The political scientist Julio Shiling, director of Patria de Martí, defended in a discussion on CiberCuba, shared with Zoé Valdés and César Reynel Aguilera, that the Democratic Party has devised a deliberate plan to use members of the "new arrivals" of Cuban opposition in exile to undermine Cuban-American political control in South Florida.
Shiling presented his analysis during the program Transición en Cuba, hosted by Tania Costa: "The Democratic Party's plan was for some members of this new influx of Cuban opponents to help undermine the control that the Cuban right has exercised or currently has in South Florida. That was the plan," he stated.
According to the analyst, that strategy was directly aligned with the logic of "Obamaism" and the Obama Administration's approach to Cuba: to bring a new wave of migrants and dissidents in order to reshape the Cuban-American vote. The ultimate goal, in the words of Shiling himself paraphrasing the Democratic intent, was: "We're going to take Florida away from the Republican Party. Of course. We're going to take it away. That was the plan."
That plan, however, did not succeed. "It didn't work because Trump was reelected. It didn't work for a bunch of reasons, but in my opinion, that was part of the plan," Shiling explained.
For his part, writer César Reynel Aguilera warned against the tendency to refer to "the United States" as a monolithic actor. "We need to be very rigorous in this regard because the administration of Donald Trump is not the same as that of the second Bush," he noted, emphasizing that the differences between administrations, political moments, and geographies—California, New York, Florida, Texas, Nebraska—are crucial for understanding the relationship between Washington and the Cuban exile community.
In the same thread, the participants of the discussion denounced the existence of what Reynel Aguilera described as an "operation of collusion between Castroism and the American left," which would include the creation of news dissemination sites aimed at influencing the exiled community.
The debate became urgently concrete due to the situation of Maykel "Osorbo" Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, two of the most emblematic political prisoners from July 11. Both were removed from their prisons without notification to their families — Otero Alcántara on July 7 and Osorbo on July 10 — after accepting exile under an ultimatum from the regime offering them that option or remaining incarcerated until 2030. The Trump administration had given Cuba a two-week deadline in April to release political prisoners. That deadline passed without being met. Finally, this Saturday, July 18, Otero was scheduled to arrive in Miami.
Reynel Aguilera expressed his wish for both to arrive in Florida soon, but he warned about the vulnerability of newcomers to manipulation. "There are many things in which we do not have the capacity to make that person who has just arrived see how vulnerable they are to the manipulation of those who released them and many of those waiting for them, because they are in collusion," he cautioned.
The Florida Democratic Party launched in 2026 a strategy to regain the Cuban-American vote in preparation for the midterm elections in November, focusing on economic issues such as the cost of living, housing, and health.
For the dissidents who arrive in exile, Reynel Aguilera summarized his advice in two words: "Decency and pragmatism, pragmatism and decency. If you come to exile, do not attack those who have not attacked you."
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