On December 22, Senator Marco Rubio (Rep., FL) released a “summary of his 2017 accomplishments.”[1]
Second on this list was “Shaping U.S. Policy Toward Cuba.” It stated, “Rubio worked closely with President Trump and his Administration to develop a new U.S. policy toward Cuba that rolls back the Obama Administration’s one-sided concessions to the Castro regime, and instead works to economically and politically empower private Cuban citizens and entrepreneurs.”
The hyperlinked article for Rubio’s working closely with President Trump was written in Politico by Marc Caputo, formerly of the Miami Herald.[2] It asserts that on May 5 Rubio along with his fellow Miami Republican and Cuban-American, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, met at the White House with President Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, then White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Advisor Jared Kushner. Rubio and Diaz-Balart warned the President not to rely upon career service people in the State and Treasury Departments because they did not favor abandoning President Obama’s policy of normalization with the island. Instead, it was suggested, the President himself and his close advisors should develop the new policy themselves.
Trump immediately accepted the suggestion and McMaster volunteered to implement the decision to change U.S. policy towards Cuba, which was announced in the President’s speech in Miami on June 16 and formalized in the National Security Presidential Memorandum on Strengthening the Policy of the United States Toward Cuba, which he signed immediately after the speech.[3]
This blogger already has expressed his opposition to this reversal of U.S. policy and rhetoric regarding Cuba and suggested instead on overturning the new ban on individual person-to-person travel and emphasizing the ban’s adverse impact on Cuba’s emerging entrepreneurs while continuing to advocate for implementation of other normalization measures.[4]
Although Rubio is a Cuban-American, he has never lived there or even visited the island. Thus, he is subject to legitimate criticism for having a distorted view of what U.S. policy should be. Addressing this glaring gap in his knowledge, a group of Cuban businesswomen have invited him to visit Cuba to learn about Cuba, the island’s emerging private sector and the adverse impact on those new businesses from the U.S. policies advocated by the Senator and President Trump. The Senator, however, has not accepted the invitation or even acknowledged this graceful gesture by the women.[5]
The Senator also could learn from Living Waters for the World, a project of the Synod of Living Waters of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that has installed nearly 900 clean water systems in 25 countries, including nearly 50 in Cuba. A recent U.S. volunteer group visited 10 such clean water sites in Cuba and said there was a sense of God whispering, “Pay attention, I have something important to show you—our inherent connectedness. Clearly, God does extraordinary things when we reach beyond our boundaries to know, be with, and pay attention to our brothers and sisters in Christ.”[6]
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[1] Press Release: Rubio Highlights 2017 Accomplishments (Dec. 22, 2017).
[2] Caputo, Inside Marco Rubio’s campaign to shape Trump’s Cuba crackdown, Politico (June 15, 2017).
[3] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: President Trump Announces Reversal of Some Cuba Normalization Policies (June 19, 2017); U.S. Reactions to Trump Reversal of Some U.S.-Cuba Normalization Policies (June 21, 2017); Cuban Reactions to Trump Reversal of Some U.S.-Cuba Normalization Policies (June 22, 2107).
[4] This Blogger’s Reactions to Trump Reversal of Some U.S.-Cuba Normalization Policies, dwkcommentaries.com (June 23, 2017).
[5] Reuters, Cuban businesswomen seek Rubio meeting as U.S. policy bites (Nov. 17, 2017).
[6] Zehnder, Changing Subjectivity, Waters of Life (Nov.-Dec. 2017).
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