MINREX

MINREX (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores) is Cuba's foreign ministry and the source of official Cuban diplomatic communications, maintaining Cuba's positions at the UN, the Non-Aligned Movement, CELAC and ALBA. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla has served since 2016, one of the longest-serving senior officials under both Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel.

In April 2026 Rodríguez Parrilla accused Washington of 'creating confusion' to maintain a fuel blockade, characterising Executive Order 14380 as having an 'extraterritorial character' that 'intimidates, pressures and extorts' third-party firms. Following the 20 May 2026 DOJ indictment of Raúl Castro over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down, MINREX condemned the charges as 'political coercion'; the US Deputy Secretary of State answered Havana's formal protest on 24 May 2026, the first exchange at that level in the current sanctions cycle. Díaz-Canel offered dialogue 'on equal terms' while ruling political prisoners off the table.

At the UNGA's 7-8 July 2026 annual embargo debate, Cuba's delegation rebutted US Ambassador Mike Waltz's presentation of political-prisoner photographs, arguing Havana has nothing resembling the repression imagery on display and condemning the US measures as themselves the cause of humanitarian harm. The rebuttal came in the same session where the EU's Stavros Lambrinidis acknowledged the embargo's humanitarian cost while criticising Cuba's stance on Ukraine, leaving MINREX arguing its case from a weaker position than in earlier 2026 rounds.

MINREX continues to manage Cuba's international legal argument against US secondary sanctions and the back-channel prisoner-release diplomacy via the Holy See, sustaining maximum rhetorical pressure on sanctions while keeping enough dialogue open to avoid full isolation.