MIAMI (WSVN) – While so much attention has been on the Middle East and an 11th-hour ceasefire announcement, fiery talk from Cuba’s leader has raised some eyebrows in the Cuban community on Monday, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio doesn’t appear overly concerned about it.
In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel threatened a gorilla-style fight if the U.S. military takes action against the island nation.
“We will always strive to avoid war. We will always work for peace. But if military aggression occurs, we will fight back, we will battle, we will defend ourselves,” Diaz-Canel told the interviewer in Spanish. “And should we fall in battle, to die for the homeland is to live.”
During the interview with Diaz-Canel, the author notes that what he is saying is a slogan popularized by former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Diaz-Canel agrees and said in Spanish: “The loss of life and material destruction would be incalculable. Such an act of aggression would be extremely costly in every respect, and it is not what our peoples deserve.”
The war of words from the Cuban dictator comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to take over Cuba and has said that the island nation is next on his list. It also comes on the heels of a major U.S. operation in Venezuela and Iran.
On Tuesday, during his meeting with New Zealand’s foreign minister, Rubio was asked about the Cuban leader’s statement and didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“OK, sure, yeah. I don’t think much about what he has to say,” said Rubio.
For Cuban Americans like Rafael Sosa, who still has family in Cuba, he said he shares the secretary of state’s sentiment.
“It’s a joke. Pretty much, all the Cuban people know that there is no way, no comparison between the two countries,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Havana on Tuesday, hundreds of women took to the streets to oppose U.S. policy against the island and its ongoing energy blockade. The female group is closely linked to Cuba’s government and its Communist Party.
Many chanted “Long live Fidel and Raúl [Castro]. Long live Díaz-Canel. Down with Yankee imperialism.”
Earlier this year, following the Venezuelan operation in January, President Trump disrupted Cuba’s oil supply by cutting off Venezuela’s lifeline and threatening tariffs against any country that sells or supplies oil to the island nation.
But by the end of March, Trump gave the green light for a Russian oil tanker to deliver oil to Cuba for the first time in three months, essentially bypassing his own oil blockade.
As for Sosa, he says the conditions in Cuba remain very difficult.
“It’s bad. It’s bad. That’s what I hear from her, she pretty much says it’s hard to find anything, food, gas,” he said.
He hopes all this tough talk from Trump leads to regime change on the island nation.
“Need a different kind of government, a system that is open for everyone so you have the same opportunities we had when we got [to the United States],” said Sosa.
The U.S. and Cuba have confirmed that they are currently negotiating, but it remains unclear if any progress has been made.
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