[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 195 (Saturday, December 17, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8766-S8767]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   IMPACTS TO THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

  Mr. RUBIO. It is a pleasure to be here. This will be my last speech 
of the year. As I said yesterday in another speech, it has been an 
extraordinary honor and privilege to serve in the Senate. I look 
forward to the next 5 years of doing that, God willing. It is a 
phenomenal institution and I am proud to be a part of it, even though 
some days make you scratch your head.
  I am here on two things before we close out the year. I have a 
specific interest on items that impact the Western Hemisphere.
  I wish to take this opportunity to say that one of the real treats of 
the last year is being able to work with Senator Menendez on the 
Western Hemispheric Committee. We share a lot of views in common, and 
even on the ones we don't we have a very cooperative working 
relationship. It has been a great experience working with him on that, 
and I look forward to more of that next year on that committee and with 
everyone on Foreign Relations.
  I know there are a lot of big domestic issues happening, but the 
things around the world matter. They matter a lot to us. I know when 
times are tough economically, sometimes we wonder: Why should we care 
what is happening halfway around the world?
  We are not Luxembourg, with all due respect to Luxembourg. We are the 
United States of America. What that means is that virtually every 
aspect of our life is directly impacted by things that are happening 
sometimes halfway around the world.
  One of the things that is always in our interest is the promotion of 
freedom and democracy. It is one of the things that sets us apart from 
other nations. Our greatest export is the American example, the fact 
that people look to this country and see it is possible for people to 
have self-government.
  I know self-government and this Republic sometimes look messy from 
the outside looking in. As I tell people often, if you saw the way some 
of your food is made, you wouldn't eat it. I think sometimes when you 
look at the political process and the lights that shine on it, there 
are some things about it and the process that I don't like and you 
don't like. But it is still better than virtually any other form of 
government that has ever existed on the Earth. We are all privileged 
and blessed to be able to live in this Republic. Any time we have the 
opportunity to speak out on behalf of democracy and freedom, we should.
  I had, this week, the opportunity to engage on that issue, and I wish 
to publicly acknowledge the work of Under Secretary Sherman, who has 
spent a lot of time talking to me this week about Nicaragua and about 
elections in Nicaragua that were, in my opinion, fraudulent and 
unfortunate because the rest of the hemisphere is moving toward 
democracy, the rest of the hemisphere is moving toward free and fair 
elections. In Latin America, sometimes people whom we don't agree with 
win elections, people who don't like us, who believe the national 
interests of their country are contrary to ours. But the people chose 
them.
  Unfortunately, what happened in Nicaragua is grotesque. This person 
Daniel Ortega, who was a Sandinista, who was once a dictator of that 
country, basically has ignored the Constitution and ran for office 
again. There were extraordinary irregularities. The Carter Center, for 
example, wasn't allowed to come in and observe it. The OAS has already 
talked about real problems with that election and we hope to see their 
report soon.
  Let me publicly acknowledge the time and effort the Department of 
State spent talking to me on the phone about ensuring that the United 
States is a forceful voice on behalf of democracy and freedom in 
Nicaragua and in the hemisphere. I appreciate their work on that 
behalf, and I know we are looking forward to the OAS's report fairly 
soon.
  Senator Menendez and I have filed a resolution in this institution 
that I hope we will pass that recognizes the need for this country to 
stand firmly on the side of the Nicaraguan people on behalf of freedom 
and democracy.
  There is another topic I touched upon the other day; that is, the 
people-to-people travel to Cuba. I kind of went through these 
itineraries a couple days ago that show basically what these trips are 
all about is nothing more than tourism--just tourism. It is just people 
going to Cuba.
  The reason why this is problematic is because it gives money to the 
Castro government.
  Today in the Miami Herald is a very disturbing article. The article 
is from Juan Tamayo, who is a reporter who writes for the El Nuevo 
Herald and Miami Herald:

       Cuban dissidents have sent out photos and videos of a large 
     police crackdown in the eastern town of Palma Soriano that 
     left at least five government opponents with head wounds, 
     black eyes and other injuries.
       One photo of the Dec. 2 roundup of 46 dissidents shows 
     Henry Perales with two wounds on his shaved head that 
     required nine stitches to close. Another shows AbrahanCQ 
     Cabrera with one stitch on his forehead.
       "That wound bled a lot because it was on a blood vessel, 
     but it was a kick to the ribs on the right side that made me 
     fall to the ground. . . . It still hurts,'' Cabrera told El 
     Nuevo Herald by phone from Palma Soriano.
       The images were sent to the newspaper by Luis Enrique 
     Ferrer Garcia, U.S. representative of the dissident Cuban 
     Patriotic Union. His brother, former political prisoner Jose 
     Daniel Ferrer Garcia, heads the Union and was one of the men 
     arrested in the Palma Soriano crackdown.
       Union members and supporters took two weeks to smuggle out 
     the photos and the videos, via emails, because they had to 
     work slowly and carefully to avoid police agents who were 
     trying to find and seize the images, Luis Enrique said.
       The Palma Soriano roundup was one of the largest and 
     harshest police crackdowns on dissidents in recent years. All 
     were freed hours or days later--one of them 12 days later--
     without charges.
       Forty-six men had gathered in a Palma Soriano house 
     starting on Nov. 30 with plans to stage a street protest two 
     days later to demand the release of all political prisoners 
     and respect for human rights.

  Those sound like pretty reasonable requests to me, release of 
political prisoners and respect of human rights. This is what they were 
going to protest on behalf of.

       Cell phone videos shot inside the house showed many of the 
     dissidents saying they wanted to show they were not U.S. paid 
     ``mercenaries,'' as the government brands them, but rather 
     ``defenders of human rights.''
       The unidentified narrator of some of the videos referred to 
     the police already deployed outside ``and the repression that 
     awaits us.''

  So these protesters knew what was about to happen. They have seen 
this before. This is what happens in Cuba when you speak out in favor 
of human rights and against political prisoners. You get your head 
cracked open. These guys knew this was going to happen, but yet they 
had the bravery to go forward with it.

       Police indeed arrested the dissidents as they left the 
     house in groups of four and five, and a video taken from a 
     second-story balcony showed them punching some of the 
     protesters and forcing them onto a U.S.-styled

[[Page S8767]]

     yellow school bus parked at the end of the block.
       Cabrera said the bus driver, dressed in civilian clothes, 
     hit him as well as Perales and several other dissidents with 
     a wrench once inside the bus.

  The bus driver hit them with a wrench once they got inside the bus.

       Other photos show dissidents Misael Valdes Diaz and Alexis 
     Yanch OiCQ with black eyes and Emilio Dinza with a large bump 
     on his forehead. Other dissidents reported black and blues 
     from police strikes.
       Angel Moya, a former political prisoner who was reported 
     beaten in a police station after his arrest in Palma Soriano 
     Dec. 2, said police punched him on the way from the house to 
     the school bus but not afterwards.

  How nice of them not to punch him afterwards.

       Moya said Friday that he spent 12 days in a police lockup, 
     in a cell that was smelly and had no water or lights and that 
     he shared with common criminals.

  This is Cuba. I doubt this experience is something these tourists 
traveling on U.S. licenses are going to get to see on their next visit 
to Cuba.
  The other day I talked about one of these visits that the United 
States has licensed called Ethics and the Cuban Revolution. How 
interesting--Ethics and the Cuban Revolution.
  I wonder if part of that ethics course will be a part about schoolbus 
drivers dressed as civilians hitting protesters with a wrench. I wonder 
if that is part of their itinerary. I wonder if the part about cracking 
people's heads open because they are going to peacefully protest in the 
street is part of the itinerary in this Ethics and the Cuban 
Revolution.
  Why do I bring this up again? No. 1, it is outrageous. It should be 
denounced, and this is a great forum to do it because the world needs 
to know what happens 90 miles from our shores. It is one of the most 
repressive regimes in the Western Hemisphere's history. It is still in 
place. It is still ongoing. But here is No. 2. Where do they get the 
money to pay these people? Don't you think those guys are getting paid, 
the civilian busdriver is getting paid to hit people with a wrench or 
do you think he is doing it for free? How are they paying these police 
officers? How do you get people to do this stuff? You have to pay them. 
Where do they get their money to pay them?
  Their government is a fiasco. They don't know anything about the 
economy. Do you want to know why the Cuban economy is in the tank? It 
is because the people who run Cuba are incompetent. They have no idea 
about what a modern economy looks like or how to create one, apart from 
the fact that they cling to a broken ideology.
  So where do they get the money to pay for all these things? Sadly, 
where they are getting a lot of the money to pay for these things is 
from us. It is from people who live in this country who are curious 
about what happens in Cuba, who are curious--and some who outright 
sympathize with this idea that somehow Cuba is this socialist 
paradise--and they travel there and they leave money there. All these 
trips, Cuba gets a huge take, and they use it to fund this repressive 
apparatus.
  As I said the other day, I understand and I don't have any false 
illusions that the President is going to change his travel policy 
toward Cuba or this people-to-people program. But at least make sure 
these programs are furthering what you say you are trying to further, 
which is bringing freedom and democracy to Cuba, instead of being a 
source of hard currency and hard revenue.
  A few days ago, I denounced two specific itineraries. I didn't 
denounce 5 or 10; I pointed out 2 of the most outrageous ones on this 
floor in a speech I gave. Then I sent that to the State Department and 
said: Would you look at this for me? They responded that they would. 
They told me they would send me a letter. In fact, in conversations I 
had, they gave me great hope that in fact they too were troubled by 
these itineraries and that they would start to look at these more 
seriously.
  Sadly, as a result of what they told me--because one of the things 
that has been going on around here is I had placed a hold on two 
nominations in the Western Hemisphere as a result of their inaction on 
this issue.
  After I spoke to them on the phone, I was hopeful about it and I 
lifted those holds. We were going to vote on those today. Then I got 
this letter today that, to summarize, basically says: Thank you for 
your letter, but we can't talk to you about it.
  That is not what I expected to get, and so we are going to hold those 
nominations again until we take this seriously.
  This is a problem. This is a problem. We have these companies in 
America that are advertising tourism to Cuba--tourism that is not just 
a source of irritation, it is a source of hard currency. It is the 
money this regime is using to crack people's heads, to pay so-called 
busdrivers to beat people with wrenches. It is the money they are using 
to stick people in jails with common criminals, with no access to food 
or water for 12 days, without charges. We are funding a repressive 
regime through these practices, and it has to stop. Someone better take 
this seriously. When they take this seriously, then we can talk.

  I hope where we are headed here in the coming year is that we will 
stand not just on the side of the Cuban people's desire for freedom and 
democracy--no political prisoners, respect for human rights--but stand 
for that in the hemisphere and the world, because our voice still 
matters, and I hope this country will always stand firm on those 
issues.
  Before I left today, I wanted to stand on the floor and talk about 
this because it is something very important to me and should be 
important to our country. I hope in the coming year we will have the 
opportunity in our Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and in this 
body and in our conversations with the White House and State Department 
to bring these programs into focus. This people-to-people program is a 
sham. Maybe they are very well intentioned but some of these trips are 
nothing more than tourism that plows millions of dollars into the hands 
of one of the most disgusting and grotesque, repressive apparatuses 
this hemisphere has ever seen, and it has to stop. Someone has to start 
cracking down on these people, someone has to start cracking down on 
these agencies, someone has to start cracking down on these trips, and 
make sure they do what they are intended to do, and that is real access 
to the ways of freedom, to the ways of opportunity, to opening the eyes 
of the Cuban people to the fact that the rest of the world does not 
live under what they live under--even though most of the Cuban people 
already know that.
  It is time we start holding these people accountable. If they are 
filing these licenses under false pretenses, they need to be 
prosecuted, their licenses need to be suspended. They have to be barred 
from having these trips. We have to have people actively monitoring 
these itineraries that are being sold. We need to match their 
applications for these licenses, and we need to stop approving licenses 
for these tourist trips.
  I hope we will make progress on that in 2012 and I hope that is what 
we will focus on in the year to come.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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