Sen. Marco Rubio says entertainers Beyonce and Jay-Z missed a chance while in Cuba to see firsthand the effects of political oppression. The Republican lawmaker from Florida calls their recent trip "hypocritical" and he takes issue with the U.S. government's approval of the visit as a cultural mission.
Rubio represents all that is wrong with US policy towards Cuba. Our policies are based on lies and cold war propaganda that is fuel by the rightwing Cubam emigrees living in South Florida. And this criticism comes from the Tea Party wannabe who distorts his own family's story when it comes to Cuba for his own political gain.
The WAPO carried this in 2011:
During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.
But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2.5 years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.
The supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year’s Senate election. Rubio — now considered a prospective 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate and a possible future presidential contender — mentions his parents in the second sentence of the official biography on his Senate Web site. It says that Mario and Oriales Rubio “came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” And the 40-year-old senator with the boyish smile and prom-king good looks has drawn on the power of that claim to entrance audiences captivated by the rhetorical skills of one of the more dynamic stump speakers in modern American politics.
And btw, what about that Batista guy that Castro et al overthrew? He was a dictator who took power twice by coup, who suspended the Constitution, who revoked civil liberties, who was a puppet for the sugar producers, casino owners and corporations doing business in Cuba and who led one of the most oppressive and corrupt regimes replete with public executions and torture. Excuse me if I bother to point out that your family and thousands of others now living in Miami and South Florida SUPPORTED that regime. Facts are inconvenient things. It is time to tell the more full story of what happened in Cuba and not just the PR that Cuban zealots spoon feed an ill-informed media and public.
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