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Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Wednesday defended her country’s vote against the resolution the Cuban regime brings every year to the UN General Assembly calling for an end to the US embargo. “We do not support a military dictatorship. The Cuban people deserve democracy,” she wrote in a statement posted on her official X account.
With that vote, Trinidad and Tobago was the only member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to oppose the text, something it had not done since the General Assembly began voting on it in 1992. The resolution passed with 130 votes in favor, 17 against and 25 abstentions, according to UN News.
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What Persad-Bissessar said
The prime minister said the decision “reflects the Government’s firm and unwavering commitment to democracy, freedom and the fundamental rights of all people.” She added: “I have made it clear publicly that Trinidad and Tobago will not support military dictatorship in Cuba.”
In the statement she cited Secretary of State Marco Rubio, writing that “Secretary of State Marco Rubio … of Cuban heritage is right, for Cuba to prosper, there must be political reforms and the democratic rights and freedoms of the Cuban people must be restored.”
She also challenged her Caribbean partners: “Why should citizens of CARICOM nations enjoy the right to freely elect and change their governments while the Cuban people are denied that same democratic choice?”
Persad-Bissessar argued that for years “the argument of compassion for the Cuban people has been manipulated to support a military totalitarian political system,” and that while ordinary Cubans suffer, “the leaders of the Cuban regime and their families live in luxury.” She added: “There is nothing romantic or idealistic about dictatorship masked as a revolutionary struggle for freedom.”
The statement blends the voice of the Government with that of her party, the United National Congress (UNC): it opens with a UNC declaration and closes with the party commending “all nations who stand in solidarity with the wonderful people of Cuba.”
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Trinidad and Tobago reverses a three-decade position
Trinidad and Tobago abstained when the resolution was first put to a vote in 1992 and voted in favor every year since, including 2025. Last October, all 14 CARICOM members with a seat at the UN backed the text.
The shift was already visible in July 2026, when the country abstained in the procedural vote that authorized a special debate on the embargo, approved with 136 votes in favor, 9 against and 30 abstentions.
Trinidad and Tobago was not the only change in the region. Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti abstained on Wednesday after voting in favor in 2025, while Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Saint Lucia did not vote. Overall, the Cuban regime lost 35 votes at the UN compared with last year, when the resolution received 165 votes in favor.
A clash that began in February
Persad-Bissessar’s stance is not new. In February 2026, eight former Caribbean leaders, including her predecessor Keith Rowley, signed a statement against the January 29 US executive order targeting countries that supply oil to Cuba, calling it “economic warfare.”
The prime minister replied that all of them had come to power through democratic elections and asked why Cubans should not have that same right. The former leaders reminded her that during her first term (2010-2015) her Government supported the UN resolutions against the embargo.
Days later, at the opening of the CARICOM Heads of Government summit in St. Kitts and Nevis, where she met with Rubio, Persad-Bissessar said her country does not support Havana’s “dictatorial” regime.
What the vote changes
The resolution is non-binding: it does not force Washington to change its sanctions, and lifting the embargo is up to the US Congress. Even so, Cuban ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel hailed the result as a victory for the Cuban people.
Washington read it the opposite way. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz, who clashed with the Cuban delegation during the debate, said nearly three times as many countries voted no, abstained or chose not to vote, and activist Rosa María Payá said most of Ibero-America refused to vote alongside the Cuban dictatorship.
With its vote, Trinidad and Tobago breaks with the common position CARICOM held for decades, when its members backed the Cuban regime’s resolution as a bloc.
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