Díaz-Canel Slams New U.S. Sanctions as 'Genocidal' Blockade

These remarks, delivered in a social media post, came hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing new coercive measures aimed at foreign banks, energy and mining firms, and security-related entities that cooperate with Havana.

RELATED: Trump Threatens Again Cuba in Florida Rally, After Expands Sanctions

“Today the U.S. government has announced new coercive measures that reinforce the brutal genocidal blockade, exposing its moral poverty and contempt for the sensibility and common sense of the American people and the entire international community,” Díaz‑Canel wrote. He insisted that “no honest person can accept the excuse that Cuba is a threat to that country” and closed his statement with the tag “The Homeland Is to Be Defended.”

The new package targets foreign financial institutions that do business with the Cuban government, tightens immigration restrictions, and threatens to block any company or individual that operates—or has ever operated—in Cuba’s defense, energy, mining or security sectors, or that provides material, financial or technological support to the island or to previously sanctioned persons.

The measures come as Trump has escalated rhetoric acquiring control of the island. He recently threatened to send the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln toward Cuban waters, asserting the United States would seize control “almost immediately.” His administration is already imposing tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba, squeezing the island’s fuel lifeline.

Against the backdrop of new sanctions piling onto a 60‑year embargo that U.N. resolutions overwhelmingly condemn, Díaz‑Canel returned repeatedly to the notion of national resistance, weaving anti-imperialist rhetoric with a call to endurance: “The blockade and its tightening cause so much harm, due to the intimidating and arrogant conduct of the greatest military power on the planet.”