The United States ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, and the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, starred in a tense verbal confrontation this Tuesday during the General Assembly, in a new chapter of the long confrontation between Washington and Havana, marked in recent months by the tightening of the U.S. blockade against the island.
The clash was triggered when Rodríguez interrupted what he later described on social media as an "offensive" speech by the American representative, who went on to show a black and white photograph of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro wearing a Rolex watch on his wrist.
At that moment, the Cuban delegation demanded that Waltz's speech be stopped and several of its members approached the podium where the American diplomat was speaking, who responded by asking the representatives of Cuba to return to their seats.
"We are in the United States of America," shouted Waltz, "and here no one is going to intimidate me like they intimidate political prisoners. Step back!".
After the incident, Rodríguez replied to Waltz reminding him that "with his arrogance and pride, he forgets that he is at the United Nations, he is not at the U.S. National Security Council nor in a Green Beret unit".
According to the Cuban minister, the ambassador's words "are part of the media circus, of threats and of the electoral campaign, to which the U.S. government dedicates substantial economic and human resources." In his opinion, "there is no excuse to maintain the act of collective punishment to which they subject the Cuban people," Rodríguez concluded, who is still awaiting a formal assessment from Waltz about what happened.