'Tired of Waiting:' Cuban Americans Say Biden Broke Promise to Lift Cuba Sanctions and Thaw Relations

After rare anti-government protests in Cuba, Cuban Americans are speaking out to demand the U.S. government end its blockade of the island. But President Joe Biden has responded with new sanctions. "Democracy Now!" speaks with Cuban American Carlos Lazo, who just led a march from Miami to the White House with Puentes de Amor, or Bridges of Love, and says President Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to undo Trump sanctions and return to a more constructive relationship with Cuba. “After seven months, he did nothing,” says Lazo. “We get tired of waiting.”

"Democracy Now!" also speaks with Latin American affairs scholar William LeoGrande, professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., who says, despite official U.S. rhetoric, almost every president going back to Dwight Eisenhower has found areas of mutual interest with the Cuban government. “There’s a long history of negotiation and cooperation just under the surface of the very real hostility that the United States has had toward Cuba,” says LeoGrande.