Mike Waltz, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, displayed photographs of Cuban political prisoners before the General Assembly this Tuesday and delivered a passionate speech in which he accused the Havana regime of being the true culprit behind the suffering of the Cuban people.
The intervention took place during an extraordinary session convened at the request of the regime to discuss the U.S. embargo, while Cuba was experiencing its third total collapse of the National Electric Power System in 2026.
Waltz reframed the debate from the beginning: "There has been much talk about the blockade today, and indeed there is a blockade before all of us: the blockade that the Cuban regime ruthlessly imposes on its own people, decade after decade."
The diplomat pointed out the irony of the blackout as a backdrop: "Sadly, Cuba is once again in the dark. There is a new blackout across the island," he said, adding that "it always seems like there is light and electricity for the regime, for the dictatorship. Right now, there is electricity in the Castro family complex. There, there is indeed light."
The most striking moment came when Waltz held up photographs of Cuban political prisoners before the delegates, one by one, reading their names aloud.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the San Isidro Movement, was the first: "His crime was being an artist," said the ambassador, noting that he is in a maximum-security prison. The artist's five-year sentence will end on July 9, just two days after this session.
He also mentioned Maykel Castillo Pérez (Maykel Osorbo), a rapper and co-author of the anthem "Patria y Vida," who was sentenced to nine years for writing songs that the regime considers subversive; a musician identified as Fernando Almadévez Rivera; the poet Duannis León Taboada, 24 years old, sentenced to 14 years and currently in solitary confinement at Combinado del Este; and the brothers Jorge and Martín Perdomo, whose detention has been condemned by the UN, which has called for their release.
"They are not violent, they do not have weapons. What they carry are flowers, and they write poetry and songs, and that is why the regime tries to eliminate them by putting them in jail," Waltz stated.
The speech also pointed to the corruption of the nomenclature: it questioned how the Cuban president can afford a Hermès tie, a Rolex watch, and a Montblanc pen while the people suffer from hunger; how the Castro family owns 700 mansions on the island, in Costa del Sol, and in Moscow; and how the military conglomerate GAESA controls half of the economy with a trust fund of 18 billion dollars without “a single cent going to the Cuban people.”
The Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla interrupted the speech twice with points of order, both times being rejected by the Assembly's presidency. In his second intervention, he called the American diplomat a "liar" and asserted that the UN "is not a green beret camp."
Waltz responded without flinching: "Truth offends, and truth is not a disrespect."
Waltz concluded his speech with a direct plea to the delegations: "Stand with the Cuban people, do not side with the regime that has broken that country. You cannot do both at the same time. The time has come to make a decision."
Despite the diplomatic pressure from Washington —which, according to a leaked cable from Secretary Marco Rubio, instructed its embassies to block the debate—, the General Assembly approved the opening of the session with 136 votes in favor, nine against, and 30 abstentions, a result significantly lower than the 165 votes Cuba received in the annual vote in October 2025.
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