The anti-Cuban document released by the US government on June 30, 2025, is a reissue and amendment of Presidential National Security Memorandum No. 5, which the US government itself had issued on June 16, 2017, at the beginning of Donald Trump's first term.
Cuba categorically denounces and rejects both versions of this 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 blockade and causing greater hardship for the Cuban people, in a 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, under the protection of the Memorandum issued at that time, the US government began to apply measures to extremely reinforce the economic blockade, taking it to a qualitatively more damaging level. These measures have been maintained for eight years, including during Joseph Biden's administration, and largely explain the current shortages and the major challenges facing the Cuban economy in terms of recovery, growth, and development.
The original 2017 Memorandum has been the political platform that promoted, among other measures, the almost total 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 using Cuban medical services to care for their respective populations.
It is also the one that has promoted pressure on commercial and financial entities anywhere in the world to prevent them from having relations with Cuba, which has led to lawsuits in US courts against investors in our country, and which led to the slanderous inclusion of the island on the list of states allegedly sponsoring terrorism, with its disastrous consequences for the national economy.
This hostile policy 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 no coincidence that, since 1992, the UN General Assembly has almost unanimously called for an end to the economic, commercial, and financial blockade.
To justify its actions, both the original Presidential Memorandum and the now amended one refer to terms such as democracy, human rights, religious freedom, and others. All of these are concepts incompatible with the abusive and transgressive historical behavior of the US government. It also makes explicit reference to the effort to destroy socialism and convert the Cuban economy to capitalism.
The rulers and politicians of the United States have the audacity to declare that they are acting in this way for the good of the Cuban people.
The challenges facing Cuba are great and daunting, especially given the US determination to destroy the national project that we Cubans have built in full exercise of our sovereign rights, including that of self-determination.
The US government does not care that Cuba is a peaceful, stable, supportive country with friendly relations with practically the entire world. The policy it applies responds to the narrow interests of an anti-Cuban and corrupt clique that has made aggression against its neighbor a way of life and a very lucrative business.
Havana, July 1, 2025.
