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Previously month, the island nation of Cuba has been hit by a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, Hurricane Rafael, and a collection of blackouts. The U.S. embargo continues, and now Cuba has to cope with the announcement that President-elect Donald Trump has picked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state.
Trump’s collection of international coverage hard-liner Rubio may have political repercussions not solely in Cuba, however all through the remainder of the Caribbean and Latin America.
Al Jazeera reported on the newest catastrophe to hit the island nation in “Earthquake rocks Cuba as residents struggle to recover from recent storms”:
The tremor is the most recent in a collection of pure disasters which have compounded current infrastructure issues in Cuba, the place massive swaths of the inhabitants additionally face financial insecurity.
In October, Hurricane Oscar introduced heavy rains and widespread energy outages to the island and left no less than six folks useless after making landfall in japanese Cuba.
One other storm, Hurricane Rafael, knocked out energy for no less than 10 million folks after slamming into the japanese a part of the island final week.
The storm uprooted timber and knocked down phone poles. Lots of of buildings had been destroyed and lots of of hundreds of individuals had been displaced.
Native information stations in Florida, the place there are roughly 2 million Cuban Individuals, instantly broadcast reviews from the island.
In the meantime, there was little or no media protection of the United Nations’ latest vote on the U.S. embargo on Cuba. The continuing embargo has received us few world buddies, as the UN continues to name for its finish.
The UN Common Meeting on Wednesday as soon as once more urged the US to finish its financial, business, and monetary embargo on Cuba, renewing a requirement it has made yearly since 1992.
The decision, titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” handed with 187 votes in favor, two towards (Israel and the US), and one abstention (Moldova).
Although non-binding, the end result drew consideration the relative isolation of the US concerning the embargo, which was first imposed in 1960 after former chief Fidel Castro got here to energy following the revolution.
Trump’s announcement that Rubio will likely be secretary of state is making probably the most information. It won’t be effectively acquired in lots of components of Latin America and the Caribbean, reported The Miami Herald’s Nora Gamez in an article titled “With Rubio’s selection as next secretary of state, Cuba leaders’ worst fears come true”:
A gaggle of Cuban-American Republicans is poised to play outstanding roles within the upcoming Trump administration and Congress within the coming years, bringing to life the worst worry of the Cuban regime: that Cuban exiles and their descendants would have the ability to dictate U.S. coverage towards the island. Information that President-elect Donald Trump will decide Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as the subsequent secretary of state, the primary Hispanic and the primary Cuban American in such a job, probably unfold shock waves in Havana, the place he’s repeatedly demonized in state media because the nation’s enemy. If his nomination is confirmed, Rubio is prone to be joined in Washington by different like-minded Cuban Individuals able to affect U.S. international coverage towards Cuba and the whole Latin American area.
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When President Barack Obama introduced in December 2014 that he was restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, Rubio vowed to do “everything possible” to dam the engagement insurance policies in Congress. “The President’s decision to reward the Castro regime and begin the path toward the normalization of relations with Cuba is inexplicable,” Rubio mentioned on the time. “Cuba, like Syria, Iran, and Sudan, remains a state sponsor of terrorism…. Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama’s naiveté during his final two years in office. As a result, America will be less safe.”
Rubio’s anti-Obama rhetoric got here at a time when the previous president was opening relations with Cuba, which I coated right here in 2016, in two tales titled “Thoughts on President Obama’s address to the Cuban people” and “Black Cubans celebrate Barack Obama’s visit.”
The Florida senator lied about his household coming to the U.S “fleeing Castro,” which was reported in The Washington Submit in 2011 by Manuel Roig-Franzia. The story didn’t use the phrase “lies” in its headline, opting to make use of “embellishes” as a substitute. The article was titled “Marco Rubio’s compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show”:
Throughout his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio incessantly repeated a compelling model of his household’s historical past that had particular resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he advised audiences, Cuban Individuals compelled off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took energy.
However a overview of paperwork — together with naturalization papers and different official data — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account ornaments the details. The paperwork present that Rubio’s mother and father got here to the US and had been admitted for everlasting residence greater than two-and-a-half years earlier than Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban authorities and took energy on New 12 months’s Day 1959.
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The supposed flight of Rubio’s mother and father has been on the core of the younger senator’s political identification, each earlier than and after his gorgeous tea-party-propelled victory in final yr’s Senate election. Rubio — now thought of a potential 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate and a potential future presidential contender — mentions his mother and father within the second sentence of the official biography on his Senate Website. It says that Mario and Oriales Rubio “came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” And the 40-year-old senator with the boyish smile and prom-king beauty has drawn on the facility of that declare to entrance audiences captivated by the rhetorical expertise of one of many extra dynamic stump audio system in trendy American politics.
Rubio has milked his lies to nice impact in Florida, which has helped him win elections and garner robust help from anti-Castro Cubans and different Latin American teams within the state. Emily Sweigart at America’s Quarterly compiled an inventory of Rubio quotes in “What Marco Rubio Has Said About Latin America”:
On Cuba
August 2024
Introducing a decision within the Senate condemning the Cuban authorities:
“The world is bearing witness to the multiple ways the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia. America has a moral duty to defend our nation’s interests and we must continue to uphold democratic order and justice in our hemisphere.”April 2024
Interview in Voz:
“Cuba has a long history of intelligence and military cooperation with the communist government of China…. In many cases, we have not done enough to create alternatives to what China has done in many countries.”
Rubio will strongly oppose lifting and even loosening the embargo. Isabella Oliver and Mariakarla Nodarse Venancio wrote “Understanding the Failure of the U.S. Embargo on Cuba” for the Washington Workplace on Latin America:
On December 17, 2014, President Obama broke the mould within the U.S. strategy to Cuba coverage. His administration lifted restrictions for Cuban-Individuals to journey and to ship household and donative remittances, reestablished the U.S. Embassy in Havana, eliminated Cuba from the SSOT listing, expanded entry to the web, and licensed a spread of commerce alternatives for U.S. firms. Past these particular insurance policies, this shift in discourse by a U.S. president signaled the largest change in U.S.-Cuba coverage since diplomatic relations had been severed in 1961, and ushered in a brand new period within the relations, resulting in 23 bilateral accords on problems with mutual curiosity. The subsequent two years noticed an unprecedented growth in private-sector actions in Cuba, important openings for civil society discourse, and different reforms by the Cuban authorities.
In 2017, the Trump administration undid all of the progress Obama achieved and extra. It swiftly imposed new restrictions prohibiting U.S. firms from doing enterprise with sure Cuban firms managed by the armed forces and prohibited U.S. guests from staying in resorts operated by these firms. It eradicated people-to-people academic journey, positioned strict caps on household remittances, and made it not possible to ship remittances by wire service. It additionally interrupted consular providers and considerably diminished staffing on the U.S. Embassy in Havana following the onset of unexplained well being incidents, now generally known as the ‘Havana Syndrome’ circumstances, as a consequence of issues of foul play by international states which have now been dismissed following findings by the Central Intelligence Company (CIA).
Trump additionally determined to implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act to allow U.S. nationals to pursue lawsuits towards any enterprise or particular person, U.S. or international, benefiting from property nationalized after 1959 discouraged international funding in Cuba. Lastly, the Trump administration put Cuba again on the SSOT listing throughout its ultimate days in workplace in an effort to make it more durable for President Biden to restore U.S.-Cuban relations.
Two years in the past, WOLA streamed this dialogue analyzing the embargo 60 years later. The discussion board featured WOLA’s Cuba skilled Mariakarla Nodarse, Peter Kornbluh, Dr. William LeoGrande, Dr. Ricardo Torres Pérez, and Gail Reed:
Cuban Individuals play a serious position in native politics wherever they dwell. The Pew Analysis Truth sheet on Cuban Individuals has some knowledge on who they’re and the place they’re positioned:
An estimated 2.4 million Hispanics of Cuban origin lived in the US in 2021, in keeping with a Pew Analysis Heart evaluation of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Group Survey. Cubans on this statistical profile are individuals who self-identified as Hispanics of Cuban origin; this contains immigrants from Cuba and people who hint their household ancestry to Cuba.
Cubans are the fourth-largest inhabitants (tied with Dominicans) of Hispanic origin residing in the US, accounting for 4% of the U.S. Hispanic inhabitants in 2021. From 2000 to 2021, the Cuban-origin inhabitants elevated 92%, rising from 1.2 million to 2.4 million. On the identical time, the Cuban foreign-born inhabitants residing within the U.S. grew by 50%, from 850,000 in 2000 to 1.3 million in 2021.
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The Cuban inhabitants is concentrated in Florida (64%), Texas (5%), California (4%), New Jersey (4%) and New York (3%).
Pew additionally checked out Cuban identification in an earlier examine:
Cubans are way more possible than different Hispanics to establish themselves as white when requested about their race. Within the 2004 Census knowledge, about 86% of Cubans mentioned they had been white, in contrast with 60% amongst Mexicans, 53% amongst different Central and South Individuals and 50% amongst Puerto Ricans.
Within the Census knowledge, a 3rd or extra of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and different Hispanics selected “some other race” when answering this query. However amongst Cubans, solely 8% selected “some other race.”
A 2004 report by the Pew Hispanic Heart concluded that Latinos who establish themselves as white and people who say they’re another race have completely different traits. Survey knowledge additionally present that Latinos in these two teams have completely different attitudes and opinions on a wide range of topics. Hispanics who establish themselves as white have larger ranges of schooling and revenue and than those that select “some other race.” The report mentioned the findings recommend that Hispanics see race as a measure of belonging and “whiteness” as a measure of inclusion, or perceived inclusion.
The “racial identity” knowledge on the island exhibits fewer residents there are categorized as “white.”
As in lots of Latin American and Caribbean international locations, there’s additionally a big mestizo or ethnically combined inhabitants (additionally known as ‘mulatto’, particularly to explain combined European and sub-Saharan African ancestry), and color, class and social standing are intently interlinked. Few Cubans are both ‘pure’ white or black. Definitions of ‘colour’ are as a lot the results of social standards as of somatic classification. Afro-Cubans are most prevalent within the japanese a part of the island and in districts of Havana.
Estimates of the proportion of individuals of African descent within the Cuban inhabitants vary enormously. Whereas the 2012 Nationwide Census concluded that almost all of the inhabitants (64.1 per cent) of Cuba was white, with 26.6 per cent mestizo (combined race) and 9.3 per cent black, these figures are primarily based on self-identification and so, in a context of widespread internalized racism and the entrenched stigma round race, are extensively believed to considerably under-report the black and mestizo populations. Different assessments recommend that solely round a 3rd of Cubans are whites, with the remaining two–thirds composed roughly equally of mestizos and blacks.
Taking all of this into consideration, the truth that there was a big exodus of ‘white’ Cubans from the island signifies that Afro-Cubans have now come to signify a bigger proportion of the general inhabitants and are now thought to represent a big majority of the inhabitants.
For additional readings on Cuban Individuals, see this listing from the College of Central Florida.
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