cuban-am

maybe belated

MADURO VENEZ EZ FAST BUT IRAN NOT

Trump’s Cuban base is clamoring for regime change – and Republicans are nervous - Alternet.org

AN 5 26

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AN 10 25

Cuba's foreign minister not only accused Secretary of State Marco Rubioof being corrupt, but he also said the Cuban American "knows nothing about Cuba," The Hill reports.

In an interview with the Associated Press Wednesday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said Rubio, whose parents are Cuban immigrants, said he has made it his mission to carry out a "maximum pressure" campaign against the island nation.

"There is a very personal and corrupt agenda that he is carrying out, which seems to be sacrificing the national interests of the U.S. in order to advance this very extremist approach," Rodríguez Parrilla told the AP.

Since taking office, the Trump administration redesignated Cubaas a state sponsor of terrorism, days after former President Joe Biden lifted that designation before the end of his term. Trump has also placed new restrictions on Cuban tourists and revoked legal protected status that shielded approximately 300,000 Cubans in the U.S. from deportation.

Despite all that, Cuba's top foreign diplomat since 2009 says he doesn't blame Trump, but, rather, Rubio.

IFrame Content

"Trump 'portrays himself as an advocate of peace,' Rodríguez Parrilla said, but Rubio “promotes the use of force or the threat to use force as an everyday, customary tool.”

The foreign ambassador then cut into Rubio's Cuban American heritage, saying, “The current secretary of state was not born in Cuba, has never been to Cuba, and knows nothing about Cuba."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-won-florida-after-running-this-false-ad-tying-biden-to-venezuelan-socialists/

In Florida, where President Donald Trump gained crucial support among Latino voters, his campaign ran a in Spanish making the explosive — and false — claim that Venezuela's ruling clique was backing Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

YouTube showed the ad more than 100,000 times in Florida in the eight days leading up to the election, even after The Associated Press published a fact-check debunking the Trump campaign's claim. Actually, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed opposition to both presidential candidates.

The video was part of a broader Trump campaign strategy in heavily Latino South Florida that sought to tie Biden to Socialist leaders like Maduro and the late Cuban President Fidel Castro. Trump won Florida by about 375,000 votes, the largest margin in a presidential election there since 1988. He carried about 55% of the Cuban American vote, according to exit polls by NBC News.

“Latinos who live here in the U.S. have left socialist or communist regimes," said Diego Scharifker, a Venezuelan American lawyer, former city councilor in Caracas and co-founder of the pro-Biden group Venezolanos Con Biden. “There is of course a big impact or fear or scarring in the Latino community in the U.S. from communism. Trump with his false accusations and false information was fearmongering and playing on the pain to promote his agenda."

The ad illustrates gaps in the policing of misinformation by Google, which owns YouTube. While Google nominally prohibits all false claims in advertising, it rarely takes down political ads. In addition, shortcomings in its transparency tools make it harder for watchdogs and fact-checkers to scrutinize ads.

Google's political ad rules are “trying to have it both ways" with respect to fact-checking, said Bridget Barrett, a political communication researcher at the University of North Carolina. “In reality, basically everything stands." Google sees claims like the one about Maduro as being “within the public arena that should be contested by Biden's campaign or fact-checked by journalists," Barrett added.

YouTube approves ads by both human and machine review. Its policies prohibit any advertiser from making “a false claim — whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died."

Charlotte Smith, a company spokeswoman, told ProPublica in an email that “we don't make any special exceptions for politicians." Nevertheless, YouTube takes down only a “very limited" number of political ads making “demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine trust in democratic or electoral processes," she said.

The Trump campaign ad “doesn't meet that bar," she said. “This video does not violate our policies. ... Political ads are known for being hyperbolic, and we're not going to attempt to adjudicate every claim or counterclaim."

Other platforms are at least somewhat more restrictive.While Facebook doesn't fact-check campaign ads, it banned new ones within a week of the election. (The Trump ad does not appear to have run on Facebook, according to its ad library. If it had, the ban may not have applied to it, because it began running on YouTube on Oct. 26, eight days before the Nov. 3 election.) Facebook's fact-checking partners do vet ads by political action committees and other third-party groups, some of which get removed.Twitter banned all political advertising. Although broadcast television stations aren't allowed to choose candidate ads by content, cable networks can, and sometimes do, reject ads. The Trump ad didn't appear on TV, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad-tracking firm.

The Trump campaign saw YouTube as a key to its strategy, according to a Politico report in September. It ran more than 18,000 video ads on YouTube this year. The campaign spent $106 million, including $37.2 million in the last month of the campaign, on Google's platform, including both YouTube ads and Google search ads.

The questionable video begins by describing Biden as “the candidate of Chavismo," referring to the brand of socialism associated with Hugo Chávez, the late leader of Venezuela, and Maduro's government. It then shows Diosdado Cabello, a Maduro ally and Venezuela's second-most powerful politician, saying on his television program that the “brisa Bolivariana," or the “Bolivarian breeze" of Latin American socialism, “is blowing, blowing, blowing, blowing. ... Let's see what happens. Maybe the Bolivarian breeze will reach the United States. In how much time? In 13 days until the elections." The term “Bolivarian" is an allusion to Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century revolutionary, claimed as an inspiration for many Latin American socialist movements.

Then the text on the screen reiterates that “the Chavistas" — the political party that controls Venezuela — “want Joe Biden to win." The video concludes with a statement that it was paid by the Trump campaign and Trump saying that he approved the message.

There's little doubt that the relationship between the Trump administration and the Maduro government is tense. Trump has imposed sanctions on Venezuela and on Maduro and Cabello personally. The U.S. government indicted both Maduro and Cabello on narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges in March. Venezuelan state-run television has struck a “completely anti-Trump" tone, said Daniel Acosta-Ramos, an investigative researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that tracks misinformation and an Electionland partner.

Yet Maduro said in late September that he didn't care who was elected. “If Trump wins the elections, we will confront him and defeat him, and if Biden wins, we'll confront him and defeat him too," he said. An AP fact-check of a video that resembles the one in the Trump campaign ad concluded that neither Biden nor Maduro “has declared that there is any kind of affinity between them or between their national projects."

In the television segment from which Cabello's “Bolivarian breeze" remark was clipped, he didn't explicitly mention Trump, Biden or the Democratic or Republican parties. While the remark could be interpreted as hoping that Biden would be elected and promote the agenda of his party's progressive wing, Cabello has a reputation for being a provocateur and saying unclear things on purpose, according to Acosta-Ramos. “That ambiguity creates an environment ripe for misinfo," he said.

The ad, Acosta-Ramos said, was “micro-targeted for people who know what the 'brisa Bolivariana' means. Not just Venezuelans, but also Cubans and Colombians."

Other YouTube ads from the Trump campaign reinforced the false message. They showed clips of Maduro referring to Biden as “Comrade Biden" in a 2015 speech. Although it was only a passing reference, and Maduro accused Biden shortly afterward of plotting to overthrow him, Donald Trump Jr. framed it as evidence that Biden was weak on socialism.

The Trump campaign's official bilingual Twitter account also claimed that Maduro's regime supported Biden. A tweet from President Trump called Biden a “PUPPET of CASTRO-CHAVISTAS." Trump ads on Facebook called Biden a “socialist" and pictured him with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom refer to themselves as democratic socialists.

“There was a concerted effort by the Trump campaign and their allies to misrepresent Joe Biden and his values because they knew they couldn't win on Trump's disastrous record," a Biden campaign official told ProPublica.

Florida's Venezuelan population has grown to about 200,000, of whom an estimated 50,000 are registered to vote. In Doral, a city in Miami-Dade County that's home to many Americans of Venezuelan, Cuban and Colombian descent, Trump pulled in roughly 49% of voters in 2020, up from 29% in 2016. Overall, in Miami-Dade, Trump garnered nearly 200,000 more votes than he had in 2016, shaving the Democratic margin from 29% to 7%.

The Trump campaign, the White House and the Venezuelan Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

The Trump ad may have attracted relatively little notice during the campaign because of inadequacies in the political ad report that Google established in 2018 to improve transparency. Unlike Facebook's political ad archive, Google's doesn't group identical ads together if, for instance, they were shown over different time periods. Google's transparency tools showed three different copies of the “brisa Bolivariana" ad, giving separate data for each. Google also doesn't make videos searchable or any ad content downloadable in bulk.

The design doesn't allow opponents, journalists or watchdogs to meaningfully analyze the 263,000 political video ads (and 361,000 other ads) that Google sold in 2020, Barrett said.

“You're just drowning in content and overwhelmed by these individual pieces of advertising content, and really many of them are the same, you're stuck trying to swim through this overwhelming sea of ads," Barrett said. Ads “can disappear into the depths of the ad library."

Google has said that it only allows advertisers to target political ads by users' location, age and gender, and that it discloses these targeting choices on its transparency website. The three copies of the “Bolivarian breeze" ad were targeted by location to Florida users.

Although it's not disclosed in Google's transparency tools, YouTube ads also may be targeted by language, for example to Spanish speakers, Smith said.

It's unclear exactly how much the Trump campaign spent on the ad and how many times it was shown. Google's data show that the Trump campaign spent between $1,000 and $5,000 on one copy of the ad; between $100 and $1,000 on another; and less than $100 on the third. Two of the copies were shown fewer than 10,000 times, and the third was shown between 100,000 and 1 million times. Facebook publishes more precise information.

Trump supporters amplified the campaign's message, professing to connect Biden and other Democrats to “Castro-Chavismo," a term linking Venezuelan socialism to Cuba's. False posts on social media, of undetermined origin, purported to show Jill Biden, Joe's wife, standing next to Fidel Castro. It was actually Jacqueline Beer, the wife of a Norwegian explorer.

“We saw a huge number of WhatsApp messages being shared in Venezuelan, Cuban groups, saying the governments of these countries that we escaped, [they] want Biden — so we should vote Trump," Acosta-Ramos said.

What a Biden staffer described as a flood of information put the Democrat's campaign on the defensive. The Biden campaign mounted its own fact-checking effort to push back against the claims about Biden and socialism.It invested heavily in outreach to Florida Latinos, including six-figure media buys in the last two weeks of the campaign targeting the community, a staffer said. At an early October rally in Miami, Biden said, “Maduro, who I've met, is a dictator, plain and simple, and he's causing incredible suffering among the Venezuelan people."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/these-florida-cuban-american-voters-are-flipping-their-support-from-trump-to-biden-i-know-what-a-dictator-looks-like/

Rafael Cruz - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Cruz

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz (born March 22, 1939) is a :{Cuban:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:-American Protestant preacher, public speaker, and :{father:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: of Texas U.S. Senator and 2016 presidential candidate :{Ted Cruz:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. ... Cruz was born in Matanzas, :{Cuba:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, in 1939.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

**Born**‎: ‎Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz; March 22, ...

Nationality‎: ‎Cuban (1939–present); Canadian ...

**Political party**‎: ‎Republican

Residence‎: ‎Carrollton, Texas‎, U.S

Early life · ‎Religious and political ... · ‎Personal life

Ted Cruz - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Rafael Edward Cruz is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States ... Cruz's :{father:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: was born and raised in :{Cuba:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. ... At the time of his birth, :{Ted Cruz's parents:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: had lived in Calgary for three years and ...... Cruz has joked, "I'm :{Cuban:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist." ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Rafael Cruz · ‎Political positions of Ted Cruz · ‎Ted Cruz presidential ... · ‎Heidi Cruz

How Ted Cruz's Father Shaped His Views On Immigration : It's All ...

https://www.npr.org/sections/.../how-ted-cruzs-father-shaped-his-views-on-immigration

Jun 20, 2013 - ... Cruz. He portrays his dad as a kind of Cuban Horatio Alger. ... The views of that freshman senator — Texas Republican Ted Cruz — have been significantly colored by the saga of his own father, an immigrant from Cuba.

diaz-balart

Towards violent destabilization

In November, 2010, according to emails obtained by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had reportedly received the blessing of Otto Reich, afanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush’s Department of State, and theright-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.

Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting.Torrar is a self-described “human rights activist” and “intellectual” whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.

Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory committee of Georgetown University’s Latin America Leadership Program.

Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared that Google’s records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.

Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela’s current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/25/cuban_exile_cia_agent_luis_posada

Former CIA operative and Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles died Wednesday just outside of Miami. He was 90 years old. Posada Carriles is best known as the suspected mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airline jet. For decades, the U.S. refused to extradite Posada Carriles to face terrorism charges, despite demands by Cuba and Venezuela. Posada Carriles later publicly admitted ties to a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997. In 2000, he was arrested in Panama City for plotting to blow up an auditorium where Fidel Castro would be speaking. Despite his record, Luis Posada Carriles died a free man in Florida. We get reaction from José Pertierra, a Cuban attorney based in Washington, D.C. He represented the Venezuelan government in its efforts to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, and also represented Elián González in 2000-2001.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Former CIA operative and Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles has died. He died on Wednesday just outside Miami. He was 90 years old. Posada Carriles is best known as the suspected mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airline jet. For decades, the U.S. refused to extradite Posada Carriles for terrorism charges, despite demands by Cuba and Venezuela. He later publicly admitted ties to a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997. In 2000, he was arrested in Panama City for plotting to blow up an auditorium where Fidel Castro would be speaking. Despite his record, Luis Posada Carriles died a free man in Florida.

For more, we’re joined by José Pertierra, a Cuban attorney based in Washington, D.C., represented the Venezuelan government in its efforts to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, and also represented Elián González in 2000, 2001, when Elián González was here in the United States, eventually sent back to Cuba to be with his dad.

José, if you could start out by talking just about the Cubana airlines bombing in 1976, how—and the Cubana airlines bombing? How many people died? And the significance of who this man is, who has died in Miami [Wednesday]?

JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Thank you, Amy. Good morning.

The Cubana airline disaster in 1976 was, at the time, the worst airline passenger disaster or act of terrorism against a passenger airline in the history of aviation. It killed 73 innocent people, including 24 members of the juvenile fencing team from Cuba. There was a little 9-year-old girl on board named Sabrina. She also died. Posada Carriles was the mastermind of the bombing. He masterminded the placing of two bombs—one in the front of the plane, one in the back of the plane in the restroom—that exploded in midair. And the plane crashed into a bay called—near Paradise Beach in Trinidad. And no bodies—or, some bodies were recovered, but most of the bodies were not. They went to the bottom of the sea, where they’re still lying.

Venezuela presented charges against Posada Carriles, because there was overwhelming evidence of his involvement. There was even a confession by the persons who planted the bombs, who were arrested in Trinidad. They were interrogated, and they confessed to having worked for Posada Carriles. They even tried to communicate with Posada Carriles by telephone, by calling Caracas. This evidence was enough for Venezuela to charge him with 73 counts of first-degree murder. While the case—

AMY GOODMAN: We don’t have much time, José Pertierra, and I want to ask you—so, that happened, 73 people dead. How did he end up dying a free man in Miami this past Wednesday?

JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Amy, Venezuela—well, he escaped from jail in Panama, where he was being held, as you said, for trying to bomb an auditorium full of people. But after getting out of jail in Panama, receiving a pardon, he came to the United States to Miami. And Venezuela presented a request for extradition. And the United States simply refused to extradite him. Instead, they charged him with violating immigration law, lying on immigration forms, for which he was ultimately acquitted, even though there were admissions by Posada Carriles that he had masterminded a string of bombings in Havana that resulted in the murder of an Italian businessman. And he lied about those on the immigration forms.

But even though there was of that, including a taped confession of Posada Carriles to New York Times correspondent Ann Louise Bardach, nonetheless he was acquitted of that, and the U.S. refused to extradite him. Why? Because he was the United States’ man in Caracas. He worked for the CIA for, by his own admission, over 24 years. It just goes to show you, if you’ve got friends in high places, even though you may be a terrorist, the United States will protect you.

AMY GOODMAN: And I want to get to, before the end—Luis Posada Carriles’s death came days after a Cuban plane crashed and burned right after takeoff on Friday outside Havana, killing 111 people.

JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: It was another Cubana airlines jet. Critics say the crash is partly due to the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, which makes it so difficult for Cuba to acquire newer aircraft. I believe this plane was something like 40 years old. In this last minute we have, can you talk about the fallout from this tragic crash?

JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Well, the investigation is going on. There’s absolutely no evidence it was an act of terrorism. It was either pilot error or something wrong with the plane.

What you’re saying is absolutely true, however. Cuba has a fleet of aging planes, simply because they cannot buy new planes that either are made in the United States or contain parts that are made in the United States. And most jet planes today have parts that were made in the United States. It’s a brutal blockade that’s been imposed by the United States against Cuba since 1961. And that results in tragedy—a lack of medicine sometimes, lack of plane parts. This tragedy probably stems from that.

And Cuba is doing everything in its power right now to investigate what happened. Two survivors are in critical condition. The prognosis is not good for one of them. And Cuba, I’m sure, will try to prevent this from happening again. But the best way for the United States to respond is not to give prayers and condolences, but to lift the embargo and allow Cuba to purchase planes with American parts and fly safely over Cuban skies.

AMY GOODMAN: José Pertierra, I want to thank you for being with us, Cuban attorney based in Washington, D.C., represented the Venezuelan government in efforts to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, who died on Wednesday a free man in Miami.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/31/mauricio-claver-carone-cuba-national-security-council-805571

caputo

Trump is poised to promote an international finance official tied to Sen. Marco Rubio to lead Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council, making him the fourth member of an unofficial team of top pro-democracy Cuba hard-liners who are executing and advocating the administration’s Latin American policies.

Mauricio Claver-Carone, an attorney who rose to prominence in conservative foreign policy circles as a writer for the Capitol Hill Cubans blog and as the executive director of the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC, advised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He then joined Trump’s transition team for the U.S. Treasury Department, where he was instrumental in U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s president, who was labeled a “dictator” by the Trump administration. ...Now the acting U.S. executive director at the International Monetary Fund, Claver-Carone will work under National Security Advisor John Bolton and coordinate White House policy with the State, Treasury and other departments. Reached by phone, Claver-Carone said he couldn’t comment.

Claver-Carone joins fellow Cuban-Americans promoted by Trump to execute a hardline foreign policy in which Cuba is seen as a major disruptor in Latin-American affairs: Carlos Trujillo (_{U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States}_), Eliot Pedrosa (U.S. Alternate Executive Director of the InterAmerican Development Bank) and Tomas Regalado (_{head of Radio Marti}_).

That places the president’s foreign policy in the region in the hands of top anti-Castro hard-liners in the areas of White House policy, multi-lateral policy, finance and media.

“We have people who understand the cause, and not just the symptoms, of the problems in Latin America — not all the problems — and that is Cuba,” said Otto Reich, who has a long foreign policy résumé under former presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

“The United States has been a fire brigade in Latin America for the last 60 years and we have ignored, to a large degree, the arsonist,” Reich said. “Look at Venezuela today. The Cubans run the military intelligence systems, strategic comms, the voter rolls, the ports, airports, counter-intelligence police. In Nicaragua, it’s practically the same thing. They’re supporting [Nicaragua President Daniel] Ortega. The Cubans are in Bolivia supporting Evo Morales, and they were supporting the violence in Colombia, in Argentina and in Brazil.”

Venezuela’s deteriorating economy and failed-state government are leading to the largest mass-migration in the hemisphere — _{an estimated 2 million people}_ — and is on pace for an inflation rate of _{1 million percent,}_ meaning a person who had $1 million before the crisis hit now has a worth of $1.

Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela who’s _{now a lobbyist}_, said Claver-Carone’s intelligence and background make him ideal to understanding Venezuela’s problems and the influential role of trade and finance in the region. He said his “strong personality” makes him a good fit in national security circles because “it attracts strong personalities.”

Trujillo, for instance, worked with Vice President Mike Pence to persuade a majority of the Organization of American States to vote to eventually _{expel}_Venezuela from the organization.

All have close ties to Rubio, who’s playing a central role in setting U.S. policy in Latin America as chair of the Senate’s Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Rubio has a close relationship with Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who successfully pushed for tougher Venezuela sanctions Rubio had been calling for — including _{penalties that target a Venezuelan official}_ implicated in an assassination plot against the senator.

Rubio and Florida GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart were architects of Trump’s policy to unwind President Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba, and used as a reference point the “Military Transparency Act” that Rubio had previously written with the input of Claver-Carone.

Claver-Carone was not involved directly in the issue because he was a former registered lobbyist on Cuba-related issues and felt he shouldn’t be involved directly in Cuba policy for two years after entering the administration, according to a knowledgeable source.

Claver-Carone’s former lobbying, blogging and political activity have made him a target of pro-Cuba engagement activists who supported Obama’s policy.

"Claver-Carone built his career peddling campaign cash to dissuade members of Congress from revising our failed Cuban embargo policy,” said James Williams, president of a group called Engage Cuba, who also criticized Claver-Carone for elections and ethics complaints that had been filed against him years ago.

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Americans

Cuban Americans (Spanish: cubanoamericanos)^[3] are Americans who trace their ancestry to Cuba. The word may refer to someone born in the U.S. of Cuban descent or to someone who has emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba. Cuban Americans are the third-largest Latino group in the United States.

Many communities throughout the United States have significant Cuban American populations.^[4] Florida (1.53 million in 2017) has the highest concentration of Cuban Americans in the US,^[5][6] standing out in part because of its proximity to Cuba, followed by California (91,438), Texas (90,376), New Jersey (85,935), and New York (70,947).

South Florida is followed by New York City, Tampa, Union County and North Hudson, New Jersey areas, particularly Union City, Elizabeth and West New York.^[4] With a population of 141,250, the New York metropolitan area's Cuban community is the largest outside Florida. Nearly 70% of all Cuban Americans live in Florida.^[6]

...

Politics

Until the early 2010s, Cuban Americans historically tended to be more Republican than Democratic, thanks to the anti-communist foreign policy platform of the Republican Party since the 1950s. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion left many Cubans distrustful of the Democratic Party, blaming John F. Kennedy for his handling of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion.^[45] Cuban exiles began an alliance with the Republican Party of Florida. In Florida, Cuban-American congressmen have tended to be Republican, beginning with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Joe Garcia, a Democrat, is an exception). The presence of Cubans in the Republican Party was highlighted by the 2016 presidential race, which featured U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as prominent candidates, both of whom are of Cuban descent. But in New Jersey, another state with many Cuban Americans, Cuban-American congressmen have tended to be Democrats, for example Representative Albio Sires. Ronald Reagan is particularly popular in the Cuban-American community for standing up to Soviet communism and Castro's export of revolution to Central America and Africa (there is a street in Miami named for Reagan),^[46][47][48] and George W. Bush received 75 and 78 percent (in 2000 and 2004 respectively) of the Cuban-American vote. The Cuban-American lobby has also lobbied both parties on causes important to Cuban Americans.

In recent years, the Cuban-American vote has become more contested between the parties. In the 2008 United States presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 47% of the Cuban-American vote in Florida.^[49] According to Bendixen's exit polls, 84% of Miami-Dade Cuban-American voters 65 or older backed McCain, while 55% of those 29 or younger backed Obama.^[50] In 2012, Barack Obama received 49 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida, compared to 47 percent for Mitt Romney according to Edison Research exits polls.^[51] By spring 2014, this trend increased among Cuban American voters having a preference for Democratic Party candidates increased particularly for younger voters aged 18–49, increasing to some 56% for the younger voter demographic, versus Cuban-American voters over 50 years of age having a 39% preference for Democratic candidates.^[52] As in the 2012 United States presidential election, Mitt Romney got more support than Barack Obama. In the 2016 United States presidential election saw Donald Trump garner about the same level support within the community, garnering 50-54 percent of the Floridian Cuban-American vote, as opposed to 41-48 percent for Hillary Clinton, as some Cuban Americans dissatisfied with Obama's Cuba policy, which restore foreign relations with the Castro regime.^[53][54]

Socioeconomics

The median household income for U.S.-born Cuban Americans is $57,000, higher than the overall U.S. median household income of $52,000.^[55]

However, the median annual personal earnings for foreign born Cuban Americans is $25,000, which is lower than that of US population at $30,000.^[55]

Education

Among U.S.-born Cuban Americans, 36% have a college degree or higher, compared to 30% for the overall U.S. population. Of foreign-born Cuban Americans, 27% have a college degree. This is higher than the U.S. Hispanic population (14%) but lower than that of the overall U.S. population.^[55]

[Hispanic and Latino Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans "Hispanic and Latino Americans")
National origin groups[show]
History[show]
Colonial casta system[show]
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v t e

Notable Cuban Americans

For a more comprehensive list, see List of Cuban Americans.

writers

...

Others

Judge Alex Ferrer
Judge Marilyn Milian

Journalists

Jim Acosta, CNN's Senior White House Correspondent
Jessica Aguirre, anchor for KNTV NBC Bay Area News, San Francisco, California
Achy Obejas, novelist, journalist
Manny Alvarez, medical correspondent for Fox News Channel
Cathy Areu, founder of Catalina magazine
Liz Balmaseda, columnist, Miami Herald
Bárbara Bermudo, anchor, Primer Impacto
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, business news general assignment reporter for CNBC television
Myrka Dellanos, former anchor, Primer Impacto
GiGi Diaz, sports reporter, Pompano Park, and journalist in Miami
José Díaz-Balart, anchor and reporter
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, National Public Radio
Max Gomez, medical correspondent for WCBS-TV in New York City
Pedro Gomez, ESPN reporter
Eva Golinger, journalist and presenter
Ambrose E. Gonzales, co-founder of The State newspaper in South Carolina and author of several books in Gullah language
Narciso Gener Gonzales, co-founder of The State newspaper in South Carolina
Perez Hilton, celebrity blogger and television personality
Dan Le Batard, sportswriter for The Miami Herald
Tom Llamas, correspondent for ABC News
Antonio Mora, host on Al Jazeera America
Belkys Nerey, anchor WSVN, Fox in Miami
Jackie Nespral, anchor WTVJ, NBC in Miami
Soledad O'Brien, Al Jazeera America correspondent, independent producer
Mirta Ojito, Pulitzer Prize winner
Rafael Pineda, veteran TV personality, former anchor WXTV in New York City
Ellie Rodriguez, anchor for WSVN in Miami
Maggie Rodriguez, co-anchor of CBS's The Early Show
Mari Rodriguez Ichaso, filmmaker, columnist, journalist, Vanidades, Harper's Bazaar en Espanol, Travel & Leisure en Espanol
Rick Sanchez, anchor

Government

United States ambassadors

Eduardo Aguirre, former United States Ambassador to Spain and Andorra
Paul L. Cejas, former United States Ambassador to Belgium
Miguel H. Díaz, United States Ambassador to Holy See
Lino Gutierrez, former United States Ambassador to Argentina
Hugo Llorens, United States Ambassador to Honduras
Carlos Pascual, former United States Ambassador to Mexico
Otto Reich, former United States Ambassador to Venezuela
Mauricio Solaún, former United States Ambassador to Nicaragua

United States Cabinet members

Carlos Gutierrez, former United States Secretary of Commerce (Republican)
Mel Martinez, former United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Republican)
Alexander Acosta, United States Secretary of Labor (Republican)

United States House of Representatives

Carlos Curbelo, Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida's 26th district
Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Republican former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida's 21st district
Mario Díaz-Balart, Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida's 25th district
Joe Garcia, former Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida's 26th district
Thomas Ponce Gill, Congressman from Hawaii in the early 1960s (his paternal grandmother was Cuban)
Anthony Gonzalez, Republican, Ohio’s 16th District (2019-Present) ^[42]
Joseph Marion Hernández, first Hispanic elected to the United States Congress
Alex Mooney, Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing West Virginia's 2nd district
David Rivera, Republican former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida's 25th district
Ileana**Ros-Lehtinen**, Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida's 18th district
Albio Sires, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing New Jersey's 13th district

2008 Congressional candidates

Raul L. Martinez, Democratic candidate for Florida's 21st district

United States Senate

TedCruz, United States Senator (R–Texas)
Mel Martinez, former United States Senator (R-Florida)
Bob Menendez, United States Senator (D–New Jersey), and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; former representative for New Jersey's 13th district
Marco Rubio, United States Senator (R-Florida)

Federal government

Al Cardenas, Washington, D.C. lobbyist
Alex **Castellanos**, Republican media consultant; senior advisor to 2008 Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney
Nils J. Diaz, former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Cari M. Dominguez, Chair of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Emilio T. Gonzalez, Ph.D, director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
Eliot A. Jardines, first Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source
Elsa A. Murano, former Undersecretary for Food Safety United States Department of Agriculture
Steve Pieczenik, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
OttoReich, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Mauricio J. Tamargo, 14th Chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission

Local government

Carlos Alvarez, mayor of Miami-Dade County
Joe Carollo, former mayor of Miami
Manny Diaz, mayor of Miami
Rosario Kennedy, former commissioner and vice-mayor of Miami
Raul L. Martinez, former mayor of Hialeah
Carlos Mayans, mayor of Wichita, Kansas
Gilda Oliveros, first Cuban-born woman mayor in the United States
Alex Penelas, former mayor (D–FL), Miami-Dade County, Florida
Tomas Regalado, mayor of Miami
Julio Robaina, former mayor of City of Hialeah
Xavier Suarez, former mayor of Miami
Silverio Vega, mayor of West New York, New Jersey
Bill Vidal, former mayor of Denver, Colorado; born in Camagüey, Cuba^[43]

State government

Eladio Armesto Garcia, Florida state representative, 117th House District
Zulima Farber, former Attorney General of New Jersey
Anitere Flores, Florida State Senator and former Florida State Representative, first Republican Hispanic woman to serve in both the Florida House and Senate since 1986
Bob Martinez, former governor of Florida, first Cuban-American governor in United States history
Joseph Miró, Delaware state representative, president National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators
Alex X. Mooney, member of the Maryland state senate representing District 3
Vincent Prieto, New Jersey State Assemblyman, 32nd District
MarcoRubio, U.S. Senator from Florida, and former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives
Katherine Fernandez Rundle, State Attorney for Miami-Dade County
Yvanna Cancela, State Senator representing Nevada's 10th District
Mo Denis, State Senator representing Nevada's 2nd District

U.S. Commonwealth government

Roberto Arango, Puerto Rico Senator

Judiciary

Barbara Lagoa, Justice on the Florida Supreme Court
Cecilia Altonaga, United States District Court Judge
Danny Boggs, Chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati
Raoul G. Cantero, III, first Hispanic justice on the Florida Supreme Court
Adalberto Jordan, United States District Court Judge
Jorge Labarga, chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court
Jose L. Linares, United States District Court Judge of United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey
Ariel A. Rodriguez, judge of New Jersey Appellate Division, acting Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court
Joseph H. Rodriguez, United States District Court Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in Camden, New Jersey
Eduardo Robreno, United States District Court Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
Esther Salas, United States District Court Judge of United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey
Mauricio J. Tamargo, Chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission

United States Armed Forces

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