Miguel Díaz-Canel sent a recorded message on Thursday to the II International Conference on Unilateral Coercive Measures, held in Geneva under the auspices of the UN, to blame the U.S. embargo for the crisis Cuba is facing and to evade any responsibility for the regime he leads.
In his video, directed to the conference organized by the special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures Alena Douhan, Díaz-Canel described the situation in Cuba as a prolonged collective punishment aimed at kneeling his people through hunger, illnesses, and severe shortages of basic supplies.
The Cuban leader accused Washington of flagrantly, deliberately, and unjustifiably violating the human rights of an entire people.
Díaz-Canel used the arrival of the Russian ship Anatoly Kolodkin at the port of Matanzas on March 31, carrying 100,000 tons of fuel, as a symbol. He referred to the coverage that international media gave to that event to illustrate the "criminal intent" of the United States to suffocate the Cuban economy.
What Díaz-Canel omitted is that this shipment barely covers nine to ten days of demand for diesel on the island, a figure that reveals the magnitude of the structural collapse that no speech at the UN can disguise.
Díaz-Canel himself commented in his video on devastating figures: more than 96,000 Cubans —including 11,000 children— are awaiting surgeries due to a lack of electricity; over 16,000 patients needing radiotherapy and 2,888 who depend on hemodialysis are affected by the energy crisis; and public transportation is virtually paralyzed.
These figures reflect decades of inefficiency in the centralized economic model that the regime refuses to reform, coupled with outdated electrical infrastructure.
The Cuban GDP has fallen by 23% since 2019, with a projection of -7.2% for 2026 according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a path of collapse that far predates the intensification of sanctions under the Trump administration.
The energy crisis intensified from January 2026 due to the convergence of several factors: the halt of Venezuelan shipments following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the suspension of Mexican supplies under pressure from Washington, and Trump's executive order on January 29 declaring Cuba an "extraordinary and unusual threat."
However, Cuba was already producing only 40% of the crude oil it needs before those measures were implemented, which shows that energy dependence is a direct consequence of the failure of the revolutionary model, not the embargo.
In his speech, Díaz-Canel called on the UN to establish a working group within the Human Rights Council and to adopt a binding legal instrument to compel the lifting of sanctions, and he delivered a passionate rhetoric.
"What right does the world's leading economic power have to commit such an abuse against a small developing country?" said the leader who refuses to open the country to the changes needed for the Cuban economy.
On March 13 Díaz-Canel appeared on national television to declare that the blame for the crisis in Cuba does not lie with the government. "The blame is not on the revolution" he now repeats to the international community, while the Cuban people endure blackouts lasting more than thirty hours and an unprecedented shortage.
Eight independent economists agreed in October 2025 that the solution to the Cuban crisis requires a deep economic and political transition, not diplomatic band-aids in multilateral forums.
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