[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 30, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6614-S6616]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CASTRO REGIME

  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, it was Armando Valladares, a Cuban dissident 
and poet who was imprisoned for 22 years under the Castro regime, who 
so powerfully observed in his memoir:

       My response to those who still try to justify Castro's 
     tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and 
     hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built 
     schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured 
     and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and 
     extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing 
     the worst crimes against humanity.

  This week we witnessed a powerful moment for people all across the 
country and especially for Cuban-Americans like myself. Cuba's longtime 
oppressive dictator Fidel Castro is dead. Let me be absolutely clear. 
We are not mourning the death of some revolutionary romantic or a 
distinguished statesman. We are not grieving for the protector of peace 
or a judicious steward of his people. Today we are thankful. We are 
thankful that a man who has imprisoned and tortured and degraded the 
lives of so many is no longer with us. He has departed for warmer 
climes.
  This brutal dictator is dead, and I would like to pay tribute to the 
millions who have suffered at the hands of the Castro regime. We 
remember them, and we honor the brave souls who fought the lonely fight 
against the totalitarian Communist dictatorship imposed on Cuba. Yet, 
at the same time, it seems the race is on to see which world leader can 
most fulsomely praise Fidel Castro's legacy while delicately averting 
their eyes from his less than savory characteristics. Two duly-elected 
leaders of democracies who should know better, Canadian Prime Minister 
Justin Trudeau and American President Barack Obama, have been leading 
the way.
  Mr. Trudeau praised Castro as a ``larger than life leader who served 
his people for almost half a century'' and ``a legendary revolutionary 
and orator, [who] made significant improvements to the education and 
healthcare of his island nation.'' Tell that to the people in the 
prisons. Tell that to the people who have been tortured and murdered by 
Fidel Castro.
  Mr. Obama likewise offered his ``condolences'' to the Cuban people 
and blandly suggested that ``history will record and judge the enormous 
impact of this singular figure.'' Now, he added, we can ``look to the 
future.''
  What is it about young leftists, what is it about young Socialists 
that they idolize Communist dictators who torture and murder people? 
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and all of their goons were not these 
sexy, unshaven revolutionaries on posters in college dorm rooms that 
make leftists go all tingly inside; they were brutal monsters, and we 
should always remember their victims.
  Earlier this week, I publicly called that no U.S. Government official 
should attend Castro's funeral unless and until his brother Raul 
releases the political prisoners--first and foremost, those who have 
been detained just since Fidel's death. Unfortunately, in this 
administration, my call went unheeded. Two high-level U.S. Government 
officials attended Fidel's memorial service yesterday. This unofficial 
delegation included Ben Rhodes, assistant to the President, National 
Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, 
the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba.
  Yesterday, when asked about a U.S. presence for the memorial service, 
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, ``We believe that this 
was an appropriate way for the United States to show our commitment to 
an ongoing future-oriented relationship with the Cuban people'' and 
that ``this is an appropriate way to show respect, to participate in 
the events that are planned for this evening, while also acknowledging 
some of the differences that remain between our two countries.'' I am 
afraid I must ask Mr. Earnest whether any of these ``differences'' were 
publicly acknowledged while Rhodes and DeLaurentis were commemorating 
the legacy of Fidel Castro. How exactly do you commemorate it--cheers 
to the tyrant? I suspect that those ``differences'' were not mentioned 
in the funeral pamphlet. Mr. Earnest also claimed last night: 
``Certainly no one from the White House and no other delegations will 
be sent to Cuba to participate in any of the other events.''

  Well, that is comforting. Let's hold him to those words. My hope and 
prayers are that these officials do not attend the funeral. Although I 
must say, it is quite convenient that Rhodes had a preplanned trip to 
Cuba this week. Earnest remarked that ``Mr. Rhodes has played a leading 
role in crafting the normalization policy that President Obama 
announced about two years ago'' and ``he has been the principal 
interlocutor with the Cuban government from the White House in

[[Page S6615]]

crafting this policy and implementing it successfully.''
  I suppose it is appropriate that the Federal Government official who 
played an integral role in allowing billions of dollars to flow to 
Cuba--to flow directly to Raul and Fidel Castro--be there to 
commemorate Fidel's death. It is billions of dollars that have gone to 
strengthen the repressive machinery, to strengthen the regime. If a 
U.S. company or a European company wants to hire a Cuban worker, they 
can't do it. It is against the law.
  It is unlike many other countries. It is unlike China or other places 
where you can hire a local worker. Instead, you must hire the 
government. There is one and only one person you can hire. The foreign 
companies pay the Cuban Government, and the Cuban Government, in its 
benevolence, keeps 93 cents of every dollar and pays the Cuban workers 
7 cents out of every dollar.
  Ninety-three cents of every dollar of the billions that Barack Obama 
has funneled to Castro has gone to the government of Raul Castro and 
Fidel Castro to fund the secret police, to fund the prisons, and to 
fund the torture, while our diplomatic brigade pat themselves on the 
back as to what enlightened diplomats they are.
  The life and legacy of Fidel Castro is no cause for celebration or 
commemoration. His contributions consist of a ruined country and a 
broken people. Cuba is almost like the land that time forgot. You can 
go and see cars from the 1950s--meticulously maintained, held together 
almost with rubber bands and chewing gum. It is not that the citizens 
there have a fondness for antiquities. It is that the repressive 
communist economy has trapped them, has mired them in poverty where 
1950s cars are all they have, and where the last 60 years didn't 
happen, other than the jackboot of the oppressive police state.
  I will point out that on this issue I am not a disinterested 
observer. My own family's experience has been acute. My father, born 
and raised in Cuba, fought in the Revolution. He initially believed in 
the principles of freedom that he thought the Revolution was about. He 
fought against Batista, a cruel dictator, and was tortured and 
imprisoned by Batista's police state.
  Then my aunt, Tia Sonia, who is younger than my father, stayed and 
was there after the Revolution occurred and suddenly discovered the 
Revolution was based on a lie. The kids who thought they were fighting 
for freedom discovered instead an even worse tyrant than that who 
preceded him--a communist dictator who would line up dissidents and 
shoot them.
  My Tia Sonia participated in the counterrevolution. She fought 
against the Castro tyranny. I will tell you, when she was a high school 
girl, she and her two best friends were arrested, were thrown into 
prison by the Castro regime, and, like her brother, she faced terrible 
treatment in a Cuban prison. What they did in Cuban jails to teenage 
girls should not happen to anyone.
  This is the legendary figure that Trudeau and Obama celebrate. The 
night that the news broke that Castro had died, I received a text from 
my cousin Bibi--my Tia Sonia's daughter and someone whom I grow up with 
like a sister. Bibi texted me. She said: Fidel Castro is dead. I am 
glad that I was able to make that call to let my mother know.
  I image when Bibi called my Tia Sonia it was an extraordinary moment. 
My aunt was asleep at the time. Bibi sent me a second text. I couldn't 
help to think about all the conversations at the dinner table with my 
grandparents about the day that Castro dies. Texts just like that 
millions of people sent all over the world, especially in the Cuban-
American community. People had dreamed for years, for decades about the 
day this tyrant would die and face eternal judgment.
  The betrayal, brutality, and the violence experienced by my father 
and by my aunt were all too typical of the millions of Cubans who have 
suffered under the Castro regime over the last six decades. This is not 
the stuff of Cold War history that would be swept under the rug simply 
because Fidel is dead.
  Consider, for example, the dissidents Guillermo Farinas and Elizardo 
Sanchez, who came to the United States. I had the opportunity to sit 
down and visit with them and interview them both. They warned me in the 
summer of 2013 that the Castros, then on the ropes of the reduction of 
Venezuelan patronage, were plotting to cement their hold on power by 
pretending to liberalize in order to get the American economic embargo 
lifted. Their motto was Vladimir Putin's motto--his consolidation of 
power in Russia, which Sanchez called ``Putinismo.''
  Their plan was to get the United States to pay for it. Sadly, it 
worked. The year, after I met with Farinas and Sanchez, Mr. Obama 
announced his famous ``thaw'' with the Castros, and the American 
dollars started flowing. As we know now, there was no corresponding 
political liberalization--simply, American dollars funding a brutal 
dictatorship. Last September, Mr. Farinas concluded his 25th hunger 
strike against the Castros' oppression.
  Then there is the case of prominent dissident Oswaldo Paya, who died 
in 2012 in a car crash that is widely believed to have been 
orchestrated by the Castro regime. His daughter, Rosa Maria, has 
pressed relentlessly for answers on her father's apparent murder, and, 
thus, she has become a target herself. Just 3 years after her father's 
death, the Obama administration honored the Castros with a new embassy 
in Washington, DC, and at the launch of that embassy, Rosa Maria tried 
to attend the State Department press conference as an accredited 
journalist. She was spotted by the Cuban delegation, who demanded that 
she be removed if she dared to ask any questions. The Americans 
complied, in an act of thuggery more typical with Havana than 
Washington.
  What does it say of John Kerry and the State Department? What does it 
say of the Obama administration when a communist tyrant or their police 
force says: There is a dissident, a journalist who might ask 
inconvenient questions; will you silence her and muzzle her? And the 
response from the Obama administration is only too happy to comply--no 
inconvenient questions about the apparent murder of your father. We 
have different priorities.
  Last summer I had the honor to meet with Dr. Oscar Biscet, an early 
truth teller about the disgusting practice of postbirth abortions. I 
want you to think about that concept for a second--postbirth abortions, 
otherwise known as the murder of infants, which are far too widespread 
in Cuba. Dr. Biscet has been repeatedly jailed and tortured for his 
fearless opposition to the Castros.
  I asked him, as I had Mr. Farinas and Mr. Sanchez, whether his 
ability to travel signaled a growing freedom on the island? He 
answered--just as they had 3 years earlier: No. In fact, he said, the 
repression had grown worse since the so-called thaw.
  Didn't we realize, he asked me, that all those American dollars were 
flowing to the Castros' pockets and funding the next generation of 
their police state? That is the true legacy of Fidel Castro--that he 
was able to institutionalize his dictatorship so that it would survive 
him.
  Fidel Castro's death cannot bring back the thousands of victims, nor 
can it bring lasting comfort to their families. For 60 years, Fidel 
Castro systematically exploited and oppressed the people of Cuba, and 
now that tyrannical reign has fallen to his brother Raul, every bit as 
vicious as Fidel was.
  I was with my father shortly after he found out the news that Fidel 
Castro was dead. I asked my dad: What do you think happens now? My 
father shrugged and said sadly: Not much of anything. Raul has been in 
charge for years now. The system has gotten stronger.
  What Obama has done in funneling billions of dollars to the Castros 
has strengthened tyranny just 90 miles from our shores. Those 
billions--those American dollars--are being used to oppress dissidents. 
In 2016 roughly 10,000 political arrests occurred in Cuba. That is five 
times as many as occurred in 2010. What does it say about President 
Obama's foreign policy that under him political arrests have increased 
to 500 percent where they were just 5 years ago? This tyrannical regime 
has gotten stronger because of a weak President and a weak foreign 
policy.
  There is a real danger that we will now fall into a trap of thinking 
that Fidel's death represents material change in Cuba. It does not. The 
moment to exert maximum pressure

[[Page S6616]]

would have been 8 years ago, when Fidel's failing health forced him to 
pass control to his brother Raul. Rather than leverage the transition 
in our favor, the Obama administration decided to start negotiations 
with Raul in the mistaken belief that he would prove more reasonable 
than his brother. It is an unfortunate pattern that this administration 
has repeated with Kim Jong Un, Hasan Ruhani, and Nicolas Maduro. They 
don't seem to learn the lesson about the brutality of tyrants. The 
administration lifted the embargo that had been exerting economic 
pressure and having real meaningful effect.
  Efforts to be diplomatically polite about Fidel's death suggest the 
administration still hopes that Raul can be brought around. All 
historical evidence points to the opposite conclusion. Raul is not a 
different Castro. He is his brother's chosen successor, who has spent 
the last 8 years implementing his dynastic plan. Unlike Cuba, however, 
the United States has an actual democracy, and our recent election 
suggests there is significant resistance among the American people to 
the Obama administration's pattern of appeasement and weakness toward 
hostile dictators. We can, we should, and we are sending clear signals 
that the policy of weakness and appeasement is at an end.
  Among other things, we should halt the dangerous ``security 
cooperation'' we have begun with the Castro regime, which extends to 
military exercises, counternarcotics efforts, communications, and 
navigation--all of which places our sensitive information in the hands 
of a hostile government that would not hesitate to share it with other 
enemies, from Iran to North Korea.
  I hope all my colleagues will join me in calling for these 
alterations. The Communist dictator Raul Castro is not our friend, and 
we should not be sharing military secrets in military cooperation with 
his military only to have those used against us. A dictator is dead, 
but his dark, repressive legacy will not automatically follow him to 
the grave. Change can come to Cuba, but only if America learns from 
history and prevents Fidel's successor from playing the same old 
tricks.
  It is very much my hope and belief that with a new President coming 
into office in January, President Trump and a new administration, that 
U.S. foreign policy--not just with Cuba but with our enemies, whether 
they be Iran, ISIS, or North Korea--will no longer be a policy of 
weakness and appeasement but instead will use U.S. strength to defend 
this Nation and press for change. This ought to be a moment where 
Cubans are dancing in the street because they are being liberated, but, 
instead, if anyone dances in the street right now, they will be thrown 
in jail.
  Obama is sending his condolences to the Cuban people on the passing 
of a dictator who has imprisoned, tortured, and oppressed them for 60 
years. Those are condolences they can do without. Cuba is not a free 
society. You aren't allowed to speak or worship freely. They tear down 
churches. They repress the most basic liberty to worship God.
  We need leadership to prompt real and meaningful change in Cuba. 
Valladares wrote in his memoir:

       The mass execution was ordered by Raul Castro and attended 
     by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance; other 
     officers in Castro's guerrilla forces shot ex-soldiers en 
     masse without a trial, without any charges of any kind lodged 
     against them, simply as an act of reprisal against the 
     defeated army.

  I have never been to my father's homeland. I have never been to Cuba. 
My father has not returned to Cuba in over 60 years. I look forward to 
one day visiting Cuba, hopefully with my dad, my Tia Sonia, my cousin 
Bibi, and seeing a free Cuba where people can live according to their 
beliefs without fear of imprisonment, violence, or oppression, but 
under the dictator Raul Castro, today is not that day.
  The people of Cuba need to know that there are still those in America 
who understand that and stand with them, not the corrupt and vicious 
crime family that has oppressed them for so long, that has enriched 
themselves, accumulating millions and millions of dollars in personal 
wealth, living like emperors and kings while they have oppressed the 
people of Cuba.
  Those in Hollywood, those in the academy, and those in the Obama 
administration think that communism is about equality. There is nothing 
equal about Cuban communism other than a quality of suffering, other 
than a quality of misery, other than a quality of hopelessness. In the 
Cuban Communist regime, the army acts as the enforcers for the 
dictators who live opulent lifestyles while oppressing the masses. 
There is a word for that. It is called evil. It is not simply an 
interesting way to govern a society. It is the face of oppression, the 
face of dictatorship, the face of evil. Let there be no mistake, Fidel 
Castro was evil. Anyone who systematically murders, tortures, and 
oppresses people for over six decades embodies it, and I have no doubt 
that right now, today, Fidel Castro is facing the ultimate judgment. 
That is cause for celebration, and I look forward to celebrating the 
end of his dictatorship and repressive regime and the return of freedom 
to Cuba.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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