By Johana Tablada on February 18, 2025
Mauricio Claver-Carone. Foto: Gabriel Aponte/Getty Images.
Mauricio Claver Carone, the special envoy for Latin America appointed by President Trump and under the orders of the now infamous Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is trying to scare Cuba and its neighbors into submission by claiming, once again, that this time it is true that the Revolution has only a few days left and that the US government will do everything possible to accelerate this process.
He talks about “creative” measures and actions. He avoids listing them, but his allies in Florida are promoting an end to flights and family visits to Cuba with all kinds of lies and threats that discriminate against Cuban emigration (in truth they want to remove the flights to provoke more shortages, destabilization and, if possible, a migration crisis). Let’s take a look at the recent past.
Claver Carone was, together with Marco Rubio, the architect and executioner who, from the White House, designed and implemented in a couple of years (summer 2018 to January 2021) more than 200 measures in addition to the blockade with the aim of causing Cuba to collapse.
It did not achieve its main objective, but it imposed a brutal setback in bilateral relations and in the standard of living of Cubans, causing gratuitous and undeserved enormous suffering that still endures and the largest migratory flow in our history.
Now they come and say that Cuba is playing with the immigration issue, that we are enemies of humanity and a threat …
This man is dangerous and well-known. He has returned to the government, after being expelled for corruption from the post of President of the Inter-American Development Bank. That was a position that Trump gave him as a reward when he was coming to the end of his first term.
Previously, that position had always gone to a prestigious figure from Latin America, for reasons of balance given that the Bank’s headquarters are in Washington DC.
A few days before Biden’s symbolic and belated decision on January 14, universally acclaimed as fair, to exclude Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Claver Carone arrogantly responded to the New York Times by saying that… “He who laughs last laughs best” and promised worse measures as soon as the president-elect took office.
And so it goes. The recent activity of the US embassy is also embarrassing, dedicated to pleasing the most abusive, lying and reactionary anti-Cuban sectors in order to ingratiate itself with the new heads of diplomacy at the State Department with open acts of interference that they would not allow foreign governments to carry out in their country. Meanwhile, I invite you to see on social media how ours in Washington is dedicated to promoting better ties between the two countries.
According to them, their siege measures bear no responsibility for our shortcomings. The truth is that they did not let a single day go by with Trump in office before starting to pull the strings of pressure and economic warfare.
If Cuba was already going to fall soon, why the rush to rectify Biden’s two measures of flexibility within a large package of decrees?
The thing is, they did it without even documenting the decision review process. Only 23 lawmakers criticized the decision to exclude Cuba from the infamous list. None, apart from the usual suspects, applauded the reversal of the measure.
They also know that in just three months it would be clear that we are right in saying how much the fraudulent inclusion on the terrorist list is hurting Cubans (more tourists would come very soon, more business, fewer people would leave, there would be some relief from the torment applied by them and Biden).
Curiously and without fanfare, hiding their actions from the public eye, they have already done a little more with the measure of putting an end to transparent channels of remittances, and note that it was very little what they failed to do the previous time. Except for the breaking of diplomatic relations and the naval blockade of Cuba, which they proposed a thousand times, they managed to get almost everything else out of the Trump administration, for whom Cuba was not and is not a priority but who wants to please politicians of Cuban origin who serve him best even though they have deceived him time and time again.
So, those measures, the vast majority of which Biden applied with identical purposes and a high human cost for our people and their emigration, weakened us, pushed hundreds of thousands to emigrate but they have not overthrown the Revolution or bent the will of Cubans in the face of the moral shortness of the adversary.
Who can guarantee that by doing the same they will achieve different results? Nobody. They won’t.
I don’t believe that the Dominican Republic or any other neighboring country would be able to withstand the kind of pressure that this gentleman has implemented and designed with the help of the other corrupt Marco Rubio.
We have all seen with deserved sensitivity how everyone in the countries of the region such as Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Canada, has been concerned about the threat of coercive measures or the adjustment of commercial tariffs, due to the large estimated losses.
That doesn’t even represent 2 percent of what the US already does to Cuba.
Let’s take an example that nobody would want to be true:
Imagine that tomorrow the Dominican Republic unjustly finds itself on the short list of state sponsors of terrorism and the millions of Europeans who visit it lose the right to travel to the US with the convenient remote online ESTA visa system. That is going to radically reduce tourism.
And so it could take two hours to list, for other countries, other “creative” measures by Rubio and Carone that are already in force, such as the medieval persecution of fuel (more than 50 ships punished worldwide), the threats to governments to suspend medical cooperation agreements that allow foreign currency to enter Cuba’s public health system, and a very long list that continues with the dozens of additional Trump measures and those of the blockade.
If only we could export rum, tobacco, coconut, coffee, biotechnological products to the United States, cultural shows and much more with tariffs.
It hurts and it is regrettable that thanks to the ambitions and thirst for retribution and revenge of men without integrity, dishonest and of low morals, the Cuban people and other peoples of the region must suffer. But love conquers hate.
They will not get away with their lies, their little campaigns of fear and more measures, their hard power or their soft power.
Not even the cowardice of those who fear them and the bad feelings of those who support them and enjoy the torment of seeing their own people suffer will be able to erase the stature of Cuba and its people.
In their contempt and mistreatment of Cuba and the countries of the region they have had ephemeral victories but they have already failed before in a strident manner and they will fail again. Rubio and Carone have already begun to make themselves look foolish with their blackmail of Panama, Colombia and Venezuela. Carone said he didn’t want Venezuela’s oil when Grennel’s plane landed to meet with Maduro and Chevron’s license was approved, Rubio returned from Panama saying the ships wouldn’t pay and then it turned out they didn’t and with Colombia, Mexico and Canada they had to swallow their measures in hours. Trump might not be very happy soon. Any day now he will discover that the plan they have proposed for Cuba is another scam that could increase emigration.
They made a big mistake when they sold Trump the proposal that he recognize Guaidó to overthrow President Maduro. They blamed Cuba for their lie and botch job by inventing the nonexistent 30,000 Cuban troops in Venezuela that prevented the success of the coup d’état so as not to recognize that the Bolivarian Revolution did have the support of the people and the military.
Carone is a psychopath, intelligent but a psychopath sick with hatred and discredited in this hemisphere for his responsibility in Argentina’s multi-million dollar debt to the IMF (he also worked there for a time, his corrupt stint at the Inter-American Development Bank which expelled him and his determination and track record of imposing obstacles to anything that improves Cuba’s relations with the US).
Faced with these criminal types, allies of the most reactionary sectors of the US and the region, Cuba and its people have the reserves to confront them and prevail.
They are going to be left wanting again. Of course we can and should do things much better at home and we will do so, but it is unfair to agree with those who want to hold Cuba responsible for the impact of such an outrage. Resisting has already been quite a feat.
They are willing to do anything and everything to try to give Cuba as a trophy to their master and that is why there is no other option but to unite, to do what depends on us and to work hard to move forward knowing that we will say goodbye to them and here we will be fighting for the dreams of a better country, without blockade or interference.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans want normalization of relations with Cuba, and the world already knows how it has been divided with an overwhelming all against two. I’ll leave you with this and the interview with the guy who scares people.
Johana Tablada is the Deputy Director General of the United States Directorate of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Graduate of the Raúl Roa Higher Institute of International Relations.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English