Florida Democrats lie low on Biden plan to lift some Cuba sanctions

Cuban activists and supporters march from the White House to the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., during a Cuban freedom rally on July 26, 2021. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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The Biden administration’s announcement that it will relax financial sanctions against Cuba to boost entrepreneurship on the island has raised howls of outrage among Florida congressional Republicans — and a loud cone of silence among Democrats.

The responses reflect how the momentum to reestablish ties between the U.S. and Cuba that climaxed when Barack Obama visited the island eight years ago has significantly cooled.

The Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said last Tuesday that it would allow independent private sector entrepreneurs who are Cuban nationals (known as “pymes,” from the Spanish “pequeña y mediana empresa”) to open, maintain, and remotely use U.S. bank accounts for the first time. They’ll also be able to make remote online transactions, and OFAC is allowing so-called “U-turn transactions,” where money is sent from one country to another but is routed through the United States.

While self-employed proprietorships — “cuentapropistas” — have been legal in Cuba for some years, State Department officials say that more than 11,000 private businesses are now registered in Cuba, with the private sector responsible for nearly one-third of all employment on the island.

The move was championed by Florida advocates who are promoting the private sector in Cuba.

“Anything that supports the creation of these independent micro-enterprises in Cuba is a good thing,” said Elio Muller, a Tampa-based Cuban native who served in the Bill Clinton administration. “These microenterprises are cropping up and growing and they are teaching people to be entrepreneurs and teaching people to be capitalists and self-sufficient, and all of that insures for the possibilities of a free and independent and market-economy Cuba.”

“It’s late in arriving but better late than never, and we in particular appreciate the very good work that the U.S. State Department has been doing in promoting the private sector in Cuba,” said former Miami-based Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia. “I think it’s a way to promote change that amplifies Cuba’s civil society and brings about a more vibrant opportunity for the Cuban people.”

GOP complaints

But South Florida Congressional Republicans immediately denounced the news.

“President Biden has just announced more concessions to the dictatorship in #Cuba,” said Congressman Carlos Giménez, who was born in Cuba but moved with his parents to Florida after the communist takeover, on X. “This move will only perpetuate the regime in power & prolong the suffering of the Cuban people. The blatant complicity with these dictators is dangerous & pathetic.”

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar questioned a State Department official during a congressional hearing in January about whether the Biden administration would open the U.S. banking system to independent Cuban businesses. She says last week’s announcement confirmed her suspicions.

“As I warned, the Biden Admin is now giving the ‘Cuban private sector’ access to the U.S. financial system,” she said last week on X. “This would make a mockery of American law, considering no progress has been made toward freedom on the Island and repression has intensified.”

“This move poses serious national security risks as it further enriches the regime in power,” added U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart on X. “The regime selectively issues licenses only to the so-called ‘entrepreneurs’ who support it. The regime’s licenses have created an incestuous network of Communist party members which, shamefully, the Biden Administration has decided to help with sanctions relief. Rewarding those close to the regime with extensions of credit or other financial support does nothing to help the Cuban people.”

The Biden administration strongly denies that allegation. A State Department official told reporters last week that the new definition of independent private sector entrepreneurship excludes prohibited officials of the Cuban government, as well as members of the Cuban military, intelligence, and security services.

‘Ostrich strategy’

Curiously absent from any public discussion about the policy change were Florida’s eight congressional Democrats, whose offices did not respond to inquiries by the Phoenix.

“Well, it’s kind of an ostrich strategy, right?” Florida International University political science professor Eduardo Gamarra said. “Maybe if I hide myself for a couple of reasons this will just blow over and people will forget about it.”

For years, Gamarra has documented how Republicans in South Florida have been successful in persuading Hispanic people to vote GOP by branding Democrats as “socialists” and comparing them unfavorably with the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan governments that many of those residents escaped from.

He says that while he’s personally “very comfortable” with the Biden administration’s announcement regarding Cuban independent businesses using U.S. banks, officials should have waited and made that announcement after this November’s election.

“It’s timing,” he said. “Look, I think our policy to Cuba has been wrong for 65 years, right?  I’ve written and said publicly that sanctions don’t work. They haven’t worked in most cases, but it’s the only policy we have. But you don’t choose to lift sanctions in the middle of a very, very contested election. I’ve worked in presidential campaigns all over Latin America, and it’s just insane to make these types of decisions in the middle of a hotly contested campaign, even if you just completely dismiss Florida.”

Call for monitoring

One Democrat who did comment publicly was former South Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the party’s leading candidate to challenge Rick Scott this fall for re-election to the U.S. Senate.

“In the fight against the brutal [Cuban President Miguel] Diaz-Canel communist dictatorship, it’s important for the United States to support legitimate private enterprises and small businesses while maintaining strong sanctions against the human rights abusing regime and their allies,” she said. “The Biden Administration must monitor the situation closely and ensure this isn’t being abused and put Cuba back on the list of countries not cooperating with anti-terrorism efforts.”

While there hasn’t been much daylight between Republican and Democratic members of Congress from South Florida when it comes to doing anything but supporting the 60-year-plus economic embargo against Cuba, the Tampa Bay area had been the locus pushing for stronger Cuban-American ties over the past decade.

Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor visited the island in 2013 and made headlines when she returned after she called for an end to the trade embargo . But a year ago, she acknowledged that she had curbed her enthusiasm about bringing the two governments together, telling the Phoenix that the Cuban government “has become even more repressive, and so my view has definitely changed from a time of being able to work with the Cuban government.” (Her office did not respond to inquiries about the banking announcement last week).

Castor made that comment after a group of GOP state lawmakers filed a resolution during last year’s legislative session calling out three Tampa elected officials who held a private meeting with Lianys Torres Rivera, Cuba’s ambassador to the United States. A Cuban exile and his son disrupted the meeting, one of whom videotaped the encounter (the resolution never came to the floor).

In the closing years of the Barack Obama administration, the U.S. enacted a number of policy changes affecting Cuba , specifically regarding travel and trade, calling the previous 50-plus years “a failed approach.” But a number of those policies were reversed when Donald Trump came into power in 2017 .

Patrick Manteiga, editor and publisher of La Gaceta, a Tampa-based weekly that boasts of being the country’s only tri-lingual newspaper, says he would expect that Democrats outside of South Florida to support the Biden administration’s move, but doesn’t think that it’s all that significant.

Terror list

“I see what Biden is doing and to me it really isn’t anything,” he said. “This is not helping the Cuban private businesses. This is not helping the Cuban economy, and Biden’s got to go a lot further than this. He really kind of promised that he would reverse Donald Trump’s policies, and he has yet to do that. And if you really want to help Cuba and the people of Cuba, he will take them off the list of terrorist nations.”

Former President Donald Trump’s State Department put Cuba on the short list of state sponsors of terrorism on Jan. 8, 2021 , just days before he left office, including it with North Korea, Iran, and Syria for “repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists.”

“People like me all assumed that the day after Joe Biden was sworn in, he was going to rescind all of that, and at the minimum bring us back to the days of Barack Obama, which is what he said in his campaign,” says Al Fox, founder of the Tampa-based Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation, which advocates for normalizing Cuban American relations. “And he’s done nothing.”

While Cuba does remain on that list of state sponsors of terrorism, the State Department did just remove Cuba from a short list of countries that are not fully cooperating with the U.S. on counterterrorism efforts. While that move may win applause from those pushing for the U.S. to liberalize relations with Cuba, Professor Gamarra, citing the current state of Florida politics, calls it a “misguided concession.”

“For many Cuban Americans, this move undermines their painful history and struggles against a regime they view as oppressive and terroristic,” he wrote on his blog . “This perception drives a wedge deeper between the Democratic Party and Cuban Americans, a key voter base that remains skeptical of any engagement with the Cuban regime.”

Meanwhile, former Congressman Joe Garcia says it’s now up to the Cuban government to reciprocate.

“Cuba has hundreds of political prisoners who are still in jail,” he said.

“A first step towards welcoming these new moves by the Biden administration would be the release of some of these political prisoners. Which, beyond the merits of whether they’re political prisoners or not, they are damaging Cuba’s ability to project itself and get its message out. And the faster they move to solve that damaging reality, the faster and quicker those of us who want to find ways to empower Cuban civil society and better the nation of Cuba, will be able to work and be able to achieve things.”

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