Tag: CUBA

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpTj_qz-YjI&w=560&h=315] HAVANA (AP) — For 60 years, Cuba’s communist government has monopolized virtually every aspect of life on the island, including dozens of state-controlled...

“This is a bridge between Tampa and Cuba,” said Rev. Ramon Hernandez, a Cuban-born priest who lives in Tampa and returned for the ceremony.

Rubio also helps steer an influential body of President Trump's Cuban-American. followers both in Miami and Tampa as well as statewide.

Renewed tensions between the U.S. and Cuba aren’t stopping the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from shining a spotlight on the island’s rich cultural heritage during what’s being billed as the largest Cuban arts festival ever held in the United States.

Cuba on Wednesday selected 57-year-old First Vice President Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez as sole candidate to succeed Raul Castro as president of Cuba, the centerpiece of an effort to ensure that the country’s single-party system outlasts the aging revolutionaries who created it.

When Castro steps down Thursday after two terms as president he will leave his successor a host of problems that are deeper than on the day his brother Fidel formally handed over power.

The word traveled quickly through Ybor City in Tampa and in the Little Havana area of Miami. Travel to Cuba is being cut drastically. At least, for now, things are a no go on the travel front.

Cuba’s foreign minister rejected President Donald Trump’s new policy toward the island, saying Monday that “we will never negotiate under pressure or under threat” and refusing to return U.S. fugitives who have received asylum in Cuba. In a hard-edged response to the policy announced Friday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said from Vienna that Trump’s restrictions on transactions with the Cuban military would not achieve their objective of weakening the government. He said they would instead create unity behind the communist leadership.

Many Cuban exiles in Miami are embracing the changes President Donald Trump announced Friday to his predecessor's policies of engagement with the communist island - but some want even more. President Barack Obama's restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba and easing of decades-old travel and business restrictions had divided Cuban-Americans. Hard-line exiles agreed with Trump's move to roll back some of the changes by restricting commerce with entities linked to Cuba's military, restoring tougher travel rules and other moves in hopes of forcing Cuba toward democracy.

When President Donald Trump stood on a hot stage in the "Little Havana," section Miami he gave a big shout out to his new best friend Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Trump was in Miami to keep his campaign promise to South Florida Cuban-American's to rollback former President Barack Obama's 2014 executive that rolled back some of trade and travel embargo's that had been in place since 1962.