The Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío published a response on his social media this Monday to the State Department report titled “Cuba: the capital of 21st century communism,” labeling it as “voluminous and false.”
In a lengthy post on Facebook, the diplomat also accused Washington of trying to "instill fear among American citizens regarding an alleged threat from Cuba."
The document, published on July 20 under the direction of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accuses the Cuban regime of having developed over six decades networks of espionage, ideological subversion, and influence operations against the U.S., with ties to Russia, China, and Iran, and mentions specific cases such as Ana Belén Montes, Víctor Manuel Rocha, and the Avispa network.
Cossío did not refute any of those cases nor provided evidence that contradicts the accusations. Instead, he resorted to the argument that the report omitted the historical context.
In that regard, it was noted that when mentioning the admiration of American civil rights fighters for Cuba, the document made “no mention of the serious injustices committed in that country that led so many people from various backgrounds to become involved in a political and civil battle of national dimensions.”
Regarding Cuban support for armed movements in Africa, the deputy foreign minister argued that the report "omits reference to the yoke of colonialism and the oppression of the racist regimes in South Africa and former Rhodesia, whose survival was long associated with the political, economic, and military backing of the U.S. and other major powers."
Cossío also denounced what he referred to as a "double standard": that the report criticizes Cuban intelligence actions in the U.S. while ignoring U.S. operations against Cuba, and failing to acknowledge "the right to legitimate defense that a country has under the constant aggression of the world's greatest military and nuclear power."
The argument overlooks that documented cases of Cuban espionage —such as that of Ana Belén Montes, who spent years leaking intelligence secrets to Havana— are not defensive responses, but rather offensive operations against a sovereign state.
What the deputy foreign minister omits in his response is as revealing as what he says: no mention of the more than 700 political prisoners that Rubio demanded to be released on July 18, no reference to the humanitarian crisis affecting the island, and no acknowledgment of the systematic human rights violations that the report itself documents.
This Sunday, the chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla also spoke, describing the idea that Cuba represents a threat to the U.S. as a "ridiculous and clumsy lie" and accused Rubio of creating a pretext to justify sanctions and a potential military aggression.
Rodríguez Parrilla came to label the sanctions as "current genocide" against the Cuban people, a term that the regime systematically uses to evade its own responsibility for the economic collapse of the island.
Cossío's response falls within a sustained pattern of verbal confrontation with Rubio throughout 2026: in May, he accused him of lying "repeatedly," and in June, he referred to the sanctions as "collective punishment."
However, in a surprising rhetorical twist, the Deputy Foreign Minister recently stated in an New York Times article that the Cuban regime does not exclude Trump or his organization from doing business on the island.
Rubio presented the report stating that Cuba has been for over six decades "the main sponsor of left-wing radicalism and third-worldism" in the U.S. and the hemisphere, under a policy of maximum pressure that includes more than 240 sanctions and the re-inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
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