Cubans eager for Rubio’s nominationpublished at 00:13 Greenwich Mean Time

00:13 GMT

Will Grant
Correspondent in Mexico, Central America and Cuba

image source, Getty Images

If there’s one name the Cuban government — and Cubans in general — would least like to see nominated as President-elect Trump’s secretary of state, it’s Marco Rubio.

As Florida’s senator, he was Havana’s best daughter-in-law, perhaps the leading voice against engagement with Cuba in the final years of the Obama administration — which sought to normalize relations after six decades of hostilities.

After President Trump won in 2016, Rubio advocated reversing the policy, making it harder for Americans to visit the island and raising the US economic embargo to its harshest possible expression under the doctrine of maintaining “maximum pressure” on the communist regime. island.

Cuba is, of course, a unique personality for Rubio — while his parents immigrated to the U.S. before the Cuban Revolution came to power in 1959, his grandfather fled a few years later, forced into exile, while Fidel Castro took Cuba more into his arms. Soviet union. His grandfather had a great influence on the young Marco when he became politically aware.

Despite his popularity in Miami, most Cubans living on the island shudder to think what Rubio will have in store if he is confirmed as secretary of state. There are still a few places where sanctions could still be stepped up. Direct commercial flights to Cuba could be banned and diplomatic ties severed, closing the US Embassy in Havana.

One thing is clear: At a time when the island is suffering widespread blackouts and chronic shortages, Rubio is unlikely to extend any form of bailout to Cuba, but rather seek to further strangle the mainstay of its faltering economy, tourism.

For Cuba’s close socialist allies in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela and Nicaragua, it is also likely to be a period of greater hostility toward Washington over the next four years.