President Lacalle Pou on Cuban migrants: "They come because they have no other choice"

The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, openly opposed to Latin American populist regimes, stated that Cuban migrants come to his country because they have no other choice.

A census published this Friday confirmed that Cuban migrants represent 20% of the foreign population in Uruguay.

In response to journalists who asked about it, he explained that "there are two types of migration, voluntary and mandatory. Many people from Venezuela and Cuba came to our country and not because they wanted to, in fact, they miss it like crazy, I meet them everywhere, a while ago I met a Cuban woman, but they came because they had no other choice," he said.

Regarding "migration by decision," he said that this occurs "not because they expel you, or throw you out, or because they do not have freedom, not because you cannot eat," but because of issues of opportunity.

"I am also going to receive them, we stimulate it because we changed some rules on tax residences, investment in large projects and we do it because there was a very critical moment such as the pandemic and Uruguay made a decision that was important, we did not establish mandatory quarantine and the concept Responsible freedom passed the test and left a message to people around the world. Today basically people come from the other side of the La Plata River," he said.

Lacalle Pou has supported the Cuban people in different international spaces and has even held strong discussions with President Miguel Díaz-Canel in multinational bodies in defense of the island's political prisoners.

"A president who does know and understands Latin America. For telling the truth, for going to the root of the problems from which we fled into exile "Thank you Lacalle". The terror of the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela," he published in Twitter the Internet user Luis Estrada, who published the video of the Uruguayan president on his X profile.

Shortly after the July 11 protests in Cuba, the Uruguayan was one of the first Latin American presidents to react.

"The Cuban people are demonstrating courage worthy of praise," he stated on July 12 at a press conference; and added that "Cuba is a dictatorship which obviously does not respect human rights.

Days later, in an interview with La Nación, the president of Uruguay ratified the description of "dictatorship" for the Cuban regime, and stressed that anyone who denies it has "very strong ideological affinities" with totalitarian governments.

Two months later, in September 2021Lacalle Pou condemned the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, during the VI Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), held at the National Palace of Mexico.

"When one sees that countries do not have full democracy, that the separation of powers is not respected. When the repressive apparatus is used by those in power to silence proposals. When opponents are imprisoned. When human rights are not respected... We, in this voice, calm but firm, must say with concern that we seriously see what is happening in Cuba, in Nicaragua and in Venezuela," said the Uruguayan president in words that were very well received by the Cuban exile.

The position of President Uruguay regarding the condemnation of the dictatorships in the region has been marked since he won the presidency in 2019 and decided not to invite Miguel Díaz-Canel, Daniel Ortega or Nicolás Maduro to his inauguration, held in March 2020, despite maintaining diplomatic relations with those countries.