Leading voices of the Cuban American community backed President Donald Trump’s warning to Cuba this week during his United Nations address, where he claimed that his administration is “seeking a fundamental change,” before calling the country a “failed state” that will soon “fall.”
The president’s remarks come after the Cuban people have suffered totalitarian rule, starvation, oppression, and indoctrination since 1959.
The regime’s top officials continue to live lavishly under their military wing, Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), which has a $14 billion budget.
“Cuba is absolutely a failed state; my family lived it. The Castro regime has no economy, no legitimacy, and no future. President Trump is applying more pressure on that regime than any administration in history, and it is working,” Florida state Rep. Juan Porras, a descendant of Cuban exiles, told the Daily Signal.
“The indictments, the sanctions, the isolation—Cuba will be free, and I believe we are closer to that moment than we have ever been,” Porras, whom Trump has endorsed, added.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice indicted several top officials of Cuba’s communist regime for their involvement in the downing of an American humanitarian rescue flight in 1996.
Miguel Granda, a former legislative aide for another Trump-endorsed South Florida republican, David Borrero, told the Daily Signal that for “over 60 years, the Cuban people have lived under a regime that gave them nothing but hardship. No freedom to speak, no freedom to choose, not even enough to eat.”
“That is the legacy of the Castro regime: a failed state. But today, thanks to President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio’s leadership, hope for a free Cuba feels close than it has in generations,” Granda continued.
Ian Vallecillo, commissioner of the city of Sweetwater, a south Florida area with a large Cuban American community, added in his statement to the Daily Signal that Rubio’s role in the Trump administration could bring the United States closer than ever to achieving its strategic goal of stopping the Cuban regime.
“As a Cuban American serving as U.S. Secretary of State, he understands the Cuban regime, communism, and the history of failed U.S. approaches toward Cuba on a deeply personal and professional level,” Vallecillo stated, adding that the secretary is in a “truly unique position [to make] extraordinarily informed decisions about what has failed in the past and what may actually work going forward.”
“He has spent decades studying foreign policy and observing the regime, and today he has access to intelligence and information at the highest levels of our government,” the commissioner continued.
The commissioner said that Rubio’s Cuban heritage makes the issue of addressing the regime one that is “personal” to him.
“I had the unique opportunity to be a student of Secretary Rubio’s at [Florida International University], so I was able to see firsthand just how intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoughtful he is when it comes to government and foreign policy,” the commissioner added. “I think there are very few people who could be better positioned to confront the Cuban regime and its aggression.”
