"Our focus needs to be on freeing dissidents and continuing to support the opposition movement within Cuba - not rewarding Castro and subsidizing and strengthening his totalitarian regime"

Mel Martinez draws a moral and strategic boundary around U.S. engagement with Cuba: human rights and democratic pluralism should be the north star, not policies that inject resources into an authoritarian state. The emphasis on “freeing dissidents” centers political prisoners, independent journalists, and activists as the legitimate interlocutors of change, asserting that external support should flow to civil society rather than to state institutions. He frames economic or diplomatic concessions to the regime as a subsidy that props up repression, arguing that material benefits, tourism revenue, unfettered trade, financial flows, tend to consolidate elite control in systems where the state monopolizes distribution.

Underlying the statement is a theory of leverage. Pressure and conditionality are meant to raise the cost of repression and lower the payoff of authoritarian durability, while assistance to opposition networks aims to expand the space for organizing, information-sharing, and dissent. It also reflects a contest over legitimacy: the regime seeks international normalization to validate its rule; prioritizing dissidents denies that imprimatur unless concrete human-rights benchmarks are met.

There is an implied rebuttal to engagement-first approaches, which claim that contact, commerce, and cultural exchange can soften authoritarianism. Martinez’s stance warns that, absent safeguards, engagement can entrench a security apparatus and subsidize patronage systems, leaving ordinary Cubans only marginally better off while the state grows more resilient. At the same time, it acknowledges the risks to internal activists and the need for sustained external support, legal, financial, technological, and diplomatic, to reduce their vulnerability.

The position resonates with the Cuban exile community’s experience and the broader tradition of linking sanctions relief to political reforms. Critics might counter that isolation can unintentionally harm the populace and rarely produces rapid democratization. Martinez’s framing answers that the moral calculus should privilege those resisting repression and that any relaxation of pressure must be contingent on measurable improvements in fundamental freedoms.