Cuba stands up to the UN: "We are not a threat, the blockade is"

Cuba's voice resounded firmly on the international stage during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)...

Writing Cubahora in Exclusive 22/09/2026

Cuban delegation leaves plenary at United Nations in the face of Trump’s lies (Photo: Prensa Latina)

Far from bowing to interventionist speeches, the country’s top leadership and Cuban diplomacy responded immediately, dismantling Washington’s fallacies and reaffirming that the real threat to regional peace is the heightened economic blockade.

During the opening day of the High-Level Segment, the American president resorted to old arguments and hegemonic positions. Overreaching regulatory time, he devoted part of his intervention to extolling his country’s military might and calling Cuba a “failed state,” in an evident attempt to justify a military aggression against the Caribbean nation, located just 90 miles from its shores.

🇨🇺🇺🇸 Cuban delegation leaves the room of the UN General Assembly after statements of Trump pic.twitter.com/xQdH0Cmv6w

— RT Last Minute (@RTultimahora) September 22, 2026

 Faced with this rhetoric of force – exposed a few minutes before the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for the world for law and peace, and not for coercion – the Cuban delegation left the compound in sign of resounding rejection.

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, denounced through his account on X the inability of the White House to justify his systematic punishment against the Cuban people. "The lie is the appeal of those who refuse to accept the right to self-determination of the Cuban people," he said.

For his part, the president of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Esteban Lazo Hernández, ratified the strong condemnation of Cubans in the face of the falsehoods exposed in the international body, strongly coining the institutional label that marks the national feeling: Cuba Is Not a Threat, the blockade yes.

A siege that suffocates, a country that resists
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla categorically dismantled slander from the same digital platform. The foreign minister stressed that Washington is unable to digest the fact that Cuba is, and has the right to be, a fully independent and sovereign country.

"None of the falsehoods of the US President. The U.S. at the UN may deny that fact. Cuba is not a threat to the US. U.S. or any country. The economic blockade, including energy encirclement, does threaten Cuba and the rest of the nations. It is an act of genocide and collective punishment. We are a country of peace and we deserve peace," Rodriguez Parrilla said.

International solidarity in the face of abuse

In the midst of the interventionist offensive, the voice of global justice soon manifested itself. The Cuban foreign minister publicly thanked the intervention of the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who during his turn in the General Debate crudely denounced the reality that the archipelago suffers.

Lula expressed before the plenary that "in Cuba, the world observes with horror how a collective punishment is imposed on 10 million people through an illegal embargo." The Brazilian leader also advocated genuine cooperation in the face of hegemonic impositions and military guardianship attempts in the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba thus confirms, once again, that it will not yield to blackmail. With the historic conviction to defend their sovereignty and overcome the ruthless aggression imposed by the U.S. government, the Cuban people continue to march on the path of peace, creative resistance and social justice.

 

 

More flexibility in foreign exchange transactions among economic players

In order to order, expand and energize, in wholesale trade, such operations in foreign currency between companies and forms of non-state management, new regulations accompany in this sense the economic and social transformations in execution...

Fidel Benito Rendón Matienzo in Exclusive 14/09/2026  CUBAHORA

Inter-business and commercial operations at the wholesale level, in foreign currency, has been included as a new source of foreign exchange in the Cuban economy.

This is reflected in Resolution 103/2026 of the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP), published this Thursday 10 in the ordinary Official Gazette number 76, along with another of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), number 102/2026, referring to the Rules for the opening of bank accounts in foreign currency.
The economic and social transformations, approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power on June 18, demanded to update the general bases for the system of management, control and allocation of those currencies.

On the one hand, in a context of restrictions on its availability due to the unprecedented intensification of the US blockade, and on the other, of the expansion of powers granted to economic actors, and greater flexibility and business and territorial autonomy, it was necessary to temper Resolution 140/2025 of the MEP.

As explained to this journalist Susset Rosales Vázquez, general director of Planning and Development of the aforementioned body, the new provision allows that in foreign exchange transactions state entities, forms of non-state management and cooperatives, among others, can operate with greater fluidity, flexibility and autonomy in order to energize the economy.

The priority is given to the exporting and import substitute sectors, in addition to the fact that through direct payments in foreign currencies it is intended to chain and strengthen the productive links, minimizing the exchange rate distortions that exist today.
In turn, the new resolution contributes to the resuppression of raw materials and inputs for the different productions, and the timely access to foreign exchange for the maintenance of productive activities and services, with direct impacts on the supply to the population without having to access the exchange market.

Susset Rosales clarified that even when foreign exchange transactions in inter-business and wholesale trades become the source of these currencies, in retail trade, domestic currency operations continue and only those that are of interest to the country will be approved in USD.
Undoubtedly, this seeks the protection of the population and improve the purchasing power of the Cuban peso, avoiding that access to goods and services is subject to currency tenure and the current volatility of the exchange rate.

That is why the use of the currency is regulated in the interest of re-approval and increasing production of economic actors, and the measure is in line with the strategic objective of de-dollarization and with the monetary policy of the country.
The possibility of foreign exchange payments to the domestic of the economy by international cooperation projects is even extended, as agreed between the parties.

Resolution 103/2026, of the Ministry of Economy and Planning entered into force since its publication on Thursday in the Official Gazette and will be in effect until December 31 of this year.

On the opening of foreign bank accounts by economic actors

Also in conversation with Ian Pedro Carbonell Karell, director of Payment Systems of the Central Bank of Cuba, we knew that according to Resolution 102/2026, referring to the Rules for the opening of bank accounts in foreign exchange, it is intended to relax the existing mechanisms for this purpose.

He mentioned as important and novel elements, authorizing that non-state economic actors can deposit currency in cash in their current accounts, and can order payments abroad directly in their bank, for import or other related to their economic activity, without having to pass that payment process by the importing entity.

That is, the payment mechanism can be done directly with the bank and once it is executed and has the proof of it, then it can be sent to the importer, points out the interviewee.

Ian Pedro Carbonell clarifies that the regulations of the BCC are with a view to accompanying economic and social transformations, by easing the existing regulatory framework for the operation with the currencies of all the economic actors of the economy, so that there are no obstacles in the inter-business and commercial relations of wholesale, and production and services are increased.

With the previous regulations the state company could have its currency account, and that gave it some capacity and autonomy, but by paying a private actor it could not do it if it was not authorized to operate in currency, says the director.

With the lawful income of their business, holders can deposit cash into their checking account, and with their balances they can ask their bank to order a payment abroad, explains the BCC’s director of Payment Systems.

The resolution of this institution will enter into force seven days after its publication this Thursday 10, in the Official Gazette.

---

What they did not calculate: our animalization

Laidi Fernandez de Juan

Cuba debate, www.cubadebate.cu

Our conviction as an unbeatable Cuban people tells us that no matter how dark the outlook is, the sun, whatever it may be, will rise every morning

In the midst of this chaotic situation we live in, where survival prevails and resilience, inventiveness and a resigned way of accepting the inevitable predominate, little by little we acquire qualities that we never imagined we could have. Those who surround us to the limit, imposing crude restrictions on us, forcing us into a permanent state of wakefulness which undermines our central nervous system, which is our entire body, they did not calculate the intrinsic nature of the Cuban people: the stubborn force to invent, to come to the surface, to transform mechanisms, things, things that were until then incalculable. This category of resistance does not appear in any manual. It is something that we have been acquiring over many years of shortages and their consequent alternatives.

I am not going to compare one period with another, this crisis with the previous one, nor how much we have sacrificed, because that would weaken the current state of immediacy in the face of the precariousness of our existence.

If half a year ago it seemed enormous to us not to have basic services for 4 or 6 hours a day (water supply, the essential electricity, gas for cooking, digital or fixed telephone connection), we have already reached the point of having these services for a few hours each day, which forces us to a gradual animalization, to develop skills that we never planned or thought possible to develop.

This does not mean that we are pleased or accept the transformations with pleasure, quite the opposite. Everyone's nerves are frayed, and on the surface, with a terrifying irritation that explains why we fight like beasts for the right of the road or for a simple bucket of water. We do it because, among other reasons, nothing is simple or dispensable.

We all need water, food, electricity, gas, medicines at any cost, even if it implies the progressive animalization to which I refer. There are many examples, but I will limit myself to a few.

Although it violates laws of human physiology, we have already developed a certain night vision, as if we were cats or bats. In the shadows for six months, in the early hours of the morning we see silhouettes of the dining room table, we identify the living room armchair and the bedside table without us falling. The ear acquires new capacities, also unimaginable before this war that we fight day by day. We are no longer frightened by the fluttering of some wrong butterfly that cannot find a window through which to get out.

Those impressive moths we call "tataguas", witch butterflies that sometimes sneak into our homes, walk around without us falling on with our brooms, as before. They no longer scare us nor do we believe they are bad omens of things to come. We already have bad things happening.

Mice nibble on the corners of rooms and the edges of skirting boards without much attention to them. Not only because we are exhausted after fighting battles during the day, but because in our new scale of values, feeling (hearing or seeing) rodents or flying beings is not important.

Chicken eggs explode due to the intense heat and lack of refrigeration. I can attest to the noise they make when they burst, but we already know that it is not a bomb that has exploded in the kitchen, but an egg, and although it is a fatality, it is not the end of the world. At least in the world we inhabit right now.

As if we were crocodiles, we bleed very little, or not at all. The other day a very heavy flashlight fell over one of my eyebrows. Under normal conditions, blood would have flowed from the injured brow arch, but not now. As if the body, the platelets and the physiological cascade of coagulation understood that there are no threads or suture needles, no disinfectants or cotton or gauze or light in the polyclinic, the forehead, the eyebrows and the face are all repressed, and not a bump leaves a record of the trauma. We are reptiles, cats, bats.

We are like "wise elephants," "gentle dolphins" or "multicolored butterflies" accepting a new way of life, a way of life which is constantly changing. It may happen that the blessed hour of electricity comes to us in the middle of the night. In a state of constant wakefulness, we don't even gossip. Each member of the family throws himself out of bed with cheetah speed because we know that in a matter of minutes we have to charge the few pieces of equipment we have, cell phones, fans, as well as washing, cooking, cleaning and perhaps ironing even if it is 3 in the morning.

We look like anxious guinea pigs doing everything at once, with frenzy. Then, like sleepy koalas, we spend the rest of the day regaining the tactile sensitivity of a mole when darkness arrives (metaphorical and real).

I am convinced that our oppressors did not calculate that these unusual and unnatural adaptations would allow us to survive. The vast majority of us already belong to the so-called "ordinary Cubans," and we go to the market as if we were members of a team of ducks, geese or ants, in a silent line to get food, dragging carts with wheels, or wooden boxes adapted for such purposes.

No matter how hard, difficult, cumbersome and suffocating our corrosive daily life is, no matter how animalized we are, and no matter how distant hope may be, we are not going to allow ourselves to be defeated.

Translation by NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)

Song: Fidel Arrived

 

 “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.