Speech by Federation of Cuban Women Leader Osmayda Hernández Beleño

The following is a speech Osmayda Hernández Beleño, director of international relations of the Federation of Cuban Women (known as FMC, its Spanish-language acronym), gave on March 14, 2026. That day, the FMC leader addressed the opening of a conference at the City University of New York Graduate Center in Manhattan, New York, on normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba.

She spoke about the challenges facing the Cuban people since Washington escalated its blockade against Cuba following Trump’s January 29 executive order.

Hernández Beleño was part of the FMC delegation that traveled from Havana to New York City to take part in the 70th session of the United Nations Commission on the Legal and Social Status of Women.

We are publishing the speech below for the information of our readers. Translation from the Spanish-language original, photos, and notes are by World-Outlook.

— World-Outlook editors

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By Osmayda Hernández Beleño

Dear friends,

For the Cuban delegation taking part in the 70th Session of the Commission on the Legal and Social Status of Women, it is a source of immense satisfaction to participate in the 11th International Conference for the Normalization of Relations between the United States and Cuba.

This important event takes place at a time when the Cuban people are experiencing a profound energy crisis as a result of the policies of maximum pressure imposed on our country by the U.S. government. 

What historically has been an economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba that has lasted for more than six decades has recently mutated into a qualitatively different and qualitatively even more aggressive and inhumane stage.

Cuba is suffering from the continuation of unilateral coercive measures with an enormous extraterritorial impact on relations with all countries, and it is facing a systematic siege, surgically designed to create shortages capable of hurting and reversing our nation’s social development and the quality of life of our population for purposes of destabilization.

The unjust inclusion of Cuba on the list of supposed state sponsors of terrorism, together with the persecution of commercial contracts with countries and companies to acquire fuel; the harassment, interception and confiscation of ships transporting fuel, and threats of sanctions, and in some cases their effective use against shipping companies, have created even more pressure, going beyond the economic level to negatively impact basic human security by affecting access to essential goods and services such as food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity, which are vital to guaranteeing the right to life and other basic human rights.

In the face of this severe energy blockade and the shortage of fuel in recent months, Cuba has not stood idly by. It has implemented measures within its National Energy Strategy, prioritizing the protection of essential services and accelerating projects for renewable energy sources as a sustainable and sovereign long-term solution. In this sense:

• 995 solar panel systems have been installed in homes in isolated areas and social centers.
• Photovoltaic kits have been installed for 120 children with illnesses that require continuous air conditioning in their homes. Likewise, for more than 10,000 health and education workers.
• More than 900 state enterprises have photovoltaic systems to carry out their activities.
• 6,765 homes are now connected to the national electric system through photovoltaic systems.
• 636 solar water pumping systems [are now in operation] for the population, which are above all in aqueducts for the community.
• 462 solar pumping systems for agricultural irrigation [are in place], and at the same time, major investments are being made in the area of hydroelectric systems and wind energy.

Friends of Cuba:

Throughout all these years, there have been constant attempts to destroy the example that the Cuban revolution represents for many in the world. More than 60 years of embargos, extraterritorial laws and oil blockades, and surviving this relentless strangulation is something that imperialism cannot comprehend.

Cuba does not represent a threat of any kind to the United States or to any other country in the world, as Donald Trump has claimed. The “problem with Cuba” is that it spread its example of solidarity and internationalism within a destructive capitalism that expresses the opposite.

The “problem with Cuba” is that it has been and is an example of self-determination and resistance against the criminal blockade. It is the example of having become involved in the struggle to end the South African apartheid regime.^[1] It is the example it provided when it received the victims of the Chernobyl disaster.^[2] It is the exemplary commitment of the medical and health missions that Cuba sends to dozens of countries, and that has deepened as a policy in the middle of the pandemic, when no other country dared to do so.^[3]

Cuba is an example of independence that still shines brightly, and that, in a strange paradox, was the last Latin American nation to become independent from one empire, Spain, only for another, the United States, to set upon it. In response to Trump’s threats, [Cuba’s] President Miguel Diaz-Canel stated: “Cuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do. Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the United States for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”

Friends who are with us today,

In this intense battle to defend our sovereignty, we have had the unquestionable support of the solidarity of thousands of friends who have denounced injustice, lies and manipulation campaigns.

Articulating the defense of the Cuban Revolution to put an end to this genocidal, inhumane blockade, is without a doubt an act of love and commitment to a country that for more than six decades has been an example of solidarity and altruism, of resistance and determination, principles that we will maintain no matter how difficult the times are.

Thanks to all of you for being here, and to the organizers of this conference!

NOTES

[1] In November 1975 the Cuban government, in response to a request from the government of Angola, sent thousands of volunteer troops to that country to help defeat the invading armed forces of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Pretoria was determined to block the Angolan people from realizing their hard-fought independence from Portugal, set for November 11, 1975. The apartheid rulers recognized that the crumbling of the Portuguese empire, the last bastion of European colonialism on the African continent, would provide impetus in South Africa itself to struggles to end white minority rule.

The Cuban government named its internationalist mission in Angola Operation Carlotta, after the slave who led an 1843 rebellion in Cuba’s Matanzas Province. When Cuban volunteers arrived, South African troops had already pressed more than 400 miles into Angolan territory and anti-government forces had reached the outskirts of the capital city of Luanda. By late March 1976, however, the last invading forces had been pushed back over Angola’s southern border into Namibia, at that time still a South African colony.

This initial defeat of apartheid’s army gave new impetus to the struggle for a nonracial, democratic republic inside South Africa. In June 1976 young people took to the streets in Soweto and other Black townships across the country. In the years that followed, the surge of protests gave birth to a new network of popular committees and anti-apartheid organizations on both the local and national level. Super-exploited workers waged strikes and formed trade unions in defiance of government bans.

The new rise of struggles reinforced the African National Congress (ANC), which had been banned in 1960 and many of whose leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were imprisoned for their anti-apartheid activities. The advancing struggle inside the country increased the pariah status of the apartheid regime worldwide.

Over the next 12 years the apartheid rulers repeatedly conducted military operations penetrating deep into Angolan territory. Together with Washington, Pretoria armed and financed the forces of UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), which carried out counterrevolutionary terrorist operations in southern Angola.

In November 1987, however, in the face of a critical situation in which South African troops had encircled Cuito Cuanavale in southeast Angola, Cuba made the decision to send thousands of volunteer reinforcements and massive amounts of weaponry and supplies. By March 1988 the South African troops had been dealt a decisive military defeat at Cuito Cuanavale by the combined forces of the Cuban volunteers, the Angolan army, and fighters from SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation) in Namibia. The South African invaders were forced to withdraw from Angola. In subsequent negotiations the apartheid regime ceded independence to Namibia, which celebrated the end of colonial domination and the establishment of its own government in March 1990.

By puncturing once and for all the myth of the white supremacists’ invincibility, the outcome at Cuito Cuanavale gave another impulse to the battle against apartheid — leading to the unbanning of the ANC and to freeing Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders from imprisonment — and its eventual defeat inside South Africa.

On July 26, 1991, ANC president Nelson Mandela — who was subsequently elected South Africa’s president in 1994 — and Cuba’s president Fidel Castro spoke together for the first time at a historic rally in Matanzas, Cuba. “The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa!” Mandela said in his speech. “The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa! Without the defeat at Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned! The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today!… Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”

For more information see How Far We Slaves Have Come by Nelson Mandel and Fidel Castro.

[2] For 21 years, from 1990 to 2011, Cuba operated a major internationalist program that provided free, comprehensive medical care to over 26,000 people — about 22,000 of them children — affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Located in Tarará, near Havana, this initiative treated specialized cases of cancer, leukemia, and skin diseases, offering rehabilitation and schooling in a residential seaside setting. The Cubans covered the entire cost of the “Children of Chernobyl” program, even though it coincided with Cuba’s severe economic crisis, known as the Special Period, following the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet bloc beginning in 1991.

[3] For more information see Cuba Sends Doctors, the U.S. Sends Sanctions, published by World-Outlook on March 14, 2025.

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