El Ciudadano
Original article: “Es un acto de guerra”: canciller cubano denuncia bloqueo energético absoluto y amenazas de portaaviones de EE.UU. a 90 metros de la costa
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Warns of Direct Military Aggression from the U.S.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla delivered a strong warning during the International Solidarity Meeting with Cuba, denouncing the United States for imposing an «absolute energy blockade,» which he labeled an «act of war.» In his speech, he recalled that the U.S. government threatened tariff reprisals against any country that sells fuel to the island. «It’s an act of war. Equivalent to a naval blockade, defined in international law as an act of war,» he stated, emphasizing that this measure aims to «cause hunger, despair, and the overthrow of the government,» as outlined in the historic Mallory Memorandum.
The head of Cuban diplomacy alerted to an unprecedented scenario of multidimensional aggression, which includes not only economic suffocation but also an increasing threat of direct military intervention. Rodríguez Parrilla cited recent statements from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said, «talking about a place called Cuba, from which we will take control almost immediately.» He noted that Trump announced the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier would come to within «about 100 yards, around 90 meters from the coast of Cuba, and Cubans will say, ‘Thank you very much, we surrender.'» In response, the minister declared: «Cuba would become a hornet’s nest, a deadly trap, a battleground for the entire population if U.S. imperialism dared to attack us.»
In a crucial section, the minister denounced the implementation of a cognitive war funded by Washington to demobilize the population. «It is accompanied by a government program costing millions that deploys a cognitive war against the Cuban people, aimed at spreading disinformation, disorienting, demobilizing, breaking national identity, and patriotic spirit,» he expressed. He also warned about unprecedented secondary sanctions aimed at intimidating any entity worldwide that engages in commerce with Cuba, which constitutes «an extremely aggressive and unprecedented step in the extraterritorial application of the blockade.»
Despite the critical situation, Rodríguez Parrilla highlighted the massive public response as a demonstration of resilience. «The demonstration yesterday by the Cuban people, over 500,000 in Havana, and more than 5 million Cubans across the country, showcased a conscious expression of unity, resistance, creativity, commitment to the Revolution, and readiness to defend it with ideas or arms; it has been a significant event,» he affirmed. He insisted that the blockade is not an abstraction but something that is «suffered daily» and affects «the everyday lives of people,» including the denial of ventilators and medical oxygen during the pandemic.
Finally, the minister reaffirmed the willingness to engage in respectful dialogue with the United States but without conceding on issues of sovereignty. «This does not form part of that exchange in any way, the political and economic order of Cuba. We will never discuss with the United States matters that pertain solely to sovereignty, independence, and the self-determination of Cubans,» he declared. He concluded with a message of warning and dignity: «Cuba does not threaten anyone. Cuba resists thanks to you because it is not alone. Cuba defends itself, it defends itself with ideas and will defend itself with arms.»
Full Speech at the International Solidarity Meeting with Cuba.
Full Speech by Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla
Thank you. I express deep gratitude to all of you, and to the vast international movement you represent, for your persistent, tireless, and victorious solidarity with the Cuban people.
The demonstration yesterday by the Cuban people, over 500,000 in Havana, and more than 5 million across the country, was a conscious display of unity, resistance, creativity, commitment to the Revolution, and willingness to defend it with ideas or arms. It has been a transcendent fact. It was a historic, vibrant day that we hope U.S. imperialism has taken due note of.
We are living in particularly dangerous times for humanity and for Cuba.
In an increasingly unstable international scenario, the use of force normalizes, and the so-called peace based on force is discussed. The proliferation of unilateral coercive measures, cognitive or unconventional wars, occupation of territories, conquest of natural resources, disregard and violation of international law, and the brutal application of instruments of domination, rather than hegemony, are again placing the world in a multidimensional crisis and threatening Cuba, which is in the crosshairs of imperialism.
You will remember the infamous memorandum from Undersecretary Mallory, which was the first formulation, classified for many years, of the design and objectives of the blockade against Cuba. To provoke hunger, despair, and the overthrow of the government. This has been the essence of U.S. policy against Cuba.
The government’s reinforcement in the last ten years has obviously had an impact on social and humanitarian consequences and our economic performance. Since 2019, with the inclusion of 243 additional coercive measures, they intensified their efforts to deprive Cuba of supplies, notably of fuel in the summer of 2020. The cruel application of blockade measures and their reinforcement in health, medical equipment, and medicines can never be forgotten by our people as one of the worst episodes in the execution of imperialist policy against Cuba, due to the denial of ventilators, blocking of medical oxygen balloons during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On January 29 of this year, the United States adopted the additional and extraordinary measure of threatening tariff reprisals against any country whose territory, companies, or businesses exported fuel to Cuba. It is, in fact, an absolute energy blockade that adds to the intensified economic blockade and the accumulation of its effects over more than 60 years.
It is an act of war. Equivalent to a naval blockade, defined in international law as an act of war.
When the naval blockade was applied against the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the U.S. government quickly changed the name to avoid appearing as an international criminal, and began to call it a quarantine, recalling that applied against Cuba during the October Crisis or Missile Crisis.
It is an act that causes extraordinary damage to our population, to every Cuban family, and also has very serious consequences for our economy. In fact, it had begun to affect us even before, when U.S. military commands started to pursue, intercept, and confiscate foreign oil tankers in the Caribbean and beyond.
It is known that Cuba cannot currently produce all the crude or fuel needs required by the life of the people or our economy. It needs to make imports, exercising an internationally recognized right of freedom of trade and navigation. When the U.S. government seeks fuel, it does not merely stop a supplier, shipping company, or insurance company. It stops transportation to Cuba, affects medical services, harms the lives of millions of people, endangers our children, our elderly, our sick, and seeks to sow despair.
It is an unprecedented scenario in the world where a superpower abuses the capacity to impose on almost all states the prohibition of acting sovereignly, and in Cuba’s case, of exporting its own national products to the country it wishes, or for its citizens to visit any nation on the planet.
It is not merely a criminal attack against Cuba but against the sovereign prerogatives of any state. It is an unacceptable act of intimidation against any country.
The consequences are not greater for Cuba than those that would likely be suffered by the vast majority of nations, precisely because of the ordered, socialist nature focused on people and families, on social justice in our economy. But the impact is severe, as you have experienced during your time in our homeland. The pressure is evident, and the repercussions for the people are felt daily. We’re not talking about an abstraction but about the daily life of people.
In that sense, you have surely also perceived the way in which Cuban families adapt to these critical circumstances, how our people, creatively, innovatively, resiliently, firm and at the same time optimistic and cheerful, face the consequences.
Some ask how far Cuba can resist the energy blockade or the current conditions. The answer was found yesterday in our plazas and streets across the nation.
Our people’s determination to overcome and advance, even in the worst scenarios, is resolute. We produce in Cuba about half of the crude we consume. We can now refine it with new Cuban technology.
We possess some of the largest reserves on the planet of nickel and cobalt, which are critical minerals. We have sufficient cultivable land. We have water, despite drought and climate change circumstances. We have innovative and competitive industry and technology, such as pharmaceuticals. But the most important aspect is the people, the protagonists of the Cuban Revolution.
The blockade is not the only form of aggression; it also includes the tolerance, the impunity with which terrorist and violent acts against Cuba are organized from U.S. territory, where calls for violence and sedition are made daily.
It is also accompanied by a multi-million dollar government program deploying a cognitive war against the Cuban people, aimed at spreading disinformation, disorienting, demobilizing, breaking national identity, harming Cuban sensitivity, damaging sense of dignity, and affecting the monolithic unity of the Cuban people around the party, the Revolution, and its current and historical leadership, in around General Raúl Castro Ruz and First Secretary and President Díaz Canel.
The confrontation is now also taking place in the symbolic and digital realms. The recent international colloquium Patria, held in Cuba, has showcased the advances of an international coordination platform with great potential for articulating in the digital struggle, integrating technological sovereignty, including infrastructure, data, algorithms, content generation, distribution capabilities, specialized training, and operational capacities for progressive, revolutionary, and leftist democratic intervention in the digital space, fighting against the dictatorship of the algorithm.
This April and the days surrounding the commemoration of the victory, Cuba’s first military victory against U.S. imperialism, the first U.S. military defeat in this hemisphere, on April 17, 18 million people participated in the digital conversation about Cuba.
That day, the convergence at Girón, the aggressions of the U.S. government through some of its leaders’ statements, and the labeling by leftist leaders of the blockade as an act of genocide were significant. Cuba then transitioned from a bilateral issue with the United States to an international case of the highest level.
According to networks, the military option against Cuba, the threat of direct U.S. military aggression, goes from being speculative noise to real institutional debate globally. Important paradigms have emerged, notably that the oil blockade is a severe attack against humanity, aimed at inflicting humanitarian harm, creating extreme damage against an entire people as a form of collective punishment.
Secondly, the development of a multipolar front of international solidarity.
Thirdly, the mention that «Cuba is next,» indicating military escalation.
Fourth, the manipulation in human rights regarding Cuba and progressive governments.
Fifth, the effects of a successful, effective Cuban communication offensive, which resonates in discussions within the United States regarding our country and attracts global attention related to exchanges between Cuba and the U.S. government.
The two most frequent narratives are blockade and solidarity, reinforcing the same narrative.
Cuba is a besieged state, an attacked state; it is not an ineffective state. It contradicts one of the main narratives that imperialism has tried to instill in people’s minds.
It is true that we have begun a process of exchanges with the U.S. government. It is nothing extraordinary. We have done it in the past with practically all U.S. governments since the triumph of the Revolution, if I remember correctly, thirteen governments.
Always, Fidel, Raúl, Díaz-Canel, and the leadership of the party, state, and government have been open to respectful, serious, and responsible dialogue to attempt to resolve our profound differences. There are previous experiences; we are willing to move forward along that path. There are bilateral issues where it would be beneficial for both peoples to find a solution.
This does not form part of that exchange in any way; the political and economic order of Cuba will not be discussed. No internal matters of our people or our Revolution will be part of conversations with the United States.
We will never discuss with the United States issues that pertain solely to sovereignty, independence, and the self-determination of Cubans.
I can assure you that we continue and will continue fighting, dreaming, committed to the continuous improvement of our socialist construction process. We will continue advancing the path to achieving the greatest possible social justice, protecting it, defending it to the fullest, and ensuring its sustainability.
This is the Revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble.
It is the socialist and anti-imperialist Revolution of the Cuban workers who marched to our streets yesterday.
We know that Cuba is not alone, and you can count on an unwavering and profound loyalty regardless of any risk to the Cubans to the just causes of the planet, to the anti-imperialist struggle.
We will continue being deeply martian, feeling that homeland is humanity, and we will continue being profoundly internationalist, like Fidel and Che, to the last consequences.
In a radio interview, the President of the United States said on January 8: «… well, I don’t think much more pressure can be exercised than just coming in and destroying everything.» He was asked if they would impose additional economic pressure measures against Cuba. He acknowledged that they had practically exhausted their arsenal and that what remained is to come in and destroy everything.
It would be wise for the U.S. imperialism, the government, the military intelligence community, to read the signals well, interpret them correctly given the heroic and uneven fight of Cubans defending the sovereignty and security of the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Those who have fallen heroically fighting against imperialism.
Interpret well the march of the fighting people on the day of aggression against Venezuela, the massive tribute to our fallen, and the recent events commemorating the victory of Girón, the more than 500,000 Habaneros that filled the anti-imperialist José Martí tribune yesterday in Havana, and the over 5.2 million Cubans who did the same across the country.
Cuba would become a hornet’s nest, a deadly trap, a battleground for the entire people if U.S. imperialism dared to attack us.
Last night, the President of the United States said, and I quote: «… speaking of a place called Cuba, from which we will take control almost immediately,» he said.
«Now Cuba has problems, we will finish one first, upon the return from Iran,» our solidarity with Iran. Trump said, «upon returning from Iran, we will send one of our greats, perhaps the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the largest in the world. It will stop about 100 yards, approximately 90 meters from the coast of Cuba, and Cubans will say, ‘Thank you very much, we surrender.'»
Previously, he issued a new executive order reiterating Cuba’s designation as an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, which is an infamous lie.
For the first time, secondary sanctions are established, meaning sanctions that can be applied against any person, any entity, company, etc., for engaging in activities linked to Cuba, even if their interests in the United States or the U.S. economy have no relation to our country. This is an extremely aggressive and unprecedented step in the extraterritorial application of the blockade against our homeland.
Attention is called not only to the text of the executive order and its opacity, which states that they are not obligated to publish who the designated persons or entities are or would be under that punitive condition, precisely to expand the effect of intimidation on everyone else.
Among the priority areas mentioned for actions against Cuba are energy, military or defense, metals and mining, security, and finance. But the significance lies not only in the text of the order but also in an information sheet distributed yesterday by the U.S. government, which has a curious and menacing appearance when listing what they consider the recent successive military successes of the United States. Although the order does not state it, the informational sheet implies a reiteration of the military threat.
One must ask, what justification could the superpower’s government have for such a barbaric, brutal, coarse, and uncivilized act? What excuses could they write to provoke dozens of deaths of young Cubans and fighters, and young Americans, and to cause destruction and suffering? What would be the goal? What would happen next? What impact would a military adventure of this nature have on the destabilization of the region, on the damage to the main trade and air routes supplying the eastern territory of the United States? Would they aim to kill hundreds of thousands of Cubans, provoke the destruction of the country? Would they intend to generate a situation of ungovernability, misery, diseases, unpredictable calamities? Who would benefit from such a scenario, which we are sure will not occur because Cuba has the capacity to prevent it, to impede it, and to defend its independence, sovereignty, and socialist self-determination effectively?
This places the entire international community in a serious dilemma. In light of these acts, no state will be able to act sovereignly, independently, exercising the sovereignty of its peoples, can consider that the only applicable realm in its territory are its national laws, can defend the concept that only its courts will have jurisdiction over its own matters unless they take a stand today in favor of justice, in favor of Cuba.
Cubans today are commenting with concern about what will happen with the U.S. aircraft carrier 90 meters off our coast. The Caribbean Sea becomes turbulent when an aircraft carrier is present. What will we do with that huge mass of metal? Could it become a bulk carrier, a tanker for international trade? Today, Cubans are also discussing whether it could be a dance floor.
Cuba acts and will act responsibly. While we prepare for any eventuality, even for direct military aggression, we trust that common sense and sanity will prevail before initiating such a risky adventure.
I reiterate, there is no justification for any aggression against our country.
Cuba does not threaten anyone. Cuba resists thanks to you, because it is not alone.
Cuba defends itself, it defends itself with ideas and will defend itself with arms.
Thank you very much.
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