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Will Grant
Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

If there is one name which the Cuban Government – and Cubans in general – would have least wanted to see nominated as President-elect Trump’s Secretary of State, it is Marco Rubio.

As a Florida Senator he was Havana’s bête noire, perhaps the leading voice against engagement with Cuba during the final years of the Obama Administration – which had sought to normalise relations after six decades of hostilities.

After President Trump won in 2016, Rubio advocated for rolling back that policy, making it harder for Americans to visit the island and ramping up the US economic embargo to its harshest possible expression under a doctrine of maintaining “maximum pressure” on the communist-run island.

Cuba is, of course, uniquely personal to Rubio — while his parents emigrated to the US before the Cuban Revolution came to power in 1959, his grandfather fled a couple of years later, forced into exile as Fidel Castro took Cuba further into the arms of the Soviet Union. His grandfather was a big influence on the young Marco as he came to political consciousness.

Despite his popularity in Miami, most Cubans who live on the island shudder to think what Rubio will have in store if confirmed as secretary of state. There are still a few places where sanctions could yet be ramped up. Direct commercial flights to Cuba could be banned and diplomatic ties broken, shuttering the US Embassy in Havana.

One thing is clear: At a time when the island is suffering widespread blackouts and chronic shortages, Rubio is unlikely to extend any form of lifeline to Cuba, but rather attempt to further strangle the mainstay of its faltering economy, tourism.

For Cuba’s close socialist allies in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela and Nicaragua, it is also likely to be a time of greater hostility with Washington over the next four years.