The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has signed a memorandum that extends for an additional year the current embargo against Cuba, so it will remain in place until September 2027, considering that this measure responds to the "national interest" of the country.
The framework of economic, commercial, and financial restrictions on Havana is based on the Trading with the Enemy Act of the United States, passed in 1917. However, the blockade on the island began to be applied in practice during the term of the 34th U.S. president, Dwight Eisenhower, at the beginning of the 1960s.
Although the official text, which Europa Press has accessed, was disseminated this Tuesday, the signing of the document took place on August 20, thus setting the extension of the embargo until September 14, 2027.
Cuba's response: a "genocidal" policy to "suffocate" the country
From the Cuban government, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, has reacted, repudiating "in the strongest terms" the extension, understanding that it demonstrates that Washington "persists in its purpose" to "suffocate" the "entire" nation.
"Cuba condemns in the strongest terms the extension for one more year of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the government of the United States, a genocidal policy that has been maintained against our people for more than six decades," the minister pointed out in a message disseminated on social networks.
For the head of Cuban diplomacy, this decision by the White House "is not a minor administrative act" but "the confirmation" that the United States "persists in its purpose to suffocate an entire nation" in, he denounced, "the cruelest moment of the U.S. offensive against Cuba in recent years."
The pressures from Washington on the island have intensified especially during Donald Trump's last term, with sanctions directed both against the current Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and against his predecessor, Raúl Castro.
In relation to the embargo, Díaz-Canel has wondered these days why the United States maintains the blockade if Cubans are "so clumsy, incapable, inefficient" and could "fall" by themselves. "They know that Cuba, blockaded, has managed to solve problems that are not resolved today in the United States in terms of social justice," the leader stated in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper 'Folha'.
In that same conversation, the Cuban president emphasized that the country is not "on the brink of collapse" but "in a complex situation, but with an enormous creativity that adds to the heroic capacity for resistance of the Cuban people."
"There are blackouts, but no blackout has extinguished the hope of the Cuban people. There are shortages, but no shortage has fractured the capacity to grow," reiterated Díaz-Canel, asserting the "capacity to function" of the island despite the crisis it is going through.