increases pressure<\/a> on Cuba\u2019s government and Secretary of State Marco Rubio describes the island as a national security concern, Puebla says many Cuban-American families are watching closely.<\/p>\n\u201cMy mom\u2019s family left Cuba in \u201961,\u201d Puebla said. \u201cMy husband left Cuba in \u201996.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puebla is a first-generation American. Her husband, a physician, left Cuba nearly three decades ago after working as a doctor in Havana.<\/p>\n
At the time, she said, he earned about $26 a month.<\/p>\n
While her family eventually built a life in the United States, Puebla says the effects of the Cuban revolution reached across generations.<\/p>\n
She shared a decades-old letter that her family says documented the execution of her grandfather in 1961.<\/p>\n
According to Puebla, her grandfather was involved in anti-Castro efforts after Fidel Castro took power. She says he was captured, subjected to what the family believes was a sham trial, and executed the following day by firing squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandfather got caught, and they basically had a false trial, and the next day he was executed by a firing squad,\u201d Puebla said.<\/p>\n
She also says her father was captured following the Bay of Pigs invasion and spent two years imprisoned in Cuba.<\/p>\n
The experiences left a lasting mark on the family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really humbles you,\u201d Puebla said. \u201cMy family, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my husband,\u00a0 they love this country. They would never speak ill about the United States because this is where they were welcomed and they were able to live freely with freedom of speech and go after opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than six decades later, Puebla says family members who remain in Cuba continue to face significant challenges.<\/p>\n
She says ongoing power outages, food shortages, and economic hardship are not new realities for many Cubans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve gone weeks, days without power, but it\u2019s not something new,\u201d Puebla said. \u201cThey are struggling worse today than they have been, especially in rural areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments come as Washington and Havana face renewed tensions.<\/p>\n
Last week, Rubio said Cuba remains a national security threat because of its ties to U.S. adversaries and intelligence activities. At the same time, he emphasized that the administration\u2019s preference remains a diplomatic solution.<\/p>\n
Retired FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko says Cuba has remained a focus for U.S. intelligence and national security officials for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the revolution in 1959, Cuba has been a national security issue for the United States,\u201d Kolko said.<\/p>\n
Kolko points to Cuba\u2019s proximity to Florida, just 90 miles away, along with its relationships with countries including Russia and China, as reasons the U.S. continues to closely monitor developments on the island.<\/p>\n
For Puebla, however, the issue is about more than geopolitics.<\/p>\n
She says many Cuban-Americans continue to hope for political and economic change that would allow future generations to reconnect with a homeland many families were forced to leave behind.<\/p>\n
Every New Year\u2019s Eve, she recalls, older relatives would raise a toast with the same wish.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would always say, \u2018This is the year we\u2019re going to see a free Cuba,\u2019\u201d Puebla said. \u201cI know a lot of them passed with that hope and that dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puebla says she hopes to visit Cuba with her children and grandchildren one day. Not as tourists, but as family members returning to a country they have longed to see again for generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Inside the Hibiscus House in Fort Myers, Cuban heritage is woven into nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,325,115],"class_list":["post-284268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-lee","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}