The Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla reacted on Tuesday with an impassioned post on X following the announcement of new sanctions by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio against entities linked to the Cuban military conglomerate GAESA, calling it “dishonest and deceitful” and accusing Washington of continuing to “tighten the grip on Cuba's economy.”
In his post, Rodríguez stated that the Island has proven to be "stronger, more capable, and more effective" than Rubio anticipated in the face of what the Chancellor described as "the ruthless aggression and collective punishment against the people and their living conditions."
He ended his message with a direct statement against the head of U.S. diplomacy: "What drives this individual from the greatest power in the world is a crime," accompanied by the hashtag #CubaEstáFirme.
The sanctions that triggered the chancellor's reaction were announced by Rubio on his X account and designate five Cuban entities and one individual under Executive Order 14404, signed by President Trump on May 1, 2026.
The sanctioned entities are Almacenes Universales S.A. (AUSA), RAFIN S.A., the Banco Financiero Internacional S.A. (BFI), GeoMinera S.A., and the José Martí Steel Company (Antillana de Acero), the largest producer of raw steel in Cuba, recently modernized with the collaboration of Russian entities.
Annalie Lilliam Rueda Cardero was also appointed, the wife of Alejandro Castro Espín, former head of Cuban intelligence services and son of Raúl Castro, who had been sanctioned on June 4 along with Díaz-Canel and Lis Cuesta Peraza.
Rubio described GAESA as "the main vector for the regime's elites to appropriate the scarce resources of the Island, diverting them towards repression, anti-American subversion, and espionage, instead of allocating them to schools, power plants, and the basic needs of the Cuban people."
The Secretary of State also warned that any person or entity providing services to those sanctioned risks being subject to secondary sanctions, and urged foreign banks and companies to immediately freeze their activities with these entities.
According to the official statement from the Department of State, these sanctions represent the fourth major wave of designations in less than two months, and the stated objective is "not to punish, but to achieve a positive change in behavior."
Rodríguez's reaction on Tuesday is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a systematic verbal offensive by the chancellor against Rubio that intensifies with each new wave of sanctions.
On May 7, he described the first designations against GAESA as “collective punishment with genocidal intent”; on June 2, he defended the military conglomerate as a structure of “proven efficiency”; and days later accused Rubio of “chronic lying”.
This communication strategy of the regime aims to portray the sanctions as an imperial aggression against the Cuban people, diverting attention from the central role that GAESA plays in the Island's economic crisis.
The military conglomerate controls approximately 40% of Cuba's GDP and 95% of the country's foreign currency transactions, with total assets estimated at least at 17.9 billion dollars.
Since January, the Trump administration has imposed more than 240 sanctions against Cuba, including an oil embargo that has reduced fuel imports by 80% to 90%, resulting in blackouts lasting more than 24 consecutive hours across the entire Cuban territory.
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