The Secretary of State sends a video to the population on the day when the criminal indictment against Raúl Castro will be officially announced
14ymedio, Madrid, 20 May 2026 / Anticipation is running high on a Cuban Independence Day that will see the US indict former president Raúl Castro, news that was already more than expected after it was leaked days ago, but which comes with a new development first thing in the morning. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has addressed some direct words to the Cuban people in a video obtained by Axios, the outlet that the regime has turned into its new bête noire because of the leaks it has published on relations between the two countries and the Donald Trump Administration’s plans for the Island.
“President Trump is offering a new relationship between the United States and Cuba. But it must be directly with you, the Cuban people, not with Gaesa,” Rubio says in the message, later published by the State Department.
Judging by the leaked content, Rubio does not say anything he has not said before, although what is new is that he addresses the population directly and does so on a date of special historical importance, both for the opposition, which regards it as its national holiday, and for the regime, which has demonized a date it identifies with the celebration of a “bourgeois republic.”
The US Secretary of State, who is of Cuban origin, aims all his fire at the military conglomerate Gaesa, which he repeatedly accuses of stealing. “The real reason you have no electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have looted billions of dollars, but none of it has been used to help the people,” he says. In his speech, he highlights the contrast between “the wealthy elites” who run Gaesa and a population living through “unimaginable hardships.”
“Cuba is not controlled by any ‘revolution’. Cuba is controlled by Gaesa,” he insists. The official also recalls that Washington has promised “one hundred million in food and medicines for you, the people,” which will be distributed by “the Catholic Church or charitable organizations,” without the government conglomerate being able to keep them in order to “sell them in one of its stores.”
Marco Rubio draws on the estimates he has used in recent days, according to which Gaesa has billions of dollars in assets, although a recent analysis by The Economist stated that the successive failures of recent years — especially in tourism — have ended up leaving its funds at no more than one billion, pushing it into a situation close to bankruptcy. The military conglomerate owns 70% of the Cuban economy — as the Secretary of State recalls — but that would be precisely what has led it to figures in free fall.
“The real reason you have no electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have looted billions of dollars, but none of it has been used to help the people”
“The real reason you have no electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have looted billions of dollars, but none of it has been used to help the people,” Rubio says in the speech, adding that “the only role played by the so-called government is to demand that you continue making ‘sacrifices’ and to repress anyone who dares to complain.”
However, a better future would await the population, he says, if change succeeds. “You, the ordinary Cuban, [have] the right to own a business, whether a gas station or a media company. A new Cuba where citizens can vote for their leaders and complain about a failed system, without fear of going to prison or being forced to leave the Island.”
Rubio believes that there is nothing that makes Cubans different, since they “have reached the top of practically every industry in every country, except one: Cuba.” And he argues that this “is not impossible.” “All this exists in the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and even just 90 miles away, in Florida. If it is possible to have your own business and have the right to vote near Cuba, why is it not possible in Cuba?”
The message comes to heat up the day on which the US Department of Justice will announce a criminal indictment against Raúl Castro over the shooting down of the planes belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue organization 30 years ago. The agency has summoned the media to Miami’s Freedom Tower at 1 p.m., where Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, will be present to make the announcement.
“Raúl has cultivated that loyalty every day which does not bend before either fatigue or hardship. That is why we love him as the steadfast patriot who teaches us to defend the Revolution, with tenderness and with a rifle, with study and with intelligence, with heads held high and hands extended”
The event will be historic for many Cuban exiles, although everything suggests that the US is trying, with this, to continue exerting pressure so that the regime gives way, and that it will not enter Cuba to arrest the ninety-something Castro. It is precisely his advanced age that the Union of Young Communists refers to today, having made public a statement — with an obvious whiff of a show of support on this day — to call for a march celebrating the 95 years that the former leader will turn on 3 June.
“Raúl has cultivated that loyalty every day which does not bend before either fatigue or hardship. That is why we love him as the steadfast patriot who teaches us to defend the Revolution, with tenderness and with a rifle, with study and with intelligence, with heads held high and hands extended,” the text reads. In the call, with references to the concept of “not giving up,” it asks that “this 95th be the enormous embrace for a dear friend and a leader proven in every trial.”
The statement has been circulated by an official press which, coincidentally, also today publishes a declassified US document showing that officials from the Federal Aviation Administration warned of the possible shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996. “Someday the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes,” they wrote.
“The declassification comes amid a new political and media escalation surrounding that case,” says the text published by Cubadebate, without making any mention of Castro and the indictment that is on its way.
Translated by GH
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