The Cuban comedian Ulises Toirac reacted with his usual irony to the scandal involving the foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla at the UN General Assembly, summarizing in 30 seconds what thousands of Cubans believe: that shouting and physically assaulting others is the clearest sign of someone who is in the wrong.
"Generally, when violence is resorted to, it is because there are no arguments," he wrote on Facebook.
In a video that has garnered over 87,000 views, he dubbed the episode with a devastating neologism: "the diplochancleta," a satirical combination of diplomacy and chancleta that perfectly encapsulates the outrageous style of the Cuban delegation in the eyes of the world.
"The argument at the UN has shown that the promotion of Cuban culture is not going well, not going well, because if Cuban song was better known, the President of the UN General Assembly would have stood in front of Bruno and said: 'Don't shout at me, that doesn't give more weight to what you’re saying,'" mocked Toirac, recalling an old Cuban song to undermine the chancellor's performance.
The trigger for the comment was one of the most chaotic episodes in the recent history of the General Assembly.
On Tuesday, during the annual debate on the U.S. embargo against Cuba, U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz displayed to the delegates photos of Fidel Castro's Rolex watches valued at $40,000, and properties owned by the Castro family, such as the private island Cayo Piedra with a floating restaurant and dolphin lagoon, a 14,000-square-meter beach retreat in Varadero, and a 50-meter-long yacht in the Mediterranean.
Waltz also cited research from the Miami Herald that attributes 18 billion dollars in current assets and 14.5 billion in secret accounts to the military conglomerate GAESA.
In light of those revelations, Rodríguez and the rest of the Cuban delegation stood up from their seats and moved towards the podium, forcing the President of the General Assembly, Khalilur Rahman, to suspend the session and order the chancellor to return to his place.
The incident didn't stop there. Richard Tur de la Concepción, the first secretary of the Cuban mission, tried to snatch the phone from Waltz's spokesperson, J.P. Freire, who was recording the confrontation, and swatted at him. The episode was captured on video and was shared by Waltz himself on his social media.
The response from Washington was immediate: Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the documentation to expel Tur de la Concepción from the United States. "He's leaving. He will be on a plane to Havana within the next 24 hours," announced Waltz on Fox News.
Despite the spectacle, the annual resolution against the embargo was approved on Wednesday with only 130 votes in favor—the lowest result since 1995—compared to 165 in 2025 and 187 in 2024: a drop of 57 votes in two years that reflects the increasing diplomatic isolation of the regime.
The reaction from Cuban intellectuals was forceful. The historian Alina Bárbara López Hernández described Rodríguez's behavior as "a shame" and accused the regime of having "internationalized the acts of repudiation."
The writer Wendy Guerra, for her part, asked bluntly: “Do you feel your arguments are so fragile today?”.
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