Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism
Floor Speech
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Ms. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the honorable gentleman from Arkansas, the distinguished French Hill, chairman of the Committee on Financial Services. It is a pleasure for me to be serving with him on this committee.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to say before I start, before I explain to this body why I am introducing this resolution, when I was a journalist covering stories for Univision Network, I interviewed many people who had lost their legs or lost their brothers or sisters in the middle of the ocean, trying to get to Miami, and the sharks ate them up. Some of them were eaten up alive. Others lost legs.
When they made it to Florida, I was able to interview them as a journalist and see the horrors of what they had to go through because they were escaping the paradise called socialism. I am going to start with that and maybe finish with another anecdote.
The reason we are introducing this resolution is to condemn the horrors of socialism, and I am presenting just the facts. I invite my colleagues on the other side to vote to condemn this nefarious ideology.
This has nothing to do with political parties. This is not a Democratic issue. This is not a Republican issue. This is a moral vote against an ideology that has destroyed millions and millions of families--many of those families I serve in District 27, the heart of the city of Miami, the heart of the Cuban exile community and now the Venezuelan community--and murdered more than 100 million lives besides crushing hundreds of thousands of other families and individuals.
Unfortunately, socialism and Marxism crush the human soul. It is not just in my community in Miami. Millions of Cubans had to flee. It is the rest of the hemisphere and the rest of the world. Just look at Russia, look at North Korea, and look at Iran.
What a coincidence that, today, President Trump is receiving in the White House the mayor-elect, Mr. Mamdani, from New York City. I salute the President for receiving Mr. Mamdani because he won fair and square, and that is the way democracy works.
Let me just tell you something. Knowing very well how Fidel worked, how Hugo Chavez works, and how socialism works, I want to put this in perspective. If it were to be the other way around and Trump would have been the mayor-elect and Mamdani were to be the President of the United States, I assure you that there is no way that Mamdani is going to receive Trump at the White House, period.
How do I know that? Because I know exactly how they operate. Democracy is just a tool to get to power, period. People who love freedom, we are just useful fools to be used in order to get to the business of power, which is all socialist, communist, whatever you want to call it. If it is not democracy, freedom, and a free-market economy, it is just a bad ideology. Unfortunately, that is what they do to achieve power. They use us.
Just look at Venezuela. Oh, my God, Venezuela is in the news. Everyone is talking about Venezuela, my God, the Caribbean.
Let me just give you the facts. Maria Corina Machado, who is the legitimate President of Venezuela, who won 80-20 after President Biden gave the opportunity to Maduro to do fair and square elections and transparent elections, 2 years ago Maduro signs a document by the name of the Barbados Agreement, and he agrees to the Biden administration and to Juan Gonzalez, who used to be the National Security Advisor for Latin America, that he was going to leave if he did not win the elections. He signed that document with the Biden administration.
What did he do? He just spit on Biden's face because we believed that, oh, my God, Biden, look what he is doing. It is good. It is a good idea to give the opportunity to Maduro to just create and conduct free, fair, and transparent elections with international observers, and he was going to go. Look at where he is at now.
Maduro is not only the head of the Suns Cartel, one of the most important drug trafficking cartels in the world, but he was also indicted in 2020 by a Federal grand jury in this country for being one of the major drug traffickers in the world. Not only that, he is now on the transnational criminal organization list. Not only that, he is the head of the Suns Cartel.
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Ms. SALAZAR. As you can see, I can speak until tomorrow about socialism.
The problem is that Venezuela is the perfect example, and the Venezuelans would make fun of the Cubans 25 years ago, saying that it was impossible for that to happen in Venezuela. They had the largest reserves of oil in the world. They were a brave and strong democracy. They were not an island. It was impossible. They have such a strong economy.
Look, right now, the average Venezuelan weighs 15 pounds less because of a lack of food, and the Trump administration has to come to rescue them from what they have turned that country into.
We are at a crossroads in this country. Young Americans, 70 percent believe that socialism is good. One in three believes that government should control major industries. One in four says that we should abolish private property.
It is my duty as a Representative of District 27, the heart of the Cuban exile community, to tell this body it is time to denounce socialism in this country because, just like it happened to the Venezuelans, it could happen to the Americans.
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Ms. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, if there is someone who has seen the horrors of socialism up close within the Democratic Party, and is in the House, it is the Honorable Congresswoman Maxine Waters. And I would love for you to support this resolution specifically because, Madam Waters, for decades, you traveled to Cuba dozens of times to visit Fidel Castro personally, whom you considered your friend.
Congresswoman Waters was in Havana, and she saw the destruction of Biblical proportions that Castro caused on that island, who, at the time, in 1960, had the highest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere.
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Ms. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, I am asking for unanimous consent to withdraw the violations of the rules and continue with my speech, which is that there are many people on this floor that have--
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Ms. SALAZAR. Mr. Speaker, there are many people on this floor who have seen the horrors of communism. They have been to Cuba. They have been friends with Fidel Castro. They have seen the jails full of Cuban prisoners. They have seen people preparing rafts to die in the middle of the ocean, eaten by sharks.
There are many people in the Democratic Party who have witnessed that and have not said anything.
For this reason, Mr. Speaker, I am asking some of my colleagues on that side of the aisle, many of them who are very good friends of mine, to understand that denouncing communism and socialism is the right thing to do for the Democratic Party.
If some of the highest, most important Members of the Democratic Party on that side of the aisle want to vote with us, they would be doing a favor to their Republic. Not only that, the Democratic Party will become the new champions for freedom in the Western Hemisphere.
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