Díaz-Canel visitsVedca: “This company is a stronghold of our cooperation with China”

May, 2026     Radio Rebelde

Claudia Díaz Pérez

Havana— The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, visited this Friday the International Economic Association (Asociacion Economica International) of Electric Vehicles in the Caribbean (Vedca in Spanish), located in the municipality of Boyeros in Havana. He signaled the strategic role that this industry plays in the energy transition of our country and its contribution in building our “Shared Future Community” with the Popular Republic of China.

During the tour our president highlighted that Vedca -resulting from a contract between the Tianjin Dongxing Industrial Group Co. Ltd and its counterpart Minerva in Cuba, has become a very crucial actor in electrical mobility in our country. “This factory is a concrete expression of the Shared Future Community that we are building with China” said our president and noted that this installation is also full of innovation, a project that provides many opportunities for our country’s development.   

The chief of State remarked that the production level of Vedca is directly connected to energy transition, which is one of the three strategic priorities of Cuba, together with defense and food production. In this context, he highlighted that electrical mobility is an essential component. “We can talk much about electrical mobility, but if we do not have the appropriate equipment we will not be able to succeed,” he said.

  Díaz-Canel encouraged workers and directives of the factory to think big, to diversify product lines and apply innovation in the function of what our country needs. He proposed, among other things, to extend the use of these vehicles to the support of food, the transportation of medicines (including refrigerated systems) and popular recreational activities with support from mobile units equipped with photovoltaic panels and audiovisual screens.

Innovation in the function of diversification is thinking big, and not getting used to just a range of products. Technology allows diversification, it is flexible.

The director of Vedca, Julio Oscar Pérez Pérez, explained that the association started to function in 2021, after getting over the challenges imposed by COVID-19. The results obtained have been increasing: from a thousand units assembled during our first year, to 10 thousand units in 2025, for a total of more than 12 million dollars and which translated into a direct income to our country of 2 million dollars.

Today Vedca has three crucial production lines: electric bicycles, electric motorcycles, and electric tricycles. During the second semester this year, we plan to incorporate the production of electric cars able to reach 80-90 km/hour speed and 200-250 km of autonomous driving. We also plan to produce electric pickup trucks and there are already two models authorized.

He also added that the factory employs 96 workers, 20 of them females, with an average age of 46 years old and a salary average of 16 500 pesos.  We apply a plan of food subsidies to ensure the well being of our labor force and its stability. We are moving forward with the creation of a joint venture including the making of metallic structures (specifically tricycles frames) in Cuba, saving space but also incorporating advanced technology such as laser cutting and automatic welding.  

In terms of the commercialization of the products -they are sold through international platforms of international payment (to clients outside of Cuba) and in store chains, mainly with TRD (which already bought more than 1000 bicycles and motorcycles this year) in Cuba. We also sell to Cuban public firms. At this time, demand outstrips supply, the goal is close this year with more than 20 thousand units delivered.

One of the most relevant aspects in connection with Vedca is energetic sustainability. The building socio-administrative has already a photovoltaic system, and for august or September we plan to achieve total independence from the national electro-energetic net. On top of this, all tricycles assembled from no won will include photovoltaic panels that contribute, in a 30 and 40 percent, to its autonomy. We are studying to incorporate foldable photovoltaic systems to motorcycles and bicycles, as well as fix stations that help deal with domestic charging.   

The ambassador of China in Cuba, Hua Xin, who was touring with our president and who has been in this role for two years now, noted that Vedca not only is producing new equipment with new energy, but it has also used them in its own productive process. He explained that he values the vision of the future of our president who bets in favor of renewable energy.  “Without the efforts of the last few years, Cuba would not have today the possibility of showing resilience in confronting illegal sanctions,” he affirmed. He highlighted China’s commitment to increased support of Cuba transition to renewable energy, and announced the objective of ensuring Vedca becomes an example of bilateral cooperation and of the construction of a “Shared Future Community.”

 Díaz-Canel concluded calling Vedca to become the flag bearer of the use of renewable energies and of innovation, as well as in the digital transformation and artificial intelligence, to be “a modern, flexible and competitive organization, an example of the efficient and socialist company we want”.

Before departing our president confessed that visiting Vedca was very positive. The country faces a challenging situation brought about by the ongoing, and more aggressive than ever, blockade and energetic wall. It is very encouraging because we can see the results of this collective fighting and working for development. 

Translation by NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)

Sanctions, threats… the story of a genocidal vocation

U.S. policy against Cuba has been aimed at "finding the source of income, finding out how the country works, and doing everything to ensure that none of it works"

Author: Laura Mercedes Giráldez | informacion@granmai.cu

Author: Amy Liz de la Rosa, Journalism student | internet@granma.cu

May 7, 2026 

Photo: José Manuel Correa

Under the dubious guise of a supposed interest in the well-being of the Cuban people, successive U.S. administrations have persisted—since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution—in their desire to destroy it.

To that end, the Cuban economy has been subjected for more than 60 years to "the longest and most integrated regime of coercive measures ever applied against any country or government," in the words of Alejandro García del Toro, Deputy Director General of the Directorate General for the United States at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during his appearance last Tuesday on the program Mesa Redonda.
Undoubtedly, one of the most critical points of this hostile and genocidal policy was the new Executive Order issued by the White House on May 1st, with which they no longer need lies to hide their strategy of plunging the Cuban people into a crisis that will lead to internal unrest and encourage U.S. intervention.

SOME BACKGROUND:
1970s: Prohibition on countries exporting finished products to the U.S. that contained Cuban sugar.
1970s to the present: The U.S. has prohibited companies from third countries from exporting Cuban nickel to the United States (technology, machinery, transportation equipment, technological or communications equipment).
1996: With the Helms-Burton Act and its 1992 predecessor, the U.S. expanded the extraterritorial effects of its economic sanctions against Cuba. Through blackmail and intimidation, U.S. embassies worldwide targeted Cuban exports and investments on the island, combining pressure to prevent exporters and investors from engaging with the Cuban economy.

FROM THE CURRENT U.S. ADMINISTRATION:
Reinstation of Cuba on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, with repercussions for the banking sector.
Implementation of travel restrictions to Cuba.
Reinstatement of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which has a significant intimidating effect.
Executive Order of January 29, 2026: limits each country's sovereign prerogative to determine the export of its national products, and cuts off Cuba's access to fuel for daily life.
*During its first term, this administration had implemented more than 243 unilateral coercive measures against Cuba.
 
SHARED OBJECTIVES:
To stifle the Cuban economy.
To destroy production.
To restrict Cuba's export capacity.
To control the island's economic structure.
 
EXECUTIVE ORDER OF MAY 1, 2026:
Exacerbated extraterritorial character.
Effective on May 1st.
Establishes that there is no need to notify those affected: a company or person that has a connection to or exports any product to Cuba does not necessarily have to be notified for their assets, accounts in U.S. banks, or businesses in the United States to be frozen or blocked.
Seeks to intimidate, prohibit, and nullify the Island's ability to connect its banking system and economy with the rest of the world. Reflects the clear objective of the U.S. Government to take control of Cuba in the medium term, according to its objectives.
A desperate attempt to implement a policy that leaves Cuba and its Government with virtually no options to operate the national economy.
The new measures especially affect key sectors such as energy, mining, and financial services.
Establishes secondary sanctions beyond energy, fuels, and their derivatives.
They are trying to prevent Cuba from using the sun, air and water rationally, and from developing technologies associated with harnessing renewable energy sources.

EXTRATERRITORIAL REACH:
Ariadna Cornelio Hitchman, a specialist with the Legal Affairs and Analysis Department of the U.S. Affairs Office, stated that this new executive order has a distinct and expanded dimension regarding the extraterritorial and illegal effects of U.S. policy to date:
Individuals, financial institutions, and banks with ties to the Cuban government can have their assets in the U.S. frozen, even if their businesses in U.S. territory have absolutely nothing to do with Cuba.
It targets any "foreign or U.S." entity operating in sectors vital to generating foreign currency for the island.
It attempts to involve third countries in the application of these coercive measures.
It prevents the arrival of essential medical supplies, a demonstration of solidarity from sister nations: attacking anything that could help, anything that could arrive and improve the lives of the Cuban people.
 
PSYCHOLOGICAL STRATEGY:
Based on a long-standing and enduring hatred of the Revolution, the Cuban nation, and absolute contempt for the Cuban people.
Designed to destroy and cripple the Cuban economy, to create as many hardships and shortages as possible.
"Find the source of income, find out how the country works, and do everything to make sure none of it works." (Mauricio Claver-Carone, architect of the 234 measures against Cuba).
They not only try to make the victim feel guilty, but they also use them so that, after making them suffer as many shortages as possible and making them feel they have no way out, they give them the impetus to generate chaos, a situation of social imbalance that justifies a potentially more aggressive action, such as a military attack, under the pretext of a supposed humanitarian crisis.
On February 16th, high-ranking U.S. officials stated that Cuba was a nation in dire straits and that "they don't even have fuel."
On March 30th, the White House spokeswoman stated: "There is no formal change in sanctions policy. We reserve the right to seize ships if the law allows it."
On April 15th, the Secretary of State told Al Jazeera: "We have not taken any punitive measures against Cuba. The blackouts have nothing to do with us." Meanwhile, the Secretary of Energy asserted: "We want to force change and let the people be free."
May 1st: Threat to position an aircraft carrier 90 meters off the Cuban coast. And the assertion: "They will surrender."

Source: Mesa Redonda program  

 Frei Betto: «My prediction is that there will not be any military attack by the US against Cuba»

The writer and philosopher analyzes what can be expected of the future of the US government strategy of energy strangulation against Cuba.

Cuba is facing one of its worst crises since the hardening of the economic blockade set by the United States. Since January 11, a week after the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, congress member Cilia Flores, by the US government of Donald Trump, the United States has prohibited oil shipping to the island.

Because the supply of electricity in Cuba depends on a thermal plant network, oil scarcity has provoked an energy crisis. Everyday life of the population has been transformed by blackouts that last hours, paralyzing the functioning of cities, causing challenging problems of food supply and affecting the health system, which leads to a humanitarian crisis.   

In an interview with Brasil de fato, the writer and philosopher Frei Betto shares that, despite all the pressures, Cuba will continue being resilient and that the actual geopolitical situation in the United States weakens the possibilities of a military attack against Cuba. “My prediction is that there will not be a US military attack against Cuba. First, because  this quagmire in which Trump is in with Iran forces US strategists to rethink how to deal with the countries they intend to subjugate. And second, because of Cuba’s geographic proximity to the US, they must think carefully, let's suppose Cuba still has missiles. One missile from Cuba could easily reach Florida.”  

Betto explains that this strategy that Trump applies to extremes is not new for the Cuban people, forged through struggle and resistance throughout its history. He mentions how US interventions have strengthened the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and remembers the invasion of Bay of Pigs, when mercenaries acting in the name of the US government tried to invade Cuba and were defeated.

“Since then, president Kennedy, who unfortunately will go down in history, for now, as a democrat when he was not one at all, decided to suffocate Cuba through hunger.  What Trump is now taking to the extreme was, in reality, a decision Kennedy made in 1962: “Let the Cubans starve, let’s create a blockade so they can’t get essential supplies.” And so, this blockade has lasted 67 years,” he says.

Given Cuba’s oil dependence, Trump decided to attack precisely this front. “The island consumes 100.000 oil barrels per day and can only produce between 30.000 and 40.000. Therefore, there is a deficit of 60.000”, explains Frei Betto.

Against this backdrop, the solidarity of countries such as Mexico has been fundamental, but the threat of sanctions could slow down these initiatives. “The president of Mexico [Cláudia Sheinbaum], who is an example of solidarity with Cuba and has sent several ships with supplies, including medical material, medicine and food, declared that she could not continue to send oil because Mexico could not support a tariff increase by the United States.”

Frei Betto also comments on Brazil's relief efforts and their limitations. “Brazil has provided extraordinary support, both in food and medicine. Lula's government has been extremely generous in sending supplies to Cuba. But [when it comes to oil] our hands are tied, because Fernando Henrique [Cardoso, former president] privatized a part of Petrobras that is now under the administration of the New York Stock Exchange,” he criticizes.

 Translation by NSCUBA (Nova Scotia)