Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla has publicly condemned the long-running U.S. economic blockade against Cuba, revealing stark new figures that document the escalating human and economic toll of the policy in his latest annual assessment. In a post shared to his X (formerly Twitter) account ahead of his official press briefing, Rodríguez told the diplomatic corps based in Havana that the decades-long blockade amounts to a genocidal policy that has inflicted devastating, widespread harm across the island nation.
The latest official Cuban assessment, covering the 12-month period from March 1, 2025 to February 28, 2026, calculates total damages from the U.S. economic strangulation policy at $8.083 billion. This marks a new record for annual damages, representing a 7% increase compared to the figures reported in the previous year’s assessment. When accounting for cumulative damages across the entire duration of the blockade, adjusted to current market prices, the total harm climbs to $178.75 billion — a 4.7% rise over the prior accumulated estimate.
On September 7, 2026, Rodríguez presented this fully updated damage assessment to both national and international journalists during a public press briefing. The event was broadcast live across Cuba’s national radio and television networks starting at 11:00 a.m. local time, allowing Cuban citizens and global observers to follow the presentation directly.
The report will now be taken up for debate once again at the United Nations General Assembly, where the international community has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly in favor of resolutions demanding an end to the U.S. blockade in recent decades. Cuba has regularly presented its formal accounting of blockade damages to the UN body as part of its ongoing global campaign to roll back the restrictive U.S. policy that has shaped economic and diplomatic relations between the two nations for more than 60 years.