Cuban leader says sanctions blocking 100,000 surgeries, targeting health system
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel devoted much of his Sunday speech to denouncing the tightening of U.S. sanctions, arguing that Cuba is facing “a new Moncada” under a policy of “maximum economic strangulation.” The speech was the main political commemoration of Cuba’s revolutionary calendar, marking the assault on the Moncada Barracks led by Fidel Castro on July 26, 1953, which is considered the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.
“State Department officials, experts at drafting sanctions, making lists and inventing pretexts, are a modern version of the authors of military edicts that became so feared and hated during the dark medieval period or the Nazi occupations in World War II,” Díaz-Canel said.
He said Washington is waging “a global war against the left” and described Cuba as “the capital of communism in the 21st century” in U.S. foreign policy.
Díaz-Canel said recent sanctions against officials in Cuba’s public health system and the country’s medical brigades represent a new escalation of pressure on the island.
“The latest sanctions break the record of infamy by targeting public health officials and Cuban medical services,” he said.
Díaz-Canel also contended the United States has “deliberately” designed a policy aimed at causing the country’s economic collapse.
“I denounce that Cuba is the victim of a coldly calculated genocide. The U.S. government has consciously designed and implemented a policy of maximum economic strangulation against the Cuban people,” he said.
The president attributed the country’s energy crisis, prolonged power outages, medicine shortages, and the difficulties facing the healthcare system to that policy. According to Díaz-Canel, the situation has prevented more than 100,000 scheduled surgeries from being performed and has forced thousands of patients, including children with cancer, to receive alternative treatments because of a lack of access to first-line medicines.
He said the U.S. economic embargo constitutes “a weapon of war” and blamed Washington for the deterioration of living conditions on the island.
“First it was Gaza, Lebanon, Iran; today it is Cuba. Tomorrow it could be any other nation,” he said, comparing Cuba’s situation with other international conflicts.
Díaz-Canel also accused the United States of trying to manufacture international consensus for a possible military aggression through a recent State Department report, which he described as “a mediocre propaganda pamphlet.”
Despite the economic crisis, Díaz-Canel called for maintaining national unity, defending the socialist system, and accelerating the economic reforms promoted by his government, which, he said, must be carried out “without abandoning social justice.”