Rubio betrays MAGA on Cuba
Let the people declare, “Up with MAGA! Down with Rubio!”
In recent weeks, I have been insisting that the policy of the second Trump administration with respect to Cuba had not yet been defined, and that we should not rush to conclusions. I was aware that when Marco Rubio was designated by Donald Trump to be Secretary of State, Rubio, a strong anti-Cuba advocate, used Trump’s recent slogan of “peace through strength,” which emphasizes the maintenance of a strong military as a deterrent, avoiding costly endless wars and involvements in the affairs of other nations. I took note of the fact that Trump in recent months has not been proposing the continuation of unconventional wars against countries, like Cuba, which insist upon their sovereignty. I considered Trump’s executive order, emitted without rationale, rescinding Biden’s executive order removing Cuba from the spurious list of states that sponsor terrorism, emitted just a week before, to be more a reflection of the game of executive orders and pardons between Biden and Trump rather than the formulation of a policy of the second Trump administration with respect to Cuba. And I took into consideration that the political situation today is much different from the situation when the first Trump administration announced measures designed to intensify the blockade, including the fact that Trump has more support today from various sectors, and he may no longer need the political support of anti-Cuba fanatics who are out of sync with the sentiments of the people. And I took into account that Trump, when he began his first presidential run in 2016, had advocated for commerce with Cuba, reflecting the fact that Trump is a businessman who applies a business model to international relations. Trump would much prefer making a deal with a foreign head of state over sending the marines.
The policy of Trump 2.0 with respect to Cuba is now beginning to emerge. On January 31, 2025, the U.S. Department of State emitted a press release that announced its communication to the Congress of its reactivation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Law of 1996, as well as its restitution of its List of Restricted Cuban Entities, with which U.S. entities and persons are prohibited from having transactions. The measures, combined with the inclusion of Cuba on the spurious list of nations that sponsor terrorism, are central to the intensification of the blockade since 2017, which has produced an economic crisis (but not a political crisis) in Cuba.
On February 1, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded. It issued a Declaration noting that from 1996 to 2019 all U.S. presidents had suspended the application of Title III, due to their recognition that it contravenes international law and the sovereignty of third countries. It further observed that the implementation of Title III since the third year of the first Trump administration has generated legally questionable and possibly unconstitutional civil demands against U.S. companies, which have forced them to spend money and time to defend themselves. The Cuban Declaration asserts that such measures have nothing to do with defending the national interests of the United States, and they go against the desire of many U.S. companies to do business with Cuba. Furthermore, it maintains that such measures are violations of international law, contravening rules of trade and international economic relations.
The Declaration of the Cuban Ministry reminds the U.S. government that Cuba has initiated civil demands against the United States for economic damages caused by the U.S. economic blockade. And it reaffirms Cuba’s willingness to find a solution to mutual claims and compensation.1
I fully support the Cuban Declaration. At the same time, I would like to put forth a critique from a different perspective. I maintain that, with the January 31 press release, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has violated the principles of the MAGA movement.
In its current stage, the MAGA movement gives highest priority to increasing American productivity and revitalizing American industry, which would benefit American workers. The core of the MAGA movement is populist nationalism, which involves preserving and restoring the competitive advantage of the U.S. economy vis-à-vis emerging powers like China, but also ensuring that the little guy, and not merely corporations, benefit from the revitalization (see “Steve Bannon on ‘Broligarchs’ vs. Populism,” an interview by Ross Douthat in The New York Times, January 31, 2025). Populist nationalism involves reversing the flow of high-value manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere, and ending the importation of skilled high-tech labor from other countries, who are willing to work for one-third less than similarly skilled American citizens. Populist nationalism proposes an industrial economic policy that defends American interests and American workers first. Populist nationalism involves eliminating unnecessary restrictions on the production of oil and gas, in order to strengthen the national economy (see “Trump’s economic plan for America: A non-imperialist proposal for strengthening the national economy,” January 24, 2025). It includes a commitment to middle-class business entrepreneurship as against concentrated corporate power, as the best way to promote technological creativity. It believes in utilizing tax incentives to encourage large corporations to produce and distribute in ways that are consistent with national priorities, which ought to be defined through extensive public debate. Trump’s controversial comments with respect to Greenland and the Panama Canal have been widely misinterpreted as having imperialist objectives, rather than as an expression of legitimate issues from the point of view of the U.S. need to defend its economic interests and its national economy, in response to its decades-long economic decline relative to other nations, due to the unwillingness of the U.S. political establishment to defend and promote national manufacturing.
There has been in the MAGA movement during the past year very little mention of the need to carry forward unconventional war against nations (like Cuba and Venezuela) that insist on their sovereignty, which was initiated in the second Obama administration, intensified during the first Trump administration, and continued during the Biden administration. The 2024 Republican Party Platform makes no mention of the unconventional war, nor does it mention Cuba. The Platform advocates the prevention of war through military strength, noting that “war breeds inflation while geopolitical stability brings price stability.”
In fact, the unconventional war against the disobedient nations of the neocolonial world order is inconsistent with the MAGA proposal to reinvigorate American national industry. In the case of Cuba, restrictions against commerce with Cuba deprive the U.S. economy of a market for the goods and services produced and created by the U.S. national industrial, agricultural, high-tech, and service industries. And they deprive American consumers of access to Cuban pharmaceutical products and (less expensive) Cuban medical care, sectors in which Cuba has emerged as a world class producer and provider, in spite of its small size and in spite of more than six decades of an economic blockade. Mutually beneficial trade between the USA and Cuba would benefit the American economy, and it would involve absolutely no threat to the American economy or American national interests, as Fidel stressed during his extensive historic visit to the United States in 1959, following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
In spite of the State Department’s self-destructive approach to Cuba, I maintain that the MAGA movement holds promise and potential for saving America from its present condition of economic, political, and moral decadence. I have in recent commentaries defended the reasonableness of MAGA’s emphasis on revitalizing American productivity, through unleashing the nation’s energy production and developing mutually beneficial trade with other nations; on controlling and regulating immigration, in accordance with the right and duty of all States; and on replacing DEI with merit-based evaluation, in accordance with the historic demand of the African-American movement of 1930 to 1965.
“Trump’s economic plan for America: A non-imperialist proposal for strengthening the national economy,” January 24, 2025
“Unregulated & uncontrolled immigration: Trump seeks to rectify a historic crime of the political establishment,” January 28, 2025
“The national turn against DEI: Renewing the progressive concept of equal opportunity for all,” January 31, 2025
The world should not view Trump’s use of tariffs and threats of tariffs as an indication of an imperialist intention. Nations have the right to enact tariffs to protect their national economies. In fact, such protection was a key component of the economic policies of the nations of the Third World project of the 1960s and 1970s, before they were cast aside by neoliberalism and its false, imperialist notion of “free trade.”
In addition, the world should not misinterpret Trump’s aggressive style. Trump is moving with decisiveness and energy not against the legitimate claims of the nations of the Global South and East, but against the American political establishment, which has permitted trade agreements and bilateral forms of commerce that have been detrimental to the U.S. economy. His righteous anger is directed towards the political establishment.
Trump speaks in the name of the people of a once proud and powerful nation, admired at one time throughout the world in spite of its social sins, but now has been reduced to decadence by decades of unpatriotic indifference on the part of the corporate elite and the political establishment. If sometimes Trump is angry, it is because we are all disgusted and angry. But we are not angry with the peoples of the world. We are angry with those who pretended to lead us, but instead lied to us and betrayed us.
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Trump’s Secretary of State
Marco Rubio was born in Miami in 1971, the son of immigrants who had migrated from Cuba in 1956, during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. During his career in politics, Rubio made public statements to the effect that his parents were forced to leave Cuba in 1959, following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The Washington Post exposed these statements as false in 1971, inasmuch as Rubio’s parents left Cuba in 1956, and the Revolution came to power on January 1, 1959. When this contradiction came to light, Rubio stated that it was not his intention to embellish the family story. His statements were based on family lore, and he now fined-tuned the story, stating that his parents had intended to return to Cuba, and even began to implement the return of the family to their native land, but did not do so because of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
I have no difficulty in accepting Rubio’s word on this, and there is confirming evidence for the revised story. But the incident underscores the embellishments of Cubans who left Cuba during that period, some of whom have built careers on such false and exaggerated claims. In fact, Rubio’s family chose to leave Cuba; they were not forced to leave. The only Cubans who were forced to flee were those who faced charges of acts of corruption or brutality committed during the Batista dictatorship, who fled to escape punishment for their crimes, constructing a false story to present themselves as victims rather than criminals. Even the owners of big Cuban industrial enterprises were not forced to leave. The initial intention of the Cuban Revolutionary Government was that the Cuban figurehead bourgeoisie, subordinated to U.S. interests, would convert itself into an independent national bourgeoisie allied with the Cuban Revolution. But the members of this class chose instead to relocate to Miami and to become the leading force in the U.S. project of regime change. (See “In tribute to the Cuban Revolution: Sixty-six years of socialist construction,” December 31, 2024).
Rubio has apparently decided to continue to invoke the false émigré narrative with respect to Cuba in his new role of U.S. Secretary of State, in spite of the fact that the narrative no longer has functionality, given the rise of the MAGA movement and its emphasis on defending national security through the development of the productive forces of the nation. Rubio either has not arrived to the political maturity to discern that the political culture of his family and his youth is rooted in a false narrative with respect to Cuba; or he is aware that the narrative is false, and he cynically decides to draw upon it for his own political purposes.
False narratives have no place in the MAGA movement, which rejects post-modern epistemological assumptions that permit and foster the construction of narratives based in personal subjectivities and group interests. The MAGA movement is based on seeking and speaking the truth against mere appearances and false claims, a fact that is obscured by the legacy media’s persistent characterization of MAGA truth-speaking as disinformation.
Truth is attained through dialogue across ideological, political, racial and ethnic, class, cultural, and civilizational differences, a dialogue rooted in critically reflective listening to the other. The quest for truth has to occur in a context based, on the one hand, in reasoned analysis and empirical observation, and on the other hand, in the revelations of God, revealed through the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; it must occur, in other words, in the context of the cultural heritage of humanity.
As for Mr. Trump, it is said of him that he listens to everyone, gives consideration to what is said, and decides. This is a virtue. But in the case of Marco Rubio, Trump is listening to a man whose understanding of Cuba remains trapped in a false narrative.
I say, “Up with MAGA! Down with Rubio!”
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Excerpts from the February 1, 2025, Declaration of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs follow.
“The objective of the measures is to intimidate foreign investors and prevent them from contributing to Cuba's economic development and the well-being of Cubans, by means of the express threat of being sued in U.S. courts. It is also to close all sources of external income to the Cuban economy; to criminally sabotage the ability of all economic actors, public and private, to provide goods and services; and to further deteriorate the living standards of the population affected by the blockade and the additional measures imposed during Trump's first term, to create social exacerbation and destabilization, and to try to achieve the often dreamed of and never attained purpose of overthrowing the Revolution for purposes of domination and chastisement.
. . . . . . . . .
“Since the adoption of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 and until 2019, all U.S. presidents, including Trump in the first two years of his previous term, made use of their executive power to suspend the application of Title III every six months, recognizing that it contravenes international law and the sovereignty of other States. In addition, because they understood that its application would generate insurmountable obstacles to any prospect of settlement of claims and compensation to Americans whose properties were legitimately nationalized following the triumph of the Revolution.
“As a result [of the first Trump administration’s application of Title III], approximately forty-five lawsuits have been filed in the courts since 2019, primarily against U.S. companies, which have had to spend money, time and energy to defend themselves against what experts consider a legal anomaly, with aspects that would qualify it as unconstitutional. Among the most significant of the irregularities, Title III extends its reach to owners who were not U.S. citizens at the time of the nationalizations and whose alleged ownership has not been certified by anyone.
“Such measures have nothing to do with the national interests of the United States, or the desires of a large part of the business community in that country who wish to participate in the Cuban economy. On the contrary, it is linked to the outdated desires of the political heirs of the dictator Fulgencio Batista to reconquer Cuba.
“It is a demonstration of the corrupt nature with which that government operates in general and, specifically, of its objective of economically asphyxiating Cuba, causing harm to our people, with the intention that we renounce our sovereignty, the attainment of which has cost so many years, efforts and lives.
“With the reactivation of Title III, the application of the Helms-Burton Act is once again completed in its entirety, distinguished by its extreme extraterritorial scope and by its violation of the norms and principles of International Law, contravening the rules of trade and international economic relations. It is injurious to the sovereignty of other States, mainly because its provisions affect companies and persons established in their territories. It has been broadly, consistently and almost unanimously rejected by the international community in the United Nations, specialized international organizations, and regional organizations. Several countries have national laws to deal with the extraterritorial effects of this law.
“The Government of Cuba reiterates the postulates of the Law for the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty (Law No. 80) and recalls the decision of the People's Provincial Court of Havana, on 2 November 1999, to declare the civil demand [by the Cuban people] against the Government of the United States for Human Damages admissible, ordering it to compensate the Cuban people in the amount of 181 billion dollars. Subsequently, on 5 May 2000, the Court determined the Economic Damages caused to Cuba and ordered compensation to Cuba in the amount of 121 billion dollars.
“Cuba has reiterated its willingness to find a solution to the mutual claims and compensation. The Cuban nationalizations were carried out under the protection of the law, in strict compliance with the Constitution of our country and in accordance with international law. All nationalizations contemplated fair and adequate compensation processes, which the U.S. government refused to consider. Cuba reached and honored global compensation agreements with other nations that today invest in our country, such as Spain, Switzerland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.
“Similarly, the Cuban government holds the U.S. government responsible for the immediate consequences of the new measure against the right of Cuban émigrés to send remittances and help to their relatives, who already are suffering much because of the intensified siege resulting from the unjust and fraudulent inclusion of Cuba on the list of alleged State sponsors of terrorism.
“Cuba strongly, firmly and categorically rejects these decisions. It interprets them as a new hostile and arrogant act. And Cuba repudiates the disrespectful and slanderous language of the State Department's press release, full of lies to justify the unjustifiable.
“No one will be fooled by their false pretexts to try to justify these and future outrages. They will only succeed in reinforcing the isolation and universal rejection of the shameful abuse of the U.S. governments against Cuba and its people.
“We call on the international community to denounce the press release and to accompany our people in the face of the new and dangerous onslaught of aggression that has just begun. They will do much damage with their murderous and cowardly plans and measures, but they will never achieve their main objective of bringing Cuba to its knees in order to subjugate it.
“Cuba will overcome!”