Rubio Calls on Cubans to Reject Communist Leadership

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday appealed to the Cuban people to reject the country’s communist leadership as the former head of the country, Raul Castro, was indicted in the United States.

In a video message in Spanish, Rubio made a plea to the Cuban people through the Department of State’s social media channels that the United States isn’t responsible for recent electrical blackouts across the country and called on Cubans to create “a new Cuba” without the communist party.

“The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the U.S.,” he said. “As you know, better than anyone, you have been suffering from blackouts for years. The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”

He then accused Raul Castro, the brother of longtime Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, of founding a state-run company operated by the Cuban military that “has revenues three times greater than your current government’s budget” and effectively controls the Cuban economy.

Castro and the company “profit from hotels, construction, banks, stores, and even from the money your relatives send you from the U.S.,” Rubio said. “Everything, everything passes through their hands.”

“Instead of using the money to buy oil, like all other countries in the world, they depended on free oil from Hugo Chavez and Maduro to keep the money,” he said, referring to the former Venezuelan leaders, Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. “But now that the free oil has stopped coming, they buy fuel for their generators and their vehicles while the people are asked to sacrifice.”

Rubio’s message came on Cuban Independence Day, which marked the establishment of the Republic of Cuba to end the Spanish-American War and the U.S. occupation of the island in 1902.

Free markets and less state control “exists in the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and even just 90 miles away, in Florida,” he added. “If owning your own business and having the right to vote is possible around Cuba, why is it not possible for you in Cuba?”

In response, Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez criticized Rubio for his speech and said that the foreign aid recently offered by the U.S. government wasn’t rejected by the regime.

“He keeps talking about an aid package of 100 million dollars that Cuba has not rejected, but whose cynicism is evident to anyone in light of the devastating effect of the economic blockade and the energy stranglehold,” he wrote in a post on X, according to a translation.

The comment from the U.S. secretary came just hours before U.S. prosecutors unveiled an indictment against Raul Castro, 94, in connection with the Cuban military’s fatal downing of two planes roughly 30 years ago. The indictment was initially confirmed by FBI Director Kash Patel on social media.

Other than Castro, five others were charged “with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, two counts of destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder,” Patel wrote on X. He was charged in a federal court in South Florida, according to documents unsealed by a judge on May 20.

Earlier this year, Maduro was captured in a U.S. military raid in Venezuela and was taken back to the United States to face drug trafficking and other charges. The U.S. government has since started blocking oil tankers from heading to Cuba, which had relied heavily on oil from Venezuela and Mexico.