The Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, used the open debate of the Security Council on Women, Peace, and Security on Wednesday to attribute the hardships faced by women in Cuba to the U.S. embargo, in a statement that contrasts with the recent admissions of President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Soberón stated before the international organization that "Cuban women today are suffering the consequences of a reinforced blockade, at extreme levels, with an energy siege and the application of so-called secondary sanctions," and emphasized that these measures have restricted access to medications, medical technologies, and hospital equipment.
The diplomat warned that more than 32,880 pregnant women face additional risks due to these policies, a figure that the Ministry of Public Health introduced in February and that the regime has repeated in various international forums without validation from independent organizations.
"The reinforcement of this policy imposes a disproportionate burden on women, particularly in contexts of significant energy hardships and scarcity of basic resources," Soberón stated before the Security Council.
The intervention, however, directly contradicts what Díaz-Canel himself acknowledged on Thursday during the Extraordinary Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party: "There are obstacles that do not come from outside or from the blockade. There is sluggishness, bureaucracy, regulations that hinder those who want to produce, and decisions that we have delayed."
That unusual self-criticism from the Cuban leader, pronounced just hours after his ambassador exclusively blamed Washington at the UN, exposes the central contradiction of the official discourse: internally, the regime acknowledges its own incompetence; externally, it exports a narrative that attributes everything to the embargo.
The healthcare crisis faced by women in Cuba is real and well-documented. Maternal mortality almost doubled between 2023 and 2025, rising from 37.4 to 56.3 per 100,000 live births, and the national infant mortality rate closed 2025 at 9.9 per 1,000 live births, an increase of 148% since 2018.
Díaz-Canel himself acknowledged on June 5th to the Spanish outlet elDiario.es that over 100,000 patients are waiting on the surgical waiting list, including more than 12,000 children, and that nearly 67% of the basic medicine supply is affected.
Activists, independent economists, and the president's own statements indicate that the health care collapse is also due to decades of mismanagement, massive emigration of medical personnel, deteriorating infrastructure, and delayed structural reforms—factors that the regime systematically ignores when addressing international organizations.
Soberón also took his turn at the Security Council to denounce the situation of Palestinian women and reaffirm that Cuba is open to dialogue, although he warned that "a military aggression will meet with the enormous resistance of our people, including women."
The Cuban head of state admitted that the measures approved at the Extraordinary Plenary of the Communist Party on Wednesday "are not new ideas; they are decisions that the country discussed and approved years ago," and that "the mistake was not in proposing them, but in having postponed them."
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