Florida's Cubans are now divided on Trump: 'He acts like Fidel'

[In It to Win It]

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-09-14/floridas-cubans-are-now-divided-on-trump-he-acts-like-fidel.html?outputType=amp

https://archive.ph/tmFef

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency in charge of processing immigration applications, goes around asking coworkers and neighbors whether someone is eligible for U.S. citizenship or not, in the style of the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). The American government attacks the LGBTQ+ community… just like the Cuban government did in the 1960s. Donald Trump has flirted with staying longer in the White House, in the same way in which Fidel Castro — having tasted so much power during his lifetime — decided to lead Cuba for nearly half a century. The former has already devoted efforts toward attacking opposing ideologies and freedom of expression, concepts that the latter completely nullified. One man worships what the other turned into a religion: exaltation, maximum control, a sea of fanatics, as well as the certainty that there’s no reason for the “dictator” label.

These comparisons are, among other reasons, why Carlos Icaza, a 63-year-old Cuban-American barber (almost the same age as the Revolution), finds it inconceivable that a large part of his community in the United States still defends the Republican. He knows a dictator when he sees one. “Cubans have never known what a democracy is,” he asserts. “They need a [strong]man to tell them what to do.”

He’s not the only one who thinks so. Daimarys Hernández, a manicurist whose husband is about to be deported from the Krome Detention Center in Florida, finds it incredible that her people “don’t understand how a dictator acts.”

“The same Cubans who have been here for years don’t realize that Trump acts the same way as Fidel did,” she adds.