US Special Envoy to Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone. Photo: Latam.
By Randy Alonso Falcón – Apr 20, 2025
While Trump focuses on distributing tariff increases, maneuvering with Ukraine, and delivering bombs to Israel, and Elon Musk continues to cut corners on the US government apparatus and foreign aid, the administration’s anti-Cuban team has launched an offensive to prepare the ground for deploying its punitive arsenal against Cuba.
A few days ago, we commented on the statements by US Congressperson Carlos GimĂ©nez calling for increased pressure against Cuba to “starve the regime.”
His anti-Cuban broadside was followed by those of the administration’s special envoy for Latin America and the military chief in charge of imperialist adventures in Latin America.
Mauricio Claver-Carone went to Miami—where better to outline the White House’s policy toward Latin America, and especially toward Venezuela and Cuba?
Ousted from the presidency of the Inter-American Development Bank (a position Trump appointed him to) for corruption, Claver-Carone is once again in charge of US policy toward Latin America, with a focus on Cuba and Venezuela.
Claver-Carone has made a lifelong profit from the anti-Cuba industry, first as a lobbyist in Washington for the so-called US-Cuba Democracy PAC and, later, as an appointed official of the Trump administrations.
Claver-Carone’s new anti-Cuban strategy boils down to short-term pain, maximum pressure upon maximum pressure, and a comprehensive punitive approach, as if he hadn’t already caused enough “pain” to every Cuban with the 243 measures implemented during Trump’s first term, of which he was one of the main strategist. Claver-Carone said the following in a recent presentation at Miami Dade College:
In 2019, the policy was maximum pressure, but we never reached the point of maximum pressure, not even 50% of maximum pressure. There were a great many things that could be done. But, in that sense, in that administration, there were disagreements. There was the DoS, which didn’t agree with many of our ideas; the Treasury Department, which thought sanctions should only target nuclear states; the Department of Defense, which was only concerned about the Middle East and was beginning the pivot toward China and wasn’t concerned about the region. And the big difference with today’s scenario is that that’s no longer the case. This is the most coherent foreign policy team I’ve ever seen, the most focused on the Western Hemisphere. Clearly, there are no disagreements within the Department of Security with our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio; we have a Treasury Department that fully understands the threat; and we have a Department of Defense that understands that security in the region comes first. That goes some way to describing where we are today.
So, what’s the biggest mistake we can make? Going piecemeal, riddling the policies we make with loopholes. And look, there are always going to be disagreements, there are always going to be commercial interests. I get that, I’m an investor, and these interests have their priorities and their way of thinking. But it’s either short-term pain for long-term gain, or literally long-term pain and no gain. So, in the end, what may seem annoying, disruptive, etc. today, honestly, if you don’t do it, it’s not going to work, so we have to go all in. That’s my biggest lesson. I work with a Secretary of State who thinks the same way, a President who understands these priorities, and the goal is to achieve it.
For Claver-Carone, whom Venezuelan evangelical pastor JosĂ© Amesty dubbed “Donald Trump’s obsessive bulldog,” what has been unequivocally rehearsed against Venezuela provides the keys to intensifying the criminal economic war against Cuba:
“The tools that have been used against Cuba are very outdated,” said Claver-Carone. “Even the actions themselves are based on old laws that sometimes have no side effects. With Venezuela, the tools are much more targeted, effective, have side effects, and are more powerful.”
That same day, April 3, in Washington, the head of the Southern Command (based in Florida) made his own contribution to the situation, classifying Cuba as a “very challenging” threat to US national security.
With shameless cynicism and convenient amnesia about his government’s anti-Cuban policies, Admiral Alvin Holsey declared before the House Armed Services Committee that the Cuban government, “instead of addressing the economic disaster it created with its failed policies, is strengthening its ties with US adversaries.”
“Cuba’s malign actions weaken our relationships in the region, encourage irregular migration, and threaten the security of the United States,” the military chief said.
Last January, Holsey met with the head of the US diplomatic mission in Havana, a seasoned organizer of subversive and manipulative campaigns against Cuba and other nations.
It is no coincidence that on the same day and in two different settings, senior Trump administration officials for imperialist policy in this region spoke out specifically about Cuba. Claver-Carone’s decision to use medical-military terms in his anti-Cuban diatribe does not seem to be a coincide: “We are going to be more surgical, more effective.”
The ground is being prepared for the announcement of more punitive measures against Cuba. The 243 previous measures plus the seven in the new term are still few for the new dictators holding power in the empire.
The level of cynicism, cruelty, and contempt of the figures who guide US policy toward Cuba today is very similar, perhaps with a greater dose of hatred, to that of the sadly remembered Lester Mallory, who 65 years ago paved the way for the Cuban people to die of hunger and disease for daring not to submit to imperialist rule.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
