The Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) has issued a statement denouncing the new genocidal escalation by the United States government against Cuba. We transmit the UPEC statement in full.
Trump’s Lies and the Power of Words in the Face of the Executive Order.
This January 29, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, issued an Executive Order with the absurd title: Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba.
The text of this document, as noted in the preamble, is based on the Constitution of the United States of America, as well as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the National Emergencies Act, and Section 301 of Title III of the United States Code.
An obvious and necessary observation is that it is enacted under the laws of another government that has not been legitimized by the Cuban people, and its application impacts the future of our nation.
The text unfolds in a cyclical rhetoric about “the danger that Cuba represents to the United States.” These legal headings are embedded in the body of the document as narratives that seek to legitimize the orders that the White House occupant has given (revealed in the final part of the document) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is responsible for implementing it in all its diabolical writing.
It is worth noting a passage by Donald Trump, which emerges as one of his most recent delusions: he announced him as the future “president of Cuba.”
In section 1 of “Addressing Threats…,” the first part states: “As President of the United States, I have a peremptory duty to protect the national security and foreign policy of this country.
I consider the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, originating wholly or substantially outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” This assertion is unfounded and provides no documentary evidence to legitimize such a claim. It is not even accompanied by any appendix that might “illustrate”—if such a word can be used—the assertions of the President of the United States. It merely reveals, as is typical of President Trump’s rhetoric, the launching of empty accusations before the public in the United States and the world, accusations that only aspire to create a climate of opinion regarding countries and governments that “pose a danger to the United States.”
Elsewhere in Section 1 of this Executive Order, the President of the United States clearly interferes in the foreign policy of the Cuban government, employing terms and descriptions that seek to undermine the island’s right to maintain relations with other states and governments recognized by the United Nations.
In this collection of “reasons,” he concocts, like a concocter of empty words, the terms: “hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adversaries of the United States.” The Cuban government has taken extraordinary measures that harm and threaten the United States. The regime collaborates with numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adversaries of the United States, including the Government of the Russian Federation (Russia), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Government of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, to which it lends support. For example, Cuba openly welcomes dangerous adversaries of the United States, inviting them to establish sophisticated military and intelligence capabilities on its territory that directly threaten U.S. national security.
It is worth noting that in the last third of this section, Donald Trump states: “Cuba hosts Russia’s largest overseas electronic intelligence facility, which attempts to steal sensitive information about U.S. national security.”
Cuba continues to develop deep cooperation in intelligence and defense matters with the People’s Republic of China.” Once again, the United States government is spreading lies straight from the manuals of U.S. intelligence agencies. This is part of a long-standing strategy to justify more far-reaching actions. Its rhetoric has been characterized by interference in the internal affairs of other nations, even resorting to military interventions in the name of “freedom and democracy.” How many U.S. military bases are located outside the United States? According to various sources, it is estimated that between 750 and 800 operate across five continents. This assertion suggests not only that it is blatantly lying, but also that it suffers from a certain delusion regarding issues handled by columnists and scholars of U.S. geopolitics.
In the body of this section 1, titled: Addressing the Threats Against the United States by the Government of Cuba, other absurdities are recycled, aiming to solidify, once again Moreover, the rhetoric of deception, without the slightest hint of shame and without presenting any documentary evidence. Cuba harbors transnational terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, creating a safe environment for these malign groups so that they can establish economic, cultural, and security ties throughout the region and attempt to destabilize the Western Hemisphere, including the United States. Cuba has long provided defense, intelligence, and security assistance to adversaries in the Western Hemisphere in order to thwart international and U.S. sanctions designed to ensure regional stability, uphold the rule of law, and safeguard U.S. national security and foreign policy. Cuba continues to attempt to thwart U.S. efforts to address the threats posed to you by hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors, including in the Western Hemisphere. Regarding this “chapter” of the Executive Order, the position of the Cuban people and government in defense of the sovereignty of the Palestinian cause is public: it is the right to exist as a nation that this rebellious island defends. Defiant. It is worth remembering that in the last two years, the genocidal practices of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people have increased.
According to Gazan health authorities, this new escalation has resulted in 71,667 deaths and 171,343 injuries, a consequence of the bombings carried out by Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian enclave. This figure represents pain and loss of human life. The United States government is complicit in this barbarity, as are several nations of the European Union. This alliance of countries has supplied, and continues to supply, military equipment with which the lives of this dignified people are being cut short.
The arguments of the Executive Order issued on January 29 by the President of the United States continue their pattern of vulgar, mendacious, and slanderous messages. This is the “logic” that defines the staged performances of Donald Trump, anchored in a strategy that breaks with all discursive logic. The material presented in this first section reveals the desperation of the White House occupant regarding the likely consequences of the Jeffrey Epstein files being released.
The outrage felt by Americans over the paramilitary practices employed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against immigrants, which resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens, is among Donald Trump’s concerns.
What this document actually endorses is simply ridiculous, filled with crude narratives and printed with blatant falsehoods.
Furthermore, contrary to U.S. interests and foreign policy, the Cuban communist regime supports terrorism and destabilizes the region through migration and violence. The communist regime persecutes and tortures its political opponents; denies the Cuban people freedom of expression and of the press; corruptly profits from their misery; and commits other human rights violations. For example, the families of political prisoners face reprisals for peacefully protesting the wrongful imprisonment of their loved ones. Cuban authorities harass the faithful, block the free association of civil society organizations, prohibit freedom of the press, and deny the possibility of free expression, including on the internet. The Cuban regime continues to spread its communist ideas, policies, and practices throughout the Western Hemisphere, posing a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
It is important to remember that in these 67 years of the Revolution, 3,478 compatriots have lost their lives and 2,099 have been left disabled by state terrorism organized, financed, and carried out from the territory of the United States. The 32 combatants who fell in Venezuela on January 3, fulfilling their duty to safeguard the lives of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, represent a new chapter in the terrorism promoted by the United States government against the Cuban people. The response of these 32 honorable men brings us pain and strengthens the unity among Cubans.
What they call opposition members should be understood as mercenaries in the service of a foreign power, a crime defined in Cuban law, as well as in the laws of the United States and other Western countries. They are mercenaries in the service of reactionary agencies and media outlets that are committed to overthrowing the Cuban Revolution. Our people and government have the legitimate right to defend themselves against all aggression, regardless of its origin.
The narrative of the alleged use of torture in Cuban prisons is a recurring theme in the arguments of White House officials. To this, it must be responded that torture has indeed occurred at the Guantanamo Naval Base, illegally occupied by the United States against the will of the Cuban people and government.
None of those politically responsible for these reprehensible acts, which are duly documented, have been brought to justice under the laws of that country.
None of the political figures responsible for these despicable, well-documented acts have been brought to justice under the laws of that country.
The Cuban nation is strengthened by a network of organizations that form part of a robust civil society. They represent the interests of broad sectors of the nation. The number, actions, and objectives that characterize each of them reflect the sovereign will of their members, enshrined in the Cuban Constitution and strengthened through sovereign acts in 2019. Every country has the right to disseminate its ideas anywhere in the world, respecting the laws of the nations that recognize this right to express ourselves in defense of our model of society.
The narrative in this document continues its pattern of disseminating lies, without offering a single line to support the arithmetic of its “evidence” presented in the main body of the Executive Order. The arguments we share below illustrate how they repeat outdated “arguments,” steeped in cynicism. I believe that the policies, practices, and actions of the Cuban government directly threaten the security, national security, and foreign policy of the United States.
The policies, practices, and actions of the Cuban government are designed to harm the United States and support hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malignant actors seeking to destroy it. The policies, practices, and actions of the Cuban government are also contrary to the moral and political values of free and democratic societies and conflict with the United States’ foreign policy of fostering peaceful change in Cuba and promoting democracy, freedom of speech and of the press, the rule of law, and respect for human rights throughout the world.
President Trump learned from his advisors the well-known Nazi strategy created by Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler’s top collaborators: “A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a great truth.”
Cuba is not a threat, neither to the United States nor to any other nation in the world. The Proclamation to establish Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed in January 2014, was promoted by the then-President of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz.
Everything expressed in this section of the document reeks of empty rhetoric, drenched in vile adjectives that merely aim to create a certain public opinion about our island that would only resonate with the ignorant and the mercenaries in Miami who are determined to overthrow the Cuban Revolution.
The remaining sections of this Executive Order are summarized in this paragraph: To address the national declared emergency in this order, I deem it necessary and appropriate to establish a tariff system, as described below. Under this system, an additional ad valorem duty may be imposed on imports of goods from a foreign country that sells or supplies, directly or indirectly, oil to Cuba. In essence, any nation that supplies oil to Cuba will be penalized with the well-known practice of increased tariffs, one of the weapons that characterizes the coercive policies of the Donald Trump administration. This measure is revealed as a clear intrusion into the sovereignty of nations that trade with Cuba, and moreover, it is another turn of the screw to suffocate the Cuban people, seeking internal unrest and destabilization, in the hope of sowing “pretexts” for a military intervention on the island, which has already been announced.
With these considerations, the Union of Journalists of Cuba categorically rejects the perverse actions that the Donald Trump administration intends to implement against our people. As our José Martí said: “To those who believe that Cubans lack the courage and capacity to live for themselves in the land created by their valor, we say: ‘They are lying.’”
Havana, January 31, 2026.
