MIAMI — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel used the 73rd anniversary of the Moncada Barracks assault — the event that marked the start of the Cuban Revolution — to level some of his sharpest language yet at Washington, comparing U.S. officials to Nazi-era administrators and accusing the Trump administration of pursuing a “coldly calculated genocide” against the island.
What Díaz-Canel Said
Speaking Sunday in Pinar del Río, Díaz-Canel said State Department officials who draft sanctions, compile lists, and “invent pretexts” were “a modern version of the drafters of edicts and military decrees so feared and hated in the dark ages of medieval times, or in the Nazi occupations of World War II.”
He described current U.S. policy as a “genocidal policy that has set out to asphyxiate the entire people in order to seize the country,” and placed Cuba within a broader pattern he attributed to Washington:
“Before it was Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. Today it is Cuba. Tomorrow it could be any other nation.” He said Cuba is “not the first, nor will it be the last, victim” of U.S. policy, and called the blockade “a weapon of war” that “causes deaths.”
Díaz-Canel’s remarks came amid what he characterized as a campaign of “maximum asphyxiation” combining the decades-old U.S. embargo, a fuel blockade in place since January, and successive rounds of sanctions, including secondary sanctions on third-party entities. He singled out the most recent measures, announced Thursday, which target Cuba’s medical missions abroad — one of the island’s principal sources of foreign revenue — calling them a measure that “breaks the record of infamy.”
Two Competing Framings of Cuba's Medical Missions
The dispute over those medical missions reflects a broader disagreement over how to characterize Cuban state policy. Havana presents the missions, which send Cuban doctors to work in other countries, as an act of international solidarity and a legitimate source of national income. Washington has instead described the program as a form of modern forced labor, arguing the Cuban government withholds most participating doctors’ earnings and restricts their personal freedom while abroad.
Both characterizations are contested by the other side, and independent assessments of individual doctors’ working conditions vary by country and program.
The Energy Crisis Underlying the Rhetoric
Díaz-Canel’s speech landed against the backdrop of a severe and prolonged energy crisis that has directly shaped daily life across the island. Blackouts in Havana have run more than 30 hours at a stretch, with outages lasting several consecutive days in parts of the country's interior. Cuban officials have consistently attributed the crisis to the U.S. fuel blockade and broader sanctions pressure restricting the island’s access to oil and spare parts for its aging power infrastructure.
Washington on the other hand, says the Cuban plight is the direct result of six decades of communism and failed economic policies that have impoverished the island’s declining population.
A Notable Absence
The event also carried a symbolic marker of Cuba’s evolving internal politics: former President Raúl Castro did not attend the Moncada anniversary ceremony, the first time in roughly three decades he has missed the occasion, a departure from decades of consistent presence that drew attention among observers of Cuban politics, though the Cuban government did not offer a public explanation for his absence.
Part of a Broader Pattern This Year
Díaz-Canel’s remarks arrive amid a marked increase in U.S. pressure on Cuba across multiple fronts in recent months — including a 100-page State Department report characterizing Cuba as a decades-long architect of far-left influence inside the United States, a Treasury designation of Cuba’s Rapid Response Brigades, and continued warnings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing Cuba’s government as hostile to U.S. interests.
Notably, Cuba’s own government confirmed earlier this year that it had engaged in direct diplomatic talks with Washington aimed at addressing the fuel and energy crisis, releasing thousands of prisoners as part of that process in the spring — talks that stood in some tension with the more combative rhetoric on display in Díaz-Canel’s Moncada remarks, in which he made no reference to dialogue or potential contacts between the two governments, a departure from more conciliatory language he had used in prior months.
Whichever side’s characterization of the underlying policy is accepted, the practical reality facing ordinary Cubans remains consistent across accounts: an island contending with chronic, extended power outages, a shrinking supply of imported fuel, and a government in Havana unable to address the most basic human needs of its citizens.
