Miami Republican Mayor Francis Suarez called out the far-left’s silence over the pro-democracy protests in Cuba, which has been ruled by decades of Communist dictatorship, and told Fox News the latest unrest exposes the “false promise” of socialism.
Suarez, whose father Xavier was the city’s first Cuban-born mayor, told “Your World” guest host Sandra Smith on Monday that it is unbelievable that anyone would fail to condemn Communist ideology.
“[It] has failed not just in Cuba but in the history of humanity—this is an ideology that promises to create equality. The only equality it has delivered is equal misery for all of its citizens in every country that its been tried,” he said. “It’s time for the United States to understand that. It’s time for us to understand this could affect American cities if we’re not careful.”
Suarez added that socialism provides people a “false promise” and in practice means the government takes away peoples’ property and freedoms.
“The truth of the matter is, it’s never worked and never going to work and the United States has to start intervening and finding a way, whether it’s through humanitarian aid, military intervention, whatever means necessary to protect the sovereignty of the Cuban people and the sovereignty of the United States in this hemisphere,” he said.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, who is also head of the Communist Party, released a statement that warned the “Cuban Revolution is not going to turn the other cheek to those who attack it in virtual and real spaces,” and that his government will “avoid revolutionary violence, but will repress counterrevolutionary violence.”
Suarez said the communist regime is a “drug-trafficking dictatorship” that sponsors terrorism and exports its dangerous political system throughout the world.
“And so, it affects U.S. interests. That’s something that sometimes is not emphasized enough: How this affects U.S. National security policy,” he said. “And I think the U.S. has to understand that these kinds of regimes that are enslaving not just Cubans, but Nicaraguans and Venezuelans… impact our sovereignty and our security.”
“The U.S. has a vested interest and a right to intervene on behalf of the Cuban people but also on behalf of the United States and creating an international coalition is important,” he added.
The mayor referenced Fox News correspondent Phil Keating’s report outside Versailles, a famous Cuban restaurant on US-41 in Little Havana, where people waved Cuban flags and shouted pro-democracy slogans.
“The Cuban people have no food, as was stated by [Keating]. They have no access to medical care, particularly being devastated by the coronavirus and most importantly they want freedom. What we have in this country, they want the hope for a better future,” Suarez said.