Letters to the Editor: Biden must minimize overtures to Cuba | The Miami Herald

The Miami Herald, February 18, 2021

Biden must minimize overtures to Cuba

Kudos to Kevin G. Hall and Nora Gámez Torres for their well-researched Feb. 12th article, “Brother of powerful Cuban general moves like a phantom in embargo-evading offshore world.”

It exposed the links between Guillermo Faustino Rodríguez López-Calleja who controls the Luxembourg registered Mid Atlantic company and his brother Gen. Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja who runs Cuba’s military-industrial conglomerate, Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A., (GAESA), that reportedly controls 60 percent of Cuba’s economy.

Monies generated by Mid-Atlantic and GAESA go to the repressive elements of the Castro regime that finance mistreatment of Cubans, and funds Castro’s military and intelligence personnel propping up Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

The Prague-based CASLA Institute in its 2021 report “Venezuela: Crimes Against Humanity, Systematic Repression and Torture, Responsibility of the Cuban regime” presented testimonies they obtained in 2020 from Venezuelan civilian and military witnesses who were tortured by Cuban officers. A rape was also reported.

Greater military control of the Cuban economy occurred during the warming of relations between the United States and Cuba, between January 2009 and January 2017.

The Obama Administration’s 2014 opening to Havana resulted in Castro’s military exponentially expanding “its economic empire under detente” seizing control of economic sectors previously controlled by civilian elements.

Resuming détente with Havana will provide more resources to commit atrocities to spread Cuba’s communist ideology.

 

John Suarez

Executive Director

Center for a Free Cuba

Falls Church, VA

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/miami-herald/20210218/page/10/textview