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The Cuban regime’s delegation banged on the tables and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla shouted down the United States ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, on Tuesday, October 27, in the middle of the General Assembly plenary during the annual debate on Havana’s resolution against the US embargo.
As Waltz was speaking, Rodríguez shouted toward the rostrum demanding that the Assembly president, Khalilur Rahman, call the US diplomat to order, according to the EFE news agency. Rahman warned that he would suspend the meeting and, after repeated calls to order, gave the Cuban foreign minister the floor.
“This isn’t Havana”
Waltz was denouncing repression in Cuba when he was cut off. “Imagine what happens when someone asks these questions in Havana, not in a room full of ambassadors and cameras,” he said, according to the Spanish interpretation carried with the broadcast. “Imagine what happens to those people if this is the intimidation and the interruption we are seeing.”
With the Cuban foreign minister moving toward the podium, the ambassador raised his voice: “This isn’t your communist dictatorship. You cannot silence me.” He added: “He’s not going to intimidate me in the United States of America,” and then: “I’m the representative of the United States of America. Back up! Back up, Ambassador. Back away! This isn’t Havana.”
Waltz also cited Rule 71 of the Assembly’s rules of procedure, which bars whoever raises a point of order from speaking to the substance of the matter. “The reality is that you do not like the substance of what you are hearing,” he told Rodríguez, according to the Spanish interpretation.
Bruno Rodríguez’s response
Rahman first asked Rodríguez to let the speaker finish and, faced with his insistence, gave him the floor on the condition that he limit himself to a procedural question. The foreign minister accused Waltz of lying “grossly” and of offending “the dignity of the people and the government of Cuba.”
“I wish you a better future in other roles, but at the United Nations and on the Security Council your performance leaves much to be desired,” added Rodríguez, who advised him to learn the rules of procedure. Rahman said his remarks would be entered into the record and returned the floor to the United States.
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What Waltz said about the Cuba embargo
In his remarks, the ambassador urged member states to vote against the resolution and said US companies exported more than 876 million dollars in goods to Cuba in the first eight months of the year, according to EFE. He also accused Fidel Castro of having sent thousands of gay people, Christians, Afro-Cubans and others to concentration camps, and he used the same session to expose the luxuries of the Castro family.
A tense week in New York
The clash came eight days after Cuban diplomats led by ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán staged a counter-event a few feet away from a “Cuba Libre” panel that Waltz hosted with dissidents and former political prisoners at UN headquarters on October 19, which Washington denounced as an act of repudiation. Rodríguez had already cut off Waltz with a point of order in the October 2025 embargo debate, and the two clashed again at a special session in July of this year. Days before this session, ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel had called the embargo “genocidal.”
What happens now
The General Assembly continues the debate on Wednesday, October 28, when the vote is expected. The resolution, which is non-binding, is being put to a vote for the thirty-fourth time. In 2025 it passed with 165 votes in favor, 7 against and 12 abstentions, according to UN News. Only the United States Congress can lift the embargo.
With information from EFE, Fox News and The National. Mike Waltz’s quotes are his own words in English, except the passages noted as coming from the Spanish interpretation broadcast with the session.
Update, October 27, 2026: This story was updated to reflect that, according to EFE, Rahman warned he would suspend the meeting rather than suspending it; to use Mike Waltz’s original English words instead of a back-translation of the Spanish interpretation; and to clarify the October 19 episode and the earlier clashes between Rodríguez and Waltz.
Read this story in Spanish: La delegación del régimen cubano golpea las mesas y Bruno Rodríguez interrumpe a gritos a Mike Waltz en la ONU.
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