{"id":31742,"date":"2026-07-02T17:15:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=31742"},"modified":"2026-07-02T17:15:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:15:34","slug":"how-floridas-cuban-diaspora-and-the-israeli-lobby-came-together-and-are-coming-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=31742","title":{"rendered":"How Florida\u2019s Cuban Diaspora and the Israeli Lobby Came Together \u2014 and Are Coming Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-intercept-editors-note\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-intercept-editors-note__content\">\n<p><span class=\"has-underline\">After a devastating<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/06\/25\/trump-venezuela-earthquakes-aid-sanctions\/\">earthquake<\/a> rocked Venezuela last week, President Donald Trump backed off his claims to be \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/06\/25\/trump-venezuela-earthquakes-aid-sanctions\/\">in charge<\/a>\u201d of the country he invaded in January \u2014 which might imply an obligation to support its people and rebuild the nation \u2014 opting instead to send disaster assistance to our \u201cfriends\u201d there.<\/p>\n<p>This week, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Southcom\/status\/2071764438760518023\">U.S. Southern Command<\/a> has <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Southcom\/status\/2071652965245665707\">been<\/a> furiously <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Southcom\/status\/2071677584107036680\">posting<\/a> on X, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Southcom\/status\/2071658708258464117\">boasting<\/a> about its role in providing \u201cdisaster assistance to the people of Venezuela.\u201d\u00a0This marks a shift from its now-standard <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/06\/29\/tomdispatch-trump-war-killing-videos\/\">posting of snuff films<\/a>, showing the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/06\/10\/trump-boat-strikes-human-trafficking-victims\/\">murder of Venezuelans<\/a> on boats in the Caribbean, not to mention <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/12\/12\/venezuela-boat-strikes-video-press-coverage\/\">Colombians<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/27\/boat-strike-victims-lawsuit\/\">others<\/a> killed by the command in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>SOUTHCOM did not reply to a request from TomDispatch for a count of how many Venezuelan earthquake victims U.S. troops have saved. But we do know that the boat strikes have resulted in at least <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/11\/17\/trump-boat-strikes-death-toll-caribbean-pacific\/\">215 extrajudicial killings<\/a> since last September. <\/p>\n<p>SOUTHCOM\u2019s multi-ocean murder spree is just a tiny part of a much larger Trump administration project in Latin America. From the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/04\/trump-maduro-venezuela-war-media\/\">war <\/a>in Venezuela to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/23\/trump-operation-total-extermination-ecuador-colombia-cuba\/\">Operation Total Extermination<\/a>\u201d in Ecuador, the U.S. is attempting to exert extreme control over its near abroad. How, why, and where this effort originated is tied up in a swirling storm of covert ops, drug trafficking, and illicit cash that first made landfall, decades ago, in Miami, Florida. Today, in the first guest post at the new TomDispatch at The Intercept, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/greg-grandin\/\">Greg Grandin<\/a> lays out this sordid story and explains how a secret cabal of Latin America expats has warped U.S. foreign policy and transformed President Donald Trump into their very own repo man. <\/p>\n<p><em>\u2013 Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!-- BLOCK(tipline)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22TIPLINE%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%7D) --><!-- CONTENT(tipline)[0] --><\/p>\n<p class=\"tipline-shortcode\">If you haven\u2019t signed up yet, <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/signup\/tom_dispatch_signup\/\">sign up to receive TomDispatch in your inbox here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- END-CONTENT(tipline)[0] --><!-- END-BLOCK(tipline)[0] -->\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<h2 id=\"h-the-other-lobby\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Other Lobby<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regime change in <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/31\/trump-iran-war-venezuela-maduro\/\">Venezuela<\/a>; a punishing <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2026\/06\/1167671\">siege<\/a> of Cuba; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/12\/05\/americas\/honduras-nasralla-trump-interference-latam-intl\">election meddling<\/a> in Honduras, Argentina, and Colombia; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.piie.com\/blogs\/realtime-economics\/2026\/latest-us-squeeze-brazil-jeopardizes-its-financial-autonomy\">economic sabotage<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mondaq.com\/unitedstates\/export-controls-trade-investment-sanctions\/1795866\/sanctions-update-june-1-2026\">terrorist designations<\/a> in Brazil; boots-on-the-ground <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/ecuador-us-troops\">militarism<\/a>, knife-to-the-throat <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/ecuador-total-extermination-torture\">death squads<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wola.org\/analysis\/trump-joint-targeting-rethink\/\">torture<\/a> in Ecuador; <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2026\/05\/31\/mexico-president-claudia-sheinbaum-us-interfering-domestic-politics-doj-indictment\/\">lawfare<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropsitenews.com\/p\/hondurasgate-leaked-audio-files-juan-orlando-hernandez-likely-authentic\">psy-ops<\/a>, and CIA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/05\/12\/politics\/cia-drug-cartels-deadly-operations-mexico\">kill teams<\/a> in Mexico; mass <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2026\/03\/16\/us\/el-salvador-deportees-forcibly-disappeared\">deportations<\/a> and support for a <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/05\/09\/trump-bukele-kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-cecot-prison\/\">gulag state<\/a> in El Salvador; a deadly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/americas\/us-says-it-is-ramping-up-emergency-assistance-bolivia-amid-protests-2026-06-04\/\">crackdown<\/a> on protesters in Bolivia; and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/collections\/license-to-kill\/\">outright murder<\/a> in the Caribbean and Pacific \u2014 a year and a half into his second term, President Donald Trump has deployed, with significant success, the full range of U.S. hard power on Latin America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even as the White House has proved reckless and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/collections\/targeting-iran\/\">self-defeating in Iran<\/a>, it has maintained a menacing, disciplined focus on Latin America. The siege of Cuba and informal annexation of Venezuela are the centerpieces of this program, but there\u2019s not one country, except perhaps Uruguay, where Washington isn\u2019t in deep. The State Department was even micromanaging the recent Colombian elections, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/19\/us\/rubio-beto-coral-colombia.html\">personally approving<\/a> the deportation of Beto Coral, a Colombian national who lives in Texas, because he has been critical of Trump\u2019s preferred candidate.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>A narrow, wealthy Latin American diaspora geographically concentrated in Miami has captured U.S. hemispheric policy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The extent of this power projection is impressive, even if the power asymmetries make operations in Latin America easy compared to the Middle East. You can pressure Ecuador with a gang designation and $20 million in security aid and get results. You can\u2019t do that with Iran.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But asymmetry alone doesn\u2019t explain the Trump administration\u2019s overwhelming focus on Latin America. Florida, to a large degree, does. A narrow, wealthy Latin American diaspora geographically concentrated in the greater Miami area has captured U.S. hemispheric policy \u2014 not through persuasion or broad public support, but through the state\u2019s electoral math and alliance with the Republican Party. This informal lobby represents a Latin American propertied class who fancy themselves dispossessed, who imagine their interests threatened by the mildest of democratic reforms. The members of this class see Trump and Rubio as their personal repo men.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-the-cause\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Cause<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Florida\u2019s outsized role in U.S. politics begins with the backlash to Cuba\u2019s 1959 revolution.\u00a0Those who fled Fidel Castro\u2019s socialist government in its early days overwhelmingly came from the middle and upper classes. They turned the peninsula into a <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=i5qQEQAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=ada+ferrer+a+history+of+cuba&amp;hl=en&amp;newbks=1&amp;newbks_redir=1&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjQzpitxvKUAxUBj4kEHQ3dG04Q6AF6BAgLEAM\">sanctuary state<\/a>. After the failure of the <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/bayofpigsleaders00john\/page\/n11\/mode\/2up\">Bay of Pigs<\/a> invasion \u2014 the CIA\u2019s 1961 bid to use exiles as an expeditionary force to invade Cuba and dislodge Castro \u2014 the more ideological of these agency-trained exiles continued to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/The_Castro_Obsession\/TxWMPwAACAAJ?hl=en\">populate<\/a> the counterinsurgent gothic. These Cuban emigres allied with rogue elements in the CIA and FBI, Colombian drug traffickers, and mafiosi to advance \u201cThe Cause,\u201d as the novelist James Ellroy <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Underworld_USA_Trilogy\">calls<\/a> efforts to liberate Cuba through the violent overthrow of Castro\u2019s government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cuban exiles, drawn into covert operations and the ranks of the then-fringe U.S. New Right, would go on to participate in many of the storied black-bag operations that defined the middle to late Cold War: the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ap.org\/news-highlights\/spotlights\/2025\/newly-released-jfk-assassination-files-reveal-more-about-cia-but-dont-yet-point-to-conspiracies\/\">conspiracies<\/a> surrounding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/Our_Man_in_Mexico\/iT8VAQAAIAAJ?hl=en\">JFK\u2019s assassination<\/a> (as the House Select Committee on Assassinations <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/research\/jfk\/select-committee-report\/part-1c.html\">put it<\/a> in 1979: \u201canti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination, but the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved in the assassination) and the execution of revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia, led by Bay of Pigs veteran and CIA operative <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/retropolis\/wp\/2017\/10\/09\/do-not-shoot-the-last-moments-of-communist-revolutionary-che-guevara\/\">F\u00e9lix Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, who then went to Vietnam to train the death squads of the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/12\/07\/george-h-w-bush-iran-contra\/\">Phoenix Program<\/a>. Other Bay of Pigs alumni flew CIA combat missions over the Congo <a href=\"https:\/\/historynet.com\/the-cias-cuban-air-force-battles-communists-in-the-congo\/\">strafing<\/a> Simba rebels and carried out the Nixon White House\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2022\/06\/16\/watergate-latino-break-in-anniversary\">Watergate break-in<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/12\/07\/george-h-w-bush-iran-contra\/\">Iran\u2013Contra affair<\/a>, in which Reagan administration officials secretly sold weapons to embargoed Iran and diverted the illegal profits to right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua, directly violating a congressional ban.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Cold War ended but the Cause continued. In 2000, the notorious Republican operative Roger Stone <a href=\"https:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/article\/179367\">recruited<\/a> Cuban American protesters for the infamous Brooks Brothers riot \u2014 the mob action that <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/11\/10\/democrats-should-remember-al-gore-won-florida-in-2000-but-lost-the-presidency-with-a-preemptive-surrender\/\">shut down the Miami-Dade recount<\/a> of presidential ballots and handed George W. Bush the White House \u2014 by instrumentalizing exile grievance through Cuban radio broadcasts. \u201cThe idea we were putting out there,\u201d Stone later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2008\/06\/02\/the-dirty-trickster\">said<\/a>, \u201cwas that this was a left-wing power grab by Gore, the same way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Drug profits financed many of these operations. \u201cEvery major area of operation in which the CIA has worked has left behind a major functioning drug cartel,\u201d as CIA operative-turned-whistleblower <a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/clip\/public-affairs-event\/user-clip-secret-wars-of-the-cia\/5049668\">John Stockwell<\/a> put it. So too the Western Hemisphere with the Cubans. The beginning of the modern cocaine trade \u201chad developed largely under the control of exile Cuban criminal organizations based in Miami,\u201d Bruce Bagley, an expert on Latin American drug trafficking, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/bVMuP\">observed<\/a> in Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the late 1970s, Miami prospered, even as the rest of the country was suffering from a prolonged economic downturn, high unemployment, and urban decay. Laundered cocaine money in effect provided Miami a covert Keynesian stimulus, a massive injection of cash into construction, retail, banking, and services at the exact moment the U.S. government was abandoning such policies as inflationary. While nearly every other Federal Reserve district was running a deficit, the vault of Miami\u2019s Fed was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.miaminewtimes.com\/news\/kilo-cocaine-made-miami-part-1-6366058\/\">stuffed<\/a> with a $5 billion surplus made up of manicured bundles of $50 and $100 bills, evidence of large cash transactions conducted outside normal financial channels. Real estate boomed. Employment boomed. Car dealerships, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Archives\/1990\/02\/11\/Miami-flooded-by-cocaine-cash\/8767634712400\/\">paid in cash<\/a>, boomed. Buildings went up, the city\u2019s traditional pastel stucco and red tiles giving way to glass, glitz, and gleam.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cuban Americans came to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/cocaine-cowboys\/\">dominate<\/a> Miami\u2019s independent banking sector. Continental National Bank, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1974\/05\/17\/archives\/bank-for-cubans-opened-in-miami-200-of-its-250-shareholders-are-for.html\">first<\/a> Cuban American-owned bank in the United States, was founded in 1974 by exile Carlos Dascal in Miami\u2019s Little Havana neighborhood. Typical of the small Latin American-owned banks that proliferated in this period, Continental went from $12 million in annual deposits in the mid-1970s to over $600 million by 1980 \u2014 a dramatic illustration of the narco-dollars flooding Miami\u2019s banking system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was a <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2026\/05\/castro-indictment-cuba-us-war\">wild time<\/a> in Miami\u2019s exile community. Cocaine and covert ops were a <a href=\"https:\/\/nsarchive2.gwu.edu\/NSAEBB\/NSAEBB157\/index.htm\">dangerous mix<\/a>. No two figures better embodied the era than <a href=\"https:\/\/nsarchive2.gwu.edu\/NSAEBB\/NSAEBB153\/index.htm\">Luis Posada Carriles<\/a> and Orlando Bosch \u2014 both CIA-trained Bay of Pigs veterans, both connected to the New Orleans mob and the drug trade. Together, they founded the Coordinaci\u00f3n de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas, or CORU, which the FBI described as \u201can anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization\u201d that served as a subcontractor for Operation Condor, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet\u2019s hemisphere-wide assassination program. In 1976, Cuban CORU operatives <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/articles\/pinochet-terror-attack-dc\">planted<\/a> the car bomb that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/politics\/1990\/04\/12\/suspect-arrested-in-letelier-slaying\/8823005b-79bc-4df8-ba29-cbc187f5ef59\/\">killed<\/a> former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his U.S. colleague Ronni Moffitt in Sheridan Circle in Washington \u2014 the first case of state-sponsored international terrorism in the nation\u2019s capital. Posada and Bosch also carried out the bombing of <a href=\"https:\/\/nsarchive2.gwu.edu\/NSAEBB\/NSAEBB153\/index.htm\">Cubana de Aviaci\u00f3n Flight 455<\/a> off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 people aboard, including the Cuban national fencing team, soon after.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ronald Reagan\u2019s 1980 presidential election victory changed the calculus. His advisors were hard-line: the New Right had moved from the fringe to the halls of power. Cocaine continued to finance Miami, but the off-the-books exiles had become a liability. The historian Alan McPherson writes that by the mid-1970s, Cuban exile militants had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americasquarterly.org\/fulltextarticle\/long-view-how-the-fight-against-castro-once-terrorized-u-s-cities\/\">carried out<\/a>, in addition to the attacks described above, more than 100 bombings on U.S. soil and in 1974 accounted for 45 percent of all terrorist bombings in the world. The Reagan White House didn\u2019t want to dim exile passion, but it also didn\u2019t want planes being shot down over the Caribbean and bombs exploding in Sheridan Circle. And so mercenaries were out, and lobbyists were in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reagan\u2019s national security adviser Richard Allen worked with Jorge Mas Canosa, who had left Cuba in 1960, to create the Cuban American National Foundation, or CANF. Allen explicitly modeled CANF on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC \u2014 telling fellow Cubans to study the Israeli lobby and replicate its methods, as <a href=\"https:\/\/ur.bc.edu\/system\/files\/2025-04\/bc-ir102064.pdf\">documented<\/a> by political scientists Patrick Haney and Walt Vanderbush. The goal was not just to sideline terrorists like Posada and Bosch but to marginalize more moderate perspectives within the Cuban American community who wanted some accommodation with the Cuban government. Reagan needed a respectable political vehicle for hard-line Cuba policy that could operate in the open. That was CANF.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>Mercenaries were out, and lobbyists were in.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Note the self-reinforcing loop: The Reagan White House organized the creation of a lobbying group to lobby itself for policies it already wanted to pursue, generating the appearance of popular democratic pressure for what was in fact long-standing government hostility toward the Cuban Revolution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mas Canosa put his own personalistic imprint on the AIPAC model. He combined, as Saul Landau <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latinamericanstudies.org\/exile\/canosa.htm\">put it<\/a>, the style of an \u201cold-style political ward boss\u201d \u2014 getting himself and his allies appointed to local utility, road, and electoral commissions; awarding contracts; doing incoming immigrants favors; finding them jobs and housing \u2014 \u201cwith the pragmatic lobbying techniques\u201d of AIPAC, cultivating congressional allies to enforce and strengthen the Cuba sanctions. His anti-Castro ideology was both genuine and lucrative: a Cuba opened to U.S. capital would be an enormous prize, and he and his inner circle would be best positioned to seize it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1989, CANF won its first congressional seat, when Cuban-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen defeated her Democratic opponent to succeed Claude Pepper, the New Deal lion who had championed labor, Medicare, and Social Security from the same Miami district for more than two decades. The symbolism was stark: \u201cRed\u201d Pepper\u2019s left-liberal tradition eclipsed by Cuban exile politics. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>Allen explicitly modeled the Cuban American National Foundation on AIPAC, telling fellow Cubans to study the Israeli lobby and replicate its methods.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ros-Lehtinen would serve for 30 years, becoming the powerful chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and what the South Florida journalist Juan David Rojas <a href=\"https:\/\/newlinesmag.com\/argument\/the-neoconservatives-pushing-for-regime-change-in-cuba-see-their-chance-under-trump\/\">called<\/a> a founding figure of the \u201cMiami neocons.\u201d She was simultaneously the exile community\u2019s most aggressive Cuba hard-liner, a champion of Israel in its Lebanon and Gaza wars, the author of Iran sanctions legislation, and a vocal defender of the accused Flight 455 bomber Orlando Bosch. Her former intern was Marco Rubio, now Trump\u2019s national security adviser and secretary of state.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over in Broward County, Florida\u2019s 25th Congressional District, with its large Jewish, Colombian, and Venezuelan population, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is another Miami neocon, a Democratic one, advocating for hard-line policies in both Israel and Latin America.\u00a0An AIPAC favorite, Wasserman Schultz shortly after first being elected in 2004 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latinamericanstudies.org\/us-cuba\/claver-carone.htm\">worked closely<\/a> with Trump\u2019s current Venezuela viceroy, Mauricio Claver-Carone, to squash five initiatives that would have diluted Cuba sanctions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time, Claver-Carone, born in Miami, was running both the U.S.\u2013Cuba Democracy PAC and the Cuba Democracy Advocates. Since 1996, the\u00a0National Endowment for Democracy, a nongovernmental organization, and the U.S government have <a href=\"https:\/\/cuba-solidarity.org.uk\/news\/article\/4142\/the-democracy-business-in-cuba-is-bustling\">channeled<\/a> more than $100 million into similar \u201cdemocracy\u201d programs, many of them headquartered in Hialeah and Coral Gables. Democratization in Cuba was the stated objective, but the work of the NGOs and their subcontractors are often protected from disclosure as \u201ctrade secrets\u201d under FOIA exemptions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mas Canosa died in 1997, and the conventional wisdom at the time was that the Cuban American lobby had peaked. The old guard was dying off, and poll after poll showed that younger Cuban Americans \u2014 U.S.-born, English-dominant, less connected to the island \u2014 were open to normalization and an end to the embargo. President Barack Obama\u2019s surprise announcement in <a href=\"https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/the-press-office\/2014\/12\/17\/statement-president-cuba-policy-changes\">December 2014<\/a> that the United States and Cuba would restore diplomatic relations \u2014 the most significant shift in Cuba policy in more than half a century, negotiated secretly with the help of Pope Francis \u2014 seemed to confirm the lobby\u2019s decline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yet the U.S. government, in the last two years of Obama\u2019s presidency, continued to flood Miami with \u201cdemocracy promotion\u201d grants, a direct federal stimulus to activists who would become some of Donald Trump\u2019s staunchest supporters. With Trump\u2019s election, what looked like the lobby\u2019s last gasp turned out to be its renaissance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2017\/06\/16\/trump-cuba-embargo-reverse-obama-opening\/\">ended the normalization of relations<\/a> with Havana and, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.american.edu\/centers\/latin-american-latino-studies\/cuba-archive-trump-policy.cfm\">listening<\/a> to Florida\u2019s then-Sen. Marco Rubio, imposed harsh sanctions on the island. After Ron DeSantis\u2019s 2018 gubernatorial victory turned the state hard right, Florida (home to a good number of the nation\u2019s billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Google co-founder Larry Page) became the command center of MAGA power.<\/p>\n<p><!-- END-BLOCK(cta)[0] --><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-a-febrile-complex\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Febrile Complex<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beyond Trump, something was transforming Miami that would change the lobby\u2019s nature entirely. Through the 2000s and into the 2020s, the city was absorbing a new wave of Latin American capital flight on a scale that dwarfed anything produced by the original Cuban exodus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Across Latin America, economic liberalization, a policy pushed by Washington since the 1980s, failed to generate prosperity and stability, leading many nations to elect left-leaning governments. Venezuelans had been arriving in Florida since Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s first election in 1998. Now they were joined by wealthy Brazilians, Bolivians, Argentines, Nicaraguans, and Mexicans. Colombians had been coming for decades, fleeing the violence of their country\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhen governments in Latin America go left, buyers go north.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even the mildest of leftists could spark a <a href=\"https:\/\/bh-compliance.com\/en\/chileans-gain-weight-as-buyers-investors-and-entrepreneurs-in-florida\/\">flight<\/a> of capital northward. When it looked like Gabriel Boric would win <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/12\/01\/marco-rubio-chile-pinochet-jose-antonio-kast\/\">Chile\u2019s 2021 presidential election<\/a>, two Chilean law firms opened offices in Miami to help wealthy Chileans move their assets to South Florida. Boric did win, and investors pulled money out of Chile at a record pace, leaving behind what Bloomberg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberglinea.com\/english\/rich-investors-take-their-money-out-of-chile-leaving-behind-a-50-billion-hole\/\">estimated<\/a> as a $50 billion hole. Chileans ranked eighth among foreign buyers of real estate in South Florida in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen governments in Latin America go left,\u201d as one prominent Miami realtor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/news\/business\/real-estate-news\/article311578025.html\">put it<\/a>, \u201cbuyers go north.\u201d Latin Americans bought <a href=\"https:\/\/www.miamirealtors.com\/2025\/07\/21\/new-international-report-global-buyers-purchase-49-of-south-florida-new-construction-units-majority-by-latin-americans\/\">nearly half<\/a> of all new luxury units in South Florida through mid-2025, most of them in cash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The city of Doral, just west of Miami, became so heavily Venezuelan it is informally known as Doralzuela. Miami\u2019s Brickell neighborhood is filled with Colombian and Brazilian private banking offices. The Biscayne corridor attracted Mexican, Argentine, and Peruvian capital. These were not the huddled poor who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, an exodus of Cubans, or the desperate Haitians who came after the 1991 coup. These were the propertied business classes \u2014 and they were looking for ideological allies in Washington to beat back the social democrats at home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Cuban exile network absorbed and nurtured the grievances of these new arrivals. Following the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2017\/08\/29\/honduras-coup-us-defense-departmetnt-center-hemispheric-defense-studies-chds\/\">2009 military coup in Honduras<\/a> \u2014 which ousted the elected center-left president Manuel Zelaya and replaced him with a right-wing government \u2014 a delegation of Miami Cubans, working with Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party\u2019s most prominent neoconservative, served as a bridge between AIPAC and the greater Latin American lobby and hosted Honduras\u2019s coup leaders in Washington to validate their takeover. For a brief moment, President Obama opposed the coup government, but when Cuban Americans and other conservatives began associating him with Castro and Ch\u00e1vez, he backed down and recognized the regime as legitimate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new Latin American arrivals found a common language in a single word: \u201ccastro-chavismo.\u201d The term had been popularized in \u00c1lvaro Uribe, Colombia\u2019s former president and leader of its far right. Uribe himself imported the term into the U.S. as part of a campaign to derail the Colombian government\u2019s Cuban-brokered peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas. Flanked by then-Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario D\u00edaz-Balart, Uribe gave a rallying <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/politics\/trump-biden-florida-election\/\">speech<\/a> at a Doral restaurant, Mondongo\u2019s, in October 2016. He <a href=\"https:\/\/cepr.net\/how-a-colombian-ex-president-went-to-bat-for-trump-in-florida\/\">warned<\/a> the crowd of Colombian and Venezuelan expats that castrochavismo would come to Colombia if the peace deal were ratified. Uribe used this trip to deepen his ties with Trump\u2019s people: Policy analyst <a href=\"https:\/\/colombiapeace.org\/trump-castro-chavismo-and-the-centro-democratico\/\">Adam Isacson<\/a> and historian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.degruyterbrill.com\/document\/doi\/10.7312\/ali-20448-027\/html?srsltid=AfmBOorAstrzSKtke4o5HXiRvBcsDzwsMFevRiFYg0NprKWUxixFfgEa\">Christy Thornton<\/a>, separately, note Uribe\u2019s influence on Trump\u2019s first reelection campaign, when he ran ads in Florida linking President Joe Biden to the Latin American left. \u201cJoe Biden is a PUPPET of CASTRO-CHAVISTAS,\u201d he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/documents\/tweets-october-10-2020\">tweeted<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Cuban lobby had long been motivated by the specific wounds of the Castro revolution: the confiscations, the executions, the broken families, what Joan Didion called in her 1987 book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.booksoncities.com\/p\/joan-didion-miami-1987\">Miami<\/a>\u201d the \u201cfebrile complex of resentments and revenges and idealizations and taboos\u201d that united the exiles. The newcomers from across Latin America were equally febrile, but their cause was not just a free Cuba \u2014 it was a continent liberated from the likes of left-leaning presidents like Mexico\u2019s Claudia Sheinbaum, Brazil\u2019s Luiz\u00a0In\u00e1cio Lula\u00a0da Silva, and Colombia\u2019s Gustavo Petro.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default alignright\">\n<div class=\"photo__container\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9781250753298-copy.jpg?fit=700%2C1079\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9781250753298-copy.jpg?w=700 700w, https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9781250753298-copy.jpg?w=195 195w, https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9781250753298-copy.jpg?w=664 664w, https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9781250753298-copy.jpg?w=540 540w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"1079\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><figcaption class=\"photo__figcaption\">\n      <span class=\"photo__caption\">\u201cEmpire\u2019s Workshop\u201d by Greg Grandin<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"photo__credit\">Available on Bookshop.org<\/span>    <\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unlike the Cuban lobby, which had operated under the tight discipline of Mas Canosa and CANF, the newer Latin American exile community had no single institutional home. The Trump transition team after the 2024 election moved quickly to capture these new constituencies, reaching out to figures like F\u00e9lix Maradiaga, a Miami-based Nicaraguan opposition leader whom former guerrilla fighter and strongman president Daniel Ortega had stripped of his citizenship.\u00a0Maradiaga <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/world\/articles\/2024-11-07\/trumps-team-keen-to-unite-anti-dictatorship-exiles-nicaragua-dissident-says\">says<\/a> that Trump\u2019s envoys were urging the opponents of Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela to \u201cunite our points of view so that the actions that come from the United States have a joint impact in the quest for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mar-a-Lago became the diaspora\u2019s clubhouse, a palace-in-exile for Latin America\u2019s displaced elites \u2014 where Brazil\u2019s Bolsonaro family bends Trump\u2019s ear, Venezuelan opposition figures convene with White House officials, and Colombian magnates attend fundraisers alongside Cuban American politicians and businessmen to discuss business opportunities and coordinate the hemisphere\u2019s restoration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The scale of what was being plotted there has been partially revealed: a cache of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropsitenews.com\/p\/hondurasgate-leaked-audio-files-juan-orlando-hernandez-likely-authentic\">forensically authenticated voice notes<\/a> leaked from former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez. <a href=\"https:\/\/insightcrime.org\/news\/drug-case-former-honduras-president-trump-pardon\/\">Convicted of drug trafficking<\/a>, Hern\u00e1ndez had been serving a 45-year sentence in a West Virginia federal penitentiary until Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/12\/01\/honduras-hernandez-pardon-trump-venezuela-drugs\/\">pardoned<\/a> him in December 2025. The leaked memos reveal that Hern\u00e1ndez was being financed by both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newarab.com\/analysis\/hondurasgate-alleged-us-israeli-plot-shaking-latin-america\">Israel<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/peoplesdispatch.org\/2026\/05\/05\/hondurasgate-leaked-audio-links-asfura-hernandez-trump-milei-netanyahu-in-anti-left-plot\/\">Argentina<\/a> (he spent his first night of freedom in the five-star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/trump-ice-pardon-juan-orlando-hernandez-honduras-prison-special-treatment\">Waldorf Astoria<\/a> hotel) and that his political proxy, current Honduran President Nasry Asfura, was meeting with investors at Mar-a-Lago to discuss sketchy deals with U.S. officials and to plan a broader destabilization program targeting Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-miami-rules\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Miami Rules<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new, greater Latin American lobby operates differently from the old CANF model, trading\u00a0a single-issue ethnic lobby focused on one country for a class-based hemispheric operation united by a common enemy: reformism of even the blandest sort. CANF itself continues to exist but has fallen into irrelevance. Its PAC went dormant and its lobbying function was absorbed into a broader, more decentralized Latin America lobby. Florida\u2019s Republican Party has largely absorbed CANF\u2019s electoral machinery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Class divisions had long existed in the Cuban diaspora, especially after the Mariel boatlift. But a singular focus on liberating Cuba had muted the cleavages. Now, though, as the diaspora became hemispheric in scope, the gap between the haves and have-nots has become more visible. Doral\u2019s gated communities sport lovely names \u2014 Doral Isles Riviera, Doral Isles Venetia \u2014 and wealthy Venezuelans play golf at Trump National. Tens of thousands of poorer Venezuelans \u2014 many of whom risked their lives trekking the Dari\u00e9n Gap to get to the U.S., many of whom work at that same golf resort \u2014 live in constant fear: Trump has revoked their Temporary Protected Status, leading to more than 15,000 deportations. Some have been sent back to Venezuela, others to El Salvador\u2019s infamous maximum-security <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/05\/09\/trump-bukele-kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-cecot-prison\/\">CECOT prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The cruelty is not limited to Venezuelans. The Trump administration has targeted other poor immigrants, including Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/06\/29\/g-s1-130942\/temporary-protected-status-program-explainer-supreme-court\">Haitians<\/a>. Even poor Cubans \u2014 who in the past could expect automatic residency \u2014 are now being shipped to Mexico, where many, elderly and sick, find themselves sleeping on the streets of random cities, such as Villahermosa, the humid capital of Mexico\u2019s southern state of Tabasco. \u201cThey\u2019re casting us aside to die,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/report\/2026\/05\/27\/casting-us-aside-to-die\/cuban-and-other-third-country-nationals-deported-from-the\">said<\/a> Harold A, a 58-year-old Cuban national who was deported to Mexico earlier this year. \u201cThey don\u2019t give us anything, nothing. \u2026 How are we supposed to eat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The wealthy members of the diaspora tend to see these deportations as harsh but necessary to protect their reputation as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/americanethnologist.org\/online-content\/reterritorializing-venezuelas-moral-geography-in-the-us-by-erick-moreno-superlano\/\">exceptional migrants<\/a>.\u201d Poor Venezuelans are referred to by some of their better-off compatriots as <em>orcos<\/em> \u2014 orcs, subhumans \u2014 a class contempt that Oxford scholar Erick Moreno Superlano has documented in detail. The lobby that presents itself as the agent of Latin American freedom is, in fact, a staunch defender of the hemisphere\u2019s status and class hierarchy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These new well-to-do exile groups vote in their national elections as a bloc, and often decisively so for their country\u2019s most Trump-like candidate. Last month in Peru, the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori \u2014 who spent 16 years in prison for human rights violations committed during his presidency, including death squad killings \u2014 would have lost the presidential election if only votes cast in Peru were counted, but ultimately beat her center-left opponent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-06-08\/peru-s-diaspora-emerges-as-tie-breaker-in-razor-edge-presidential-race\">thanks<\/a> to the votes of the Peruvian diaspora. The roughly 9,000 Miami-Dade votes helped her win by less than 1 percent. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More recently, Colombians living in Miami turned out in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/news\/nation-world\/world\/americas\/article316211969.html\">unprecedented<\/a> numbers to vote for the hard-right Trump mimic Abelardo\u00a0De la Espriella, helping him win a presidential election that was as close as Peru\u2019s. De la Espriella is a U.S. citizen and was a long-time resident of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Miami, where he worked as a defense lawyer for Colombian clients, among them paramilitaries, right-wing politicians, and money launderers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Be it by the bullet or the ballot, Miami rules.<\/p>\n<div class=\"newsletter-embed flex-col items-center print:hidden\" id=\"third-party--article-mid\" data-module=\"InlineNewsletter\" data-module-source=\"web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\">\n<div class=\"-mx-5 sm:-mx-10 p-5 sm:px-10 xl:-ml-5 lg:mr-0 xl:px-5 bg-accentLight hidden\" data-name=\"subscribed\">\n<h2 class=\"font-sans font-light uppercase text-[30px] leading-8 text-white tracking-[0.01em] mb-0\">\n      We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. Join us.    <\/h2>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/donate\/now\/?referrer_post_id=519036&amp;referrer_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2026%2F07%2F02%2Ftomdispatch-trump-florida-cuba-latin-america-lobby-israel-aipac%2F&amp;source=web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\" class=\"border border-white !text-white font-mono uppercase p-5 inline-flex items-center gap-3 hover:bg-white hover:!text-accentLight focus:bg-white focus:!text-accentLight\" data-name=\"donateCTA\" data-action=\"handleDonate\"><br \/>\n      Become a member      <span class=\"font-icons icon-TI_Arrow_02_Right\"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"group default w-full px-5 hidden\" data-name=\"unsubscribed\">\n<div class=\"px-5 border-[10px] border-accentLight\">\n<div class=\"bg-white -my-2.5 relative block px-4 md:px-5\">\n<h2 class=\"font-sans font-body text-[30px] font-bold tracking-[0.01em] leading-8 mb-0 xl:text-[37px] xl:leading-[39px]\">\n          <span class=\"group-[.subscribed]:hidden\"><br \/>\n            Join Our Newsletter          <\/span><br \/>\n          <span class=\"group-[.default]:hidden\"><br \/>\n            Thank You For Joining!          <\/span><br \/>\n        <\/h2>\n<p class=\"text-[27px] mb-3.5 font-bold text-accentLight tracking-[0.01em] leading-[29px] font-sans xl:text-[37px] xl:leading-[39px]\">\n          <span class=\"group-[.subscribed]:hidden\"><br \/>\n            Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.          <\/span><br \/>\n          <span class=\"group-[.default]:hidden\"><br \/>\n            Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?          <\/span>\n        <\/p>\n<p>        <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/donate\/now\/?referrer_post_id=519036&amp;referrer_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2026%2F07%2F02%2Ftomdispatch-trump-florida-cuba-latin-america-lobby-israel-aipac%2F&amp;source=web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\" class=\"group-[.default]:hidden border border-accentLight text-accentLight font-sans px-5 py-3.5 inline-flex items-center gap-3 text-[20px] font-bold\" data-action=\"handleDonate\"><br \/>\n          Become a member          <span class=\"font-icons icon-TI_Arrow_02_Right\"\/><br \/>\n        <\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"font-sans text-accentLight text-[10px] leading-[13px] text-balance [&amp;_a]:text-accentLight [&amp;_a]:font-bold [&amp;_a:hover]:underline group-[.subscribed]:hidden\">\n<p>By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/privacy-policy\/\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/terms-use\/\">Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- END-BLOCK(newsletter)[0] --><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-the-dogs-that-caught-the-car\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Dogs That Caught the Car<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both AIPAC and the greater Latin American lobby had, in the second Trump term, achieved close to their maximal ambitions simultaneously: a war on Iran and a full-court press on Latin American leftists of all stripes, with the deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces, CIA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/05\/12\/politics\/cia-drug-cartels-deadly-operations-mexico\">assassination teams<\/a>, naval blockades, and sanctions. War powers resolutions to stop Trump\u2019s actions \u2014 in <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/06\/28\/fetterman-iran-trump-war-powers\/\">Iran<\/a>, Cuba, and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/14\/trump-venezuela-senate-war-powers-vote-failed\/\">Venezuela<\/a> \u2014 are routinely blocked by a Republican caucus <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/05\/19\/thomas-massie-loses-election-results-trump-aipac-kentucky\/\">dependent on AIPAC money<\/a> and Florida\u2019s electoral votes, often with an assist from a handful of <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/02\/iran-war-democratic-primaries-trump\/\">AIPAC Democrats<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet both lobbies now find themselves something like the dog that caught the car, and then was run over.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump\u2019s war in Iran was a <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/11\/iran-school-missile-investigation\/\">tactical<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/04\/08\/ceasefire-iran-war-israel-us\/\">strategic disaster<\/a>, leading the White House to lash out at Israel in ways that, just a month ago, would have been unimaginable. Vice President JD Vance just lectured Israel that it \u201ccan\u2019t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem.\u201d And Trump warned Benjamin Netanyahu \u201cyou will be on your own very soon.\u201d AIPAC\u2019s maximalist project \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/06\/19\/israel-gaza-ceasefire-tariq-kenney-shawa\/\">permanent war<\/a>, permanent leverage, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/06\/08\/us-israel-224-ai-defense-budget\/\">permanent intertwining with U.S. power<\/a> \u2014 is in tatters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whether the same reversal comes for the Latin American lobby remains to be seen. Trump is still pressing Cuba hard, demanding a \u201cdeal.\u201d But the deal Trump is pushing looks less like regime change than an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/news\/the-u.s.-is-terrorizing-cuba-to-make-rich-men-richer\">investment prospectus<\/a>. It\u2019s less the Monroe than the Capone Doctrine: Sanctions destroy foreign competitors, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/04\/27\/biden-helms-burton-act-cuba\/\">Helms\u2013Burton<\/a> lawsuits punish anyone who stays, and Trump-connected U.S. investors move in to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/sherritt-sells-majority-stake-9.7206156\">pick up assets<\/a> at distressed prices. Recently, a business <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/sherritt-cuba-canada-trump-sanctions-d2bd6d9a4188e6b81725c0c8a21a533a\">connected<\/a> to a former Trump official Ray Washburne muscled out a Canadian mining and cobalt corporation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump\u2019s sanctions worked too well. They broke Cuba\u2019s economy so completely that Havana was forced, recently, to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/world\/cuba-passes-sweeping-free-market-reforms-in-biggest-economic-shift-since-revolution\">enact sweeping economic liberalization<\/a> \u2014 reforms that serve investors, not exiles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Florida, Cuban Americans who have never set foot in Cuba, like Nicol\u00e1s J. Guti\u00e9rrez \u2014 a Miami-born lawyer whose \u201cyoung millionaire\u201d father lost his sugar fields to Castro \u2014 founded organizations such as the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/06\/04\/americas\/cuban-property-castro-trump-latam-intl\">National Sugar Mill Owners of Cuba<\/a>,\u201d hoping that Trump would make a country they have never seen theirs again.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For many, that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/news\/trumps-cuba-threats-revive-exile-hopes-fears-over-property-claims\/\">hope<\/a> is dissipating quickly as they face their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aol.com\/articles\/trump-liberate-cuba-save-cuban-195917500.html\">nightmare scenario<\/a>: a repeat of what happened recently in Venezuela, where Trump entered into a partnership with the existing government, letting demands for root-and-branch regime change take a back seat to oil industry dealmaking. ExxonMobil, which has a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/21\/world\/americas\/exxon-venezuela-oil-trump.html\">large role<\/a> in setting Trump\u2019s Venezuela policy, just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/supreme-court-oks-exxonmobil-lawsuit-over-cuban-property-seized-by-fidel-castros-government\">won<\/a> a Supreme Court Case that allows it to sue Cuban state-owned companies in U.S. federal courts to win compensation for property confiscated more than 65 years ago. This ruling will give the company enormous leverage in what comes next for Cuba. At the same time, Trump, in his second term, has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/27\/us\/cuba-deport-mexico.html\">deported<\/a> nearly 8,000 Cuban nationals, many of the low-income asylum-seekers but also a considerable number of middle-class business and property owners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sugar fields, it seems, will not be returned to the children of their former owners any time soon, though they might be put out to bid. But those hoping for restoration will always have Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Floridas #Cuban #Diaspora #Israeli #Lobby #Coming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a devastating earthquake&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[246],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}