‘maximum Pressure’: South Florida Lawmakers Push To Cut Off Cuba’s Economic Lifelines

MIAMI — South Florida Republicans pushed Thursday for a further crackdown on the Cuban government’s revenue sources, arguing it could help to push out the communist regime.

Their push for further Western Hemisphere intervention comes roughly a month after President Donald Trump’s administration arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a military operation into the country. South Florida’s diaspora community has watched the aftermath closely, wondering how the move might reverberate in other authoritarian countries in the region like Cuba and Nicaragua.

GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez, who was born in Cuba and fled to the U.S. as a child, called on the Trump administration to halt flights to and from Cuba and stop people based in the U.S. from being able to transfer money to family and friends on the island. Giménez also called on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to halt oil shipments to the communist-run nation.

Without this “maximum pressure,” Giménez said, the U.S. and Mexico will only continue to indirectly enrich the communist government. The situation was already precarious, he added, because the Cuban government has been unable to provide adequate power, food or medicine for its citizens.

“That regime is a cancer,” he said. “And the way that you cure cancer, sometimes the cure is painful, but in the end, the patient survives.”

He stood behind a lectern that read, “No oil, no travel, no oxygen” and said the Trump administration likely had other options for exerting power on Cuba. GOP Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who appeared alongside Giménez and is also of Cuban descent, said it was time for the Trump administration to “finish the job” and “end the nightmare” in Cuba. Díaz-Balart’s aunt, Mirta Díaz-Balart, was once married to Fidel Castro.

Many Cuban exiles living in Florida have long taken a hardline stance against the Cuban government and advocated keeping the island nation isolated as a way to pressure the dictatorship, including by imposing strict economic embargoes.

The representatives delivered their comments alongside Cuban exile organizations and local community leaders a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Trump administration “would love” to see regime change in Cuba.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to make a change,” Rubio said, “but we would love to see a change.”

The South Florida lawmakers pointed to these comments and said they saw the possibility of a “freedom in our hemisphere.” Giménez cautioned, however, that transitioning Cuba to a democracy would “not be easy,” but “it's a journey we must take.”