“We know it will be difficult. Yeah, it is. But look: here we are, standing, fighting, not giving up.”

Statements by the President of the Republic of Cuba to the Brazilian press...

Writing "Cubahora" in Exclusive 24/08/2026

President Díaz-Canel at the closing of the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba. Photo: Presidency Cuba

The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel offered or an interview to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. During his speeches, the president rejected or that economic transformations represent an abandonment of the process of socialist construction and later affirmed that the US blockade is the determining factor of the difficulties faced by the Caribbean nation.

Díaz-Canel acknowledged the existence of internal difficulties, including bureaucratic problems and delays in certain government actions, but argued that these do not explain the dimension of the current situation.

“I say with all sincerity: even if we had done everything right, without failure, the main cause of what Cuba is experiencing today is the blockade,” he said.

The president explained that the U.S. coercive measures, increased during the terms of Donald Trump, directly affect the availability of fuel and, by that way, electricity generation, water supply, transportation, health services and the functioning of the economy.

He recalled that in the last seven months Cuba only received a shipment of oil from Russia as humanitarian aid, while private fuel imports represent an insufficient amount to cover national needs.

Díaz-Canel also denounced the effect of U.S. actions on foreign companies that maintain commercial relations with Cuba, considering that these measures hinder the arrival of food, medicine, spare parts and other supplies.

He said that currently only a part of the basic list of drugs can be covered and mentioned difficulties in ensuring medical treatments, surgeries and immunization programs.

The lack of fuel has also affected the electric energy system. The president pointed out that Cuba has generation capacity that it cannot fully use due to lack of fuels, a situation that contributes to the prolonged blackouts registered in the country.

Díaz-Canel rejected, however, that Cuba is on the verge of collapse. “There are blackouts, but no blackout has turned off the hope of the Cuban people or broken our capacity,” he said.

In that regard, he stressed the stay of health workers in hospitals and the continuity of educational processes despite difficulties.

The president said that the United States is trying to economically suffocate Cuba to provoke a social explosion that will lead to a rupture with the government and the fall of the Revolution.

Faced with this, he affirmed that the country has no alternative but to resist and reiterated Havana’s willingness to maintain a dialogue with Washington whenever it develops without preconditions and on the basis of respect for sovereignty.

Díaz-Canel said that there are currently contacts between officials from both countries, although an agenda of talks has not been established. “There can be no dialogue under oppression,” he said. On the other hand, when referring to the 176 measures announced, the president express o that these are a result of a development debate.  

 

The measures include greater participation of the private sector, new possibilities for foreign investment and the opening to investments of Cubans living abroad. He explained, the main means of production continue in the hands of the State, while the new economic actors must contribute to the objective of increasing production and generating benefits for the population.

Díaz-Canel expressly rejected that the measures respond to demands of Washington. “The United States has no morals to ask for any concession from us, nor are we willing to make them,” he said. The president insisted that the

During the interview, the president was also questioned about the possibility of a U.S. military intervention in Cuba, in a context marked by threats and pressure measures from Washington. From this administration of the United States we can expect anything,”

When asked what would happen to him personally in the event of a military action against the island, he replied: “If my time comes, it arrived. But it won't be with weakness and cowardice. It will be fighting.” The president reiterated that Cuba does not seek a confrontation and that it maintains a willingness to dialogue with Washington, but without preconditions or subordination to external interests. Díaz-Canel argued that the defense of independence and sovereignty is directly related, under the conditions of Cuba, to socialist construction.

He also referred to the teachings of the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, who “taught us that the setbacks can be transformed into victories and that no enemy, however powerful, is invincible.” We know it will be difficult. Yeah, it is. But look: here we are, standing, fighting, without giving up,” the Cuban president concluded.

Embassy of Cuba in Canada 

Cuba is facing a criminal collective punishment imposed by the United States.

As part of the overwhelming solidarity from the Canadian people, a new petition urge the Government of Canada to oppose the United States illegal policy. Thanks to the Canadian people for actively raising this very important issue, to sign the petition click on the link below.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-7649

 Two hundred days under siege: The silent asphyxiation of a people

So far in 2026 Cuba has received a single shipment of oil: about 100,000 tons of crude oil donated by Russia, nothing more. More than 1,400 megawatts of installed capacity remain inactive because of lack of crude oil. 

The electrical system is sustained by what the island produces internally: national crude oil, gas accompanying wells and renewable sources, but it is not enough

Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu

August, 2026

The sun sets over the horizon and the island seems to be shipwrecked in the dark; you can barely see distant glows, fireflies that dot the archipelago, like the position lights of a ship fighting on the high seas in the middle of the storm.

It may seem close in time to January 29, 2026, when U.S. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order -2,207 words that declared Cuba an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy" of his country. But for 200 days an entire people has been subjected to unnecessary suffering.

With this argument, the same one that has served to justify interventions in dozens of nations, Trump enabled the imposition of tariffs on any country that dared to sell oil to the island. 

"Cuba will not be able to survive," he declared that night to the press, showing no hesitation. It was not just a threat, the energy siege is not just another coercive measure, it is the turn of the screw of the collar of the garrote torture, it is poking at a wound that has been open for more than six decades.

To understand its uniqueness, it is necessary to distinguish it from the economic, commercial and financial blockade, made official on February 3, 1962, a policy of collective punishment that the international community has condemned on multiple occasions at the UN General Assembly.

The energy fence is something else. 

It is the deliberate interruption of the flow of fuel to a nation which depends on it to make everything work: its hospitals, its water treatment plants, the pumping of water, its food refrigeration systems, transportation, schools.

Undoubtedly, the message of January 29 was clear: no one, under any circumstances, could supply Cuba without confronting the U.S. sanctions machine.

As if that were not enough, on the 1^st of May, Trump signed another Executive Order internationalizing the siege, expanding sanctions on financial institutions and people operating in sectors vital to the Cuban economy. And, in June, the U.S. government sanctioned the state-owned Cuba-Petroleum Union (CUPET), the heart of the island's energy system.

The result: so far in 2026, Cuba has received a single shipment of oil of about 100,000 tons of crude oil donated by Russia, and nothing more. More than 1,400 megawatts of installed capacity remain inactive due to lack of crude oil, the electrical system is sustained by what the island produces internally, that is, national crude, gas accompanying wells and renewable sources, that are not enough.

The blackouts have become prolonged. In many regions of the country, outages exceed 22 hours a day, public transport has been drastically reduced, classes are held remotely when electricity allows.

The Besieged

But the most profound impact is not measured in megawatts, it is measured in human lives: more than 32,800 pregnant women face additional risks from the lack of power that affects health systems.

In the health system, which for decades was the pride of the island and an example for Latin America, hospitals work with generators that consume the fuel that does not arrive, intensive care units operate at the limit, ambulances circulate with extreme rationing.

Desperation has a face: the face of mothers who cannot cook, sick people who cannot refrigerate their medicines, elderly people and children who endure the tropical heat without ventilation.

This energetic fence has predecessors, but none exactly the same. History records sieges that sought to surrender populations due to hunger or cold; for example, the siege of Leningrad, which lasted 872 days and claimed more than a million lives, but those occurred in declared conflicts.

Against Cuba it is different. There are no tanks on the borders, no bombs falling on the cities, it is an asphyxiation administered from a distance, without firing a single shot.

UN human rights experts have described this measure as "a serious violation of international law and a serious threat to a democratic and equitable international order".

The Cuban government has taken it to the United Nations General Assembly, where it has described it as "an act of genocide" and "collective punishment."

These are not rhetorical exaggerations, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines as such acts committed with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national group.

How many generations must suffer the consequences of a policy designed to make life in a nation unviable for genocide to be called genocide?

Those Resisting

And yet, the island has not surrendered, because resistance is, for Cubans, a way of life learned in six decades of blockade.

Cuba has drilled new oil wells and reversed the downward trend in its domestic crude oil production; it has installed more than 50 photovoltaic solar parks that contribute more than a thousand megawatts and generate, in the hours of greatest sunshine, 38% of the energy consumed during daytime hours.

It has recovered 348 megawatts of thermal generation in plants that were out of service. It's not enough, but it's all we have. The neighbors share the generator that works, the candle that illuminates, the little fuel that remains. Solidarity is not an abstract concept in Cuba: it is the only currency that still circulates.

The world watches, the world knows, but the world, for the most part, does not act.

Airlines have suspended their flights to Havana; international companies withdraw their investments; the fear of secondary sanctions, the punishment for trading with Cuba, has paralyzed the international community, but not the solidarity of the peoples.

We arrive at 200 days, a cold, administrative figure, which says nothing about the children who have died and who previously survived without any problem, in a country where infant mortality was less than five per thousand live births, at the level of a few developed nations.

A figure that says nothing about the absence of drugs to deal with cancer, about the old man who died of a curable disease. A figure that says nothing about children who grow up with the constant murmur of generators as a soundtrack to their childhood.

We are facing a decision taken in Washington, with all its consequences, while Washington fails to assume any responsibility.

Cuba has been under the energy siege for 200 days, on top of 66 years under the blockade. Cuba has existed for centuries against all odds, defying the logic of the empires that have wanted to bend it.

And yet, darkness is not the end. The archipelago resists the onslaught of bad weather, while sailing transfigured in those expeditionary boats that came to liberate their land from Spanish colonialism -small boats that, in the light of dawn, merge into a single and immense yacht.

Translation by NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)

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 The legacy of Fidel Castro: ‘¡Venceremos!’ (‘We will win!’)

By Workers World Editorial on August, 2026

August 13 marks the centennial birthday commemoration of Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, affectionately known as “Fidel” to hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Fidel was the leader of the 26th of July Movement that eventually defeated the U.S.-backed puppet regime of President Fulgencio Batista in Cuba on Jan. 1, 1959.

It was in early 1961, at the time of a revolutionary victory over a CIA-sponsored invasion at the Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón), that Fidel declared that a “socialist revolution” was made under the noses of the U.S. By the end of the same year, he stated that he was a Marxist-Leninist.

For the next 52 years, from the triumph of the Revolution until his formal resignation in 2008, Fidel was the leader of the Cuban people. He died at the age of 90 on Nov. 25, 2016.

There will be commemorations of every aspect of Fidel’s legacy, not only among the Cuban people, but also on almost every continent, especially within countries in the Global South. And rightfully so! Fidel was more than an individual survivor of hundreds of plots to assassinate him by several U.S. administrations. Fidel’s survival meant in many ways the survival of the Cuban Revolution; that is, Cuba’s independence and sovereignty in a world dominated by imperialist aggression and treachery.

Fidel’s exemplary revolutionary guidance helped Cuba to navigate through difficult times, including the U.S.-led Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the collapse of the Soviet Union and loss of Cuba’s main trading partners, and, of course, the ongoing devastating U.S. blockade.

It was Fidel who oriented the Cuban masses that it was necessary to take a step backward to survive during what was referred to as the “special period” in the early 1990s. This period ushered in capitalist reforms, including private investments, where dollars were integrated in certain sectors of the Cuban economy to help keep afloat crucial socialist measures, such as free healthcare and free education.

Looking toward the future

Fidel was also a fierce anti-imperialist internationalist. He encouraged Cuban brigades to travel — especially to other developing countries throughout the Global South — to provide healthcare to underserved populations.

Africa held a special place in Fidel’s heart. He helped to supervise Cuban militias battling side by side with the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against invading South African apartheid troops during the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. Fidel and Nelson Mandela maintained a close personal relationship until Mandela’s death in 2013.

Fidel expressed solidarity in words and deeds with national liberation struggles inside the U.S., despite ongoing hostility from the U.S. government. The late Black Liberation fighter Assata Shakur was granted permanent asylum in Cuba from 1987 until her death in September 2025. Rallies to free Angela Davis were organized throughout Cuba when she was arrested by the FBI on phony charges in 1970 for supporting imprisoned Black Panther Party (BPP) leader, the martyred George Jackson. Fidel also publicly expressed solidarity with another political prisoner and former BPP member, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

This Workers World editorial could go on and on with many other awe-inspiring examples of what Fidel has done to defend the sovereignty of the Cuban people and to promote the interests of all the world’s workers and oppressed peoples. Arguably his greatest gift is what his passing represents: his undying optimism in the revolutionary struggle for worldwide socialism for future generations. And that optimism is embedded deeply within the fabric of Cuban society.

Cuba continues to defend its socialist gains today and beyond despite a devastating oil and gas blockade and the current threat of a U.S. military invasion.

 Debate: Ministry of Environment, Habitat and Housing

Experts agree on the urgency of integrating habitat and sustainability policies to the housing challenge -they also warn us about the danger of  bureaucratizing risks and of the challenge of conflicts of competences...

Maya Ivonne Quiroga Paneque, CUBAHORA

July, 2026

Housing in Cuba (Fernando Medina Fernández / Cubahora)

The recently proposed Law on the Organization of the Central State Administration, published on June 8 this year by the National Assembly of People’s Power, has sparked intense debate in Cuban academic and professional circles. The preliminary draft, which would reduce the number of 23 ministries and four national institutes to mainly, and only, 20 portfolios, provides for the creation of a new institution called: Ministry of Environment, Habitat and Housing.

The measure to apply is part of a process of “reordering, resizing and perfecting” the state apparatus so as to achieve “increased effectiveness in the administrative function.” The proposal has caused many reactions. Some specialists see the merger as an opportunity to integrate sustainable development and climate resilience policies to the housing challenge, while others warn about the risk that housing urgency will cause the subordination of ecological priorities, and even that critical functions of the missing CITMA could end up diluted.

The debate reflects structural challenges that are part of the Cuban institutional system in housing, urban planning and the environment.

 

A necessary ministry may not be sufficient

 The new Ministry of Environment, Habitat and Housing would concentrate in a single body, the environmental functions that until now CITMA exercised — together with competences of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources and of the National Institute of Territorial Planning and Urbanism (INOTU).

 In his Facebook profile, Alejandro Palmarola, biologist and environmentalist, affirms the creation of the new Ministry “is a success and a necessity”.  He argues in favor of the Ministry on the basis of the accumulated experience within CITMA, and he points out, that structures with overlapping functions have coexisted, for example the Directorate of Environment and the Environment Agency, and they have generated inefficiencies as well as gaps in responsibility.

 Palmarola believes that a new Ministry with a transversal nature would permit to overcome fragmentations, while aligning with international trends favoring environmental management to be articulated with other strategic policies. He warns, however, that the challenge is working beyond the name of the Ministry  to ensure the essential: avoid duplication and to ensure the body has operational coherence.

 Institutional redesign must simplify structures and make public management more agile, particularly in a context, like Cuba, where bureaucracy has been identified as one of the main brakes for science, sustainability and innovation in the country.

 Hiram J. Gonzalez Alonso, doctor of Biological Sciences, has declared to Juventud Técnica some doubts he has about the definition of “habitat” that appear in the mission of the new ministry. He said: 

“Neither in the mission nor in the functions is habitat clearly defined," and he explains that "habitat must be conceived as the set of geographical characteristics in which biodiversity develops and coexists.”  Instead, he argues, “the situation of the waters is prioritized and united to the territorial order. We have been working for many years in research on the environment and biodiversity and have been impacted because of this approach.”

 

Architecture, housing and the risk of superstructure

 Universo García Lorenzo, architect and Master of Science at the Institute of Architecture and Constructions of Alma-Atá, Republic of Kazakhstan, argues that both, the Municipal and Provincial Directorates of Housing in Cuba, “have historically responded to a centralized approach to allocation, state control of the housing fund and bureaucratic processing.”  The professor reveals that many of the technicians who work in the housing directions lack university training in architecture or civil engineering and that such training limits them, and cannot be replaced with short courses at medium technician level. He points that such limitations often "compromise the quality of assessments and inspections performed.” 

 García Lorenzo also points out to the constant overlap of functions between the Housing Directorate and the INOTU. “With the unification of functions under INOTU, boundaries between dictating a technical housing status and granting building licenses usually collide at the  municipal base provoking bureaucratic ‘flegage’ where citizens are caught between "Housing regulations" and "Urban Planning opinions" that sometimes contradict each other.”

 Faced with such scenario, Garcia Lorenzo favors the recovery of  independent institutes for Architecture, Housing and the Environment, operating as an ecosystem of counterweights: “INOTU is necessary as the great arbiter of the territory and urbanism, but it can not continue to absorb such complex and specific disciplines.”

 

The risk of fusion: will the urgency of housing crush the environment?

 Analyzing the merger from two sides, García Lorenzo points that “The advantage is that the merger would allow to rootly integrate policies of sustainable development and climate resilience –that are vital for Cuba in the face of hurricanes and coastal floods – as well as favor the use of low-carbon materials.”

 But he warns about a risk: Housing in Cuba drags a crisis of housing deficit and critical deterioration requiring executive management of shock and massive construction resources. By merging with a regulatory and conservation entity such as the Environment, the operational urgency to build could clash with environmental protection restrictions, OR the urgency of housing could end up crushing ecological priorities if there are no autonomous control agencies.”

 

The Concept of Habitat and Historical Debt

 One of the strongest contributions of the technical guild, collected by García Lorenzo, is the transition from an approach of “housing as a unit” to one of “integral habitat”. This last involves building houses, but also ensuring services, infrastructure, public spaces and urban quality.

 This approach has been defended for decades in spaces such as the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, or the National Union of Architects and Engineers of the Construction of Cuba, where the need and value of prioritizing the rehabilitation of the existing housing fund should be above the new work. In their perspective the creation of a ministry could be an opportunity to institutionalize such vision, provided that the ministry is not reduced to merely administrative reorganization.

 

Towards a model of integral management of housing and habitat

 The dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the Technological University of Havana "Jose Antonio Echeverria", himself Master in Social Housing, Dr. Ruslan Muñoz Hernández, places the debate in a broader context. He recalls that a concern for mass and public housing took hold in Latin America from the 1930s, and in Europe after 1945, that with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to housing became a very relevant issue.

 Muñoz Hernández advocates in favor of “solid, robust, efficient offices or departments that handle the issue of housing,” while he also insists that they must be integrated not only into technical disciplines but also into banking and legal issues. He proposes that officials have technical competences of architecture and engineering, and that agents of the Ministry of Labor or Social Security and representatives of a bank to process subsidies all become directly involved in the management.

 “The properties must have administrators or managers who answer perhaps to the Municipality itself. There has to be a gear that allows a property management system to work.” 

 All specialists agree that the success of the new structure will depend not only on institutional design, but on the ability to articulate housing emergencies with the demands of environmental sustainability, and on ensuring that science and academia maintain the autonomy necessary to exercise their critical function.

 

Between integration and specialization

 The debate is not limited to these three specialists. In different academic and professional spaces, a common concern has emerged: how to achieve a balance between institutional integration and technical specialization.

 Some sectors welcome the creation of a ministry that unifies dispersed policies and facilitates coordination in the face of challenges such as climate change and the housing crisis. Others, fear that a “macrostructure” will end up diluting responsibilities and weakening technical control.

 Deep down, the discussion reveals a structural dilemma: reforming without reproducing bureaucracies, integrating without losing specialization, and responding to social emergencies without compromising environmental sustainability.

 What seems clear is that, beyond institutional design, the success of any reform will depend on its ability to solve concrete problems: the deterioration of the housing fund, administrative inefficiency and the lack of articulation between public policies.