Originally published in Spanish on April 3, 2026. Factual clarifications incorporated in the English edition.
Opinion | An open letter by Ernesto García
A letter dated April 2, 2026, signed by more than 50 Democratic and allied lawmakers, called on President Trump to reverse his Cuba policy. Led by Rep. Gregory Meeks and Sen. Tim Kaine, with signers including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joaquín Castro, it argues that U.S. pressure is worsening a humanitarian crisis.
We have read the letter carefully. Before responding, we ask one question: where was this urgency when Cubans needed you to confront the Cuban regime responsible for their suffering?
Table of Contents
What the lawmakers are asking for
- Prominent signers: Gregory Meeks, Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joaquín Castro, Ed Markey and Jim McGovern.
- Central demand: a reversal of the administration’s pressure on Cuba, including the oil-supply measures addressed in Executive Order 14380 of January 29, 2026.
- Their argument: restrictions on energy and health care are worsening humanitarian conditions and conflict with American values.
- The omission challenged here: the letter mentions political repression but makes no explicit demand for the release of political prisoners or free elections.
- The distinction among Florida representatives: María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez did not sign. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, whose mother is a Cuban immigrant, did.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Democratic office published the letter and its signers. Frost’s official biography records his Cuban American family background.
What the letter says — and what its argument leaves out
You describe blackouts, hospitals without fuel, and children, older people and chronically ill patients unable to obtain care. Those conditions are real, and they hurt. But they developed over decades under the same Cuban regime you decline to hold at the center of your argument.
Cuba’s national power grid collapsed in March 2026, affecting nearly 10 million people. The crisis did not begin with Trump or Executive Order 14380. Since late 2024, the island had experienced at least six total or partial grid collapses. In 2025, outages lasted as long as 12 hours in Havana and 20 elsewhere.
The original column cites a 35% fall in oil imports during the first ten months of 2025 and an officially acknowledged 4% contraction in GDP during the first nine months. The deterioration preceded the January 2026 measures.
The Castro regime is not a consequence of sanctions. Sanctions are a consequence of the regime’s conduct.
The 1996 Helms-Burton Act, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, placed democratic conditions on the suspension and termination of the embargo. The column’s demand is simple: U.S. lawmakers seeking to change sanctions should also press Havana for free elections, press freedom and the release of political prisoners.
The crisis the Cuban regime created, in figures
The following figures are those cited in the original April 2026 column:
- Nearly 10 million people affected by the March national-grid collapse.
- At least six total or partial national-grid collapses since late 2024.
- A 4% GDP contraction in the first nine months of 2025, according to the official acknowledgment cited.
- A 35% decline in oil imports during the 2025 period compared with 2024.
- A 73% decline in Mexican oil imports in 2025.
- A 90% decline in fuel imports in February 2026.
- An average state salary worth roughly $13 a month at the informal exchange rate used in the comparison.
- More than 3,000 pesos for a carton of 30 eggs in February 2026.
- More than 1 million departures between 2021 and 2025, roughly 10% of the population under the original estimate.
The missing urgency over political prisoners
Where is comparable urgency for the people imprisoned for opposing the Cuban regime? The original column cites Prisoners Defenders’ count of 1,211 political prisoners and Justicia 11J’s documentation of at least 760 people imprisoned for political reasons. These are different organizations’ tallies, rather than interchangeable totals.
Young Cubans went into the streets on July 11, 2021, demanding freedom in the largest demonstrations in decades. Some received sentences as long as 22 years. The column reported that at least 21 had been released in March 2026, while hundreds remained behind bars.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a co-founder of the San Isidro Movement, has been imprisoned since July 11, 2021. The original column reports explicit death threats against him by state security agents in March 2026.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission documents Otero Alcántara’s case. Amnesty International has documented surveillance of the San Isidro Movement and its allies.
Cubans can face prison, exile and threats for describing their reality online. Journalists working with 14ymedio, Diario de Cuba and CubaNet have faced travel restrictions. Their news sites are blocked inside Cuba. The country has endured more than six decades of one-party rule without free, competitive national elections.
A letter focused on the people’s suffering should confront that machinery of control with the same force it directs at Washington.
Cubanos por el Mundo has reported on a mother pleading for her detained sons in Havana and on a Holguín killing acknowledged by a pro-government profile, the related report referenced in the Spanish article.
The announcement of 2,010 releases
On April 2, 2026, the Cuban government announced the release of 2,010 prisoners as a Holy Week humanitarian gesture. Yet it excluded people convicted of offenses against authority, a category used against dissidents and protesters. It did not provide a breakdown establishing how many political prisoners, if any, were included.
While the Cuban regime presented that gesture internationally, the original column reported threats by state security’s Department 21 against documented political prisoners Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Daniel Alfaro Frías and Jorge Ayala. Those reports show why a headline release total is inadequate: the people targeted for political reasons still need individual scrutiny.
Why South Florida’s Cuban American Republicans took a different position
The Spanish article asked why no Cuban American signed. That blanket assertion is incorrect: Maxwell Frost appears on the signature pages and was raised by a Cuban immigrant mother. The meaningful political contrast is with Salazar, Díaz-Balart and Giménez, who favor stronger enforcement, revocation of licenses benefiting the regime and accountability.
Their positions, as cited in the original column, were:
- María Elvira Salazar: called on the State and Treasury departments to investigate South Florida firms suspected of evading Cuba sanctions, including the use of humanitarian licenses for sports cars and recreational yachts.
- Carlos Giménez: argued that Cuba was approaching its Berlin Wall moment and urged Washington to close revenue channels used for repression.
- Mario Díaz-Balart: argued that the anti-American dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua could not withstand another term of decisive Trump leadership.
- Marco Rubio, secretary of state: cited Helms-Burton’s political conditions and announced sanctions involving Díaz-Canel and senior defense and interior officials.
Those positions draw on the testimony of prisoners, rafters, exiles and families that know one-party dictatorship firsthand. The author’s judgment is that pressure for accountability serves Cubans better than a letter focused on easing the Cuban regime’s external constraints.
Read about the Free Cuba Rally in Hialeah, where exiles asked Donald Trump to act to end the dictatorship.
The diaspora will not fall silent
More than 1 million Cubans left between 2021 and 2025 under the estimate cited here. Their departure reflects a regime that has spent 67 years offering repression, hardship and enforced silence.
Exiles use every available means to keep hope alive. AI-generated videos imagining a free, modern Malecón have circulated with “Nuestro Día (Ya Viene Llegando),” an unofficial exile anthem. Activists put freedom slogans along the Malecón itself. The question of whether people would return and start from zero if Cuba were free produces wrenching debates between those longing for home and those who have rebuilt their lives elsewhere.
We will not let others speak in our name while ignoring the people silenced inside Cuba. Speaking there can cost freedom, exile or life. From the diaspora, we will remain the voice the regime wants extinguished. Cubans need neither complicit diplomacy nor letters that evade responsibility for their tragedy.
In this Cubanos por el Mundo video, referenced in the original article, Cuban American business leaders in Miami present a plan to rebuild a free Cuba from zero.
The history this argument leaves out
U.S. export restrictions began under Eisenhower in 1960, and Kennedy formalized the broader embargo in 1962. They followed uncompensated expropriations and Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union. The later deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles underscored the security confrontation. The embargo has continued through successive presidencies because the underlying political dispute was never resolved.
In 2014, Obama opened a path toward rapprochement. Restrictions were eased, remittances and travel expanded, and Cuba was removed from the terrorism list in 2015. Contrary to the Spanish column’s absolute claim that no political prisoner was freed, the Obama administration confirmed the release of 53 prisoners in January 2015.
Those releases did not produce free elections, a free press or an end to political imprisonment. The author’s central criticism is that the Cuban regime retained and strengthened its machinery of control despite the diplomatic opening.
When Cubans again demanded freedom on July 11, 2021, the response included beatings, prosecutions, disproportionate sentences and reports of enforced disappearances.
The problem has a name and an address
When visiting lawmakers listen only to the Cuban regime, neglect dissidents and fail to speak with ordinary Cubans outside party supervision, they return to Washington with photographs and calls for dialogue while overlooking voices that cannot speak freely.
That serves the rulers rather than the people they repress.
Warnings of humanitarian collapse are grave. But Cuba’s collapse did not begin with a January 2026 executive order. It emerged from a political and economic system imposed after a revolution that promised freedom and delivered chains.
Cuba’s problem has a name and an address: the communist regime, in power since 1959 and governing from Havana. Until that changes, neither a letter nor diplomacy can resolve the people’s suffering. Wherever a free Cuban lives, we will continue speaking for those who cannot speak freely at home.
