Against the backdrop of 2026, the centennial year of iconic Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro Ruz, Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, delivered a stirring closing address to delegates at the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba, held at Havana’s Convention Center on May 2. Opening his speech with a resounding affirmation that solidarity can never be blocked by force or coercion, Díaz-Canel extended profound gratitude to attendees who traveled from every corner of the globe to stand with the Cuban people, acknowledging that such open support for Cuba requires immense courage amid escalating international pressure from the United States.
Díaz-Canel rooted his remarks in the core ideological legacy Fidel Castro passed to the Cuban nation: the conviction that a better world, built on social justice that prioritizes people over profit and market forces, remains not just a dream but an achievable goal. Addressing the longstanding U.S. characterization of Cuba as an “extraordinary and unusual threat” to U.S. national security, he pushed back forcefully against the claim, noting Cuba has a decades-long track record as a peacemaking hub. The island has hosted landmark regional peace dialogues for Latin America and the Caribbean, and even facilitated a historic meeting between the Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox Church to mend a 1,500-year-old theological schism. The only “threat” Cuba poses, Díaz-Canel argued, is the example of unyielding resistance and creative resilience it sets for other nations resisting imperial domination.
He broke down the defining values of international solidarity into three core pillars. First, solidarity is rooted in collective compassion: following Fidel’s teaching, true solidarity means sharing what one has, not just discarding what is left over. Second, international solidarity acts as a critical strategic rear guard for nations facing aggression, with every global mobilization, donation and public demonstration breathing life into the Cuban struggle against the decades-long U.S. economic blockade. Third, solidarity is an act of active resistance against global exclusion: it forces the international community to confront unjust U.S. policies, including the baseless designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The address came one day after a historic mass mobilization of the Cuban people marking May Day in the centennial year of Fidel Castro’s birth. Díaz-Canel highlighted two landmark victories the Cuban people delivered that day: first, more than 80% of all eligible Cuban voters aged 17 and older signed a petition in support of the Cuban Revolution, the homeland and socialism, directly opposing intensified U.S. blockades, energy coercion and threats of military aggression. Second, more than 5 million Cubans marched in mass demonstrations in Havana and every city across the island to defend their nation’s sovereignty. He emphasized that this outpouring of support defied the predictions of Cuba’s enemies, who spent millions of dollars in propaganda efforts claiming Cuban youth would abandon the revolution and that popular participation would be negligible. Instead, a new generation of Cubans, raised in the centennial of Fidel Castro, turned out en masse to defend their political system, proving their opponents “got their fingers caught in the door” as Cuban saying goes.
Turning to global affairs, Díaz-Canel argued that the current crisis of global capitalism and deep credibility collapse of the U.S. political establishment among its own people has fueled a resurgence of far-right ultra-conservatism and fascism across the globe. The current U.S. government, he claimed, is a fascist administration that has overseen a wave of genocidal aggression across the Global South, from the ongoing atrocities against Palestinian and Lebanese peoples to the targeting of Iran and Venezuela. He outlined the multi-front war the U.S. is waging: an ideological war to impose hegemonic domination over all nations; a cultural war to sever Global South peoples from their historical roots and identity; and a media war that uses digital platforms, corporate outlets and coordinated disinformation to spread lies, manufacture consent for aggression and destroy the reputation of targeted nations.
Díaz-Canel detailed how this asymmetric media war has been deployed against Cuba’s allies: against Venezuela, the U.S. manufactured a false narrative of a “narco-state” to politically lynch legitimate President Nicolás Maduro, justify a naval blockade, deploy the largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in two decades, and ultimately abduct Maduro to stand trial in the U.S. — a lie that was exposed when the supposed “Cartel of the Suns” disappeared immediately after Maduro’s abduction, even as the damage to Venezuela remained. Against Iran, the U.S. spread false claims that the country’s civilian nuclear program was aimed at building a nuclear weapon, justifying a full-scale war that the Iranian people are now resisting heroically, even as no Iranian nuclear weapon has ever materialized. The only power openly threatening nuclear use today, he noted, is the U.S. government itself.
Against Cuba, the U.S. has deployed a similar playbook, spreading false narratives of human rights abuses, economic collapse and state failure, while claiming to care about the welfare of the Cuban people. Díaz-Canel called this a cynical absurdity: if the U.S. truly cared about Cubans, it would immediately lift the decades-long blockade that is the root cause of all of the nation’s most pressing economic challenges. Beyond disinformation, the U.S. has pressured scores of foreign governments to cut off the solidarity-based medical cooperation Cuba provides to low-income and developing nations, coercing some Latin American leaders to curtail or sever diplomatic ties with Cuba to curry favor with Washington.
The economic pressure on Cuba escalated dramatically in late 2025, when Cuba was cut off from oil imports following the imposition of an energy blockade against U.S.-targeted Venezuela, leaving the nation without consistent fuel supplies for four months until a shipment from Russia stabilized the country’s electricity grid — a supply that is now running low with no clear timeline for the next delivery. As if this hardship was not enough, Díaz-Canel revealed that the U.S. had issued a new executive order imposing harsh new sanctions on Cuba on May Day itself, a deliberate “gift” in response to the Cuban people’s massive show of unity.
The new sanctions are structured around three core pillars explicitly designed to collapse the Cuban economy and force regime change: first, expanded sectoral sanctions targeting Cuba’s most critical economic sectors — energy, defense, mining and financial services — blocking any U.S. property dealings with entities operating in these areas, building on more than 60 years of blockade that intensified under Trump in 2019, was maintained by the Biden administration, and expanded further in the second Trump term. Second, the order imposes global financial persecution, threatening to cut any third-country bank off from the U.S. financial system if it conducts transactions with Cuban entities, further tightening the international noose around Cuba. Third, the sanctions are implemented immediately with no adjustment period, eliminating any opportunity for timely legal appeal.
Díaz-Canel framed the new executive order as a blatant act of unilateral interference in Cuba’s internal affairs, an unacceptable attempt to impose a political model through economic coercion that undermines core multilateral principles. Beyond targeting Cuba, the policy destabilizes the entire Latin American and Caribbean region by forcing the international community to make an impossible choice: maintain relations with Cuba, or retain access to the U.S. market and financial system. He issued a forceful call to the global community: what is being done to Cuba, Palestine, Iran and Venezuela today will be done to any nation that defies U.S. hegemony tomorrow, so the world can no longer tolerate this abuse of power. Standing with Cuba today means standing for the fundamental principle of national dignity for all peoples, he argued, and no one should expect Cuba to surrender its sovereignty.
Díaz-Canel acknowledged that the cumulative weight of more than 60 years of blockade, the lingering economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these new intensified coercive measures have created an extremely difficult situation for the Cuban people, designed to force social unrest through collective punishment and economic suffocation. But he emphasized that Cuba is not passive in the face of this aggression: the government has spent months preparing a comprehensive set of updated plans and programs to address the crisis, rooted in three core national priorities.
First, Cuba has boosted national defense readiness in response to growing threats of U.S. military aggression. Díaz-Canel stressed that Cuba is a nation of peace that has always advocated for resolving differences through dialogue, but the Cuban people do not fear war. Citing the example of 32 Cuban fighters who died confronting elite U.S. forces during the attempt to abduct Maduro in Venezuela — holding off a technologically superior force for more than 45 minutes when the U.S. expected the operation to end in minutes — he argued that millions of Cubans would display the same courage in defense of their homeland. Cuba’s defensive doctrine, developed by Fidel Castro and refined by subsequent military leaders, ensures every Cuban man and woman has a role and a mission to defend the homeland, revolution and socialism.
Second, Cuba has developed a comprehensive economic and social development program through a nationwide popular consultation process held in late 2025 and early 2026, which incorporated input, criticism and proposals from grassroots communities across the island. The program is built on three core pillars: macroeconomic stabilization, expanded domestic production and increased exports; national sovereignty and sustainability, focused on achieving food sovereignty through domestic production (even amid fuel and resource shortages) via expanded agroecological practices, and energy independence through a rapid transition to renewable energy. Díaz-Canel noted that over the past year, Cuba expanded renewable energy capacity from 3% to 10% of total electricity generation, adding more than 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity, and is pursuing further growth targeting full energy self-sufficiency by 2050 using domestic resources the U.S. can never block: sunlight, wind, river and ocean currents, biogas and biomass. Cuba has also developed domestic technology to refine its own crude oil, and is now working to expand domestic production to meet national fuel needs.
The third non-negotiable pillar of Cuba’s response is a commitment to avoiding austerity shock policies, centering social justice in all reforms. Every measure is designed to mitigate growing inequality, with targeted support for vulnerable people, families and communities to ensure no one is left behind — a core principle of Cuban socialism that the nation will never abandon.
Díaz-Canel closed by reaffirming that even amid unprecedented pressure, Cuba retains its dreams of a just, prosperous and independent future, and counts on international solidarity to help spread the truth about Cuba amid the global media siege. The Cuban people remain committed to being a beacon of hope for marginalized and oppressed peoples across the globe, and will never betray the trust that global solidarity activists have placed in them. He ended with a series of resounding calls: long live peace, down with war, down with the blockade, long live international workers, long live international solidarity, Cuba will never be alone, and onward to victory.
