Top Cuban Communist Party officials, including “President” Miguel Díaz-Canel, spent the weekend griping after the U.S. State Department announced it would limit visa access for some of the most violent and powerful Party leaders on the island.
Friday marked the four-year anniversary of historic nationwide anti-communist protests in Cuba, attracting tens of thousands of people and explicitly demanding an end to over half a century of Castro dynasty rule. Díaz-Canel, as president, is the face of the Communist Party but not the most powerful official; that title still belongs to 94-year-old dictator Raúl Castro. Fidel Castro’s brother. On July 11, 2021, after an estimated 187,000 people peacefully assembled to demand that Cuba renounce communism, Díaz-Canel appeared on television and issued an “order of combat” to the regime’s few sympathizers and hired thugs, openly calling for vigilantes to beat suspected protesters into submission.
The aftermath of the protests in Cuba has been dominated by mass arrests, forced disappearances of suspected protesters, and open street violence against civilians. State security officials conducted door-to-door raids in the days following in an attempt to identify all individuals believed to have participated in the protests, or even those who by chance witnessed it, resulting in outrageous examples of state repression such as one man being shot in front of his twin toddlers in his own home.
As of Friday, human rights researchers estimate that 65 percent of the political prisoners known to be held in Cuba were arrested in relation to the 2021 protests. Many of those imprisoned were sentenced as part of indiscriminate mass trials, including children and individuals with mental disabilities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Friday that, in response to these egregious human rights abuses, Cuba’s top regime officials would no longer enjoy the privilege of applying for American visas.
“In solidarity with the Cuban people and the island’s political prisoners, the United States is designating key regime leaders under Section 7031(c) for their involvement in gross violations of human rights,” Rubio detailed in a statement. “We are also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on numerous Cuban judicial and prison officials responsible for, or complicit in, the unjust detention and torture of July 2021 protestors.”
The sanctions targeted Díaz-Canel, chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) Álvaro López Miera, and Interior Minister Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas by name, as well as their families. Section 7031(c) is a regulation that allows for limiting access to U.S. visas for individuals when “the Secretary of State has credible information that officials of foreign governments have been involved in a gross violation of human rights or significant corruption,” according to the State Department.
Rubio also announced on Friday that his office would expand the list of entities with which Americans are banned from conducting business in Cuba, most prominently several luxury hotels “including the new 42-story ‘Torre K’ hotel.” Tourism is among the most lucrative businesses the Cuban military controls through its network of shell companies. While interest in vacationing in Cuba among most Americans is low, Cuba trips became a status symbol for many American celebrities during the pro-regime term of former President Barack Obama.
“The U.S. will continue to stand for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Cuba, and make clear no illegitimate, dictatorial regimes are welcome in our hemisphere,” Rubio concluded in his announcement.
The Cuban External Relations Ministry (Minrex) has not, at press time, issued an official statement on the sanctions. Díaz-Canel and his wife, Lis Cuesta, responded to the announcement on their personal social media accounts, however, dismissing the importance of their being banned from entering America.
Díaz-Canel attempted to bizarrely link the sanctions not to human rights atrocities he has committed while president, but to the ongoing war in Gaza between the government of Israel and the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas, which Cuba supports.
“What bothers the U.S. about Cuba is its true independence, that transnationals [corporations] do not govern here, that we have free health and education, that we do not ask for permission to condemn crimes such as those of Israel and the U.S. against the Palestinians,” Díaz-Canel wrote.
Cuesta, meanwhile, mocked the sanctions by noting that Díaz-Canel has repeatedly visited the United States in the past.
“[Díaz-Canel] was already in New York, was on the streets and received love. It was already done. They’re late,” she wrote.
Cuesta appeared to be referring to several visits the communist official made to America’s largest city to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Díaz-Canel used the event in 2018 to make several stops at events honoring Marxists visiting the city for the occasion, including an event at a church in Harlem that also featured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Díaz-Canel used his church appearance to condemn President Trump for sanctions to limit the ability of the Cuban regime to brutalize its own people, notably omitting in his remarks that Cuba aggressively persecutes Christians and under no circumstances would allow a political event at a church such as the one he attended.
As typically occurs with dictators and their henchmen visiting the United States, Cuba exported its repression to New York on that occasion, bullying journalists from the Miami Herald and the New York Times out of the building. The latter was especially notable given the New York Times‘s history of promoting communism generally and celebrating Cuban Castro-communism specifically, through the publication of fake news in the 1950s that made Fidel Castro appear more relevant and popular than he actually was.
The 2018 visit concluded with Díaz-Canel receiving a salsa dance reception in New York City, which did not have any overt ties to the United Nations appearance.
Díaz-Canel returned to the United Nations in 2023, similarly attending a pro-communist event in which he was embraced by Hollywood actor Danny Glover.
Section 7031(c), which the State Department used to limit the visas in question, does include an exception Washington can use to allow designated persons into the country if it is “required to fulfill U.S. obligations under the United Nations (U.N.) Headquarters Agreement.” It is not clear at press time if Díaz-Canel will attempt to procure a visa under this exception or if the Trump administration will grant it.
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