Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart: Obama’s Cuba Policy Is Enabling a Dictator | TIME

TIME

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart represents Florida’s 25th Congressional District and is Chairman of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations.

All eight Cuban-American senators and congressmen from both sides of the aisle strongly disagree with Obama

President Barack Obama continues to appease brutal dictatorships while gaining precious little in return. He conflates the Cuban dictatorship with the Cuban people when in reality, their interests are diametrically opposed. With sweeping arrogance, President Obama acts as though he stands above history with wisdom that surpasses every American president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first to impose sanctions on the Fidel Castro regime. Obama’s foreign policy is radical even compared to his own party. President John F. Kennedy imposed many of the first stringent sanctions against the Castro regime, and President Bill Clinton signed into law the LIBERTAD Act, which codified sanctions that Obama now opposes.

All eight Cuban-American senators and congressmen from both sides of the aisle, strongly disagree with him. One would think that he might consult with us.

The Cuban people simply want to gather peacefully, speak their minds, practice their faiths, access the Internet, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. The ailing octogenarians that run Cuba would never allow those simple liberties. A key point often overlooked is that, under current law, the president can lift sanctions once free, fair elections are scheduled, political prisoners are released, and independent press, organized labor, and political parties are legalized in Cuba. The Cuban people deserve no less, yet Obama abandoned the U.S. commitment to those basic goals when he abandoned his most significant leverage to advance them.

Obama’s capitulation to dictators apparently has no bounds. In 2001, five Cuban spies were convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage. One of those five convicted spies, Gerardo Hernandez, was additionally serving two life sentences for the murders of innocent Americans and a legal permanent resident in the shoot-down of civilian aircraft over international waters. Obama’s State and Justice Departments arranged, while Hernandez was in federal prison, to help him have his wife in Cuba artificially inseminated. Shortly thereafter, in another striking concession, Obama commuted his sentence and ordered his release. When has any president been so embarrassingly eager to appease a brutal, anti-American, repressive dictatorship?

Obama’s policies also hurt the Cuban people by emboldening a regime already ready to oppress them. Since the president’s Dec. 17, 2014 announcement, there have been approximately 1,300 political arrests in Cuba. During the Obama administration, five pro-democracy activists have died – Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, Laura Pollan, Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. The Castro regime exports its brand of violence abroad to Venezuela, where it subverts democratic institutions and helps to repress the Venezuelan people. And just recently, with the president’s implicit blessing, the Castro dictatorship brazenly flexed its impunity at the summit in Panama by beating pro-democracy activists, including American citizens, and ejecting an American journalist from an international press conference. Three days later, the regime was rewarded for those human rights abuses with another monumental concession: removal from the state sponsors of terror list.

Removal from the terrorism list is especially disturbing when the Castro regime continues to provide safe harbor to one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, Joanne Chesimard, terrorist bomb-maker William Morales, and more than 70 other fugitives from U.S. justice. It also has ties to ETA and FARC terrorists, supports other rogue states including Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea, and provides support to Hamas and Hezbollah. In July 2013, Panamanian authorities discovered that the North Korean ship Chong Chon Gang was carrying military weapons that it had loaded from Cuba. A UN panel of experts determined that the shipment was the biggest violation of those international sanctions to date. Further, the Castro regime maintains an extensive espionage network against the United States. Ana Belen Montes (Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, serving a 25-year sentence for conspiracy to commit espionage), the five convicted “WASP” network spies, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers (State Department analyst and his wife serving sentences for conspiracy to commit espionage), Elsa and Carlos Alvarez (Florida International University professor and his wife, serving sentences), and Marta Rita Velazquez (USAID, indicted but fled to Sweden) are a few examples of those who have spied on the Castros’ behalf against the U.S. in the past 15 years.

Obama’s strategy has been an abysmal failure wherever it has been tried. During the horrific slaughter of Iranian protesters during the summer of 2009, President Obama was nowhere to be found throughout most of that turmoil. When he finally decided to speak, he declared, “the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs.” Defending liberty is hardly “interference,” whether referring to the mullahs in Iran or the Castro brothers. Instead, it is the minimum required from those of us living in freedom. As President Obama negotiates with the murderers in Tehran and Havana, he has excised those regimes’ terrorism abroad and atrocities at home – points any U.S. president should find salient – from the negotiating table.

One thing is clear: The president will barrel along with his failed foreign policy agenda regardless of the harm to American security interests, damage to pro-democracy movements, and the diminishing trust of our allies. Obama’s foreign policy is an aberration in America’s long and proud history of supporting freedom across the globe. The U.S. Congress continues to stand with the oppressed people of the world struggling for freedom, and will do all it can to keep the president from bargaining away every ounce of leverage we have to the world’s worst actors.

Congresistas cubano-americanos sobre las relaciones Cuba-EEUU

Maria Elvira Salazar

Cuba y la libertad desarmada

Neo Club Press

Lincoln Díaz-Balart

Desde su gestación y desde sus primeros pasos ya en el poder, el castrismo tuvo claro que su proyecto totalitario, inspirado y alimentado por sus fuentes estalinistas y mussolinianas, tenía que utilizar todas las armas para conseguir el poder y para su consolidación y permanencia. Y todas debían emplearse sin escrúpulos. Cuando para justificar sus paredones, sus robos y arbitrariedades Castro afirmaba que la revolución, es decir, su poder omnímodo, era fuente de todo derecho, también estaba advirtiendo que lo era de toda ética. En otras palabras, todo vale, todo es legítimo siempre que sirva a la tiranía. Y en pura lógica castrista, nada lo es si contraría su poder. Y, por supuesto, semejante vara de medir o “principio” castrista, es aplicable a la cultura: “dentro de la revolución todo, contra la revolución nada”.

La batalla cultural, o por el control de las mentes, es para el totalitarismo tan o más importante que cualquier otra. Estos tiranos saben que necesitan de los cañones, de los calabozos y de las fustas, saben que necesitan controlar todos los recursos económicos, pero saben que ante todo necesitan controlar las mentes, las almas de los esclavos. El objetivo mayor es que los esclavos se sientan regocijados con su condición, que aplaudan sus cadenas. Al menos que no concienticen su condición de esclavos. No por gusto Castro se hizo con el control de la educación y de la prensa casi al unísono e incluso antes que del resto de las empresas privadas. Muy pronto, desde los aciagos y confusos primeros días de 1959, las hordas “revolucionarias” se lanzaron al asalto de la Universidad, de las escuelas privadas y de la prensa, la radio, la televisión y el cine. Finalmente, amarraron corto a todo tipo de creador intelectual y artístico con el engendro de la UNEAC. Quedaba así consumado el desarme absoluto de la libertad. El desarme de la libertad al interior de Cuba, pero también dirigido al exterior, porque la tiranía albergaba ambiciones sin fronteras, sobre todo en lo que consideraba su principal esfera de influencia: América Latina.

Y así, paradójicamente, utilizaría todos los recursos de la libertad para conspirar contra ella. Por eso, el financiamiento de la violencia, del terrorismo, de las guerrillas y de todo posible mecanismo de desestabilización, y por todas las vías a su alcance, sean estas abiertas o encubiertas. Los servicios de inteligencia castristas han contado desde el principio con todos los recursos y nunca les ha detenido nada. En este arsenal de medios empleados por décadas ha ocupado un lugar de privilegio el empleo de todos los medios y subterfugios para la propaganda, la influencia y el chantaje. La guerra cultural, sin duda, ha ocupado un lugar de privilegio en la estrategia totalitaria.

No es casualidad que entre las primeras acciones para la subversión y la propaganda sucia y descarada, estuvieran la creación de Prensa Latina y Radio Habana Cuba, así como el apoyo y el financiamiento de publicaciones y programas por diversos medios, para lo cual se han servido de testaferros, agentes de influencia y personajes afines en diversos países. Nunca ha faltado para estos menesteres ni dinero ni recursos. Detrás, siempre diligentes, los servicios de inteligencia, el tenebroso Departamento América del Comité Central, así como organizaciones pantalla como el Instituto de Amistad con los Pueblos, la Casa de América, las llamadas organizaciones de solidaridad y, más recientemente, los programas supuestamente benéficos como las misiones educativas o médicas.

Pero el mundo continuaría su desarrollo más allá de los lindes de la cerrada y oscura finca castrista. Y surgieron internet y las llamadas redes sociales. Una verdadera explosión de libertad de difícil control. El régimen se topó con una realidad que no podía ignorar. Y entonces, como siempre, buscó el remedo y la trampa. Por un lado, impedir el libre acceso a internet, bloquear páginas indeseables y encarecer el acceso a la red. Por otro, la creación de redes alternativas perfectamente controladas. Pero por una rara inversión ética, esto, que es un escándalo en sí mismo y que debiera ser objeto permanente de denuncia por parte de responsables políticos en los países democráticos, así como por periodistas, intelectuales y personas decentes en todo el mundo, es olvidado o tratado superficialmente, mientras se muestra una exquisita sensibilidad ante cualquier intento por burlar la censura y buscar vías para que el pueblo cubano pueda ejercer su derecho a la libre información y comunicación. Así, recientemente, muchos se han rasgados las vestiduras por la existencia de programas como Zunzuneo o Piramideo, que han buscado hacer llegar la libertad de internet al pueblo cubano, y que lo lamentable realmente ha sido su limitada eficacia. Cuando la verdadera indignación debería estar dirigida a las causas que les han motivado.

Lo evidente es que la tiranía no puede soportar el más mínimo resquicio de libertad, por más piruetas y visajes que ensaye de cara a la galería. Continúa con sus felonías de siempre, dentro y fuera de Cuba, aun cuando se vea precisada a realizar variaciones tácticas. Enquistada y convertida en rutina, la canallada se ha tornado casi invisible y casi aceptable para muchos. Y hasta hay quienes quieren advertir “cambios” en lo que no son más que muecas circunstanciales y tramposas. Se produce así una especie de adormilamiento ético que conduce al acomodamiento y tranquila coexistencia con el mal. Queda entonces la libertad desarmada.

Lo que se impone es que armemos a la libertad, que la defendamos cada día. Que apoyemos a quienes luchan por ella en claras condiciones de desventaja y precariedad. No escatimemos esfuerzos ni recursos para ello. No nos dejemos intimidar ni camelar por los enemigos de la libertad. Nada de posiciones vergonzantes respecto a la defensa y promoción de la libertad. Frente al enemigo liberticida inescrupuloso, todo en defensa de la libertad.

Diaz-Balart: Why the U.S. Embargo Remains Necessary

capitolhillcubans

By former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart in The Miami Herald:

At this time, when the democratic opposition within Cuba is acquiring greater strength and showing extraordinary political maturity, I believe it is important to remember the reasons for the existence of the U.S. embargo and the three conditions for its lifting.

When I arrived in the U.S. Congress in January 1993, I was able to confirm that U.S. law did not prohibit trade and financing with the Cuban regime by the great majority of U.S. corporations. I was truly impacted by the fact that U.S. law only prohibited trade and financing with the Cuban regime by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, but not by U.S. companies inside the United States (in other words, the overwhelming majority of U.S. firms).

Mass U.S. tourism to Cuba was also not barred by law. All existing sanctions at that time were contained in executive orders that, of course, could be lifted by other executive orders, at any time, by any president.

Since I was convinced that no dictatorship in history has ever given anything to the democratic opposition in exchange for nothing, and since I did not have confidence that the President of the United States would insist that a genuine democratic transition for the Cuban people be underway before lifting the embargo on the regime, I decided to codify — to enact into law — those executive orders: the prohibitions on commerce, on financing, and on mass U.S. tourism to Cuba. And to condition the lifting of those sanctions (commonly known as the embargo) on three conditions within Cuba: 1) the liberation of all political prisoners, without exceptions; 2) the legalization of all political parties, without exceptions, of the independent press and free labor unions; and 3) the scheduling of free elections with international supervision for the Cuban people.

In March 1996, with the decisive help of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Sen. Bob Menéndez, I achieved codification passed by Congress. All the executive orders that constituted the embargo were made part of U.S. law, as well as the three conditions for their lifting. I believe it was the most important achievement of my 18 years in the U.S. Congress.

I was convinced then, and I continue to believe, that the U.S. embargo and the conditioning of its lifting — upon the requirement that a genuine democratic transition based on the three conditions be underway in Cuba — constitute instruments of great importance in the hands of the Cuban opposition.