标签： Cuba

On October 29, 2026, Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla delivered a landmark address during the United Nations General Assembly’s debate on Agenda Item 37, the long-running call to terminate the U.S.-imposed economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, opening with official condolences for the fatalities of the recent Toledo railway accident in Spain, and commending the General Assembly President for upholding the body’s formal rules of procedure the prior day.
The foreign minister first raised two urgent procedural grievances against the U.S. delegation: he condemned uninvited, non-consensual surveillance and filming of Cuban diplomatic staff by a U.S. official, an incident that required UN security intervention, describing the act as a violation of diplomatic decorum, personal dignity and privacy that ran counter to the UN’s core norms, and framing it as a deliberate tactic to undermine Cuba’s pending candidacy for a UN intergovernmental body. He further exposed that a designated internationally wanted Cuban terrorist, listed at position 52 on Cuba’s official most-wanted registry via formal legal resolution published in the island’s Official Gazette, had been granted gallery access to the Assembly by the U.S. permanent mission. The individual, linked to two U.S.-based terrorist organizations with a documented history of violent attacks against Cuba, had also embezzled large sums of U.S. government earmarked funding for personal enrichment. Rodríguez formally requested the General Assembly President to direct the UN Secretariat to verify the individual’s presence and immediately remove him, noting his presence constituted an insult to all global victims of terrorism, including 9/11 casualties and hundreds of Cubans killed by U.S.-based violent extremists, and served as irrefutable proof that Cuba had no place on the U.S.’s arbitrary, discredited state sponsors of terrorism list.
Rodríguez then noted the prior day’s address by the U.S. representative had inadvertently strengthened Cuba’s case, citing the American diplomat’s defiant declaration “This is America” as a revealing window into Washington’s hegemonic worldview that treats the entire planet as de facto U.S. territory, framing sovereign nations like Cuba as de facto subordinate entities equivalent to one of the 50 U.S. states. This imperial mindset, he argued, underpinned the U.S. doctrine of “peace through strength” that justifies coercive intervention against smaller, independent states. He dismissed Washington’s long-running designation of Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security as the height of cynicism, noting the small Caribbean nation posed no conceivable risk to the world’s largest nuclear power, while the 60+ year blockade was the real, ongoing existential threat to Cuban livelihoods. He highlighted the U.S. delegate’s absurd, factually baseless claim that “the blockade against Cuba does not exist”, then displayed a live public counter tracking real-time damages from the sanctions, noting that in the mere hours since the prior day’s debate opened, the blockade had inflicted more than $22.9 million in verified economic harm on Cuban communities.
The foreign minister characterized the U.S. campaign against Cuba as a deliberate, undeclared economic war targeting a peaceful, solidarity-focused small sovereign state, designed explicitly to force regime change and full U.S. domination. The ongoing fuel blockade, he stressed, functioned as a de facto naval siege that qualified as an act of war, collective punishment and a potential violation of the Genocide Convention, all explicitly banned under international law. The measures’ cascading harms permeate every facet of Cuban daily life: shortages of food for children, life-saving medicines for the sick, consistent electricity, clean potable water, and accessible supplies for routine medical operations, turning basic human needs into tools of political coercion. He contextualized that while the General Assembly has held annual votes on ending the blockade since 1992, the 2026 debate unfolded in an unprecedented new landscape, where the U.S. government had launched a coordinated campaign of pressure, intimidation and blackmail against dozens of UN member states, demanding they abandon their decades-long consistent, sovereignty-aligned votes against the blockade. Rodríguez presented official documentary evidence of this U.S. coercion, noting the moment represented a defining test for the entire multilateral system: if the UN allowed Washington to dictate how nations vote, who they trade with, which shipping routes they can use, and what financial partnerships they can enter, today that arbitrary pressure would target Cuba, but tomorrow it could be deployed against any other sovereign UN member state. The Assembly, he emphasized, was being called on to decide whether to normalize collective punishment tactics designed to break a nation’s political will through economic strangulation, mass hunger, and widespread civilian suffering.
Rodríguez detailed that U.S. aggression against Cuba had been drastically escalated since the start of 2026, with the Trump-era maximum pressure policies first imposed in 2019 transformed into a medieval-style full siege as of January 2026, with dozens of new unilateral coercive measures added to the already draconian six-decade sanctions architecture. The U.S. State Department had openly admitted its goal of preventing Cuba from developing any escape routes from the sanctions stranglehold, with Secretary of State publicly stating on August 7, 2026, that every time Cuba develops a new policy to evade the blockade’s noose, the U.S. will tighten restrictions further to eliminate all available pathways. He dismissed U.S. pretexts for the blockade as entirely baseless, noting no UN member state accepts the absurd claim that Cuba poses a threat to U.S. national security, and that in reality Cuba has for decades voluntarily shared sensitive intelligence on transnational drug trafficking, terrorist plots and other cross-border crimes that directly benefited U.S. and regional security, even amid the current administration’s open hostility. He called out Washington’s rank hypocrisy for leveling unsubstantiated accusations of elite corruption and inequality against Cuba, coming from the world’s largest plutocracy where corporate money dominates political representation and a sprawling, unaccountable military-industrial complex is widely recognized as a threat to U.S. democratic governance. He further condemned U.S. slander targeting Cuba’s global medical internationalism programs operating in more than 50 countries, which the U.S. had repeatedly tried to sabotage through blackmail and disinformation campaigns falsely framing Cuban medical personnel as victims of human trafficking or state enslavement.
Rodríguez laid out the catastrophic, human-scale harms of the escalated blockade in unflinching detail: since the maximum pressure policy was fully implemented, Cuba’s infant mortality rate has doubled, with 70% of all essential medicines now out of stock even though Cuba has the domestic capacity to produce nearly all of them, leaving 100,000 people including 12,000 children on long waiting lists for postponed life-saving surgeries. He held up two tangible examples of the blockade’s absurd cruelty: the U.S.-produced lung cancer medication Pemetrexed, which Cuba can afford to purchase but is barred from accessing under sanctions, driving a sharp rise in Cuban cancer fatalities, and the Cuban-developed Alzheimer’s treatment Neuralcim, a breakthrough therapy proven to slow neurodegenerative decline, which the U.S. blockade blocks 7 million American patients from accessing entirely. He noted 85% of Cuba’s potable water pumping systems run on electricity, and the ongoing fuel and power shortages linked to the blockade have left 2.6 million Cubans without reliable access to clean drinking water, while U.S. secondary sanctions have blocked 7,000 contracted shipping containers carrying food, medicine, hemodialysis supplies and medical equipment from reaching Cuban ports. Public opinion polling, he noted, showed 72% of U.S. taxpayers oppose the ongoing blockade, 60% support full normalization of relations, and only 25% of Americans back the harsh fuel siege measures.
Rodríguez rejected Washington’s token, restricted humanitarian aid carveouts as proof the blockade does not exist, noting the full $100 million in advertised U.S. humanitarian aid to Cuba would only offset five days of the blockade’s total economic damage, and could power national electricity grids for just two weeks, and could never replace Cuba’s inherent right to unobstructed international trade. He outlined the wide range of targeted, community-led Cuban policies that had prevented the U.S. from triggering a full catastrophic humanitarian crisis, including massive investments in photovoltaic energy, expanded domestic crude oil production and refining capacity, targeted social safety nets for vulnerable populations, expanded agroecological farming to boost domestic food production, and optimized reorganization of health and education services. He concluded by formally introducing draft resolution A/81/L.5, calling on all UN member states to vote in favor of ending the blockade as a demonstration of commitment to international law and multilateral justice, on the 100th anniversary of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro Ruz’s birth. Reiterating the longstanding Cuban national slogan “Homeland or Death! We shall overcome!”, Rodríguez reaffirmed Cuba’s unwavering commitment to defending its sovereignty under the leadership of Raúl Castro Ruz and President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, noting Cuba’s only request was to be left in peace to resolve its own domestic challenges without external aggression.

On October 28, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly is convening a high-stakes scheduled session to deliberate and cast a formal vote on a landmark draft resolution demanding the immediate termination of the long-running U.S.-imposed economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba. Ahead of the proceedings, official data released ahead of the debate confirms that over the 12-month window spanning March 1, 2025, to February 28, 2026, the cumulative economic harm inflicted on Cuban communities, public services, and national development by the blockade hit an unprecedented all-time high of $8,083,300,000 U.S. dollars. The formal debate segment leading up to the vote will kick off promptly at 10:00 a.m. local UN time, with a pre-published speaker lineup featuring 10 delegations holding speaking slots 27 through 37. The participating nations scheduled to deliver formal statements in sequence are Mexico, India, Cabo Verde, Zambia, Viet Nam, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Egypt, Belize, and closing the speaker list with a national address is the delegation of Cuba itself. Immediately after all 10 scheduled speakers deliver their remarks, the full General Assembly will move directly to the formal recorded vote on the anti-blockade resolution. Global audiences can access unfiltered, real-time live coverage of the entire debate and subsequent voting process directly through the official United Nations Webtv streaming platform hosted at https://webtv.un.org/. The announcement and procedural details are released by Cuban state international news outlet Granma International, as the 2026 iteration of the longstanding annual UN vote on ending the Cuba blockade unfolds.

On October 22, 2026, a high-profile parliamentary public hearing themed “Cuba Is Not a Threat—the Blockade Is” convened at Havana’s National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology (INOR), convened by Cuban legislative leaders to lay bare the devastating human costs of the decades-long U.S. economic, commercial, and financial blockade ahead of a scheduled United Nations General Assembly vote on October 27–28 that will consider a binding draft resolution demanding an immediate end to the unilateral coercive measure. Chaired by Esteban Lazo Hernández, member of the Communist Party of Cuba’s Political Bureau and President of the National Assembly of People’s Power, alongside Teresa Amarelle Boué, Secretary-General of the Federation of Cuban Women, the event brought together lawmakers, medical practitioners, pharmaceutical industry experts, cultural leaders, and youth representatives to testify to the blockade’s cascading harms across every sector of Cuban society, framing the policy as a flagrant violation of international law and the core principles enshrined in the UN Charter. Opening the testimonies, Council of State member and Federation of University Students president Lawmaker Litza Elena González Desdín emphasized that the hearing spoke directly on behalf of all Cuban people, particularly its youth, who are calling for a global order rooted in peace, cross-national solidarity, and mutual respect, free from arbitrary threats and punitive blockades. She echoed recent statements from Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, decrying ongoing U.S. diplomatic pressure on UN member states to alter their longstanding support for the resolution calling for an end to the blockade. Physician and expectant mother Josefina Prosper Bruff, an INOR staff member, humanized the abstract economic damage figures by noting that the Cuban public health sector sustained $367 million in losses between March 2025 and February 2026 alone, with every statistical figure tied to a real, vulnerable life. She outlined cascading crises facing the national healthcare system: 300 of the 395 essential medications on Cuba’s national formulary are currently out of stock due to impossible barriers to importing raw materials and finished pharmaceutical products; frequent energy shortages force hospitals to delay non-emergency surgeries, disrupt vaccination campaigns, and threaten the continuity of life-sustaining hemodialysis treatments. In neonatal intensive care units, over 95% of life-support equipment relies on unstable power grids, forcing clinical teams to improvise mid-operation when blackouts strike. Most alarmingly, the survival rate for Cuban children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer annually (between 300 and 400 new cases) has plummeted from 85% to 65% due to shortages of specialized chemotherapies and diagnostic equipment, leading Prosper Bruff to declare that lifting the blockade at this juncture is not a partisan political demand, but an urgent ethical imperative. Deputy Carlos Antonio Leyva Isaac, a chemical engineer with deep ties to Cuba’s domestic pharmaceutical sector, explained how overlapping financial and trade sanctions have crippled local drug manufacturing operations, describing the production pipeline as a puzzle permanently missing critical pieces: while Cuba has skilled workforces, existing production facilities, and full pharmaceutical formulas ready to deploy, restricted access to imported active pharmaceutical ingredients, packaging materials, and lab reagents means that most planned production batches cannot be completed. The Valles Pharmaceutical Laboratory, which produces 70% of the country’s intravenous parenteral solutions and 100% of its oral rehydration salts, faces constant supply chain disruptions that directly endanger renal patients, pediatric care recipients, and people dependent on routine intravenous treatments. Leyva Isaac emphasized that the blockade’s impacts extend far beyond direct U.S.-Cuba trade restrictions: Washington’s secondary sanctions penalize third-country suppliers, cut off Cuban entities from global bank financing, and create pervasive “financial fear” that makes even sympathetic international partners hesitant to engage in commercial relations with Cuba. He stressed that Cuban representatives will not beg for charity at the UN, but rather demand consistency from the global community to acknowledge the blockade’s well-documented harms and uphold international law. Leidys María Labrador Herrera, deputy director of the official newspaper *Granma*, testified that no segment of Cuban society has escaped the blockade’s reach, framing the policy as a form of collective punishment imposed solely because the Cuban people have exercised their sovereign right to self-determination and rejected foreign interference. She highlighted the quiet heroism of Cuban workers, from medical staff who show up to work at hospitals even when they face the same food and utility shortages at home, to mothers navigating scarce household supplies to care for their children, and commuters who overcome crippling transportation gaps to fulfill their job responsibilities. She also called out ongoing U.S. diplomatic efforts to coerce UN member states to abstain or skip the upcoming vote, noting that Washington’s aggressive lobbying exposes the absurdity of U.S. claims that the blockade is a non-existent or benign policy. Labrador Herrera pointed out that the fight against the U.S. blockade is not an exclusively Cuban cause: by defending its own sovereignty, Cuba is setting a precedent that protects the right to self-determination for every small nation across the globe. Yasel Toledo Garnache, president of the Hermanos Saíz Association that represents young Cuban artists and creators, outlined how the blockade’s economic and energy crises have limited access to art supplies, performance equipment, and travel opportunities for cultural workers, but emphasized that Cuban creators have continued to produce defiant, joyful art that preserves national cultural identity even under extreme hardship. She expressed solidarity with U.S.-based artists and intellectuals who advocate for normalized, respectful relations between the two nations. The hearing closed with Litza Elena González Desdín issuing a global call to young people, elected representatives, and ordinary communities across all continents to stand in solidarity with Cuba, demand the immediate end to the U.S. blockade, energy siege, and all other unilateral coercive measures imposed on the island, ahead of the landmark UN General Assembly vote.

On October 22, 2026, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla announced the launch of an innovative new digital tool via his X (formerly Twitter) account, designed to bring transparency to the ongoing human and economic harm caused by the decades-long United States economic blockade against Cuba.

Built on the core premise that ‘every second counts’, the open-access online platform, hosted at cubabloqueo.com, translates aggregated data from Cuba’s official 2026 blockade impact report into tangible, easy-to-understand impacts that directly touch everyday Cuban life. Unlike static annual reports, the site connects the cumulative economic cost of the blockade to specific, on-the-ground consequences: restricted access to life-saving pharmaceutical products, chronic fuel shortages that disrupt transportation and public services, inadequate access to clean drinking water for many communities, and underfunded resources for primary and secondary schools across the island.

Officials confirmed the platform is fully bilingual, supporting both Spanish and English interfaces to reach both domestic audiences and global users. Social media integration lets visitors share individual impact metrics directly to their own social channels, and the full 2026 official blockade report is available for free download in both languages to support researchers, activists, and policymakers. During each user session, the platform automatically generates dynamic, personalized charts and short explanatory videos to help visitors contextualize the data, making abstract economic statistics easier to grasp for people without policy or research backgrounds.

Beyond data visualization, the project serves a broader public education goal: it aims to raise global awareness of how what Cuban officials describe as a ‘genocidal policy of economic strangulation’ continues to shape every aspect of daily life for ordinary Cuban citizens, 60-plus years after the blockade was first implemented.

As the United Nations General Assembly prepares to vote on a resolution calling for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, the Caribbean island nation once again brings its decades-long struggle under an unrelenting economic siege to the global stage. Cuban officials and citizens alike argue that the word ‘blockade’ no longer fully captures the suffocating, all-encompassing pressure that has shaped daily life on the island for generations.

This year’s vote marks decades of overwhelming international consensus in support of Cuba’s call to lift the inhumane policy. Last year alone, 185 UN member states backed the resolution, with 165 voting explicitly in favor of ending the U.S.’s economic, commercial and financial restrictions on the island. Yet the United States, deaf to the collective will of the global community, has only doubled down on its pressure campaign, threatening third-party nations and enforcing a regime of collective punishment that falls disproportionately on ordinary Cuban people.

The latest damage assessment from Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lays bare the staggering human and economic toll of the policy. Between March 2025 and February 2026 alone, the blockade caused $8.083 billion in direct losses, a 7% year-over-year increase that marks a new record for annual damage. Cumulatively, the policy has cost Cuba more than $178.7 billion in adjusted losses over its nearly 70-year history. Beyond the raw numbers, the blockade drives up the cost of critical imports including medical equipment, life-saving pharmaceuticals, and educational technology, while cutting off the island from global access to affordable financing. Cuban Foreign Minister estimates that without the blockade, Cuba’s 2025 GDP would have been 10.8% higher than the current official figure.

These statistics hide a granular, daily hardship that touches every Cuban household. The energy blockade, intensified by Washington to unprecedented levels, is not an abstract political talking point: it is a mother forced to cook with firewood because household gas is unavailable, an elderly resident climbing 10 flights of stairs on foot because a broken elevator cannot be repaired, and a teenager finishing homework by candlelight or the dim glow of a dying mobile phone battery when grid power fails.

Nowhere is the cruelty of the blockade more visible than in Cuba’s world-renowned public healthcare system. Restrictions block the delivery of fuel for ambulances, diagnostic reagents for medical laboratories, and essential medications for community pharmacies. One devastating outcome: Cuba’s infant mortality rate, a metric the country kept at among the lowest in the region for decades through its free, universal public system, has doubled in recent years amid restricted access to supplies. These are preventable deaths, unnecessary grief for families, and futures cut short by the deliberate policy of a global power that has refused to accept Cuba’s 1959 choice of sovereign self-determination.

Veteran Swiss oncologist Franco Cavalli, who has worked alongside the Cuban healthcare system for five decades, has labeled the blockade what it is: an attempted genocide, a deliberate strategy to break the Cuban people through deprivation of basic needs and access to healthcare. This is no overheated rhetoric, but a clear description of a policy designed to force political change through suffering. Even now, thousands of containers holding desperately needed medical supplies are stuck or diverted at ports across the globe, as shipping lines and financial institutions avoid any interaction with Cuba for fear of harsh U.S. retaliation.

Critics of the Cuban government, including U.S. officials, often argue that Cuba’s domestic hardships stem from the island’s own policy choices, not the blockade. Cuban observers push back with a simple logical question: if that were true, why would the U.S. refuse to lift the embargo? If the policy serves no purpose, removing it would do nothing to change outcomes for Cuban people — but the U.S. continues to strengthen restrictions instead.

For nearly 70 years, this coercive strategy has failed to break Cuba’s unwavering resilience, despite attempts to force the island into submission through hunger and economic despair. The U.S. has even stepped up pressure on other UN member states to reverse their support for the end of the blockade this year, a frantic lobbying campaign that Cuban officials say only highlights the U.S.’s growing moral isolation on the world stage.

Through all of this hardship, Cuba has maintained its dignity and its commitment to sovereign self-determination. Today, the words of Cuban independence icon José Martí, written in his 1891 essay Our America, carry new weight: Martí warned of the ‘seven-league giant’ that sought to dominate the nations of the Americas, and called on independent peoples to stand against foreign interference.

Cuba remains open to a future of mutual respect and dialogue with the United States and the global community. The island has never imposed unilateral sanctions on other nations, nor has it closed the door to cooperative engagement. Cuba says it is ready to meet any gesture of rapprochement with good faith, as long as any talks are rooted in respect for Cuban sovereignty and the right of the Cuban people to determine their own political and economic future, without external conditions or demands.

Until that day of lifting the siege comes, Cuba will continue to stand tall. The country remains hopeful that the overwhelming majority of the global community will once again voice their support for ending the blockade at the UN General Assembly. For Cuba, this vote is more than a symbolic gesture: it is a global rebuke of a policy that has inflicted unnecessary suffering on the Cuban people for nearly 70 years, and a reminder that the world stands with the right of small nations to exist free of foreign coercion.

A week ahead of a critical United Nations vote scheduled for October 28, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez — who also serves as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba — has publicly condemned aggressive diplomatic coercion from the United States aimed at manipulating the outcome of the vote. The accusations were delivered during the third episode of the talk program *Criterio Compartido* (Shared Views), broadcast on Radio Rebelde, on October 21, 2026.

At the core of Díaz-Canel’s criticism is the United States’ decision to feature Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat as a speaker at a U.S.-organized event held on UN premises. According to Díaz-Canel, Gutiérrez Boronat is a publicly recognized terrorist and fraudster who is formally listed on the Cuban government’s official registry of individuals tied to terrorist activity. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez has previously publicly identified Gutiérrez Boronat by these labels. Beyond his designation by Cuba, the figure also faces federal misappropriation charges in Miami, where he is accused of stealing U.S. public funds earmarked for subversive activities against the Cuban government. Díaz-Canel called the U.S.’s decision to present this individual as a credible policy expert “the height of brazenness.”

The Cuban leader stressed that the U.S.’s choice to elevate such a controversial figure and rely on underhanded tactics is itself proof that Washington’s position opposing Cuba lacks moral and political legitimacy. He added that the event was intentionally staged to distract from the widespread, longstanding support Cuba enjoys from the broader global community.

This high-profile incident, Díaz-Canel explained, is just the most visible component of a wider coordinated campaign of diplomatic harassment the U.S. has waged in the lead-up to the October 28 vote. For decades, the United Nations has held annual votes on a resolution calling for an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, with most member states consistently backing the Cuban position. This year, Díaz-Canel confirmed, top U.S. officials including the Secretary of State have spearheaded a frantic push of pressure and blackmail to force heads of state and government to reverse their longstanding pro-Cuba votes.

Díaz-Canel acknowledged that some countries will likely cave to the pressure, changing their votes in Washington’s favor. Others may be pressured to abstain, or even to skip the vote entirely by stepping out of the chamber during the roll call to avoid taking any public position. He characterized this fence-sitting approach as an attempt to appease both sides, saying it amounts to trying to “stay on good terms with both God and the devil” — satisfying U.S. pressure without openly opposing Cuba, but also offering no tangible support to the island nation.

Even amid the confirmed pressure campaign, Díaz-Canel framed the U.S.’s aggressive tactics as evidence of Washington’s own growing international isolation on the issue. He closed with a message of cautious optimism, stating that he hoped the global community would vote for truth, end the decades-long blockade, and stand in solidarity with the Cuban people on October 28. He expressed confidence that Cuba will retain broad backing from the international community, even if U.S. pressure succeeds in shifting a small number of votes to abstention.

On October 20, 2026, Cuban state outlet *Razones de Cuba* published a long-awaited investigative follow-up to a foiled terrorist infiltration attempt that Cuban border forces intercepted off the coast of Villa Clara back in February of the same year. Building on the initial official account published in late February, this new update draws on firsthand confessions from surviving attackers and detained co-conspirators to lay bare the full scope of a cross-border plot organized and funded entirely from U.S. soil.

The attempted incursion began on the night of February 24, when 10 attackers split across two speedboats departed from Florida bound for Cuban territory. Roughly four to five hours into the voyage, one of the vessels suffered mechanical failure, forcing the group to transfer all weapons, equipment, and personnel to the remaining boat, identified as the *Tornado*. The transfer delayed their crossing, and the *Tornado* later ran aground in narrow coastal channels just 3.7 miles west of Bahía de Cádiz, in the Corralillo municipality, well inside Cuban territorial waters. When Cuban Border Guard Troops approached to investigate the unregistered vessel, the infiltrators attempted to escape, triggering a high-speed maritime pursuit. As the border patrol craft closed in, multiple attackers aboard the *Tornado* opened fire, striking the border guard commander twice. The resulting armed confrontation left five of the would-be infiltrators dead and multiple others taken into Cuban custody.

Confessions collected by Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT) have named Maritza Lugo Fernández, a Cuban national residing in Florida and leader of the self-styled 30th of November Democratic Party Revolutionary Movement (Fran País), as the plot’s chief architect. Investigations confirm Lugo has spent years building a network of anti-government actors to carry out sabotage and armed attacks across Cuba, a history she openly acknowledges in recorded evidence included in the investigative file.

“For more than 40 years, this regime has accused me of being a terrorist—of everything they can possibly come up with. I have been engaging in activities against the Cuban dictatorship ever since I was in Cuba. And when I arrived here in the United States, I continued doing so,” Lugo stated in the transcript, dismissing Cuban accusations as a smear campaign and claiming the Cuban government is the real perpetrator of global terrorism.

The *Tornado* was found carrying a massive arsenal when intercepted: 11 long guns, 15 handguns, Molotov cocktails, pipe-borne improvised explosive devices, and a full suite of communications equipment including walkie-talkies, satellite phones, and a Starlink satellite internet terminal. Investigators confirmed that participating attackers received pre-deployment training at a U.S. property owned by Lugo. Multiple co-conspirators have been identified, including two captured ringleaders, Amijail Sánchez González and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez, both of whom appear on Cuba’s national terrorist designation list aligned with UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which requires all member states to prevent and counter terrorist activity.

Court and investigative documents outline extensive prior criminal activity for both men. Sánchez González has been linked to multiple pre-existing attacks, including Molotov cocktail bombings targeting the Centro Habana Municipal People’s Court and the Havana provincial headquarters of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the cutting of a critical fiber-optic cable in Sierra de Cubitas, Camaguey, and multiple arson attacks targeting sugarcane fields and military committee offices in Cienfuegos province. Cruz Gómez, for his part, is accused of recruiting Cuban exiles residing in the U.S. and running weapons training programs for operatives ahead of planned armed incursions.

The plot uncovered in February is not an isolated incident. The investigative file links the broader conspiracy to two earlier foiled infiltration attempts: Ardenys García Álvarez, a conspirator residing in the U.S. since 2014, was captured in October 2024 while arriving via personal watercraft carrying a weapons cache, with plans to build an underground operational network and carry out attacks on Cuban military outposts. Alfredo de León Fernández was detained in November 2022 during a human smuggling operation tied to the same network.

All involved actors are tied to a network of anti-Cuban groups openly based in the United States, including *Nueva Nación Cubana*, *Cuba Primero*, the *Partido Republicano de Cuba*, *Escudo Cubano*, and *Autodefensa del Pueblo*. The majority of recruits are sourced via social media platforms, investigators confirmed. According to detailed confessions from detained attackers, the end goal of the February incursion was to seize control of Cuban military installations, distribute stockpiled weapons to civilian populations, incite a widespread uprising against the Cuban government, and ultimately trigger a direct U.S. military intervention on the island.

The report also highlights a troubling pattern of what Cuban authorities call U.S.-enabled impunity: individuals and organizations formally designated as terrorist actors by Cuba are able to openly plan, fund, and train for violent attacks on U.S. territory with no apparent intervention from U.S. law enforcement. Investigators specifically note the use of “self-deportation”—voluntary return mechanisms for Cuban migrants—as a deliberate infiltration tactic, a modus operandi the Cuban government says has previously been used for destabilization operations in Venezuela, and is now being deployed against Cuba.

Under Article 16 of the Cuban Constitution, the country rejects all forms of terrorist activity without exception. Cuba is a signatory to all 19 major international legal conventions countering terrorism, including key pacts banning terrorist bombings and the financing of terrorist operations. MININT has reaffirmed it remains on continuous high alert and will not tolerate any attempt to destabilize the country through violent means. Any individuals who facilitate terrorist plots from U.S. territory—including arranging training sites, coordinating land and maritime transport, and procuring stockpiles of weapons and equipment—are legally considered complicit in the crime of terrorist financing under Cuban law.

Cuban authorities have shared all evidence and investigative details with their U.S. counterparts, and the investigation remains active and ongoing. In a detailed FAQ accompanying the investigative report, Cuban officials emphasized that the incident cannot be characterized as simple illegal migration, dismantling claims that could frame the group as ordinary migrants or humanitarian actors. The attack is formally classified as an act of terrorism, with charges ranging from weapons possession and criminal association to terrorist financing, carrying penalties ranging from 10 to 15 years of imprisonment up to life imprisonment, and in the most severe cases, the death penalty. Cuban border forces defended their response as consistent with international standards for maritime law enforcement, describing their rules of engagement as moderate, defensive, rational, and proportional, with a five-person detachment facing off against 10 armed infiltrators.

Cuba has formally demanded that U.S. authorities end the policy of allowing terrorist groups to operate with impunity from U.S. soil, and hold all involved actors accountable for their planned attacks on Cuban sovereignty.