Donald Trump has suggested the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as tensions between Washington and Havana reach a new high after the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.
As he left the White House for a campaigning event in Texas on Friday, Trump said: “The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble.”
Although he gave no further details, it has been widely reported that US officials had met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of 94-year-old Raúl Castro, on the sidelines of the Caribbean leaders summit, Caricom, as part of negotiations on opening up the island.
Trump said on Friday: “They have no money, they have no anything right now. But they’re talking with us and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.”
The president’s comments come as relations between the two countries have sunk to one of their lowest points in an often bitter 67-year history. The US has cranked up pressure on Cuba’s struggling regime after its successful abduction of Venezuelan president and Cuba ally Nicolás Maduro in January.
In advance of the attack on Caracas, US officials won a promise of cooperation from Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, now Venezuela’s acting president, who has promised to open up the country’s sizeable oil reserves to foreign companies.
Pressure from Washington also led to the departure of the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, and prompted Venezuela to cut off oil exports to Cuba. The US has imposed an oil blockade on the island, strangling what was left of the island’s already parlous economy.
Trump said: “I’ve been hearing about Cuba since I was a little boy, but they’re in big trouble.”
Alluding to the large Cuban exile community in the US, he suggested a takeover of the island could be “something good … very positive” for them, saying: “You know, we have people living here that want to go back to Cuba, and they’re very happy with what’s going on.”
Trump’s acquisitive language will provoke worries among Cubans that history is repeating itself: US financial domination of the Cuban economy was one of the main drivers of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
His claim marked a startling departure from previous public statements. The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has previously said that although his government is willing to talk, discussions could not involve Cuba’s internal affairs, and had to come “from a position of equals, with respect for our sovereignty, our independence, and our self-determination”.
“Cuba’s Berlin Wall moment is around the corner,” said Manuel Barcia, a history professor at the University of Bath who has family on the island he left in 2001. “It sounds like [US secretary of state] Marco Rubio has orchestrated a very impressive take down.”
Trump has long counted on electoral support from Cuban exiles concentrated in Miami who have dreamed of overthrowing the island’s communist government, established by Fidel Castro.
Pedro Freyre, a leading figure in the exile community who acts as lawyer for companies wanting to do business on the island, said Trump’s language suggested a deal similar to Venezuela’s was under way, where many of the regime’s leading figures could remain in place.
“This is phrased in business terminology. When you read it together with the recent comments by Rubio, it points to economic rather than political openings, all under the aegis of the US,” Freyre said.
That could go down very badly in Miami. William LeoGrande, professor of government at the American University in Washington, believes the White House is focused on bringing Cuban Americans along. He pointed to an international tour currently being undertaken by Mike Hammer, the US chargé d’affaires in Havana.
“Hammer is functioning more as ambassador to the diaspora than as the US representative to the Cuba government,” LeoGrande said. “By travelling to Miami and Madrid, he makes Cubans in exile feel heard, so they are more likely to accept a change in US policy if Trump manages to make a deal with Cuba.”
Trump’s comments come days after what appeared to be a group of heavily armed exiles from Florida attempting to land a speedboat full of weapons on the island’s north coast, causing a gunfight at sea that left four dead and seven injured.
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