Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday dismissed the harsher U.S. tone under Donald Trump. The comments to Cuba’s National Assembly were his first on Trump’s June announcement of a partial rollback of the Cuba-U.S. détente achieved by Mr. Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama. They contained echoes of the harsh rhetoric of the past.
“Any strategy that seeks to destroy the revolution either through coercion or pressure or through more subtle methods will fail,” Mr. Castro said.
Surrounded by Cuban-American exiles and Cuban dissidents in Miami, Mr. Trump announced last month that the U.S. would impose new limits on U.S. travellers to the island and ban any payments to the military-linked conglomerate that controls much of the island’s tourism industry. He said the U.S. would consider lifting restrictions only after Cuba made a series of other internal changes.
