Mario Diaz-Balart

What’s next for Cuba? THIS WEEK on Firing Line.

Patria y Vida song: “Se acabó, tu cinco nueve, yo, doble dos”

The calls for freedom are growing louder. In Cuba, the largest protests in decades. A powerful new generation online and in the streets, chanting Liberty. And now the police crackdown. Conditions on the island are bleak — food shortages; currency shock and COVID

Diaz-Balart: They’re not asking for remittances. They’re not asking for aspirin. They’re asking for freedom, for freedom.

Representative Mario Diaz-Balart is a Cuban-American congressman whose family fled Havana when Castro took power. The Florida Republican was a harsh critic of President Obama’s decision to move toward normalizing relations with Cuba — and supported the return to tighter restrictions 

Trump: I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba. 

As Americans again turn their attention to Cuba and its communist regime, political leaders debate the best response: Keep the embargo? Loosen it? Consider military intervention?

Diaz-Balart: President Biden, this is a moment of leadership. Stand with the Cuban people. 

What does Representative Mario Diaz-Balart say now?

HOOVER: Florida Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, welcome to Firing Line. 

DIAZ-BALART: My pleasure, Margaret. Good to see you. 

HOOVER: Ninety miles off the coast of Florida, there is a crisis in Cuba. We have heard renewed calls for Libertad. We’re reading about increased food shortages and medical shortages. We’ve seen images of violent police crackdowns. You and I have known each other for a long time, since I worked in your congressional office, when you first came to Congress in 2003. And working for you, I learned about your family’s unique history with the regime in Cuba. Your father was a prominent politician in the Batista government. And he was at one point a dear friend of Fidel Castro’s. Your father’s sister, your aunt, was actually married to Fidel Castro. But ultimately your family was driven from Cuba during the revolution. Would you say that your father had early insight into Fidel Castro, into who he was and what the revolution would become? 

DIAZ-BALART: So, my family was involved in Cuban politics way before Batista or Castro. But what you just stated is factually correct. Now, as to whether my father knew what Castro would become? Absolutely. Look, as you stated, they knew each other very well. They were friends. They were roommates. Eventually, Castro married my father’s sister. But again, because of Castro being a psychopath, and that was pretty clear relatively early on, then obviously my father distanced himself rather quickly and rather severely from Castro, eventually becoming one of his strongest adversaries precisely because he knew him very, very well. And he knew that he was, frankly, a murdering psychopath. 

HOOVER: Cuba is one of the last remnants of the Cold War, a Soviet friendly communist dictatorship that survived the collapse of the USSR. Congressman, many people don’t understand why Cuba didn’t fall with the Berlin Wall. 

DIAZ-BALART: Yeah, that’s a very good question. There was a lot of hope that when communism in Europe collapsed that it would also collapse in Cuba and in North Korea and in other places. But unfortunately, Cuba is one of those places where it didn’t. And we could talk at length as to what role the United States may have played in that or not, and should it have been more aggressive. But the reality is accurate to say that that same regime that has been in power for 62 years remains in power. It was first Fidel Castro, then he turned it over to his brother, as if the Cuban people on that island was his personal farm. Right? He turned it over to his brother and now his brother has declared those who are going to follow him. But it’s not a private farm. This is a country with people who want freedom, who have their dreams, and who, by the way, now, as we’ve seen rather vividly, have turned out en masse in the streets. They know what they’re risking. Right. And they’re getting bludgeoned for it and they’re getting murdered in the streets for them. And we’ve seen the images of those regime thugs going into people’s homes and shooting them in their homes. We’ve seen the beatings in the streets, the use of live ammunition, shooting people in the streets and then not allowing them to even have medical attention. So the level of barbarism, of evil that the world is seeing and that the Cuban people have had to deal with for 62 years is frankly hard to fathom. It is beyond Orwellian. It is cruel. It is evil. And yet the Cuban people risking everything are going in the streets and they’re chanting one thing. They’re not asking for remittances. They’re not asking for aspirin. You know, there’s no health care for the Cubans, unlike what you may hear. But they’re not asking for that. What they’re asking for, clamoring for, is one thing, libertad, freedom. After 62 years, the Cuban people want freedom. 

HOOVER: You currently represent South Florida. This is your 10th term in Congress and your district has the largest Cuban-American population in the country, 42 percent. Why should Americans, Congressman, care about what we are witnessing in Cuba right now?

DIAZ-BALART: Well, first and foremost, we have to be concerned about the national security interest of the United States. That’s what foreign policy should always be driven by, right?, the national security interests of the United States. So here you have a regime 90 miles away from the United States that that is a state sponsor of terrorism. Why is it on the list of states that sponsor terrorism? Because it harbors fugitives from U.S. law, because it protects convicted murderers and convicted terrorists, including cop killers, because of its association and its aid to other terrorist regimes and other terrorist groups, whether it’s FARC– You name your favorite terrorist group, the Cuban regime has been dealing with them, helping them, and in many cases training them for decades. When they had a little bit more funds, Margaret, not only were they harboring terrorism and exporting terrorism, but they were actually– they even had troops around the world, in Latin America and even in Africa. So it has been a cancer in the entire world, but in particular in this hemisphere. The secretary of the Organization of American States has stated that what Cuba has in Venezuela, another state that, you know, we can talk days on end on, is an army of occupation. Keeping that regime, that dictatorship in power, it’s Cubans that are doing that, with help of Russia and China and Iran. But it’s Cubans. And so for our national security interests, that regime has been a nightmare. But on top of that, for the Cuban people, you know, these are people who want to live in freedom and want to send their kids to school and want to have the basic rights everybody else has. For 62 years, there have been no elections. For 62 years, it has been the private possession of of, frankly, a family. So here’s a question. Is there ever a time that we should say, you know, enough is enough, the Cuban people deserve freedom? And the U.S. law and the U.S. policy, the so-called embargo, all it is— 

HOOVER: We’re going to get there. 

DIAZ-BALART: All right. We’ll get there? Good. 

HOOVER: Okay. It was two weeks ago when images from Cuba began to get the attention of the United States and the larger media, the mainstream media, large groups of peaceful protesters in the streets chanting Libertad. These have been described as the biggest protests in three decades, more than three decades. And they are occurring throughout the island nation. Now, Congressman, many people are asking why now? Is this about Covid-19? Is this about the collapse of tourism because of the pandemic? 

DIAZ-BALART: Yeah, the interesting thing is that this has nothing to do with COVID. This has nothing to do with tourism. This is all to do with the people being fed up with being slaves, being abused, being murdered and what have. However, I think the big game changer has been Cubans, the ability of Cubans to communicate via the Internet. You know, that has been an empowering thing for so many people around the planet, and particularly for folks that suffer under repression. And in the case of Cuba, that was the way that people saw that this was happening. And, you know, obviously it wasn’t being broadcast by the Communist Party and the censored television in Cuba. It was on the Internet that people started seeing this happening. So it was just really a grassroots, impromptu thing. They hit the streets. One of the first things that the regime therefore did was cut off the Internet, just shut it down altogether so that Cubans couldn’t see what’s going on and couldn’t communicate, which is why one of the–

HOOVER: But Congressman, they’ve had the internet for several years now. So why now? 

DIAZ-BALART: The Internet has been very limited to the Cuban people. Most Cubans have not had access to the Internet. It’s very difficult for regular Cubans to have access to the Internet. There also are broadcasts, basically like Radio Free Europe that we had against the, you know, the Iron Curtain before. There are TV and radio broadcasts into the island. That’s also a way where Cubans can get some information. But I will tell you, the game changer has been people being able to actually see what’s going on, on videos on the Internet.

HOOVER: What you’re saying is this is not about bread lines. This is not about medicine. This is not about coronavirus. This is about questions of political liberty, having nothing to do with a pandemic?

DIAZ-BALART: No, it’s interesting. I mean, don’t don’t take my word for it. Listen to what the people in the streets are saying. When they went in front of the Communist Party in Havana, they said, this is not your country. It’s ours. It’s not yours. In other words, it’s the Cuban people’s. It’s not one small group of elitists that control everything in the country. They said we don’t want remittances. This has nothing to do with health care, which, by the way, is nonexistent to the Cuban people. Not only now, it’s been nonexistent for decades and decades for the Cuban people, despite what the regime would like to say. But what the Cuban people are saying, you know, we don’t want help with aspirins, with vaccines. We demand freedom. Freedom is the one thing that they’re demanding. And freedom is the one thing that they understand is the solution to all of their problems. You cannot have 62 years of brutality, of no elections, of no freedoms whatsoever, no freedom of press, no ability to organize yourselves in independent labor unions, and then expect people to be supportive of that. Nobody in the island supports the regime except for those who are living off of the regime and using the sheer brutality to keep the rest of the population down, including murdering, killing, imprisoning innocent people just because they ask for liberty, for freedom, for libertad.

HOOVER: I want to know more about what you know about the crackdown on the protesters, and specifically Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is the president of Cuba and has been since 2018. He took over from Raúl Castro, who is Fidel Castro’s brother. What kind of leader is he? 

DIAZ-BALART: He has been, he is the designee, puppet of the Castros, of Raúl Castro. He’s not a president. He was never elected to anything. So, again, calling him president is a misnomer. He’s not. He is the newly designated dictator and enforcer of the repression, of the barbaric repression that the Cuban people have been suffering for 62 years. And so–

HOOVER: Well, he signed, Diaz-Canel signs this executive order that’s targeting artists, made it illegal for artists not approved by the government to sell their work or perform. The reggaeton song Patria y Vida, which means country and life, now has more than seven million views on YouTube. It’s become the protest anthem for the San Isidro movement. What about these artists and what is your take on this opposition? Are they a real opposition movement? 

DIAZ-BALART: There are so many leaders in the opposition movement in Cuba. What this San Isidro group is are a group of artists. They’re Afro Cubans in a part of Havana called San Isidro. And, again, they’re artists. But the regime started cracking down on them because they didn’t like their art. Because, again, you know, there’s zero freedom in Cuba. And so the interesting thing that started happening, though, is that the whole neighborhood started reacting, trying to protect these artists from being arrested, from being beaten up by the regime. And then this song emerged from that neighborhood Patria y Vida. And that song has become an anthem, the anthem across the entire island. And what the song basically says is, we don’t want this dictatorship, this repressive, you know, dictatorship. We just want freedom. We want ‘country and life,’ and freedom. And the song is very explicit about that: freedom. So this is a freedom movement. These are people who are clamoring for just one thing. And we cannot minimize this. They’re not asking for handouts. They’re not asking for medical assistance. They are asking for freedom. And they are putting their lives on the line asking for that, the most valuable thing that any human being can ever have.

HOOVER: There’s a Cuban YouTuber named Dina Fernandez, who is also known as Dina Stars. She was taken into police custody in the middle of an interview with a Spanish television station. She was subsequently released and announced that she was arrested for, quote, promoting the protests. Congressman, what is the impact of seeing this play out on live video? How does that impact Cubans who see that? 

DIAZ-BALART: Well, you know, the Cubans are aware of this. You know, Cubans in the island know what repression is all about. They’ve suffered it for so many years. You don’t have to tell them. The question, Margaret, is what is the international community going to do? The international community, so much of the world has been doing business with the Castro regime, particularly with the Castro military that owns the entire tourism section. And so is the international community going to now say, whoa, wait a second, like they did in South Africa when they were embarrassed because they were doing business with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Eventually they got embarrassed to stop doing business with that apartheid regime. Are those same– Is the international community going to join the United States in not doing business with the Castro military, with those that are repressing and murdering the Cuban people? And it’s about time that people stop playing this game of, we support human rights in Cuba, but we’re going to continue to do business with those that murder Cubans, with the Cuban military, with the Cuban repression apparatus. And so you ask, I think, the key question, Spain being a good example. The government of Spain is one of the worst culprits in paying lip service to human rights in Cuba, but then going out of their way to help the regime and deal with them and do business with them. Because, you know, when you’re dealing with slave labor, it’s profitable. So hopefully they will be shamed in joining the United States in not doing business, not propping up, not sending wealth and money to the organisms that are repressing the Cuban people, i.e., the Cuban military and the intelligence services. 

HOOVER: I just– I want to ask you about the term you’ve used a couple of times, slave labor. I know you speak in hyperbole sometimes, but I know you also probably believe that it’s slave labor because you believe the Cubans don’t have free and independent choice over their work. But is using the term slave labor, rhetorically polarizing?

DIAZ-BALART: No, and I’ll tell you why I say that. Because they practice slave labor and they also practice, the regime as a policy, in human trafficking. And they profit off of human trafficking. They, for example, will send doctors abroad. But those doctors don’t get paid. The doctors get a very small stipend. The money goes directly to the regime and to the Castro Family–

HOOVER: So why isn’t that socialism? 

DIAZ-BALART: It’s human trafficking. It’s been categorized, by the way, by the Department of State, the United States Department of State as human trafficking. It’s the definition of human trafficking. You get an individual, you use their services. They don’t get paid. The person that trafficks in them is the one who gets paid. And these people have no rights. That’s precisely what happens in Cuba, for example, with the medical professionals. But also, if there’s a European company, for example, that sets up a hotel in Cuba, the workers are not paid directly. The money goes to the regime. The regime picks the people that they decide to send to, for example, that hotel, and the regime gives them a little bit of a– a teeny bit of money. The vast majority of the currency is kept by the regime. You can call it human trafficking. You can call it slave labor. Call it what you might–

HOOVER: Socialism?

DIAZ-BALART:  Well, you know, it’s the extreme of a government who, in essence, owns the people, trafficks in those people, while the only beneficiary is the regime, mostly the Castro family. And we’ve all seen the videos of Castro’s nephews and grandchildren in these huge yachts traveling in luxury throughout the world. How is that funded? It’s funded by trafficking in humans, not allowing Cubans to get paid directly by companies that are doing business with the Castro regime. I don’t know what you want to define that. The Department of State of the United States calls what they do with their doctors human trafficking, and I believe that is absolutely accurate. 

HOOVER: You signed a letter this week to leading democracies around the world, you signed a letter last week to President Biden. You’re making key specific recommendations for what Democratic allies should be doing vis a vis Cuba and what President Biden should be doing with the United States policy to Cuba. Let’s first take the letter from this week. What should our Democratic allies be doing to support the Cuban people in this moment? 

DIAZ-BALART: Margaret, number one, call the regime out for what it is: an illegitimate, murderous regime. There have never been elections in 62 years. It’s an illegitimate regime. Treating it as if it was Costa Rica is absurd and totally immoral. Number two is stop doing business with a regime that murders its people. The entire tourism industry is officially controlled by the Cuban military. Number three, call out the abuses, the human rights abuses that are existing and start pressuring, via sanctions via all sorts of pressure, that regime as opposed to doing business with the regime, playing footsies with the regime, and pretending that it’s basically, you know, quaint because the Cuban people have no freedom and have to drive 70-year-old cars. 

HOOVER: What should President Biden be doing?

DIAZ-BALART: A lot more than he’s doing.  

HOOVER: What would be helpful?

DIAZ-BALART: We already talked about the importance of the Internet. The United States has the ability to provide communications so that the Cuban people can communicate, i.e., to stop the block of the Internet. Number one. The United States should be leading the international effort to, again, make sure that the world understands that it is an illegitimate, murderous regime, and it should be pressuring our allies and everybody else to stop doing business with the regime, to stop helping finance the regime, and  to call it out for what it is. Again, it’s some very basic things that the United States knows how to do very well — lead the world in the cause of freedom. 

HOOVER: What more can the US government do to ensure that Cubans have Internet availability and access to communication so that they can organize against the government themselves? 

DIAZ-BALART: The United States does have technology that can be very helpful in allowing the people in the island to communicate among themselves. So we can and need to do a lot more and a lot more urgently there. Second thing, Margaret, is the United States has had radio and television broadcasts into the island. And I’m saddened to say that in the budget recommendation of the president, as well as what the majority is doing in the appropriations bills, they are reducing funding for broadcasting news into Cuba from the United States. This is clearly not the time to cut funding for that. It’s actually the time to double our efforts to make sure that Cubans have information, because that is one thing that makes all the difference to repressed people.

HOOVER: So in 1998 Firing Line hosted a debate on the US embargo, and conservative William F. Buckley Jr. argued on the side of ending the embargo. Representative Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who is now a senator from New Jersey, took the opposite side of the debate. Listen to this. 

MENENDEZ: The US should not lift the Cuban trade embargo because the Castro dictatorship has demonstrated after 39 years of absolute control that it does not institute economic or political change other than when it faces the economic need to do so.  

BUCKLEY: We were right in imposing an embargo on Castro’s Cuba in 1961, but we didn’t do so merely because of Castro’s human rights abominations. We did so because he had publicly enlisted Cuba as an ally of the Soviet Union. It was a part of a world enterprise, edging up on continental America with its dagger drawn. That’s over. We won that war, and Fidel Castro wallows now in the economic misery he has generated. 

HOOVER: Why do you believe the embargo is still the right policy?

DIAZ-BALART: Margaret, The embargo are sanctions against the repression and the regime that has enslaved the Cuban people for 62 years. And the embargo, the sanctions go away immediately, overnight, if only three things happen. Number one is when all the political prisoners are freed. Number two is when some basic freedoms — freedom of the press, independent labor unions, political parties — are allowed. And then when elections, the process of elections, starts moving forward. And here’s the question, which one of those three things do the Cuban people not deserve and which one of those three conditions do you not support? Not you, do we not support, does anybody not support? Those are basic human right conditions that the Cuban people demand, that the Cuban people deserve. And it is not only the right thing for the Cuban people, it’s also the right thing for the national security interests of the United States. 

HOOVER: As early as July 12th, a group of Cuban exiles in Miami, Florida, began calling for U.S. troops to step in to back the freedom fighters and to bring the regime to an end. Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez made national headlines last week when he suggested that the US should explore the option of air strikes in Cuba. 

FOX REPORTER: Are you suggesting air strikes in Cuba?

SUAREZ: What I’m suggesting is that that option is one that has to be explored and cannot be simply discarded as an option that is not on the table.

HOOVER: Would you support US military intervention in Cuba?

DIAZ-BALART: I think we need to listen to what the Cuban people are asking for in the streets of every city in Cuba. What they’re asking for is solidarity. What they’re asking for is freedom. And do I think that the president should have, on any issue dealing with the national security of the United States, should have every option on the table and all of our adversaries and enemies need to know that the president has every option on the table? Absolutely. But let’s be very clear. What the Cuban people are demanding, what they want is just one thing: freedom, freedom, and freedom. That is the answer for the national security interests, the United States. That is the answer for the dignity and the future of the Cuban people.

HOOVER: So no intervention from US military on Cuban soil? 

DIAZ-BALART: Yeah, I think I answered the question.

HOOVER: Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, thank you for joining me on Firing Line. 

DIAZ-BALART: My pleasure. 

END

> ‘Firing Line with Margaret Hoover’ is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Charles R. Schwab, the Fairweather Foundation, the Asness family foundation, and by — corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
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