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Cubans concerned about Rubio’s nominationpublished at 00:13 Greenwich Mean Time

Will Grant
Correspondent for Mexico, Central America and Cuba

If there is one name that the Cuban government – and Cubans in general – would least like to see nominated as President-elect Trump’s Secretary of State, it is Marco Rubio.

As a Florida senator, he was Havana’s bête noire, perhaps the leading voice against cooperation with Cuba during the final years of the Obama administration – which had sought to normalize relations after six decades of hostilities.

After President Trump won in 2016, Rubio advocated reversing that policy, making it harder for Americans to visit the island and ratcheting up the U.S. economic embargo to its harshest expression under a doctrine of enforcing “maximum pressure” on the communist government. island.

Cuba is of course uniquely personal for Rubio. While his parents emigrated to the US before the Cuban Revolution came to power in 1959, his grandfather fled a few years later and was forced into exile as Fidel Castro took Cuba further into the arms of the Cubans. the Soviet Union. His grandfather had a great influence on young Marco as he came to political consciousness.

Despite his popularity in Miami, most Cubans living on the island shudder to think of what Rubio will have in store if he is named secretary of state. There are still a few places where sanctions could still be increased. Direct commercial flights to Cuba could be banned and diplomatic ties severed, closing the U.S. embassy in Havana.

One thing is clear: at a time when the island is suffering from widespread power outages and chronic shortages, Rubio is unlikely to extend any kind of lifeline to Cuba, but rather will seek to further boost the mainstay of its faltering economy, tourism to strangle.

For Cuba’s close socialist allies in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela and Nicaragua, the next four years are also likely to be a time of increased hostility toward Washington.