UNITED NATIONS — After two days of often acrimonious debate by the United Nations General Assembly Oct. 27-28, the body voted overwhelmingly to pass a motion submitted by Cuba — “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” — denouncing Washington’s over 65-year-long economic war against the Cuban people and their socialist revolution. The vote was 130 in favor, 17 against, 25 abstentions. The remaining 21 U.N. members didn’t vote.
While the vote reflects significant opposition to Washington’s brutal punishment against Cuba, a heavy-handed pressure campaign by the U.S. rulers has had an effect. The 130 “yes” votes is 35 less, and the 17 “no” votes 10 more than last year.
“There is no blockade,” Mike Waltz, U.S. representative to the U.N., incredulously claimed in his speech to the body. “A blockade is a ring of military ships around an island. It doesn’t exist.”
He issued a veiled threat against any country who voted “for” Cuba’s motion — “You are complicit.”
Virtually all the rest of his remarks consisted of charges of corruption, repression and incompetence against Cuba’s elected leadership.
Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, spoke in favor of Cuba’s motion. “A great power is attacking a member state of this organization — a small, independent, peace-loving nation and fraternal — by submitting it to an economic warfare,” he said.
He noted the debate was taking place “amidst new and extraordinary circumstances,” where the U.S. rulers have “unleashed a wave of pressures, intimidation and blackmail against many member states with a coercive, illegal, immoral and unwarranted demand to change their traditional stance” in favor of Cuba.
He said Washington “has openly resorted to the threat of the use of military force and has imposed tens of new economic coercive measures in addition to the ones that have existed for decades.”
Today’s “blockade silently kills and punishes our population as never before,” he noted, pointing to Cuba’s inability to get medicines that has caused a sharp rise in the infant mortality rate as well as leaving 100,000 Cubans, more than 12,000 of them children, unable to get needed surgeries.
He said the U.S. blockade is “designed to cause the greatest possible damage in the shortest possible time against an entire people,” calling it “an attempt to bring about a humanitarian crisis in Cuba and use it as a weapon.” But, he said, the Cuban government and people are taking steps to reorganize, find ways to make gains and to resist. “We will persist in the defense of our independence and national sovereignty.”
Rodríguez concluded with noting 2026 marks the centennial of Fidel Castro, saying, “We repeat with him: Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome.”
A number of other countries’ representatives stood up in support of Cuba’s motion against the U.S. blockade. “Cabo Verde and Cuba continue to enjoy longstanding relations of friendship, built on solidarity, mutual respect and shared values,” Tania Serafim Yvonne Romualdo, that country’s representative to the U.N., said. “Cuba has made invaluable contributions to our national development.”
Cuban combatants played a key role in the independence struggle in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
When Waltz presented his slanders against Cuba, Rodríguez asked for a point of order, telling the U.S. speaker, “You are a liar!” In a display of imperial arrogance, Waltz replied, “You understand who you’re dealing with? This is America. Back up.”
The U.N. gallery held dozens of U.S. activists, workers and others who came to stand with Cuba.