The U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has launched an attack on the Cuban Government, which he holds responsible for trying to "allow fair economic activity to place the country at a 'third world' level (...) without losing control over the population" and for making citizens "depend on 100%" on the authorities, which he blames for imposing a system that "doesn't work". In this context, he has justified the continuation of Washington's blockade in what he considers a lack of political freedoms on the island.
During a briefing with the media in Paris, where he is taking part in a G7 foreign ministers summit, Rubio has reiterated that "what the regime is trying to do and what it has always done is to allow fair economic activity to place the country at a 'third world' level, but avoiding falling into a 'fourth world'; all of this without losing control over the population."
Rubio, who is of Cuban origin through his parents, has also stressed that to the authorities on the island "it doesn't matter that people have little; what they seek is to ensure that, whatever it is that they possess, they depend on them one hundred percent to obtain it".
"This model doesn't work. The result has been that millions of people have left Cuba, many of them heading to the United States," he denounced, before urging that "this situation must change, since the instability and the failed State it has generated represent a threat to national security and the national interests of the United States".
The head of U.S. diplomacy has insisted that Washington's priority regarding the island is "to secure more freedom for the people of Cuba," both on the economic level and on the political level, and he has linked both dimensions to the embargo of the United States, which he has stressed that "is codified in law and requires political freedom in order to be lifted.
"In short, our purpose is for Cuba to have a better future, and we will do everything that is within our power to help steer it in that direction," Rubio said, who nonetheless has considered "it necessary for them to wake up and realize that there is no future on the path they are currently taking".
Díaz-Canel responds to Washington's criticisms
Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has responded to these statements through social media, where he has emphasized that "the future of Cuba will never be decided to the north." "We made that clear as of January 1, 1959, and it’s not going to change no matter how crooked the Yankee plans are to try to break us," he said.
In this regard, he has described as "perverse" that U.S. authorities do not take on "the responsibility for collective punishment" to which, in his view, they subject the Cuban population "with a criminal blockade of fuels and a sickly persecution of everything that contributes to its development and material well-being," amid a full context of a hydrocarbon crisis on the island.
"It is the collective punishment to which the Cuban people are being subjected," the president added in another post, in which he has considered "the lies with which they try to justify that genocide to the North American people and the rest of the world increasingly ridiculous." However, he has assured that "there are fewer and fewer who believe them."
Díaz-Canel has finally stressed that "Cuba will continue fighting for truth and justice," to conclude by emphasizing that "Cuba is not a threat, the blockade is."