{"id":1680,"date":"2026-05-25T13:03:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1680"},"modified":"2026-05-25T13:03:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:03:58","slug":"south-florida-native-marco-rubio-moves-closer-to-decades-long-goal-of-transforming-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=1680","title":{"rendered":"South Florida native Marco Rubio moves closer to decades-long goal of transforming Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s parents emigrated from Cuba to the United States three years before Fidel Castro seized power through a communist revolution in 1959.<\/p>\n

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They were looking for economic opportunities. Rubio\u2019s father, Mario, eventually found work in Florida as a bartender, and his mother, Oriales, as a hotel maid, cashier and Kmart stock clerk.<\/p>\n

Yet, Marco Rubio talks about dismantling the communist government with the same passion that galvanizes many political exiles who left the island after the revolution. The indictment of Ra\u00fal Castro, 94, the patriarch of the family, is in line with Rubio\u2019s enduring mission, and it is just the latest in a series of efforts by the U.S. government to weaken Havana that Rubio has supported or engineered.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump is offering a new path between the U.S. and a new Cuba,\u201d Rubio said in a brief video address Wednesday that was directed at the Cuban people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil blockade by the U.S.,\u201d Rubio said in Spanish. \u201cThe real reason you don\u2019t have electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within President Donald Trump\u2019s Cabinet, Rubio\u2019s focus on Cuba stands out, but it is par for the course in the Cuban American milieu of South Florida. There, fiery anti-communist politics are the norm, and casual banter can revolve around the ways in which the United States might one day oust the leaders in Havana.<\/p>\n

\u201cRubio emerges out of the anti-Cuban politics of Miami,\u201d Benjamin J. Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, told The New York Times in December.<\/p>\n

Rhodes managed Obama\u2019s policy of trying to restore, to a degree, U.S. economic and diplomatic ties with Cuba. Rhodes discussed the policy at the time with Rubio, who was a U.S. senator representing Florida.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe\u2019s always been rooted in a regime-change policy toward Havana,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cIt\u2019s core to his identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubio was one of the architects of the Trump administration\u2019s military campaign against Venezuela, which resulted in U.S. forces seizing Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the country\u2019s leader, and bringing him to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges. In 2020, the Justice Department got a grand jury indictment against Maduro.<\/p>\n

The aggression against Venezuela was in part aimed at knocking down the pillars of Cuba\u2019s Communist government. Venezuela was the main supplier of oil for Cuba, and the Trump administration has pressured the country\u2019s new ruler, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, an ally of Maduro, to halt shipments to the island. As a result, Cuba\u2019s economy has come under greater strain than it has seen in decades.<\/p>\n

In 2019, during the first Trump administration\u2019s efforts to unseat Maduro by trying to encourage an uprising, Rubio told NPR that a weakened Cuba would be a welcome \u201cbyproduct\u201d of a change in Venezuela\u2019s government, even if it were not \u201cthe central rationale\u201d for pushing out Maduro. \u201cAnything that\u2019s bad for a communist dictatorship is something I support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Months ago, Rubio began speaking directly with Ra\u00fal Guillermo Rodr\u00edguez Castro, a grandson of Ra\u00fal Castro, to try to negotiate an economic opening with Cuba that would include some political concessions. U.S. officials were pushing in early March for the Castro family to remove President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel, which would allow the Trump administration to argue it had successfully engineered political change in Cuba, the Times reported.<\/p>\n

At the time, U.S. officials were willing to tolerate the Castros staying in power behind the scenes as long as they agreed to guide the country through economic changes pushed by the Trump administration. But U.S. officials have grown impatient with the slow pace of negotiations and what they see as stubbornness on the part of the Castro family.<\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the son of immigrants who left Cuba before the Castro revolution to look for economic opportunities. 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