Speech by Cuba’s Foreign Minister at the United Nations
The following is the speech by Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York City on October 28, 2026. Rodríguez addressed the international body during the debate on a resolution presented by Cuba titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
The UN General Assembly approved the resolution with 130 votes in favor, 17 against, and 25 abstentions. While Cuba prevailed, Washington made substantial inroads toward minimizing Cuba’s moral victory through bullying and blackmail. An article covering the two-day debate on this resolution will be published soon.
We extend our gratitude to Cuba’s Mission to the UN for providing the transcript of Rodríguez’s speech in Spanish and English, which we are publishing for the information of our readers. Subheadings and photos are by World-Outlook.
— World-Outlook editors
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By Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla
New York, October 28, 2026.
Mr. President,
A great power is attacking a member State of this organization — a small, independent, peace-loving and fraternal nation — by submitting it to an economic warfare with the purpose of imposing its domination and a “regime change” that includes a fuel blockade, which is equivalent to a naval blockade and is an act of war, an act of collective punishment and a genocide proscribed by International Law, whose dire consequences are harmful to people, restrict their fundamental rights, affect third countries and turn the basic needs of the people into instruments of political coercion.
Its consequences are felt on the dining table of Cuban families, in the bed of the ill; in the delivery of a child or in an operating room; in nutrition; in a child’s classroom; in the lack of electricity, potable water and medicines; in the prices of the goods that are indispensable to human life.
A US wave of intimidation, blackmail
The General Assembly has been taking a stand on this item since 1992, but right now it is doing so amidst new and extraordinary circumstances. The US government has unleashed a wave of pressures, intimidation, and blackmail against many member States with a coercive, illegal, immoral and unwarranted demand to change their traditional stance and adopt a position that is contrary to the well-founded stance they had been adopting for decades as an act of State.
It’s about an attempt to define the position of the General Assembly in light of the use of intimidation and unilateral coercive measures to try to dictate to the rest of member States what to say and how to vote; which nations they can freely trade with and which they cannot freely trade with; where their shipping companies can forward cargo to and where they cannot forward cargo to; what countries they can have financial relations with and what countries they cannot have financial relations with.
Today, those pressures are aimed against Cuba. What other State would these pressures be aimed against tomorrow?
It is also an attempt to define whether or not the United Nations condone or accept collective punishment and the determination to crush the political will of a sovereign State through economic suffocation, starvation, hardships, and desperation against an entire population or the destruction of a nation.
Everybody knows that the government of the United States has reinforced to extreme levels the aggression against Cuba since early on this year, with the aspiration, expressed both publicly and officially, to take hold of the country, control its economy and exercise its domination.
It has openly resorted to the threat of the use of military force and has imposed tens of new economic coercive measures in addition to the ones that have existed for decades, which have been tightened to extreme levels since 2019 and turned into a sort of medieval siege since last January.
Since the month of July, the aggression has acquired a new and stark dimension, which has included new efforts by the US government to hinder, obstruct and sabotage the ambitious program of economic and social transformations which our country has sovereignly designed as part of its economic and entrepreneurial transformations to adapt to the nefarious economic changes and face the economic warfare imposed on us. Against all odds, we will do it for the benefit and the dignity of all Cubans.
The [US] Secretary of State, when referring to the efforts being made by Cuba, stated publicly on August 7 last, and I quote: “What we are trying to teach them is there are no escape valves… Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off,” end of quote.
The most widely used and manipulated pretext by the US government to try to justify its actions is to portray Cuba as an alleged threat to the nuclear superpower or even to the hemisphere. It is well known that no government represented here would admit or accept such a gross fallacy. They have no arguments to support that assertion.
In addition to other considerations that are well known and obvious, the US government can attest to the fact — and it could recognize it if it acts with honesty — that Cuba has contributed to the national security priorities of that country.
Throughout the years and on several occasions, the Cuban government has shared sensitive information with the US government in relation to threats associated to drug-trafficking, terrorism, and other transnational crimes with a potential impact on the United States and the region. This is information contributed even in recent times, despite the manifest hostility of this administration.
Cuba is not a threat! The blockade is!
Fuel blockade: An act of collective punishment
The fuel blockade is an act of collective punishment that threatens the life of Cubans.
The shortage of hospital inputs, the interruption of treatments and the difficulties with the supplies of water, energy, medicines and foodstuffs are real threats to the life and the wellbeing of persons.
The mendacious accusations against Cuba are too well-known and do not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. They are the same boring slanders that we have heard already in this room.
They add as new pretexts several fanciful allegations of inequalities, wealth hoarding, and privileged elites.
They also wield as a pretext the fact that Cuba allegedly practices slavery or trafficking in persons, which are slanderous assertions against the medical staff and the international health cooperation program in more than 50 of the States represented here. They are exerting cruel pressures and resorting to blackmail to abort those programs.
International Law recognizes no justification whatsoever for genocide or collective punishment.
The blockade silently kills and punishes our population as never before.
Since the beginning of the implementation of the maximum pressure policy against Cuba, our infant mortality rate went from 4 per one thousand live births to 9.9 in 2005. Those are not statistics or numbers. Those are children; those are lives severed at birth, which are causing immense pain to those families.
Many of you are either mothers or fathers. You know that no statistics can express what it means for a parent not to have the medicine that a child needs; or what it means for a family to wait for a surgery that is postponed.
Seventy percent of the Essential Medicines List is lacking and around 100,000 people of whom more than 12,000 are children awaiting surgery.
It is for those children and their relatives in Cuba that we are here. And we are also here for our selfless, closely united, cultured, conscious, noble, fraternal patriotic, and dignified people who keep moving on; who wake up every day, overcoming every obstacle, looking for solutions and becoming part of those resolutions with dedicated effort.
No people deserve the suffering and abuse that are being imposed on us today.
This is a medication called Pemetrexed. It is manufactured by the company Lilly, here in the United States. It is used to treat lung cancer. In my country, there are patients who need it and do not have it, not because it doesn’t exist; not because we cannot pay for it. We don’t have it because it is manufactured in the United States and the blockade prevents us from buying it.
The number of people dying of cancer in Cuba has significantly increased. Although Cuba’s survival rates continue to be higher than those of the majority of low and middle-income countries and the rates established by the World Health Organization, these have decreased in recent years. In the case of children and youths, survival rates dropped from 85 per cent to 65 per cent. The trend coincides with the toughest moments of the oil siege.
By contrast, this other medication is called Neuralcim. Why does the blockade against Cuba prevent 7 million US citizens from receiving the benefits of Neuralcim, a Cuban medication that can slow down the progression of Alzheimer, senile dementia and neuro-degenerative diseases with proven and unparalleled effectiveness as compared to similar therapies?
Absurd US policy blockades everything that sustains life
The absurd US policy is blockading everything that sustains life; it blockades this medication to fight cancer and also blockades this other medication that carries a molecule that helps thousands of people to slow down the painful process of forgetting.
We are not speaking about numbers in this report. We are speaking about lives and healing opportunities, tragedies and traumas, the daily anxieties of the medical and the health staff in general.
Power generation by mobile facilities and fuel and diesel-powered stand-by stations in the country decreased; it is currently accounting for only 20.6 per cent of the power generated by these same stations during the same period of 2025.
Eighty five percent of potable water pumping systems in Cuba are powered by electricity. The impact resulting from the lack of fuel has caused that almost 2.6 million people have difficulties to access water and in some areas the impact is extreme.
During the last few months, the government of the United States hindered the delivery of goods to the Island. Around 7,000 containers which had been paid for even by Cuban private companies, most of them carrying foodstuffs, medicines and inputs for hemodialysis procedures could not arrive in our ports, as was originally agreed, due to the refusal by shipping companies to continue operating with Cuban counterparts, in the face of the direct threats of sanctions.
The persecution of shipping companies, the interdiction of vessels and the imposition of secondary sanctions against anyone interacting with Cuba, violate the rules of international trade and freedom of navigation.
According to several polls and surveys of digital talks, 6 out of 10 US citizens wish to normalize relations with Cuba, oppose a military action or are against “seizing” the Island and do not trust the decisions of their government. Fifty percent are against the fuel blockade as opposed to only 25 per cent that support it. Regarding conversations in social media, since September 20, 72 per cent of US citizens are opposed to the blockade.
The US government has no right or prerogative to govern the Cuban population, interfere in the internal affairs of the country, decide the destiny of the nation, impose its will on the people, appropriate the nation’s wealth or exercise its domain on the national territory.
The scarce, draconian and onerous exceptions to the blockade by means of very limited government licenses do not prove that the blockade does not exist. They prove exactly the opposite. Washington intends to present the announced $100 million of humanitarian assistance and the specific and limited licenses to export fuel and foodstuffs as a proof that it is helping the Cuban people and that the blockade does not exist. That deceitful figure is only equivalent to the economic damages caused during 5 days and would only be enough to finance the generation of a limited amount of power that would hardly cover a two-weeks demand. The humanitarian aid does not replace Cuba’s right to trade without US sanctions; nor should it be manipulated for political purposes.
In full accordance with Cuba’s foreign relations behavior, our government has expressed and reiterated its disposition to establish, with the government of the United States, a relationship based on respect, cooperation, and peace. We strongly believe that this would be beneficial to the people of Cuba but also to the people of the United States, their interests, wellbeing, and natural desire for peace. It will also be beneficial to the peoples of Our America and the entire hemisphere.
The measures adopted against my country have been designed to cause the greatest possible damage in the shortest possible time against an entire people. They are not like the so called and unacceptable “collateral damages.” These are deliberately inflicted damages, by design and by a political decision. There is an attempt to bring about a humanitarian crisis in Cuba and use it as a weapon.
We have prevented an acute humanitarian crisis
We have prevented it and we will continue to prevent it thanks to community solidarity, the understanding and democratic participation of people in the adoption and implementation of economic and social measures; of popular organizations and the civil society; the efficiency of the People’s Power bodies and government management; and thanks to our comparative advantages and a swift and significant investment in photovoltaic energy; the increase in the production of national crude oil and the development of the technology required to refine it; and the guaranteed power generation for hospitals, water pumping stations and social centers.
This will continue to be possible thanks to the reorganization of health and educational services; the implementation of intensive and effective social policies; the protection of low income and vulnerable persons; the development of electric means of transportation; the growth and increased social commitment of the private sector; the increase in the number of planted areas and the use of agroecology.
This General Assembly will need to decide whether this crime that continues to be committed against Cuba and its people would be admitted or condemned; or if the aspiration of a superpower to impose its will on the political positions and the sovereign rights of the rest of the international community will prevail.
For Cuba, there is no either-or choice. Under the guidance of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and of President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, we will persist in the defense of our independence and national sovereignty and the rejection of the ambitions of conquest and domination by an imperialist power, as part of the inalienable rights and unrenounceable obligations of our Nation. We act in compliance with International Law and the United Nations Charter.
Cuba demands to be allowed to live in peace
What Cuba demands is to be allowed to live in peace, that the Cuban people be allowed live in peace, to resolve their own problems in peace and find solutions to the great difficulties of today’s world, free from any political, military, cognitive or economic aggression.
Cuba is not a threat! The blockade is!
Therefore, I have the honor of presenting, on behalf of the heroic, fraternal and noble Cuban people, the draft resolution A/81/L.5.
In the year marking the centennial birthday of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, we repeat with him: Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome!
Thank you, very much.
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Categories: Cuba/Cuba Solidarity