Marco Rubio no Obama on Cuba - American Thinker https://t.co/ucYWS9gDIf
— Silvio Canto. Jr. (@silvio_canto) February 10, 2025
Don’t expect Secretary Marco Rubio to visit Havana and watch a ball game with Raul Castro. Not Rubio. In fact, the Trump-Rubio team is sending a totally different message. Here is the story:
Since the first days of the Republican administration, Rubio has been putting pressure on the island. In a press release last Friday, he made it clear that his government was reversing any measures taken by Biden that could benefit Cuba, and reported the new sanctions, which represent another economic blow to Havana. Among these is the reactivation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, also known as the LIBERTAD Act, which opens the way for Americans to take legal action against companies or people who handle “assets confiscated by the Cuban regime” after 1959.
Rubio also revealed that on January 31 he reactivated the so-called Cuba Restricted List, which prohibits transactions with companies under the control of Cuban military groups, such as the GAESA conglomerate, the business group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which controls a large part of the hotel complexes, hard currency stores, travel agencies, financial services and other areas of the economy. According to the State Department, it is a way “to deny resources to the very branches of the Cuban regime that directly oppress and surveil the Cuban people while controlling large swaths of the country’s economy.”
This is refreshing and the kind of hard line needed.
We tried engagement under President Obama and opened an embassy. What did it get us? Nothing but Russian military ships stopping in Havana Harbor.
What did it get the Cuban people? Nothing either. I guess that flooding the island with tourists didn’t accomplish whatever mission the Obama administration had in mind. It takes a lot more than tourists or dollars to bring down a communist regime.
Wouldn’t it be something if the son of Cubans had the opportunity to visit a post-Castro’s Cuba? That’s what needs to happen.
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