Rubio on senate floor on July 1, on cuban uprising.

9:02PM Jul 16, 2021

Speakers:

Keywords:

cuba

cubans

cuban regime

clear

fatherland

mass migration

people

regime

song

sanctions

happening

indignities

condemn

domino

tolerate

embargo

started

policy

tyranny

country

You don't have to even agree with anything I've said what you should agree with is that people everywhere in the world, including 90 miles from our shore should be allowed to go into the street, peacefully March, call for an end to dictatorship, and not have their head cracked open. By the way, no one in Cuba has guns it's up the military. So why are these repressive forces walking around with these rifles, and people getting shot. They're shooting people that literally are unarmed, should be able to do that and we should be clear, we should be clear in our language. We don't just condemn this tyranny, we condemn this communist, this Marxist, the Socialist tyranny, call it for what it is. Number two, we should make clear, nothing's going to change there's not gonna be any sanctions changed as a result of this. On the contrary, I hope the Obama, Biden administration will now announce they have finished a review of Cuba policy, and everything that's in place to staying in place. To the extent we change policy number three, I hope we make it a top priority to allow the people of Cuba to have free unfettered open Internet access, and the technology exists to do that with a satellite based system. We should put the best minds to work on getting that done because of the Cuban people have free and unfettered access to the internet, the first thing the regime shut down yesterday was the internet, they can communicate with each other, and they can receive information and communicate with the world 90 miles from our shores, we should be allowed to do that. Number four, for all of those who believe and have faith in the international community and I still hold hope that one day will work again. We're Spain. Where's the EU. We're all these countries that for years, have given cover and protection to the Cuban regime and condemned America, they should speak out clearly that what's happening there is wrong, that repression is wrong. We should rally that we should use our position of strength and power in the world in our influence in diplomatic circles to make that happen. And number five, I hope the president will be very clear with the regime in Cuba, that we will not tolerate them encouraging a mass migration event because I'm warning you, this is what they do. They've done it twice already, things get bad and they say, Look, if you don't lift sanctions. If you don't go back to the Obama era policies if you don't get rid of the embargo, it's inevitable, you're gonna have 50,000 people take to the ocean and head towards the United States, they've used that against us twice. They did it 94 They did it in 1980 with the Mariel Boatlift and President Biden needs to be clear, whether it's through private channels, or saying it publicly, be abundantly clear that we will treat the encouragement of mass migration towards the United States as a hostile action and act accordingly. That cannot, cannot be tolerated. I want to close with this. I recognize that most of the members of this chamber, most of the people here in Washington and frankly most of the people in the country. Do not pay attention to cube on a daily basis, I get it I really do. But if you're not following the issue of Cuba, you can be forgiven for not knowing that what we're seeing what we saw yesterday what we're seeing today what's happened recently. None of this was started by politicians, when started by me. When started by anybody in Miami or in Florida. When started by any think tank in Washington. Wasn't even started by political activists inside of Cuba, you know who started, what's happening in Cuba, artists, poets, songwriters, writers, actors, musicians, they're the ones who started the signing see the movement, because they came after them. And there's a song a lot of people don't realize that there was a song that came out earlier this year a song that by the way if you play in Cuba, you will go to jail. The songs name is papa, either. Now, the slogan of the Cuban regime is spot on what meaning fatherland, or death. This song played on that spot to get me that which means fatherland, and life instead of fatherland, or death. And the song is extraordinarily powerful because it was written by people and sang by people who have lived this reality and are living this reality so powerful as I said you'll go to jail and Cuba, you play it. What the song basically says is, why can't people think different ways, and not be treated as enemies. Why is life so good for party insiders in their families but there's no food for average Cubans. There's no seems to be no embargo for the Cuban regime and those and their family members. Why can you build luxury hotels, while their homes are crumbling. Why do they, why do Cubans have to suffer the indignities indignities a simple things like not being able to bathe with soap. Not being able to use deodorant not having toothpaste. Why do they have to deal with these indignities, and who also asks, Who told the regime that Cuba belongs to them and only that shouldn't belong to all 13 million Cubans.

The chorus are reversed in English and then I'll translate it in Spanish because it actually plays on the dominoes dominoes, a very popular game played by Cubans play by everybody but Cubans in particular. It's a big game there's just the course we'd Sacco, to sing Conway go over those Yasaka Whoa. So st Daniels truncal Domino, how it translates it's basically it says it's over. You're 59, meaning 1959 the year the Castro took over, but I have double tubes. And everyone knows that if in the domino game, if at the end of the chain. Both dominoes, no one has any dominoes left to put down the game gets locked, and you count numbers and count dots, you know, to see one. So it says it's over your 59. But I have double twos. It's over 60 years with the domino game locked up for us. Now, I know this is a very colloquial Cuban way of expressing it but this is incredibly powerful people in Cuba understood what that means. And that means that all this ideology all the stuff they talked about all these lies with the machine worked out really well for them. People don't believe it anymore and they're not afraid anymore. Meanwhile, their lives are ruined. Young people in Cuba, artists in Cuba, who realize that the only country on this planet where Cubans are not successful, is Cuba, and they're tired of it. And we should stand with them.