Cuban authorities have repudiated this Thursday the "vile" inclusion of President Miguel Díaz-Canel in the "illegitimate" list of sanctioned persons by the United States, which they consider another demonstration of the "US interventionist plan" to present the island as a "threat to the national security" of the North American country.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, stated on social media that "the vile inclusion of the president, part of his family, as well as Cuban institutions, civil society organizations, and companies in an illegitimate and unilateral list by the United States Government, is the latest demonstration of the US interventionist plan to present Cuba as a threat to the national security of the United States."
Díaz-Canel, for his part, described the new measures as an attempt to "reinforce the blockade measures" and the "scenario of conflict between Cuba and the United States," anticipating that the "aggressiveness and perversion of the Yankee Government" will be met with Havana's "decision" to "face the worst scenarios and resist the imperial onslaught."
In another message on social media, the leader criticized that "this political blindness is added to the coercive measures applied in recent weeks against our country, designed to harm the Cuban people."
The reaction of the Cuban Government comes after the United States Department of the Treasury announced the inclusion of Díaz-Canel; the first lady and second wife of the president, Lis Cuesta Pedraza; her son and the president's stepson, Manuel Anido Cuesta; and Alejandro Castro, the only son of Raúl Castro, in its list of sanctioned individuals.
At the same time, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has extended sanctions to five Cuban entities: the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the travel agency Amistur Cuba SA, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, and the mining company La Victoria.
After making the new restrictions public, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the Administration of the White House tenant, Donald Trump, "will no longer tolerate" "radical Marxist regimes" attempting to "threaten the national security" of the United States and "carry out influence operations to export their poisonous and perverse 'revolution'" both to the country and "to the rest of the world."
Rubio has maintained on social networks that "for decades, Cuba has been the world capital of far-left terrorism. The Havana regime has recruited, trained, and backed violent Marxist and Third World movements throughout our hemisphere and beyond. Today, we are acting against the network that enables and finances Cuba's subversive and radical operations."
Since the beginning of the year, Washington has intensified pressure on the island through a de facto blockade of fuel supplies, a policy that Díaz-Canel has described as "collective punishment" comparable, in his opinion, to an "act of genocide."