The Cuban Foreign Ministry rejected on Friday the statements made by Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Tovar Rivera, who told the Miami Herald that "there has been a breakdown in diplomatic relations" with Cuba, and noted in an official statement from MINREX that this breakdown "has never been formally notified" by the authorities of that country to the Cuban government.
The ministry led by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla described the statement as "surprising" and reminded that the process which led to this situation began in March 2026, when Costa Rica closed its embassy in Cuba citing the sustained deterioration of human rights on the island.
According to the statement, on March 17, 2026, the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry informed Cuba via Diplomatic Note of its unilateral decision to close its embassy in Havana and requested the withdrawal of the Cuban diplomatic staff in San José, leaving only consular and administrative personnel.
On that occasion, the then chancellor Arnoldo André Tinoco expressly communicated to Havana that those measures "did not signify a break in diplomatic relations."
The Institutional Communication 076-2026 from the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry, published on March 18, 2026, also made no mention of a formal break, according to the text from MINREX.
The Cuban regime pointed directly to the channel chosen by Tovar Rivera to make the announcement: instead of notifying him through diplomatic channels, the chancellor communicated it to a media outlet in South Florida.
"The fact that the current Chancellor of Costa Rica has chosen to share with a media outlet from South Florida information about an alleged rupture that the Cuban government is completely unaware of suggests that we are witnessing another act of submission by the Costa Rican government to the United States' policy against Cuba," the statement indicated.
Tovar Rivera, for his part, was categorical in dismissing any ambiguity: “We have broken diplomatic relations with the Cuban regime until freedom returns,” he declared.
The chancellor also rejected the accusation of acting under Washington's pressure: "It is a sovereign decision that we made; we do not take instructions from any government."
Tovar Rivera's statements came a day after he met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, where both discussed economic cooperation, the fight against narco-terrorism, and the situation in Cuba and Nicaragua.
The Costa Rican break is part of a regional pattern of diplomatic isolation towards Cuba that has intensified throughout 2026: Ecuador expelled all Cuban diplomatic personnel in Quito on March 4, and the Dominican Republic issued an ultimatum to nine Cuban diplomats in August 2026.
In all cases, the regime has responded by accusing the involved countries of acting under "subordination" to U.S. policy, the same argument that Díaz-Canel used last March when he referred to the closure of the Costa Rican embassy as an "unfriendly act" attributable to "evident pressures" from Washington.
Tovar Rivera announced that the return to democracy in Cuba and Nicaragua will be one of the topics at a meeting of the Shield of the Americas scheduled for next week in New York, as part of the UN General Assembly, which anticipates a new round of multilateral diplomatic pressure on Havana.
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