He stressed that Cuba does not want a war, and added that he doesn’t believe “sensitive” American people would support an invasion of the small island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. But if one were to happen, he said, there would be “very high costs for everyone involved.”
“If the time comes, I don’t think there would be any justification for the United States to launch a military aggression against Cuba, or for the U.S. to undertake a surgical operation or the kidnapping of a president,” Díaz-Canel said, referring to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year.
“If that happens, there will be fighting, and there will be a struggle, and we will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die, because as our national anthem says, “Dying for the homeland is to live.”
Trump has repeatedly spoken of “taking” Cuba, which has been a thorn in the side of the United States since 1959.
The administration has highlighted Cuba’s struggling economy and nationwide power grid failures. Since January, the U.S. has enforced a blockade around the island in an effort to increase pressure on the country’s government. Despite threatening other countries against sending oil to Cuba, Trump last month allowed a Russian oil tanker to reach Cuba for “humanitarian reasons.”
Díaz-Canel called the blockade “unfair,” accusing the U.S. government of “viciousness and evil.”
“I think the U.S. government should review how cruel and how mean they’ve been to Cuba and to the Cuban people, and they should not portray themselves as the savior of the Cuban situation,” Díaz-Canel said. “They don’t have that right.”
Still, the U.S. and Cuba have been in negotiations — though Díaz-Canel said he has not spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has reportedly been holding private talks with the grandson and caretaker of Cuba’s de facto dictator, Raúl Castro.
The U.S. has made key demands of the Cuban government, including the release of political prisoners, scheduling multi-party elections and recognizing unions and a free press. But Díaz-Canel would not commit to fulfilling any of those demands.
And while there have been calls for regime change by both congressional leaders and Cuban Americans, Díaz-Canel vehemently rejected the idea of stepping down from the presidency.
“We have self-determination and independence, and we are not subjected to the designs of the United States,” Díaz-Canel said. “The concept of revolutionaries giving up and stepping down, it’s not part of our vocabulary either.”