Cuba

Floor Speech

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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 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, 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.

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