Cuba says new US sanctions will not 'bend the will of the people'

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
12 Jul 2025 02:43
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Cuba’s foreign minister slams new US sanctions targeting President Díaz-Canel and other top officials.

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Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel attends the 17th annual BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 6, 2025. (AP)

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla condemned the latest round of US sanctions targeting top Cuban officials, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel, stressing that the move was another failed attempt by Washington to undermine the country's sovereignty and revolutionary leadership.

“The US is capable of imposing immigration sanctions against revolutionary leaders and waging a prolonged and ruthless economic war against Cuba,” Rodriguez said in a statement posted to X.

“But it lacks the capacity to bend the will of the people or their leaders,” Rodriguez underlined.

US imposes visa restrictions on Cuban officials

The remarks came in response to an announcement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday. Rubio revealed that the State Department was imposing visa restrictions on high-level Cuban government figures, including Diaz-Canel, Defense Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera, and Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas.

Rubio also declared that the US was adding Havana’s recently inaugurated 42-story Torre K hotel to its Cuba Restricted List, aiming to prevent American dollars from reaching what Washington calls “the regime's machinery of repression.”

“While the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders,” Rubio posted on X.

US sanctions, shortages in Cuba

Cuba, however, has long maintained that these shortages are not the result of domestic mismanagement, but rather the outcome of a brutal and illegal US blockade—now more than 60 years old—designed to strangle the island’s economy and provoke unrest.