Leaders of the Cuban opposition and Cuban exile were traveling in and out of the Manuel Artime theater with faces of happiness, following the “clear message” that US President Donald Trump sent today “to the regime of the Castro brothers “.
“President Trump has shown that in order to deal with the issue of Cuba there is no need to give humiliating concessions,” said Cuban opponent Jorge Luis García Pérez, “Antunez”, who was mentioned during the speech offered by the US president in the theater located in The neighborhood of Little Havana.
In a press conference following the president’s announcement, opposition and exile leaders agreed that the partial modifications announced today by the current administration to Obama’s policy are a “clear message” that “the US is with the Cuban people “.
“We have been denouncing this type of relationship that the United States Government reestablished with Cuba, to the point that the issue of human rights took second place,” said opposition Mota, husband of Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies’ movement. White.
Moya was referring to the policy developed after the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba, a process begun in 2014 under the administration of then-President Barack Obama, and which has since been heavily criticized for Cuban dissidents and exiles in Miami.
“From the beginning we said that the regime was treated as if it were a legitimate government,” said the opposition Antonio Rodiles, in reference to the process of normalization of relations between both countries, the same that, after today’s announcement, is modified and ” Puts in the position in which each political actor must be located “.
“Solidarity and steps forward must be with the Cuban people,” Rodiles added, in tune with Trump’s words, when he said that sanctions on the island should not be lifted “until political parties are legalized and free elections are held International supervision “.
The new US policy toward Cuba announced this afternoon is mainly aimed at stopping US businesses with Cuban military companies, the “backbone” of the regime, and to restrict visits to the island.
“You voted for me, and here I am as I promised, to be a voice against repression” that the Cuban people have suffered for almost six decades, Trump said during his presentation in the theater, in a message he gave in the yolk Of the taste to Cuban-American opponents and congressmen present at the event, like Mario Díaz-Balart.
“President Trump is not willing to accept tyrannies, dictatorships and narco-terrorists as normal,” Balart told reporters at the end of the ceremony.
He added that on this “new day” Trump has been on the side of those who “love freedom and not those who repress their peoples,” and that both in the streets of Havana and in Caracas (Venezuela) Know that the “president is with them”.
As every time Trump sets foot in Miami for a public event, there was no lack of sympathizers and detractors, although this time in a much smaller number and without any incident.
“Everything he promised in his campaign is fulfilling it, and he does not do it better because of the opposition,” Isabel Santiago, who was born in Cuba, told Efe, who bet on the outside of the theater with the name of one of the leaders of the Brigade 2506 of the Bay of Pigs, with the American flag and the well-known red campaign cap with the message “Make America Big Again”.
For the president of the Association of Veterans of Bay Cochinos (Brigade 2506), Humberto Díaz-Argüelles, Trump behaved “like a friend, like a Mr. President who has promised to continue fighting for Cuba”.
At the press conference, offered at the Miami Hispanic Cultural Arts Center, a few blocks from the Manuel Artime Theater, Diaz-Argüelles recalled the visit that the then candidate Trump made in October 2016 to the headquarters and at the same time museum of this association , In the neighborhood of Little Havana, and said that it was “a pleasure” to help him in his electoral campaign.
In turn, Silvia Iriondo, president of Mothers and Women Against Repression (MAR), stressed that Trump has put “above any other consideration the right to freedom and democracy of the Cuban people,” which “shook hands” At the same time as “depleting resources to the regime”.
During his speech in Miami, Trump acknowledged the dissidents and also alluded to the repression and violence of the Cuban regime with examples such as the death in 1996 of the four pilots of Brothers to the Rescue, with the presence of some of the relatives of the victims.
Miriam de la Peña, mother of Mario Manuel de la Peña, one of the pilots Brothers to the Rescue, said it was “comforting” to hear that the president
