The Cuban chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla concluded his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday with a quote from the independence hero Antonio Maceo, invoked as a warning to the U.S. ambassador Mike Waltz during the extraordinary debate on the embargo called by the regime.
"Whoever attempts to seize Cuba, as Antonio Maceo noted, will only gather the dust of its soil drenched in blood, unless they perish in the struggle," Rodríguez declared before the delegates gathered in New York, in what was a speech filled with revolutionary rhetoric and direct attacks on Washington.
Rodríguez dedicated a significant part of his speech to showing photos of blackouts in Havana, featuring a Cuban family in the dark with a child just back from school, an operating room lit by a mobile phone flashlight, and humanitarian aid distributed via ox-drawn carts, attributing it all to the "energy blockade" by the United States.
What the chancellor omitted is that the blackout that coincided with the session was the seventh total collapse of the electrical system in 18 months and the third in 2026, with structural causes including decades of lack of investment, the aging of thermoelectric plants, and the interruption of Venezuelan oil supply since January.
Waltz had put him in a difficult position by stating that the true embargo is enforced by the regime on its own people, and asking before the Assembly: "How is there fuel for a private jet and not for a hospital?"
Rodríguez responded with personal attacks, labeling Waltz as an "inconsequential official" and warning him, "Soon no one will know who you are."
The Cuban official also tried to silence the American representative twice through points of order, calling him a "liar" and stating that the UN "is not a green beret camp." The Assembly presidency rejected both objections.
In another part of the speech, Rodríguez asserted that Raúl Castro "remains ready to ride in defense of our homeland," and announced that "in a few weeks, we will celebrate his centenary in Cuba and around the world," referring to the birth of Fidel Castro on August 13.
The chancellor estimated the damages from the embargo between March 2025 and February 2026 at $8.103 billion, with a cumulative impact of $178.7 billion, figures that lack independent verification.
The session concluded with 136 votes in favor of the debate, nine against, and 30 abstentions, a result that the regime presented as a victory but which represents the worst support received in over three decades: in October 2025, Cuba had secured 165 favorable votes, and the abstentions doubled compared to that vote.
While Rodríguez was delivering his speech in New York, the United States demanded the release of Cuban political prisoners, including Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, whose five-year sentence expires this Thursday, and the poet Duannis León Taboada, who is serving 14 years in solitary confinement at Combinado del Este.
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