The foreign minister of Cuba railed against the United States for its “racist” policies and its alleged lack of respect for human rights in a meandering press conference on Monday — the first major declaration from the Castro regime after President Joe Biden’s administration held friendly talks with the Communist country last week.
The State Department confirmed last week that it had invited representatives of the communist Castro regime to discuss the growing number of Cuban refugees attempting to enter the United States through the southern border and had met with those envoys on Thursday. For years, in recognition of the unique brutality of the Cuban communist regime in the Western hemisphere, the American government has granted Cubans a pathway to political asylum when traveling by sea.
Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez addressed the migration talks with America in a press conference Monday morning, which he began with an unrelated accusation that America, this year’s host of the Summit of the Americas, is working to exclude Cuba from the summit. The conference is expected to be held this June in Los Angeles.
Cuba is not a legitimate member of the Organization of the American States (OAS), which hosts the conference, as the OAS Charter allows for the suspension of members whose governments are overthrown by illegitimate dictatorships, as occurred in Cuba in 1959. Nonetheless, during the Obama presidency, the OAS broke its own rules under pressure from Washington to invite Cuba, resulting in regime-organized gang violence against pro-democracy Cubans at Summit of the Americas events.
“I am denouncing that the government of the United States has decided to exclude the Republic of Cuba from preparations for the ninth Summit of the Americas,” Rodríguez began the press conference. “The United States government deceives the public opinion and governments of the hemisphere when they say they have not yet decided on the invitations.”
“The United States has no moral authority to address the issue or criticize others,” Rodríguez proclaimed elsewhere in the harangue, referring to human rights.
Rodríguez later addressed the talks in Washington, calling them a “positive sign” before calling America “racist.” Rodríguez appeared to indicate that the Biden administration took on an apologetic tone with envoys of the repressive Communist Party during the talks last week.
“The recognition that the government of the United States has made [regarding] the viability of agreements is without a doubt correct and positive,” Rodríguez said, without specifying which “agreements.” “The recognition of the delegation of the United States in those migration conversations that its government has not abided by migrant agreements … and the announcement that it wants to restore its observance, application, and abiding by of those agreements, are positive signs.”
The current policy of having Cubans traveling north from Central America be processed in the nations they are currently in, Rodríguez railed, is “racist, xenophobic, and plundering,” and “does not in any way address the real reasons for immigration.” According to Rodríguez, the barely existent American embargo on Cuba is “the fundamental cause of the problems of [Cuba’s] economy” — not the fact that Cuba is a woefully mismanaged, corrupt communist regime — and “provokes hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the government.”
Rodríguez also falsely claimed Cuban refugees are fleeing to America for “fundamentally economic” reasons, not to escape political repression. Accusing America of denying basic food and medicine to Cuba, Rodríguez echoed Castro regime talking points that obscure the reality of the alleged “blockade.” As the State Department explained in a recent fact sheet, “the U.S. embargo allows humanitarian goods to reach Cuba, and the U.S. government expedites requests to export humanitarian or medical supplies to Cuba.”
“Through the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and Transportation, there are many options available for expediting the provision of humanitarian goods to Cuba,” the State Department explained shortly after the July 2021 protests. “We actively encourage those seeking to support the Cuban people to use these options and contact us if there are issues.”
Extreme food and medicine shortages in Cuba are due to mismanagement and deliberate deprivation on the part of the Castro regime, which confiscates much of the humanitarian cargo sent from America.
The foreign minister did not explain why the surge in Cuban refugees immediately followed one of the most repressive episodes by Cuban state police in recent memory: the shootings, beatings, and mass arrests of anyone suspected of having participated in the July 11 protests.
The top diplomat particularly complained that Cubans are being processed in Guyana, claiming America demands “exorbitant prices” for refugee paperwork. Guyana is a friendly nation to the Castro regime and has been used as a dumping ground for unwanted dissidents for years. In some cases, the Castro regime has forced individuals who have expressed no desire to leave Cuba onto flights to Guyana at gunpoint. Rodríguez did not address the forced migration phenomenon.
Rodríguez also used the press conference, where he took no questions, to bizarrely accuse America of worsening Cuba’s poor handling of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and to condemn the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
President Barack Obama, after granting tremendous economic concessions to dictator Raúl Castro in 2014, repealed a policy known as “wet foot/dry foot” which allowed Cubans touching the shores of Florida to stay. The repeal — coupled with a deliberate Communist Party policy of forcing pro-democracy dissidents into exile through Guyana — has resulted in a boon for Mexico and Central America’s human traffickers and immense pressure on migrant processing centers at the southern border.
The Castro regime applauded Obama’s policies at the time — as they greatly enriched the country and prompted a wave of violent political repression — and condemned the return to limits on tourism and remittances in association with Castro family-owned companies under former President Donald Trump. Biden has chosen not to have a policy on Cuba at all, essentially leaving Trump’s policies in force.
These policies have led to a visible increase in pro-democracy activity against the 63-year-old regime, most prominently the July 11, 2021, nationwide protests for an end to communism that occurred in nearly every municipality on the island. An estimated 187,000 people took to the streets calling for the fall of the Castro regime, prompting a wave of violent repression that has, in turn, greatly fueled voluntary emigration and regime-imposed exile for dissidents.