Salazar Urges Biden to Cancel Contract with Small Business That Fired an Employee for Criticizing the Cuban Regime
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Chairwoman María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) sent a letter to President Biden urging him to cancel the U.S. Embassy in Havana’s contract with MadWoman, a supposed regime-independent private sector enterprise in Cuba, and requests all communications between the Embassy and MadWoman by April 1, 2024.
The United States cannot under any circumstances work with companies whose leadership fires its employees for criticizing the Cuban dictatorship.
“This MIPYME, MadWoman, is clearly a front for the regime,” wrote Chairwoman Salazar. “It is completely unacceptable for our embassy to be working with a company that fires people for criticizing the Cuban dictatorship. The U.S. Embassy in Havana must immediately cancel all contracts it has with MadWoman.”
On January 18, 2024, Chairwoman Salazar convened a hearing in the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to expose the Cuban regime’s latest propaganda tool, convincing Western countries that Cuba has a budding private sector in order to receive access to foreign capital markets.
In the hearing, Chairwoman Salazar pressed two of the State Department’s top officials on the Western Hemisphere and Human Rights on the validity of the claim that there is a growing private sector in Cuba that is truly independent of the regime. One of the officials said that the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Havana routinely visits small businesses and is open to derogatory information shared about them.
It goes without saying that the Cuban regime is totalitarian in every way – it prides itself in maintaining strict control over every single aspect of the Cuban people’s lives. The 11J protests in 2021 ought to remind the Biden Administration that the Cuban people live under constant repression and censorship. The case of MadWoman proves that the myth of the “new Cuban entrepreneurs” is exactly that – a myth.
To read the full text of the letter, click HERE.
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