U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Wednesday directly to the Cuban people in a video recorded in Spanish, criticizing the country’s elite for being corrupt and offering a “new path,” including a proposed $100 million influx of food and medicine. The message came as U.S. officials are preparing to announce an expected indictment of former President Raúl Castro.
Rubio, the son of Cuban parents who immigrated to Florida two years before Fidel Castro rose to power, targeted the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., or GAESA, a politically-connected Cuban business organization that Rubio alleges has $18 billion in assets and control 70% of the economy.
“They profit from hotels, construction, banks, stores and even from the money your relatives send you from the U.S. everything, everything passes through their hands,” Rubio said, translated from Spanish. “From those remittances they retain a percentage, but from GAESA’s profits nothing reaches you.”
Cuba is currently dealing with a massive blackout affecting most of the country as an already shaky power grid crashed due to the U.S. blocking oil from entering the country since January. Cuba routinely received oil supplies from Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, but he was removed from power by the U.S. in a military operation in January and indicted on drug trafficking charges.
“The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the U.S. As you know, better than anyone, you have been suffering from blackouts for years,” Rubio said. “The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”
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Rubio said the offer of $100 million in relief supplies, one the U.S. has made previously, must be distributed to the Cuban people through the Catholic Church or other charitable groups in order to avoid it being “stolen by GAESA to sell in one of their stores.”
“President Trump is offering a new relationship between the U.S. and Cuba,” Rubio said in the video. “But it must be directly with you, the Cuban people, not with GAESA.”
Rubio also spoke about ending communism in the country, which has now reigned for 67 years.
“Today in Cuba, only those close to the GAESA elite or who are part of it can have profitable businesses,” Rubio told the Cuban people. “But President Trump is offering a new path between the U.S. and a new Cuba.”
“A new Cuba where you, the ordinary Cuban, and not just GAESA, can own a gas station or a clothing store, or a restaurant,” he added.
The comments come on the same day as the 94-year-old Rául Castro was expected to be indicted by the U.S. government, sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News.
The case against Castro, the brother of longtime dictator Fidel Castro, is related to Cuba shooting down two small planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, U.S. officials told CBS News earlier this month.
Raúl Castro formally stepped down as the leader of Cuba’s Communist Party in 2021, but he is still widely seen as one of the most powerful figures in the country. Miguel Díaz-Canel is the current president of Cuba and leader of the Communist Party.