Abel Prieto, president of the Casa de las Américas and cultural commissioner of the Cuban regime, described the U.S. government team this Saturday from Mexico City as “that bunch of disgraceful pedophiles who want to eradicate the Cuban revolution at all costs.”
Prieto also stated that the Cuban people are "more anti-imperialist than ever" and that they clearly understand "where the brutal daily aggression comes from," according to statements collected by La Jornada.
Prieto made these statements during the presentation of a reedition of the essay Calibán —originally published in 1971 by Roberto Fernández Retamar— at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), an event organized by the collective Redes Universitarias and co-sponsored by the Political Training Institute of the Mexican party Morena.
The spokesperson described the situation on the island as "the most difficult moment of the Cuban revolution" and attributed the crisis entirely to the U.S. embargo and Washington's sanctions, which he referred to as "a suffocation project."
"We are living in stormy times. The word blockade falls short; it no longer suffices to explain what they are doing to us," he declared before the university audience.
Prieto provided a series of figures regarding the deterioration in Cuba: infant mortality is said to have doubled from 4.4 to 9.9 per thousand live births; the survival rate for children with cancer is reported to have fallen from 85% to 65%; and around 7,000 containers with medical supplies remain scattered throughout the Caribbean due to shipping companies' fears of reprisals from Washington.
He also reported that 34 banks have severed transactions with Cuba, that tourism is "in shambles," and that public transportation "almost entirely does not exist."
However, Prieto's speech completely omits the regime's responsibility for the collapse that the island is enduring. The energy crisis in 2026 has resulted in at least eight total national blackouts, with deficits of up to 2,380 MW and outages lasting up to 20 hours daily in some regions, a consequence of decades of disinvestment and poor management of the electrical system.
The massive exodus of the population directly contradicts its thesis of popular anti-imperialism: according to official data from the ONEI, 245,264 Cubans emigrated in just 2025, and since 2021 more than a million have left the island.
It is not the first time that Prieto has made controversial statements from abroad. In July 2026, he referred to the protests of July 11th as a “farce of insurrection” funded by “the Empire and the Miami mafia,” and in May, he called the Cubans asking for U.S. intervention “rabid annexationists” and “sick in soul”.
The event also featured the anthropologist Héctor Díaz-Polanco, and a student statement was read, demanding the lifting of the energy embargo and urging the Mexican government to reconsider the suspension of oil shipments to Cuba.
In March 2026, after protests in Morón, Prieto had already publicly urged to "stay united alongside Díaz-Canel, our Communist Party, and our government," which has been a constant theme in his role as the cultural spokesperson for the regime before international audiences.
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