Something interesting happened in the Dominican Republic on Thursday. The country, which is one of our greatest Caribbean allies, requested that Cuba withdraw nine members of its diplomatic mission in Santo Domingo, including their relatives who were living there. They have seven days to leave the country.
The Dominican Republic’s Foreign Ministry didn’t provide any specific reason why it chose to make the move, but in a brief statement, it did say this:
The measure falls within the powers that international law recognizes for the receiving State and within the relevant provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which the Dominican Republic is a State party.
The Dominican government adheres to current regulations and will continue to handle this matter with due discretion and through established diplomatic channels, in the interest of preserving relations between both countries. As these are diplomatic communications, we inform you that no further details will be provided on this matter.
Of course, old Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s mouthy foreign minister, responded almost immediately and blamed, who else, the United States. He said that Cuba condemned the move and “there is no justification whatsoever for this decision by the Dominican authorities.”
He added: “There is no other explanation for this action than the submission of the Dominican government to the pressures of the U.S. government, which, in its determination to isolate Cuba, has set out to damage our diplomatic relations with the countries of the region.”
Did the Donald Trump administration pressure the Dominican government? It may have made a suggestion, but I doubt much pressure was needed. Back in March, when Donald Trump and Marco Rubio hosted the inaugural Shield of the Americas meeting — a group of 12 or 13 countries with center-right or conservative leaders who came together and vowed to partner up to fight the cartels and terror groups that plague the region, among other things — Trump mentioned ending the Cuban regime once and for all, and that statement got the loudest, longest round of applause from the other countries’ presidents compared to anything else he said.
That group included Dominican President Luis Abinader. And the Dominican Republic isn’t the first country in the region to cut Cuban ties in recent months.
In March, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa’s government declared Cuban Ambassador Basilio Antonio Gutiérrez García and the entire Cuban diplomatic, consular, and administrative staff persona non grata and gave them 48 hours to leave the country, while removing Ecuador’s ambassador from Havana.
Cuba, of course, blamed the United States.
Shortly after that, Costa Rica’s president at the time, Rodrigo Chaves, closed his country’s embassy in Havana and ordered that Cuban diplomatic personnel leave San José. “We must cleanse the hemisphere of communists,” he said, and vowed that Costa Rica would not legitimize a regime that treats its country’s inhabitants so poorly.
Cuba, of course, blamed the United States.
Before he was even inaugurated last week, Colombia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, said, “In my government, there will be no ties whatsoever with tyrannies.” He cut diplomatic relations and closed Colombian embassies in both Cuba and Nicaragua.
I probably don’t have to say it, but Cuba, of course, blamed the United States.
Cuba may have friends overseas, but they’re doing very little to help the regime at this time of maximum pressure from the Trump Administration. It just lost an ally in Colombia with Gustavo Petro out of office, and it has very few left in the hemisphere. The ones it does have are kind of busy anyway. Trump keeps a thumb on Claudia Sheinbaum, Daniel Ortega is too old and sick to worry about anything but his own power, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has a big election to win in October.
Despite the fact that Delcy Rodríguez decided to make a public statement honoring Fidel Castro on what would have been his 100th birthday on Thursday, celebrating his “steadfast commitment to dignity, social justice, sovereignty, and solidarity internationalism,” Trump and Rubio have made it pretty clear that there will be no immediate future diplomatic ties between Venezuela and Cuba either.
She’s going rogue, @SecRubio @marcorubio https://t.co/2B43IvrTth
— SarahDownSouth (@SarahDownSouth) August 13, 2026
The isolation is growing. The clock is ticking.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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