Uruguay’s top diplomat commented on the speech given last week by President Yamandu Orsi at the UN General Assembly. There, he stated: “We cannot remain indifferent” to an “ironclad economic blockade like the one the Cuban people are suffering.”

  It is for a reason that governments of both the left and the right have consistently voted against the embargo (blockade); above all, suffocation is not the path for anyone, he emphasized.

  “It is Cuba today, but tomorrow it could be any other country. The path of suffocation—the path of the embargo—is not the way forward; nothing gets resolved that way. We are absolutely clear on that,” he reiterated in a television interview.

  He noted that, for Uruguay, there is no way to resolve conflicts without negotiation and dialogue.

  “The problem is that the specific reality regarding Cuba is glaringly obvious.   There is, in fact, a process of severe suffocation. And that was the only thing [the president] said: we are opposed to policies of this type, such as the case of Cuba,” he remarked.

  During the interview, he acknowledged that the issue of the Cuban medical brigade in Uruguay—which has been providing services out of the “Jose Marti” Eye Hospital as part of a 19-year cooperation agreement—was discussed during a meeting at the State Department in Washington.

  “We held a dialogue in which we explained how we were handling these matters,” he said.

  “We explained that we did not understand why they were speaking of the super-exploitation of citizens and professionals,” he said. He stated that he explained to his U.S. counterpart that the Cuban doctors are in compliance with Uruguayan law.

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