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Vito Echevarría

Vito Echevarría

Photo: Abel Basquiat

Trump´s bankrupt Cuba policy

After months of waiting, Cuba observers finally heard from Trump in mid-June on his policy with Havana. During his presidential campaign, Trump flip-flopped from being “OK” with former president Obama’s engagement policy with Cuba to aligning himself with far-right-wing Miami Cuban interests (who, despite their 50-year failure in changing the regime in Havana, still want to maintain a Cold War policy of conflict with the Cuban government). When Trump flew to Miami recently to announce, in front of an auditorium filled with conservative Cuban exile voters, his partial reversal of Obama’s rapprochement with Havana, some observers wondered why he openly aligned himself with Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (who represent this shrinking portion of the Miami Cuban community). Trump claimed that he was repaying that community for its “support” of his presidential race against Hillary Clinton. The problem with that explanation is that he lost Miami-Dade County (the district with the largest concentration of Cuban-Americans in Florida) --by a wide margin-- to Hillary. According to Politico.com, 63.7% of Miami-Dade voters (where one out of three voters is Cuban-American) went for Hillary, as opposed to just 34.1%, which went for Trump). No doubt, Trump attracted support from far-right-wing elements...