The Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla took advantage of International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism this Friday to post a message on X in which he presented Cuba as a victim of terrorism and condemned "all its forms and manifestations," in a statement that openly contrasts with the status of the Cuban regime as a state sponsor of terrorism according to the U.S. Department of State.
In his post, Rodríguez stated that Cuba "has been a victim of organized terrorism, financed and trained on U.S. soil," and paid tribute to the official figures of the regime: 3,478 fatalities and 2,099 injured attributed to terrorist acts against the Cuban people, figures that lack independent verification.
The statement comes at a time when Havana remains on the State Department's blacklist, listed as a state sponsor of terrorism since the Trump administration reinstated that designation in January 2025, just days after the Biden administration had removed it.
In June of this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated before the Senate that Cuba "has sponsored terrorism" and has supported "virtually all violent leftist terrorist groups" in the western hemisphere, explicitly mentioning the ELN and the FARC.
A month later, in July, the State Department published a report that accused the regime of being "the capital of 21st-century terrorism," according to the media coverage of the document.
Among the arguments supporting this designation, Washington points out that Cuba has harbored Joanne Chesimard—also known as Assata Shakur—since 1984, who was convicted for the murder of police officer Werner Foerster in New Jersey, as well as William Morales, a bomb maker for the armed group FALN linked to attacks in New York.
In May 2025, Rubio stated that the State Department had identified 11 fugitives wanted by U.S. justice who were residing on the island.
Diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 also documented that Cuba allowed members of ETA, FARC, and ELN to "rest" and receive medical attention on its territory.
Rodríguez himself has responded repeatedly to these accusations.
In June, he labeled as a "farce" the accusations against Raúl Castro related to the downing of two planes from Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, in which four people died.
In July, he responded to Rubio accusing him of wanting to "restore" an aggressive policy against Cuba.
The duality is hard to ignore: the same government that this Friday declares itself a victim of terrorism is the one that Washington accuses of harboring convicted terrorists, supporting armed groups, and appearing, according to an official U.S. report from July 2026, as the leading capital of terrorism in the current century.
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