She said that the oil embargo decreed by the United States is, in practice, a naval blockade that also affects other countries and underscores the extraterritorial nature of Washington’s policies against her nation.

It is a people suffering human rights violations, unable to advance their development plans. On the contrary, she noted, the US seeks to reverse the social, economic, and scientific achievements attained by the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba suffers harassment from the world’s leading power—located just 90 miles off its coast—despite the fact that the United Nations General Assembly has called for an immediate end to the blockade on 33 occasions, she stated.

She remembered that on July 7, Cuba once again brought the urgent situation it faces—and its sovereign right to trade and purchase fuel—before the General Assembly. She praised the vote by 136 countries to debate the issue, as well as the statements made by many representatives “against that hostile policy.”

She emphasized that the United States flouts international law and the norms running relations between states. It seeks to impose its own rules, including within the Pan-American system, to exert greater interference in the continent’s countries.

Cuba has had to withstand a genocidal onslaught; when speaking of genocide, silent war, and suffocation, there is also a cognitive effect involved—specifically, the demonization of Cuba and the blaming of its government for current events. “A diabolical double game,” she declared in an interview with the program *Legitima Manana* from the *Caras y Caretas* media group. jdt/ga/ool