[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 121 (Monday, July 12, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4820-S4822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Cuba

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, the world and the country yesterday watched 
these images out of Cuba. It is really unprecedented. In 62 years of 
communist tyranny on the island of Cuba, we have never seen and there 
has never been what now is up to 40 cities in which people took to the 
streets--organically, unorganized, grassroots--to ask for the end of 
that tyranny. And I think it is important for a lot of people that are 
new to the issue to sort of understand what that means and what it is 
all about.
  I think the first lesson we need to take away from it is that 
Marxism, socialism doesn't work. The way socialism, the way Marxism has 
always worked--the way it has always empowered itself--is it goes to a 
people and it immediately divides them. It says: There is the 
suppressor class, and then there is this victim class. And these evil 
oppressors--capitalists, in the case of socialism or traditional 
Marxism--they oppress the victims. And what you have to do is you have 
to give us the power in government to take care of these oppressors and 
to go after these oppressors, and if you give us that power, we will 
deliver you security and we will protect you from the oppressors. They 
ask for security in exchange for freedom. That is always the price that 
socialism asks for--security.
  And what you wind up with is a country of people that hate each 
other, and they are angry at each other. A significant portion of the 
people in the country have to leave, have to flee, go to jail, because 
they are the oppressor class. Their lives are destroyed. Their family 
lives are destroyed.
  But the socialism can't deliver the security. And when it can't 
deliver the security, you don't get your freedom back. And, in fact, 
when you start to complain about that, that is when the repression 
comes.
  Well, that is what happened in Cuba. Socialism and Marxism has done 
to Cuba what it has done everywhere in the world that it has been 
tried. It has failed. It has failed. They gave up their freedom. Or 
they were told: Give up your freedom in exchange for a world-class 
healthcare system.
  It is not a world-class healthcare system. In fact, it is a 
healthcare system that does not even have the ability to deal with 
COVID at its very basic level.
  They said: Give up your freedom for economic security.
  What economic security? People are hungry, homes are crumbling, and 
there is no economy. There is no real economy in Cuba.
  Give up your freedom and you will have an education--free education 
for everybody.
  That education--No. 1, you are a doctor, but you can drive a taxicab 
in Cuba and make more money. Or, No. 2, you get sent, forced to go, 
overseas and work basically on slave wages, no pay--barely any pay at 
all. It is basically human trafficking, as our own Department of State 
found when it looked at the Cuban doctors' program and how it has been 
abused.
  So what has happened in Cuba is that socialism has failed. It has to 
repress people who complain about it. You don't get your freedom back.
  And like socialists always do, they have to find someone to blame. 
And whom do they blame? No. 1, they blame anybody in the country who 
doesn't agree with them. You are immediately a counterrevolutionary. 
You are immediately a pawn of the imperialists. And, then, of course, 
they always blame the United States.
  The problem in Cuba for the regime is that the people aren't falling 
for those lies anymore. They are not. The embargo, that is the first 
thing they blame: It is the embargo. The embargo is causing all of 
this.
  Why aren't fishermen and farmers in Cuba allowed to fish or grow 
things and sell it to people? It is not the embargo that keeps them 
from doing that. It is the regime
  Why can't Cubans own a small business? Why can't a Cuban do in Cuba 
what they can do in Miami, what they can do in Washington, and what 
they do in countries all over the world, and they can't do it in Cuba? 
They can't open a small business. That is not the embargo that keeps 
them from doing it. In fact, U.S. law allows us to trade and to do 
commerce with small businesses that are independently owned by Cubans. 
Do you know why Cubans can't own small businesses? It is not the 
embargo. It is not the United States. It is the regime that doesn't 
allow it.
  People have seen these lies. How can they afford to build luxury, 
four-star, world-class hotels for tourists, but they cannot afford to 
deal with the crumbling homes that Cubans are living in, with roofs 
literally falling in over their heads and with water leaking into 
operating rooms at hospitals?
  Look at what they do with the money. Oh, it is because you don't 
allow more money to be sent. When an American or a Cuban American sends 
money to their family members in Cuba--in the past, through Western 
Union--the regime takes 10 percent off the top, and then they take 
those dollars you sent and they force the Cubans to convert it into 
worthless Cuban currency. They keep the dollars. And, then, guess what: 
If you want to buy anything, you have to buy it from a government 
store, and guess what the

[[Page S4821]]

government store sells things for? Dollars. That is not the embargo. 
That is the Cuban regime that does that.
  And who is it that is putting people in jail, gets your head cracked 
open, and gets your door kicked out in the middle of the night? There 
are 80 people missing today. At least 80 people disappeared overnight. 
The families don't know where they are. That is not the embargo that is 
jailing people. That is the regime.
  And that is what I tell people. You can open up all you want. We can 
pass a bill here that says: Open to Cuba--100 percent open. You can do 
whatever you want--full, free trade. You can do whatever you want. At 
the end of the day, the Cuban regime will control that opening. It is 
not just what we want to do. It is what they want to do.
  Do you want to do tourism? We tried that in 2015 with the Obama 
changes, and do you know what they did? They said: Thank you. We love 
the fact that you are coming here as tourists.
  Guess what. All the tourist sites are owned by a holding company 
named GAESA, controlled by the Cuban military. So everything comes 
through their hands.
  You want to send them food? That is great. Guess who gets it: 
ALIMPORT, which is a government, military-owned agriculture company. 
You can't sell it to a small grocery store in Cuba or even a food 
wholesaler. It goes to the Cuban Government.
  You want to send money? They take it. Do you know why? Because 
socialism is about control, and all of these things--tourism, food, 
money, medicine--it is all about control.
  You want humanitarian aid? Let's get the Red Cross. Any of these 
vetted NGOs in the world should be allowed to go into Cuba. They won't 
allow it--A, because it is embarrassing to them. They have a world 
class healthcare system. Why do they need humanitarian aid? But, B, 
because they want to control it.
  Send them vaccines, but if you put them in their hands--the 
government, the regime--guess who gets the vaccine: the people who 
behave; first, the regime elites and then the people who behave. If you 
are not behaving and if you are not going along with what they want you 
to do, you won't get a vaccine.
  They will use any opening as a tool and as a weapon against their 
people because that is what socialism does. That is what these Marxists 
do in Cuba. They will use anything as a weapon against the people of 
Cuba.
  What can we do is what people want to know. No. 1, I hope that we 
will all be clear about whose side we are on. You don't have to even 
agree with anything I have said. What you should agree with is that 
people everywhere in the world, including 90 miles from our shore, 
should be allowed to go into the street, peacefully march, call for an 
end of dictatorship, and not have their heads cracked open.
  By the way, no one in Cuba has guns, except the military. So why are 
these repressive forces walking around with these rifles and people are 
getting shot? They are shooting people that literally are unarmed.
  They should be able to do that, and it should be clear. We should be 
clear in our language. We don't just condemn this tyranny. We condemn 
this communist, this Marxist, this socialist tyranny. Call it for what 
it is.
  No. 2, we should make clear that nothing is going to change. There is 
not going to be any sanctions changed as a result of this. On the 
contrary, I hope the Biden administration will now announce that they 
have finished their review of Cuba policy, and everything that is in 
place is staying in place
  To the extent we change policy, No. 3, I hope we make it a top 
priority to allow the people of Cuba to have free, unfettered, and open 
internet access. And the technology exists to do that with a satellite-
based system. We should put the best minds to work on getting that done 
because if the Cuban people have free and unfettered access to the 
internet--the first thing the regime shut down yesterday was the 
internet--they can communicate with each other, and they can receive 
information and communicate with the world. Ninety miles from our 
shore, you should be allowed to do that.
  No. 4, for all of those who believe and have faith in the 
international community--and I still hold hope that one day it will 
work again--where is Spain? Where is the EU? Where are all these 
countries that for years have given cover and protection to the Cuban 
regime and condemned America? They should speak out clearly that what 
is happening there is wrong and that repression is wrong. We should 
rally that. We should use our position of strength and power in the 
world and our influence in diplomatic circles to make that happen.
  And, No. 5, I hope the President will be very clear with the regime 
in Cuba that we will not tolerate them encouraging a mass migration 
event--because I am warning you, this is what they do. They have done 
it twice already. They step back and they say: Look, if you don't lift 
sanctions, if you don't go back to the Obama-era policies, and if you 
don't get rid of the embargo, it is inevitable that you are going to 
have 50,000 people take to the ocean and head toward the United States.
  They have used that against us twice. They did it in 1994, and they 
did it in 1980 with the Mariel boat lift. President Biden needs to be 
clear, whether it is through private channels or saying it publicly--be 
abundantly clear that we will treat the encouragement of mass migration 
toward the United States as a hostile action and act accordingly. That 
cannot--cannot--be tolerated.
  I want to close with this. I recognize that most of the Members of 
this Chamber, most of the people here in Washington, and, frankly, most 
of the people in the country do not pay attention to Cuba on a daily 
basis. I get it. I really do. But if you are not following the issue of 
Cuba, you can be forgiven for not knowing that what we are seeing, what 
we saw yesterday, what we are seeing today, what happened recently--
none of this--was started by politicians. It wasn't started by me. It 
wasn't started by anybody in Miami or in Florida. It wasn't started by 
any think tank in Washington. It wasn't even started by political 
activists inside of Cuba.
  Do you know who started what is happening in Cuba? Artists, poets, 
songwriters, writers, actors, musicians. They are the ones who started 
it--the San Isidro Movement--because they came after them.
  And there is a song. A lot of people don't realize it. There was a 
song that came out earlier this year--a song that, by the way, if you 
play in Cuba, you will go to jail. The song's name is ``Patria y 
Vida.'' Now, the slogan of the Cuban regime is ``Patria o Muerte,'' 
meaning ``Fatherland or Death.'' This song played on that, and it says, 
``Patria y Vida,'' which means ``Fatherland and Life,'' instead of 
``Fatherland or Death.'' And the song is extraordinarily powerful 
because it was written by people and sung by people who have lived this 
reality and are living this reality. It so powerful. As I said, you 
will go to jail in Cuba if you play it.
  What the song basically says in its lyrics is: Why can't people think 
in different ways and not be treated as enemies? Why is life so good 
for party insiders and their families but there is no food for average 
Cubans? There seems to be no embargo for the Cuban regime and their 
family members. Why can you build luxury hotels while our homes are 
crumbling? Why do Cubans have to suffer the indignities--the 
indignities--the simple things like not being able to bathe with soap, 
not being able to use deodorant, not having toothpaste--why do they 
have to deal with these indignities? And who--the song also asks--who 
told the regime that Cuba belongs to them and only them? Shouldn't it 
belong to all 13 million Cubans?
  The chorus I will read first in English, and then I will translate it 
in Spanish, because it actually plays on ``dominoes.'' Dominoes is a 
very popular game played by Cubans. It is played by everybody, but 
Cubans, in particular. It is a big game there.
  The chorus reads:
  (English translation of statement made in Spanish is as follows:)
  And how it translates is that it basically says:

       It's over. Your 59--

  Meaning 1959, the year that Castro took over--

       But I have double twos.

  And everyone knows that in the dominoes game, if, at the end of a 
chain,

[[Page S4822]]

both dominoes, no one has any dominoes to put down, the game gets 
locked, and you count numbers and count dots to see who won.
  So it says:

       It's over. Your 59, but I have double twos. It's over. 
     Sixty years with a domino game locked up for us.

  Now, I know this is a very colloquial Cuban way of expressing it, but 
this is incredibly powerful. The people in Cuba understood what that 
means, and that means that all this ideology, all this stuff they talk 
about, and all these lies of the regime that worked out really well for 
them, people don't believe it anymore, and they are not afraid anymore. 
Meanwhile, their lives are ruined. Young people in Cuba, artists in 
Cuba who realize that the only country on this planet were Cubans are 
not successful is Cuba, and they are tired of it, and we should stand 
with them.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.