After starting his second 4-year term as President of the United States on January 20th in 2025, Donald Trump's first major decision was to name Marco Rubio as his ultra-powerful Secretary of State. It makes Rubio the leader of the USA's foreign relations, both around the war-torn world and closer to home involving the Caribbean and especially Cuba. Rubio was born 53 years ago in Little Havana/Miami to fierce anti-Castro counter-revolutionary Cuban parents. In his entire adult Political life Rubio, in both Miami and Washington, has tried desperately to overthrow Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, which on January 1st in 1959 overthrew the US/Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship. But now in 2025 as Secretary of State, Rubio presumably has the power to finally overthrow Revolutionary Cuba. In fact, many of the most astute US-Cuban experts believed that Rubio would have completed his task of overthrowing Revolutionary Cuba by April but we have now entered the first week of April in 2025 and Cuba is still standing as it closely monitors...Rubio.
Entering April of 2025 the two top Cuban Headlines flashing around the world, as shown above, are from CNN in the U. S. and from El Pais in Spain. CNN says Marco Rubio is fiercely targeting Cuba and El Pais tells the world that famed Cuban singer Haydee Milanes, from her new home in Miami, is "hurt" about how "devastated" Cuba is "is becoming."
Above are excerpts from CNN starting April of 2025 by reporting that Marco Rubio is using his Secretary of State airplane to lobby Caribbean leaders to support his effortts to finally overthrow Revolutionary Cuba. As you can see above Rubio was getting some pushback from leaders such as Andrew Holness, the Prime Minister of Jamaica. At the Press Conference that CNN showed above in Kingston, Jamaica, Rubio tried to tell Holness to stop paying and using Cuba's famed medical doctors in Jamaica. But, as you can see above, Holness bravely told Rubio that those beloved Cuban doctors were providing much needed medical services for the Jamaican people and therefore he wanted even more of them. Note in the CNN photo shown above that Rubio was looking at Holness who was praising Cuba's doctors.
And, meanwhile, the famed Cuban singer Haydee Milanes is shown above proudly wearing a "actually I'm in Havana" shirt. But, anticipating that Marco Rubio is about to change the political leadership in Havana, Haydee Milanes has moved to Little Havana in Miami, Marco Rubio's hometown.
This photo shows Pablo Milanes and his daughter Haydee Milanes. As a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, Pablo was for many decades one of Cuba's greatest musicians and he supported Fidel Castro's revolution. In her long interview with El Pais about why she moved to Miami, Haydee expained that her father died two years ago but her mother Zoe Alvarez remains in Cuba. Below are key exceprts from Haydee Milanes speaking to El Pais from her exile in Miami,, and you will readily detect how she described the "devastation" in Cuba that caused her to leave her homeland for Miami after her father Pablo died. Note her comments below:
Above...Haydee Milanes article in El Pais.
Meanwhile, as we enter April in 2025 U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is pointing directly at Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel. As Cuba's leader since 2018, Diaz-Canel is abundantly aware of his precarious hold on power but he says, "Rubio and other Miami politicians since 1959 have had the power of the superpower behind them in their efforts to destroy the revolution. It has not happened and it has been predictted to happen each day for the past 66 years."
This photo shows Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel paying homage at Fidel Castro's tomb in Santiago de Cuba. The revolutionary leader died at age 90 in 2016 in Havana. Miguel Diaz-Canel was born a few months after the victory of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. But Diaz-Canel worships Fidel's legacy and he believes most Cubans agree with him. Also, including his pre-presidential career as Educatiion Minister, Diaz-Canel is generally well liked despite the "devastation" on the island that Haydee Milanes and others talk so loudly about after they become exiles in Miami.
But, still, a few determined foreign tourists make it to Havana lured by things such as those 1950s-era convertibles that stiil drive as well as they did back in the 1950s when the U. S. media and the U. S. government wildly promoted tourism to Batista's Mafia-run, money-crazed dictattorship. Of course, much has changed in Cuba since 1959 when the Cuban Revolution became the surprise change-maker.