The United States Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, denounced the privileges of the Cuban regime's elite on Monday during the event "Cuba Libre: The Oppression That Havana Hides", organized by the U.S. Permanent Mission at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
The event, presided over by Waltz, brought together for nearly two hours former political prisoners, activists, researchers, and lawmakers to highlight political repression, corruption, and abuses by the Cuban regime before the international community, just days before the annual vote by the General Assembly on the resolution calling for the end of the U.S. embargo, scheduled for October 27 and 28.
In his speech, Waltz drew a devastating contrast between the situation of the Cuban people and the privileges of the nomenclature. “What I find truly outrageous is this: the regime cannot provide enough energy for its hospitals, schools, or people's homes, but it has enough for its prisons,” the ambassador stated, according to the transcript of his remarks.
Waltz enumerated the supposed privileges of the ruling elite: guaranteed energy for the Castro family's residential complex, a private plane that transports family members of the regime between Latin America and Spain, intelligence-gathering facilities shared with Washington's adversaries, and even a private island with twenty houses and its own lagoon of dolphins.
"While the Cuban people live in miserable conditions, amidst prisons and blackouts, the regime officials live, quite literally, surrounded by luxury in Spain, in Europe, and in countries across Latin America and South America. That's enough," he concluded.
The panel featured influential voices: José Daniel Ferrer, founder of UNPACU and a political prisoner with over 12 years in prison—more than nine of which were in solitary confinement—and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, an artist and activist who was released after five years in prison and forced into exile in July 2026.
Moreover, to the researcher Emilio Morales, a specialist in the finances of the military conglomerate GAESA; María Werlau, from Cuba Archive, who denounced the surveillance and exploitation of workers in medical missions; and the Republican congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, who criticized Cuba's election to the UN Human Rights Council for six consecutive terms.
The regime's response was immediate. Cuban delegation diplomats organized a repudiation act in the very halls of the UN, shouting at the panelists with accusations of "terrorists" and "get out of the UN." Ferrer denounced it on his Facebook account: "We just experienced a repudiation act at the UN from the Cuban communists."
Days earlier, Cuba's permanent representative, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, had attempted to prevent the event, describing it as a "political motivation maneuver" that violated internal UN regulations. Waltz responded directly to Soberón.
"If it bothers you that we give voice to Cubans to discuss all of this, why not stop doing those things? Then we will stop talking about them," he said.
The event takes place within a sustained diplomatic escalation. International support for the Cuban resolution against the embargo has fallen from 187 votes in 2024 to 165 in October 2025, and to just 136 in the extraordinary session of July 2026, the lowest level in over a decade, according to data from the historic decline in support for Cuba at the UN.
The upcoming vote, scheduled for October 28, is also supported by over 1,000 signatures on a letter from Cuban activists and organizations urging democratic governments to vote against or abstain.
Filed under: