Pedro Portal
pportal@miamiherald.com
Everyone in South Florida has their eyes set on Cuba, where leader Miguel Diaz-Canel on Friday acknowledged talks were underway with the Trump administration, a notion that has spurred hope and skepticism across Miami’s exile community.
“It’s more than time for this to happen,” Angela De Zayas, 70, said while standing outside of Versailles restaurant in Miami Friday. “I am more inclined to hope that is a conversation and not a negotiation, because I don’t think there’s anything to negotiate other than the fact that the Cuban people need to be free.”
De Zayas and her family left Cuba for Spain in 1969 when she was 13 and then came to the U.S. a year later. It was 2008 when she returned to Cuba with her teenage daughter to visit family in Camaguey.
She had nightmares every day.
“It was a horrible, horrible experience, not because of my family … but you could feel the oppression,” she recalled. She vowed to never return unless Cuba is free. The Cuba-U.S. talks are a good start, she said.
Diaz-Canel confirmed that the country was undergoing talks with the Trump administration on Friday, a day after announcing the release of 51 prisoners as the country grapples with an ongoing economic and energy crisis, including blackouts and shortages of gas, food, medicine and an ongoing investigation into a deadly shootout involving a Florida-registered boat off the island’s coast. President Donald Trump has been urging the Cuban government to make a deal, with members of his administration holding talks similar to those that were done with Venezuela leader Nicolás Maduro before he was captured in a military raid earlier this year, as the Miami Herald has reported.
Groups of mostly tourist line up to eat at the iconic Versailles Cuban Cuisine Restaurant in Miami, hours after Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel had confirmed that Havana is in the midst of talks with the Trump administration, on Friday, March 13, 2026. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com ‘Hope for the Cuban people,’ said Miami lawmaker
The news has Cuban-American lawmakers and others across the community rejoicing over what they see as the first signs of a possible turning point for Cuba.
State Rep. Omar Blanco, a Miami Republican whose parents fled the island after Fidel Castro seized power, said he was “all in” on Trump’s plan.
“It took a non-Cuban president to understand what it means to live with dignity and to be able to provide food and shelter,” Blanco said. “It’s not gonna happen overnight, but for the first time in 60 years there will be hope for the Cuban people.”
With the Trump administration projecting strength in Venezuela and Iran, Blanco said he is confident Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio can push Cuba toward change. He described their approach as “diametrically opposed” to the Obama administration’s strategy of “negotiating with a communist regime.”
But there’s a large wave of skepticism whether the talks will actually lead to positive change.
For Rep. Alex Rizo, another first-generation Cuban-American representing Miami, Cuba’s prisoner release “may signal something positive, but it’s “a tiny little step in a much larger gesture that must be made.”
Rizo said meaningful change in Cuba would require far more sweeping steps: the peaceful resignation of the current government, democratic elections and significant support from the international community to rebuild the island’s shattered economy and infrastructure.
“If they don’t have that support they’ll continue crumbling,” Rizo said. “It’s not even crumbling — it’s already crumbled.”
Blanco said he doesn’t believe the Cuban government’s calls for exiles to return, and help rebuild the country, are sincere, echoing a wary sentiment that can be felt across Miami’s exile community and their families.
De Zayas, for example, isn’t buying Diaz-Canal’s offer to Cuban exiles. “It’s a set-up,” she said. Neither is Waldo Toyos, a 24-year-old Cuban-American, whose grandparents fled persecution and violence in Cuba. His grandfather, who told him to never go to Cuba, witnessed his siblings be killed in firing squads.
“I want the best for the Cuban people,” Toyos said. “I hope they can find peace, but the government could go kick rocks. If it helps the Cuban people along in the long run, then I’ll support that. But you can’t trust a government that’s killed multiple, multiple people.”
U.S. Congressman Carlos Gimenez didn’t mince words on Friday, posting on X that Cuba will not see any investment from the U.S. “unless there are DECESIVE political changes on the island.”
“The regime needs us, we don’t need them,” Gimenez wrote, noting in another post that “President Trump is very direct: for better or for worse. If they [Cuba] opt for the worse, they already know what the fate of all these bandits will be. Hold yourselves accountable for the consequences.”
🚨El Presidente Trump es muy directo: a las buenas o las malas.
Si optan por las malas, ya saben cuál será el destino de todos estos bandidos.
Aténganse a las consecuencias. https://t.co/mH9bqDNtNs
— Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) March 13, 2026 ‘We stand with the Cuban people,’ Miami-Dade mayor says
Other South Florida politicians such as Miami Republican U.S. Rep Maria Elvira Salazar have also pointed out that Cuba’s decision to release 51 of the more than 1,000 prisoners it has as a sign of “good will” is not enough to make up for the 67 years of repression and persecution the Cuban people have faced.
“Releasing 51 political prisoners is not justice,” Salazar wrote on X Thursday. “Justice is when the last political prisoner walks free. And that will only happen when the longest-running and most brutal dictatorship in our hemisphere falls.”
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava shared similar sentiments in a statement, noting that “True justice will come when no one in Cuba is jailed for demanding their basic rights … We stand with the Cuban people and with the many families still waiting for the day when Cuba is free and its people can live without fear.”
For generations, the Cuban dictatorship has repressed those who speak out for freedom. Today’s announcement that 51 prisoners will be released brings hope to many families. But true justice will come when no one in Cuba is jailed for their beliefs and Cuba is free. pic.twitter.com/wQulszgekd
— Daniella Levine Cava (@MayorDaniella) March 13, 2026
The wish for freedom is what led Father Eliosbel Pereira Almaguer to pray Firday for the people in countries under tyranny –– and for their leaders to do what is right and just. Almaguer faced about two dozen parishioners at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, the Roman Catholic church named after the patroness of Cuba near Coconut Grove, on Friday afternoon. Afterward, he told the Miami Herald he hopes the negotiations result in something positive for the people, who have suffered under oppression in Cuba. “That’s what we wish for, and that’s why we pray,” Amlaguer said. Almaguer said his message to the Cuban people: keep their confidence in God. “As Christians, we have to ask God… when things are not in our hands … [and] put the matter in God’s hands.”
Miami Herald
Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.
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