Democracy for Cuba

Floor Speech

DEMOCRACY FOR CUBA -- (Senate - November 01, 2007)

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Mr. CORNYN. Briefly, Mr. President, I commend my distinguished friends and colleagues from New Jersey and Florida for this statement of solidarity with the Cuban people.

I could not agree more that it is important--certainly now as much as ever--that we stand arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, opposed to oppressive regimes that really govern by fear.

I have to say, just briefly, to my friend from Florida, Senator Martinez, I know his personal history of being a refugee from Cuba when he was 16 years old, being part of a Pedro Pan effort to bring young Cubans to America so they could have a better life.

He also shared with me recently a movie which, while a work of fiction, I think, gave me a very emotional sense of what people in Cuba, in Havana in particular, must have experienced with the Cuban people being oppressed by Fidel Castro.

I have to tell my colleagues, it is a bleak existence that these people, who are seeking nothing more than the most basic of human rights, have under a heartless regime of a dictator such as Fidel Castro.

So I just wanted to express a few words of thanks and words of solidarity for my colleagues from New Jersey and Florida and to reiterate that all of us, all of the American people stand in solidarity with those in Cuba who seek change, who seek what we perhaps too often take for granted; that is, our freedom to speak, to live, to worship as we see fit. We ought to do everything we possibly can to support them.

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