By Horizonte Cubano News
There is a fundamental question Congressman Carlos Giménez should answer: Can you starve a government without starving the people who live under it?
This is not a question based on political speculation. It arises directly from the congressman’s own public statements.
In April 2025, Giménez advocated cutting important economic connections between the United States and Cuba, including travel and remittances. Explaining his strategy, he used unmistakable words:
“efforts to basically starve the regime.”
The congressman was referring to the Cuban government, not explicitly to the Cuban people. That distinction matters, and it should be acknowledged.
But so should another distinction: governments do not stand in supermarket lines. Governments do not have children who need food. Governments do not depend on relatives abroad sending money to buy basic necessities.
People do.
From “Starve” to “Strangle”
On August 19, 2026, during an interview on CNN, Giménez discussed the conflict with Iran and endorsed an economic blockade.
His language was again striking. He advocated a strategy to:
“strangle them economically.”
Giménez then proposed arming resistance groups inside Iran.
Within the same discussion, he introduced Cuba into the comparison, arguing that ordinary people in Iran and Cuba lack the weapons necessary to resist their governments.
The congressman did not say during that CNN interview that the United States should “starve the Cuban people,” nor did he explicitly call for an invasion of Cuba.
We should not put words in his mouth.
His actual words are serious enough to deserve scrutiny.
The Contradiction
In February 2026, Giménez himself described the humanitarian reality in Cuba in stark terms: the economy was collapsing, shortages of food and medicine were severe, electricity and fuel were scarce, and “its people are starving.”
Yet his prescription was more pressure.
He called for cutting remaining financial flows to the Cuban government, including remittances and travel mechanisms he believes benefit the state.
That produces an unavoidable question:
If you already acknowledge that the Cuban people are starving, how much additional economic pressure can be applied before the strategy stops being pressure against the government and becomes additional suffering for the population?
This is where slogans must give way to policy.
Remittances Are Not an Abstract Concept
Money sent from Miami, Hialeah, Tampa, New Jersey, Maryland or anywhere else in the United States does not exist only on a government balance sheet.
For many Cuban families, that money helps purchase food, medicine and other necessities.
Certainly, the Cuban government controls important portions of the economy and obtains revenue through transactions involving its citizens. That deserves examination.
But eliminating a family’s ability to help a grandmother, mother, brother or child in Cuba requires something more convincing than the argument that economic suffering will eventually produce political change.
After more than six decades of confrontation, Cubans deserve evidence that a policy will improve their lives—not another experiment conducted with their stomachs.
We Oppose Repression Without Supporting Collective Punishment
One does not have to defend the Cuban government to question this strategy.
Cuba needs economic reforms. Cuba needs political reforms. Cuban citizens need greater freedoms, better living conditions and institutions accountable to them.
But opposition to the Cuban government cannot require indifference toward the suffering of the Cuban people.
Nor should American policy toward Cuba become a competition over who can impose the greatest amount of economic pain.
If sanctions target officials responsible for repression, corruption or human-rights violations, make that case.
If financial restrictions can be designed to prevent money from reaching sanctioned entities while preserving legitimate family assistance, develop those mechanisms.
If negotiations can obtain measurable concessions benefiting ordinary Cubans, negotiate.
But deliberately increasing economic desperation and simply hoping that desperation produces political change is not a serious long-term strategy.
Congressman Giménez Should Answer
Carlos Giménez represents thousands of Cuban Americans whose relatives still live on the island.
Therefore, the questions are straightforward:
Congressman, when you say “starve the regime,” how do you guarantee that you are not starving the people?
If you acknowledge that Cubans are already hungry, what humanitarian safeguards accompany your maximum-pressure strategy?
What happens if increased deprivation does not overthrow the government, but instead produces another massive migration crisis toward the United States?
And finally:
Is the objective of American policy to punish Cuba—or to create conditions in which Cubans can actually live better and become freer?
Those are not communist questions.
They are not Republican or Democratic questions.
They are questions of responsible American foreign policy.
Cuba does not need another generation trapped between an authoritarian government and policies that measure success by how much economic pressure the island can withstand.
The Cuban people have already paid enough.
It is time for Washington and Havana to begin measuring policy by something different:
results.
Los trabajadores con visa H-1B no necesariamente ganan menos que los estadounidenses.
