Recently Beyonce and Jay-Z visited Cuba to celebrate their anniversary, for what turned out to be a very controversial visit, with congresspersons demanding an investigation into the power couple's visit. Soon after, it was reported that their trip was actually sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, so it was all legal.
Nonetheless, Republican Senator Marco Rubio is questioning the couple's trip. Rubio, who is Cuban American, wrote a statement published in the Miami Herald expressing his concerns about the trip, and demanding President Obama explain how exactly trips such as the one Bey and Hov took comply with U.S. laws. Read his statement below.
“U.S. law clearly bans tourism to Cuba by American citizens because it provides money to a cruel, repressive and murderous regime. Since their inception, the Obama Administration’s 'people to people' cultural exchange programs have been abused by tourists who have no interest in the Cuban people’s freedom and either don’t realize or don’t care that they’re essentially funding the regime’s systematic trampling of people’s human rights.
According to recent news reports, Jay-Z and Beyonce’s Cuba trip, which the regime seized on for propaganda purposes, was fully licensed by the Treasury Department. If true, the Obama Administration should explain exactly how trips like these comply with U.S. law and regulations governing travel to Cuba and it should disclose how many more of these trips they have licensed.”
Beyonce and Jay-Z have yet to comment about their trip.
[Update: Rubio Calls The Couple's Trip "Hypocritical"]
In a broadcast of CNN's "State Of The Union, Senator Marco Rubio continued to criticize Jay-Z and Beyonce's trip to Cuba. “Quite frankly, I think it’s hypocritical of the people who took that trip, because they didn’t go down there and meet with some of the people that are actually in trouble today,” he argued.
Rubio stressed that the power couple should have taken the time to visit those who were "suffering" in the country, and also called Jay out on his uninformed idolization of Che Guevera.
“There’s a Hip Hop artist in Cuba who is on a hunger strike and has been persecuted because he has political lyrics in his songs,” Rubio explained. “If they really wanted to know what was going on in Cuba, they should have met with some of the people that are suffering there, not simply smoke cigars and take a stroll down the street…One of [Jay-Z's] heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he’s propping up.”
While the two stars have remained relatively quiet about the situation, Jay did reference the controversy in his recent track "Open Letter".
[via]
