Prominent Cuban Americans Call on President Biden to Fulfill His Campaign Promises on Cuba

May 6, 2024

Prominent Cuban Americans Call on President Biden to Fulfill His Campaign Promises on Cuba

***For Immediate Release***

The Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE) proudly announces that over 200 Cuban-American supporters of President Biden and 30 Cuban American-led organizations, along with hundreds of other concerned U.S. citizens and civil society organizations, have penned a letter to President Biden asking him to fulfill his 2020 campaign promises on Cuba policy. At a time when the White House begins to court Cuban-American voters in Florida and other immigrant communities decry the humanitarian impacts of the administration’s foreign policy in their countries of origin, this initiative led by Cuban Americans proves unprecedented during Biden’s term in office.

On Monday, May 6, a group of Cuban-American leaders will deliver the letter to the Department of State’s Coordinator for Cuban Affairs as well as to leading Democrats in Congress. Amid a dire economic crisis that has fueled the largest migratory wave in Cuban history, the letter calls on the administration to help alleviate the situation on the island by issuing regulations to support the growth of Cuba’s private sector; rescinding Cuba’s unfounded designation as a state sponsor of terrorism; fully funding and staffing the U.S. Embassy in Havana in order to resume the processing of nonimmigrant visas; and further easing restrictions on travel to facilitate people-to-people exchange and family reunification. The signers also urge President Biden to return to a broader path of normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations, which polling indicates enjoys broad support among a vast majority of Cuban-American Democrats in Florida and an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens.

The signers include former federal, state and local officials; academics and university administrators; business owners, executives and investors; lawyers; architects; doctors; scientists; educators; artists, musicians and filmmakers; non-profit administrators; social workers; veterans and other prominent individuals, such as the:

• Former Vice Chair of the DNC Hispanic Caucus, Jorge Quintana;

• President of the University of Washington, Ana Mari Cauce;
• President and CEO of Fuego Enterprises, Hugo Cancio;
• Executive Director of Puentes Cubanos, Silvia Wilhelm;
• Founder of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, Sarah Stephens;
• Co-Founder of Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, Jorge Ignacio Fernández;
• 6x Grammy Award-winning musician and composer, Arturo O’Farrill;
• Hollywood executive and former DNC Finance Committee member, Andy Spahn;
• Vice Chair of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, Stuart Ashman;
• Former CFO and Treasurer of New Jersey Transit, Bill Viqueira;
• Former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America, Fulton Armstrong;
• Founder and CEO of Busboys and Poets, Andy Shallal

For more information:

Manolo Gómez, 202-262-3981, [email protected]

Lee Schlenker, 857-636-8479, [email protected]

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-hundreds-take-streets-rare-protests-economic-crisis-deepens-rcna143871
   ↩︎
2. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/protest-erupts-eastern-cuba-amid-blackouts-food-shortages-2024-03-18/ ↩︎
3. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/27/hunger-weapon-how-bidens-inaction-aggravating-cubas-food-crisis ↩︎
4. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499 ↩︎
5. https://apnews.com/article/2858fbaa2dd5460fa2988b888fc53748 ↩︎
6. https://theintercept.com/2021/06/18/covid-vaccine-cuba-venezuela-sanctions/ ↩︎