Press Release

Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez
Opinion Editorial, USA Today
”Opposing view: Regime deserves no oxygen
U.S. shouldn’t do business with a brutal, repressive dictatorship.”

Last week, President Bush spoke passionately about the plight of the Cuban people, introducing America to the families of political prisoners who have been shackled in Cuba's prisons simply because of their beliefs.

Omar Pernet Hernandez is serving 25 years in prison for being a human rights advocate. Ricardo Gonzalez Alfonso was arrested for writing ideas contrary to the Cuban government — he was sentenced to 20 years.

For half a century, the Cuban people have been brutalized and repressed by the Castro regime, an avowed enemy of the American people. That is why every president since John F. Kennedy has supported a policy of not doing business with the Cuban dictatorship. We refuse to give oxygen to a Cuban regime that uses its resources to crush dissident voices, suppress individual freedoms, and condemn its people to a life of poverty, misery and despair. For too long, Cubans have listened to the lies of an ailing regime that seeks to feed its power, rather than feed the mouths of Cuba's hungry and poor.

The American people are the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, to Cuba. More than $250 million in aid was provided last year alone.

The president has laid out new efforts to help improve the lives of the Cuban people. If the regime will allow it, we will work with non-profits and faith-based groups to provide computers and access to the Internet. We will also invite Cuba's youth to participate in the Partnership for Latin American Youth scholarship program.

And, once fundamental freedoms are reinstated, we will work with the international community to explore the establishment of a Freedom Fund to aid the Cuban people in making the transition to a democracy.

The American people have united in their outrage over the brutality of the human rights abuses in Burma. Those same horrors have been taking place for 48 years just 90 miles off our shores. The international community and all Americans should be just as outraged over the tragedy of Cuba today.

Carlos Gutierrez is Secretary of Commerce and co-chair of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. Born in Havana, he came to the USA with his family in 1960.