DOVATO-I did.
Welcome back.
Joe Garcia was a
democratic member
of Congress, elected in 2012.
He served one term representing
South Dade and the Florida Keys.
In the '90s, he helped lead
the Cuban American
National Foundation,
a hard line on Cuba,
but over the last decade,
Garcia has advocated
for more engagement
with the island
and supported President
Obama's efforts
to normalize relations in 2016.
I started by asking
him what he expected
the Biden administration
to do when it came to Cuba.
wouldn't mind Obama 2.0,
but I think more realistically,
what you're going to
see as an administration
that's going to look at the
humanitarian angle of this,
travel, remittances,
helping civil society.
I think they're gonna lean
in aggressively in that area
and move with those
things right off the bat.
I think that makes
a lot of sense,
but I think Joe Biden
has a deep understanding
To some very broad degree,
he sort of ran a lot of the
Latin American relationships
and Cuba is clearly
one of those issues.
know it because you live here,
the Cuban American
community has 10 members
of the legislative branch of
the United States government
and they have their views
and their views
are gonna be taken
into effect or
into consideration,
just like Marco Rubio
was a definer, to some degree,
on a lot of President Trump's
views on Latin America.
There's no question that
Senator Bob Menendez
is gonna play a big role
as will Albio Sires
from New Jersey.
That said, I think
there are things here
that make sense across the board
and that you can find
a lot of unity on.
And then, secondly, I also think
that they're gonna
wanna grow their base.
We got our hat handed to us
pretty badly in Dade County
and politics is a
game of addition.
There's gonna be an
election in two years.
There are seats that are gonna
be with freshmen members,
all of them, to some degree,
are going to be
freshmen members,
'cause redistricting is
gonna affect these districts,
as you can imagine.
We're going get one or two
new congressional seats.
Those seats, one of them will
come down to South Florida
and I don't know
how you design them
to hold a for Republicans
in the Hispanic community.
There are those who believe
and say that the Obama
policy was a failure.
We saw no real
changes within Cuba
as a result of the Obama policy.
So, returning to it,
even modifying it,
won't that just open the door
for Republicans to
be able to, again,
brand Democrats as socialist
or socialist sympathizers
or Marxists or whatever
they wanna say?
Look, let's begin with,
it wasn't a failure.
There were less people in jail.
There was more civil society.
There was more exchange.
I met more dissidents
on the street of Miami
from Cuba than I
ever did in Cuba.
So, the reality is that
it opened up society.
You saw more change
in the last two years
of the Obama
administration, then you saw
in the previous 60 years
of the Cuban revolution,
but even more importantly,
what it wasn't a repudiation of,
was the fact that
Hillary Clinton
got overwhelming support in
where she got more
votes than her husband,
she got more votes
even than Obama.
And the reality is the
reason she did so well,
in the midst of
Obama policy on Cuba,
which she completely embraced,
is because it made sense
to Cuban Americans.
Now, do I think that the
Cubans need to do more?
Absolutely, I think that
They failed to do it.
I think we, as a Cuban
American community,
have to lean in, but I
think to say that policy
was a failure is simply
to avoid the facts.
There were less jailings,
less repression in Cuba.
There was more
economic opportunity.
There was a thriving
of small businesses.
There was quite
literally a flourishing
of discussion and
debate both in Miami,
where you had Cuban artists
from Cuba, traveling here.
Now we've got other
Cubans have to do more
to let Cuban artists from
South Florida go to Cuba
and I think they failed in that.
But speaking of artists, I mean,
you're woe familiar
with the crackdown
on Cuban artists that are
taking place on the island,
the heavy-handed repression.
We haven't seen this
since the Ladies in White.
This is a new generation
that is being fought against.
So again, my question
becomes, does it not then seem
as if we're rewarding
the Cuban government
by returning to the old policy,
at a time when they are
as repressive as ever?
Well, the question is
they're repressive has ever
because our policies, were
as regressive as ever.
And so, I think
that if we lean in
to a progressive policy
that helps civil rights,
I'd rather have the Ladies
in White visiting Joe Biden
in the White House
than us watching
cell phones footage of people
getting beaten in Cuba.
What we know is that as
that society opened up,
as there was more contact,
there was less repression.
There was more opportunity.
There was more exchange.
There was more of a fervent
dialogue on all areas,
human rights, journalism,
free expression.
Is it what you and I want? No.
Am I justifying what
exists in Cuba today?
Of course not, but what