[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10188-10189]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   THE SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS WAS AN EMBARRASSMENT FOR THE HEMISPHERE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the Summit of the 
Americas held this last weekend in Trinidad and Tobago constituted an 
embarrassment for this hemisphere. Fidel Castro in Cuba is a psychopath 
and a serial killer, but he has long had a plan. His long-term goal has 
been to have the United States apologize to him and for the United 
States to bankroll his oppressive totalitarian apparatus before he 
dies. He wants the United States to apologize for having kept the U.S. 
market and its millions of tourists and billions of dollars in 
financing from him and for having denied him full diplomatic relations 
for decades.
  In order to achieve his goal, Fidel Castro has been recruiting 
advocates for years. The ideological and psychological fascination and 
dependency that Hugo Chavez has on Fidel Castro has allowed Castro to 
utilize Chavez's billions of petrodollars to purchase many important 
advocates.

                              {time}  2030

  It is part of the public record that a suitcase of Chavez-cash 
heading to Mrs. Kirchner in Argentina was accidentally intercepted by 
authorities before reaching its intended destination.
  Castro has purchased advocates through the years via the always 
present threat of blackmail after trips to totalitarian Cuba where the 
regime tapes visitors in ``compromising'' situations, as confirmed by 
Interior Ministry defector Roberto Hernandez del Llano and Cuban 
Counter-Intelligence defector Major Roberto Ortega.
  Castro also serves as a ``banker'' for illicit money possessed by 
those who seek to avoid detection by the anti-laundering mechanisms set 
up by the international community. It matters not if the money's source 
is political corruption or narcotrafficking.
  Hugo Chavez's absolute dependency on Fidel Castro for every major 
decision, even for his phrases and gestures in international forums, is 
unprecedented. While the Soviet Union used to send Castro economic aid 
and also orders and instructions, Chavez sends Castro billions of 
dollars and receives orders from him.
  What the world witnessed at this last weekend's Summit of the 
Americas was a culmination of years of preparation in the purchase and 
cultivation of advocates by Fidel Castro. The goal of the advocates: 
mass American tourism with its billions of dollars a year and U.S. 
trade financing, so that the U.S. taxpayer ultimately bails out and 
bankrolls Fidel Castro.
  Castro's advocates know very well that article III of the Charter of 
the Organization of American States requires the existence of 
representative democracy in all the countries of our hemisphere, and 
that the Inter-American Democratic Charter of 2001 even spells out the 
collective steps to be taken when an American republic's democracy is 
usurped.
  They know that Cuba, under Castro, was the only country in our 
hemisphere where free elections have not been held in over 50 years, 
and where dungeons are full of nonviolent political prisoners. They 
know that under Castro, Cuba is a personal island-estate, a ranch, a 
personal land holding or homestead, a totalitarian fiefdom, owned by 
one man, with a brother who enjoys the title of head of state and 
carefully carries out his brother's orders.
  Any goods the people on the island purchase must be purchased in the 
island fiefdom's ``company stores'' and with worthless ``vouchers'' 
called ``convertible pesos'' sold by the regime. Castro takes 30 
percent of all hard currency ``off the top'' at the time island

[[Page 10189]]

residents purchase the ``vouchers,'' and all hard currency must be 
spent with purchased ``vouchers'' in his ``company stores.''
  The inducement for child prostitution on the island-fiefdom is 
unparalleled in the world, because no matter how hard island residents 
work, only foreign ``hard'' currency allows them to purchase the 
``vouchers,'' the ``convertible pesos,'' for use in the stores that 
sell everything, from food to clothes to soap to toothpaste.
  Equally, only foreign ``hard'' currency allows residents to purchase 
medicines. The shelves in the old stores and pharmacies where residents 
used to be able to purchase Soviet-bloc supplies with their ration 
cards are simply empty since there is no money to be made there by the 
dictator.
  The Castro advocates at the weekend ``Summit'' knew all this, like 
when Mrs. Kirchner called for the U.S. to make amends with ``our sister 
republic, Cuba.'' Or when Mr. Ortega condemned the U.S. for organizing 
the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Somehow they knew that President 
Obama would refer to Castro's totalitarian fiefdom as ``Cuba.'' Somehow 
they knew that President Obama would not respond to Mr. Ortega that at 
the Bay of Pigs, Cubans bravely fought to spare their country half a 
century of totalitarian oppression. President Obama said, ``I'm 
grateful President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened 
when I was 3 months old.'' Somehow they knew President Obama would not 
make clear that, as per U.S. law, the U.S. embargo will go away when 
all of Castro's political prisoners are freed and when there is freedom 
of expression and multi-party elections scheduled in Cuba. Of course 
they knew. President Obama had just unilaterally granted the fiefdom's 
owner hundreds of millions of dollars a year, in exchange for nothing.

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