HAVANA, Aug. 22 -- Miguel Diaz-Canel reached for the word executioners on Friday, and the first name on Washington's new list is a former Cuban intelligence officer who spent thirteen years in an American prison.

"It seems the executioners chose Thursdays to publish their blacklists of people and institutions whose only crime is serving Cuba by resisting the genocidal blockade," the Cuban president wrote on X. "We will be able to resist and win. And the United States will end up on the shameful list of genocidal states."

The designations he was answering had landed the previous day. The Treasury added Cuba's Ministry of Construction, nine state enterprises and three individuals, all of them officers of the Cuban Institute of Friendship ...