Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Havana, July 2 – The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement strongly rejecting the tightening of the United States government's economic, commercial, and financial blockade against the Antillean nation through a recently presented Presidential Memorandum, which is evidence of the White House's hostility and aggressiveness.
Due to its importance, we transmit this statement verbatim.
The anti-Cuban document released by the US government on June 30, 2025, consists of a reissue and amendment of National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 5, which the US government itself issued on June 16, 2017, at the beginning of Donald Trump's first term.
Cuba categorically denounces and rejects both versions of the infamous document.
As a clear expression of that country's aggressive behavior and hegemonic aims, the original text and its current reissue contemplate a set of measures aimed at further strengthening the economic siege and causing greater hardship for the Cuban people, in the failed attempt to take over the country and control its destiny, in accordance with the provisions of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996.
Since 2017, and under the auspices of the Memorandum issued at the time, the US government began implementing measures to further strengthen the economic blockade, taking it to a qualitatively more damaging level. These measures have been maintained for eight years, including the period of Joseph Biden's administration, and largely explain the current shortcomings and the significant challenges facing the Cuban economy for its recovery, growth, and development.
The original 2017 Memorandum has been the political platform that promoted, among other measures, the almost absolute ban on US citizens traveling to Cuba. It led to the persecution of fuel supplies, the obstruction of remittances, and measures against third-country governments for relying on Cuban medical services to care for their respective populations.
It is also the one that has promoted pressure on commercial and financial entities around the world to prevent their relations with Cuba, the one that has prompted lawsuits in U.S. courts against investors in our country, and the one that ordered the slanderous inclusion of the island on the list of states supposedly sponsoring terrorism, with its dire consequences for the national economy.
The hostile policy thus defined violates international law and numerous UN resolutions. It seeks to justify the use of economic coercion as a weapon of aggression against a sovereign country, with the aim of breaking the political will of the entire nation and subjecting it to the hegemonic dictatorship of the United States. It is not by chance or coincidence that, since 1992, the UN General Assembly has almost unanimously called for an end to the economic, commercial, and financial blockade.
To justify their actions, both the original and the now amended Presidential Memorandum refer to terms such as democracy, human rights, religious freedom, and others. All are concepts incompatible with the historically abusive and transgressive conduct of the US government. It also expressly refers to the determination to destroy socialism and convert the Cuban economy to capitalism.
The US leaders and politicians have the shamelessness to declare that they act in this way for the good of the Cuban people.
The challenges facing Cuba are great and challenging, especially given the US determination to destroy the national project that we Cubans have built in the full exercise of our sovereign rights, including the right to self-determination.
The US government does not care that Cuba is a peaceful, stable, supportive country with friendly relations with practically the entire world. Its policy responds to the narrow interests of a corrupt anti-Cuban clique that has made aggression against its neighbor a very lucrative way of life and business. (Text and photo: ACN)
