Miami Herald
MIAMI — In Miami, the city where candidates built their careers on stridently resisting the Cuban dictatorship, Fidel Castro’s death marked the end of a political era — and, Cuban-American members of Congress hoped, the start of a new one, with reinvigorated support for a hard-line policy under President-elect Donald Trump.
Republican politicians, some of them still uneasy about a Trump presidency, confidently said Saturday that his administration, set to begin less than two months after Castro’s death, is the best hope for the Cuban opposition — assuming Trump fulfills his campaign promise to sever the Cuba ties re-established by President Barack Obama.
“President-elect Trump has correctly stated that Obama’s overtures to the Castro regime were one-sided and only benefited the Cuban regime,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who wrote in Jeb Bush’s name for president instead of voting for Trump.
“I hope that the new administration, under the leadership of President Trump, seizes this moment as an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to the Cuban people that it will pressure the Castro regime by rolling back these executive actions of the Obama administration.”
Trump’s candidacy managed to pull together a majority of Cuban-American voters, according to exit polls — but not necessarily their elected leaders, who denounced Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants, especially Hispanics, and reported business interest in Cuba. Castro’s death late Friday appeared to do more to consolidate his standing among Miami’s Cuban-American political establishment than anything he said during the campaign.
Smiles abounded Saturday morning as Florida Republicans Ros-Lehtinen, Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo, — and former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who codified the trade embargo against Cuba into U.S. law and repeatedly referred to Castro as “the brain of evil” — gathered in Ros-Lehtinen’s South Miami office.
Their staffs had prepared for this moment for years, writing and rewriting drafts of their statements, with a wary eye on the false alarms about Castro’s health that periodically circulated in the exile community. His death, coming on Thanksgiving weekend, caught key aides out of pocket, scrambling to travel to Miami and put finishing touches on news releases.
The current and former members of Congress argued that only reverting to the old U.S. policy of isolating Cuba would undermine Raul Castro’s regime. They rejected any suggestion that Fidel Castro’s death might instead give the U.S. an opening to push for more — not fewer — economic reforms on the island.
“The strategy has always been the same: to support the Cuban people and avoid financing the regime that oppresses the Cuban people,” said Mario Diaz-Balart, who voted for Trump despite expressing some reservations about his lack of specific policies. “Unfortunately, over the last two years under President Obama, he’s done everything possible to finance the Castro family’s monopolies.”
Curbelo, the youngest of the representatives — who said he voted for a third-party presidential candidate he declined to name — mentioned his grandfather, a former Cuban political prisoner, and his great uncle, whom he said was executed by the Cuban regime without trial.
“Obviously, today a major psychological weight has been lifted from all Cubans, but especially those freedom fighters,” Curbelo said. He said he was “hopeful” Castro’s death would be a catalyst for change.
But, Curbelo warned: “Only the Cuban people can free Cuba.”
