One of the signatories, the six-time Grammy winner Arturo O’ Farrill.
Cuban Americans urge Biden to resume relations with Cuba
The Day
Jim Cason and David Brooks, correspondents
Washington and New York. A coalition of Cuban-American active and retired government officials, business leaders and politicians delivered a letter to the State Department and held a round of meetings with legislators with the purpose of urging Joe Biden’s government to resume the process of normalizing relations with Cuba initiated by the previous government of Barack Obama.
“We write to you as Cuban Americans and concerned American citizens who offered you our time, donated our resources, and voted for you in 2020,” wrote the signatories, who include the former vice president of the Hispanic Caucus of the Democratic National Committee (the Democratic Party’s top entity). Jorge Quintana, University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce, former Chief Financial Executive and New Jersey Transportation Treasurer Bill Viqueira, and six-time Grammy Award winner Arturo O’ Farrill, among others.
“We are collectively dismayed and disappointed by their indifference to the suffering of Cuban families both in Cuba and here in the United States,” they emphasize.
In the letter delivered today in a meeting with the Coordinator of Cuban Affairs at the State Department as well as with Democratic legislative leaders, the sponsors specifically requested that the Biden administration rescind the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism that even senior officials of the The government recognizes, privately, that it is unsustainable, as well as expanding efforts to support the growing private sector on the island.
The letter, coordinated by the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE), details the cost of the effects of the US blockade and also the feeling of betrayal by this government that the members of this group feel. “His campaign promise to undo the chaos left by the previous government for Cuban families was one of the main factors why many of us supported him,” says the group that includes more than 200 Cuban Americans who supported Biden in the election. 2020 presidential election along with about 30 Cuban-American-led organizations.
“We are extremely disappointed and horrified by his inaction, lack of courage and sensitivity to undo the drastic and baseless executive actions imposed by his predecessor. They cause serious damage to the people in Cuba as well as in the United States. With the stroke of a pen you could easily reverse these policies and end the pain and suffering.”
The signatories of the letter, which also include Hollywood executive and former member of the finance committee of the Democratic National Committee Andy Spahn, president and CEO of Fuego Enterprises Hugo Cancio, point out that the humanitarian crisis on the island caused due to US sanctions has contributed to the immigration crisis at the US border.
“Tens of thousands of Cubans have lost hope and have left their homeland in search of economic stability,” they write. “Those who remain in Cuba – including the growing private sector that your government claims to support – see their lives severely affected by these sanctions that you could easily reverse.”
The letter is also signed by former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America Fulton Armstrong, Washington-based Cuban-American lawyer José Pertierra, founder of the Center for Democracy in the Americas Sarah Stephens, and progressive businessman and Chief Executive of the Andy Shallal restaurant chain.
They conclude their message to Biden: “We need your courage to implement what a large part of the Cuban-American community, the overwhelming majority of American citizens and the world, believe is the right thing to do.”
Remove Cuba from terrorist list, request in letter to Biden
Washington, May 6 (Prensa Latina) With the request to remove Cuba from the list of sponsors of terrorism, a group of Cuban-Americans representing various organizations in the United States today delivered a letter addressed to President Joe Biden.
The letter also requested the president to lift the sanctions that weigh on the Cuban family, which have made life more difficult for the people in the Caribbean nation, subjected for more than six decades to a strict economic, commercial and financial blockade that has been maintained. Democratic and Republican governments over time.
Resume nonimmigrant visa processing at the US Embassy in Havana; further relaxing travel restrictions to facilitate exchanges between peoples and family reunification, as well as urging Biden to return to a path of normalization of relations, add to the exhortation.
The Alliance for Commitment and Respect of Cuba (ACERE), promoter of the initiative, said that more than 200 Cuban Americans who support President Biden and 30 organizations, along with concerned US citizens and civil society groups, were the ones who signed the letter.
According to surveys, the path of rapprochement enjoys broad support among a large majority of Cuban-American Democrats in Florida and an overwhelming majority of US citizens, ACERE stressed in a statement.
Signatories include former federal, state and local officials; academics and university administrators; business owners, executives and investors; lawyers; architects; doctors; scientists; educators; artists, musicians and filmmakers; administrators; social workers; veterans and other notable people.
The members of the group participated in a meeting with State Department officials “in which we expressed our disappointment and disgust with the Biden administration’s policies of economic asphyxiation towards the people of Cuba,” said activist Carlos Lazo on his social networks.
“The meeting, which lasted about two hours, took place in an atmosphere of respect and different topics were addressed in relation to the policy towards Cuba and the way in which it is punishing and suffocating the Cuban people,” stressed the resident professor at the city of Seattle, who leads the Bridges of Love movement.
This initiative joins other similar pushes that try to attract the attention of Biden, who during his electoral campaign in 2020 promised – and thus won the vote of many Cuban Americans – to change the failed policies of his predecessor in office, the Republican Donald Trump.
Trump reinserted Cuba into Washington’s unilateral list of state sponsors of terrorism on January 12, 2021, the last of his actions days before leaving office at the end of a mandate that was characterized by maximum pressure and the strengthening of the blockade. with 243 additional coercive measures against the island.
However, Biden still does not fulfill his promise. Almost four years after his victory at the polls and after assuming the reins of the Oval Office, he has not deviated from that line.