Denying the Blockade Against Cuba Is US Hypocrisy, Cuban Ambassador to Mexico Eugenio Martínez Says

ByFernando Camacho and Enrique Méndez

This article by Fernando Camacho and Enrique Méndez originally appeared in the October 27, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. The fact that this Tuesday the United States representative to the United Nations (UN), Mike Waltz, denied that a blockade against Cuba exists, and pointed out that his country maintains trade with the island, “is one of the most hypocritical things a representative” of Washington can say, stated Cuba’s ambassador to Mexico, Eugenio Martínez Enríquez.

Visiting the Chamber of Deputies, at the invitation of women legislators from the Morena caucus, the diplomat rejected the US official’s statements, since “every day they apply to Cuba, not the traditional blockade we knew for years, (but) an energy siege, virtually a naval blockade.”

After Waltz stated before the international body that “he sees ships leaving Florida for Cuba,” the ambassador asked: “And what does the United States Coast Guard do, which pursues ships going to Cuba? Or what does an executive order of January 29 (from Washington) do, saying that reprisals would be applied to any country that dares to sell any type of fuel to Cuba?”

That is called a blockade and they cannot deny it.

Eugenio Martínez Enríquez, Cuba’s Ambassador to Mexico

After emphasizing that the United States representative “is a laughingstock” for denying the existence of the blockade, Martínez Enríquez accused Washington of having “two faces: one is to say ‘we are going to close all the escape valves on Cuba,’ as the Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) said, and it is the one with which they apply secondary measures to countries, companies and entities that have relations with Cuba.”

The other face, he compared, “is to say ‘there is no blockade if Cuba’s private companies buy in the United States,’ which is hypocrisy.”

Warns of Crisis of Multilateralism

In that context, the island’s representative in Mexico stressed that his country defends the UN “as the body that was created to defend the principles and purposes it proclaimed in 1945, that nations have sovereign equality, that one cannot resort to the threat or use of force against other States, that conflicts must be resolved peacefully to avoid a world confrontation like that of the Second World War.”

However, he lamented, “multilateralism is in some way in crisis, not because of the UN itself, but because of powers like the United States, which disregard the principles of international law and the practices under which we have survived without a world confrontation. There is a truly worrying situation of threat to the principles that at least prevent a world confrontation.”

Within the UN, during the votes on the blockade against Cuba, “usually the United States is accompanied by one or two countries.

“However, the United States has exerted enormous pressure. Not only does it apply a tightened blockade, a collective punishment of the Cuban people, it also pressures countries to change their vote, and there may be some who subordinate themselves to the Monroe or ‘Donroe’ Doctrine, as it is called, against the will of their countries,” he elaborated.