The authorities of the United States have announced the expulsion of a diplomat from Cuba after the verbal confrontation that occurred on Tuesday in the United Nations General Assembly between the US representative, Mike Waltz, and the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, in a context of growing tension between Washington and Havana in recent months.
Waltz himself has underscored that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, "has already signed the papers to expel the Cuban diplomat", whom he pointed to as "first secretary of his delegation". "He is leaving. He will be on a plane to Havana in the next 24 hours", he highlighted in statements to the US television network Fox News.
According to Waltz, the Cuban diplomat would have pushed and tried to "assault" a member of the US delegation. For his part, a State Department spokesperson told the CNN network that Washington "has made it clear to the Cuban mission that this person is not welcome in the United States", while, for the moment, the authorities in Havana have not issued an official reaction to the measure.
The incident occurred when Rodríguez interrupted what he later described on social media as an "offensive" speech by the US representative, who came to show a black-and-white photograph of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro with a Rolex watch on his wrist. In the midst of the exchange of recriminations, the Cuban minister approached the podium.
Later, Waltz shared on social media a video in which a Cuban diplomat is seen brushing away with a swat the arm of a US diplomat who was filming him with a mobile phone. After that, the Cuban mission to the UN sent a letter to the organization's secretary general, António Guterres, denouncing that this person would have invaded the personal space of his delegate in order to obtain images intended to damage Havana's image.
In this scenario, Rodríguez accused the United States on Wednesday of "reinforcing" its "aggression" against the island and taking it to the "extreme" in order to "seize" the island and "control its economy". Likewise, he criticized the blockade on the delivery of fuel that since the beginning of the year "threatens the lives of Cubans and tries to destroy a sovereign State by way of economic asphyxiation".
Washington imposed an oil blockade on the island in January, warning of sanctions and tariffs to any country that supplies energy to Cuba, which has worsened the supply crisis. The situation has been further deteriorated after the loss of supply from Venezuela at the beginning of the year, following the U.S. military operation in Caracas, which left more than one hundred dead and the capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.