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Willie Suárez, a Cuban originally from Regla, Havana, who emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the Marine Corps, reacted with emotion and pride upon learning that the mission chief of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Mike Hammer, visited his mother Gisela at her home in Regla yesterday for Mother's Day, bringing her flowers and personally thanking her for her son's service.
"It has been a great honor for Mike Hammer, a U.S. diplomat representing the United States in Cuba, to visit my mother on Mother's Day, bringing her flowers and personally thanking her for my service as a Marine for the country I love so much," Suárez wrote in his Facebook post.
It was Willie himself who contacted Hammer to share his story: how he left Cuba, arrived in the United States, and decided to enlist in the Marines to serve the country that welcomed him. The diplomat, as confirmed in his official post, traveled to Regla to visit Gisela in response to that account.
Suárez acknowledged that his family took a real risk by hosting the American diplomat. "The Cuban dictatorship could very well use this as an excuse to harass them, and unfortunately, I am almost certain that it will. But freedom has never been free," he wrote.
Despite that threat, the Cuban American sailor was unequivocal: "I will never renounce that honor simply because a dictator may disapprove of it."
Creator of the channel BoxeoCubano and promoter of Cuban boxing in the United States, former marine Suárez recently expressed his rejection of a potential military intervention on the island on social media, although he stated that he would prefer “a few minutes of invasion” rather than “60 more years of martyrdom” under the communist regime.
Hammer's gesture is part of the direct diplomacy strategy that the official has practiced since his arrival in Cuba, with visits to communities and meetings with ordinary citizens. In April 2026, Hammer spoke with the family of the teenager Jonathan Muir, 16 years old, who was arbitrarily detained following the protests in Morón over power outages.
On May 8, the diplomat shared a photograph alongside three Cuban-American ambassadors with the question: “Why are Cubans so successful outside of Cuba?”.
This active diplomacy has generated hostile reactions from the regime. In February 2026, Hammer was the target of organized acts of repudiation by the PCC and the Union of Young Communists in Camagüey, with mobs insulting him with slogans such as "Get out of Cuba" and "Donald Trump's puppet."
The case of Willie Suárez reflects the reality of thousands of Cuban families separated by mass emigration that accelerated after the protests on July 11, 2021, driven by economic decline, blackouts, and repression. Since then, more than a million Cubans have left the island.
In his official statement, Hammer expressed that his thoughts were "with all Cuban and Cuban-American mothers" and reaffirmed the Embassy's commitment to working "so that one day soon they can be with their children and live with dignity and peace." In February 2026, the diplomat had conveyed to the Cuban diaspora in Madrid the message from the Trump administration: "Change in Cuba will happen".
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