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Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel lashed out after U.S. President Donald Trump said he could do “whatever he wants” with the Caribbean island and that Washington could take “imminent action” against it.
Díaz-Canel said on X that the Trump administration “publicly threatens” Cuba’s government almost daily with overthrowing it, and any act of aggression “will clash with an impregnable resistance.”
The comments came after new threats by Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said Cuba’s socialist economic model needs to “change dramatically.” The same day, another Latin American country denounced Díaz-Canel’s government and said it would close its embassy.
Calling Cuba a ‘failed nation’ with a ‘nice landscape,’ U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he thinks he will have the ‘honour’ of taking Cuba, adding he could do anything he wants with it.
Trump wants Díaz-Canel out
While the Cuban government places heavy restrictions on the country’s private sector, decades of U.S. sanctions have crippled Cuba’s economy.
The Trump administration wants Díaz-Canel to leave as the U.S. continues negotiating with the Cuban government, according to a U.S. official and a source familiar with the talks between Washington and Havana. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to the discuss sensitive talks.
No details were offered about whom the administration might like to see in power.
U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against Cuba on Tuesday, saying ‘I think I can do anything I want’ with the country as it tries to recover from the collapse of its national electric grid on Monday. Sebastian A. Arcos, the interim director of the FIU Cuban Research Institute, discusses whether this is the end of the road for Cuba’s government.
Trump’s comments on Cuba came more than two months after his administration’s military raid that captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, and a few weeks after the launch of joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes against Iran on February 28.
The administration has effectively halted vital oil exports to Cuba, pushing the Caribbean nation to the brink. The Cuban people that Trump and Rubio say they want to help have been left reeling.
Cuban doctor, Jesus Garcia, 62, cast doubt that the Trump administration would remove Díaz-Canel from power or intervene in Cuba, rolling his eyes at Trump’s comments.
“Americans can say whatever they want. The ones who decide what is done here in Cuba are the Cuban people,” Garcia said.
Maria del Carmen Companioni, 51, said in the face of a political back and forth between the two governments, regular Cubans like her are left struggling with the soaring prices and no clear pathway forward.
“Really, all of this has people very alarmed and in a bad state. No one knows what is going to happen,” she said.
Costa Rica closes embassy
Also Wednesday, Costa Rica’s President Rodrigo Chaves said his administration did not recognize Cuba’s government as legitimate and would close the Cuban embassy in its capital San Jose.
“Costa Rica does not recognize the legitimacy of Cuba’s Communist regime, given the mistreatment, repression, and undignified conditions endured by the inhabitants of that beautiful island,” Chaves said at an event attended by the U.S. ambassador.
“We must cleanse the hemisphere of Communists,” Chaves added.
The Cuban government sharply criticized Costa Rica’s move, calling it an “arbitrary decision” made under pressure by the U.S. in an effort to isolate the island.
“The Costa Rican government, which displays a history of subordination to United States policy against Cuba, once again joins the offensive by the U.S. government in its renewed attempts to isolate our country,” Cuba’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Ecuador also closed its Cuban embassy, after declaring Cuban Ambassador Basilio Gutierrez and his diplomatic staff “persona non grata.”
Ecuador’s and Costa Rica’s presidents were among a raft of right-wing-aligned Latin American presidents to attend an anti-crime summit Trump hosted in Florida this month, known as “Shield of the Americas.”
Costa Rica’s announcement comes as a slate of countries in Central America and the Caribbean announced they will end agreements to hire Cuban medics in their countries — an important source of foreign income for the Cuban government and a source of medical services in often under-served rural communities.
The U.S. had accused the program of exploiting its workers and threatened sanctions on officials from countries that take in Cuban workers.
Cuba has faced a longstanding U.S. economic embargo, which its government blames for its economic crisis that has prompted more than one million people to leave the island. Most countries globally oppose the embargo, but in October, Argentina and Paraguay joined a handful of countries in shifting their support to the United States in a United Nations vote.
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