(EFE).- US Democratic Senator of Cuban origin Bob Menéndez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, received this Saturday in Miami the Legacy of Exile Award and the keys to the city of Miami for his efforts to ensure that the Democracy returns to Cuba.
The senator, who attended the dinner at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora with his wife and two of their children, asserted that Cuba is a “dream” for him and was convinced that “more sooner or later it will be free, independent and sovereign as José Martí wanted”.
Menéndez, who was the first Hispanic to reach the United States Congress in 1992, asserted that a free Cuba is not an “empty promise” and opined that the end of the “dictatorship” would be achieved if there was “will” on the part of the United States United States, the European Union and the Latin American democratic governments.
He also said that US policy towards Cuba should be bipartisan, although he immediately rectified that it should be “non-partisan,” after stressing that the US is obliged to be a “beacon” for freedom and human rights in the world.
The event organized by the Inspire America Foundation, directed by the lawyer Marcel Felipe, was attended by the mayor of Miami-Dade, Daniella Levine Cava, the former mayor of Miami Joe Carollo, the Cuban opposition member Rosa María Payá and leaders of exile and the Cuban community -American from Miami.
Menéndez opined that the end of the “dictatorship” would be achieved if there was “will” on the part of the US, the European Union and the Latin American democratic governments
During dinner, an interview conducted by Carlos Vasallo, the owner of the América Tevé channel from Miami, was screened with Menéndez in the Senate in Washington, in which the senator reviews aspects of his private life and his almost 50 years of public service.
He also expresses his opinion against negotiating with the Government of Cuba, which “owns everything and is not going to give up anything,” a position that cost him problems within his party, including Barack Obama, who, being president, agreed with his pair of Cuba, Raúl Castro, a thaw in bilateral relations.
Menéndez, born in New York in 1954 into a working family that left Cuba in 1953, before the triumph of the revolution led by Fidel Castro, and raised in New Jersey, was of the opinion that without congressmen of Cuban origin like him, Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Eliana Ross Lehtinen and those who later followed them, the cause of freedom for Cubas would not have stayed alive.
The influential senator ended the evening singing guantanamera with an orchestra that was hidden behind the stage and surprised him when he had just received the award and the keys to Miami.
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