Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who put Cuban embargo into law, dies at 70

Axios

03-03-2025

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a former Miami congressman and towering figure in the Cuban exile community, died Monday after battling cancer. He was 70.
Zoom in: Diaz-Balart was the legislative mastermind responsible for enshrining the Cuban embargo into law, instead of executive action. It remains to this day and profoundly influences U.S. policy in Latin America.
A Republican, Diaz-Balart was also responsible for the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, called NACARA, that still provides immigration benefits and deportation protections to certain Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans.
It's legislation the GOP would never pass today.
The big picture: Diaz-Balart played a critical role in the political reorientation of Cuban Americans away from the Democratic Party to the GOP, where they continue to exercise outsized political influence on local, state and national politics and policy.
Diaz-Balart was such a notable figure in Miami that when politically minded people would talk of "Lincoln," it often meant they were talking about the congressman and not the former president.
The backstory: The Diaz-Balart family story is the personification of Cuban exile experience writ large. His father, Rafael Diaz-Balart, was a prominent Cuban politician when Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959. The family was on vacation at the time.
Castro was married to Rafael's sister, Mirta, and their son, Fidelito, was therefore Lincoln Diaz-Balart's cousin. The dictator was his uncle.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart's brother, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), served with him in Congress and shared the news of his death Monday. The third brother, is MSNBC host Jose Diaz-Balart. The oldest brother, Rafael Diaz-Balart, is a retired banker.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart served as a Florida state representative 1987-1989, state senate from 1989-1993 and the U.S. House from 1993-2011.
What they're saying:"The four of were like one person," Mario Diaz-Balart told Axios. "Just like our father did, Lincoln showed us how to live with dignity, honor and grace and how to die with dignity, honor and grace."
Lincoln Diaz-Balart leaves behind his son, Daniel Diaz-Balart, and wife of 48 years, Cristina, his high school sweetheart. His son Lincoln Gabriel Diaz-Balart died in 2013.
How it happened: Diaz-Balart's signature move was making sure the Cuban embargo was put in law so that it would take an act of Congress to change it, and only after democratic reforms took place on the island.
In 1996, thousands of rafters from Cuba were fleeing the already poor island that was made even more destitute from the collapse of the Soviet Union, which used to finance Castro's communist dictatorship.
A Miami-based relief group called "Hermanos al Rescate" ("Brothers to the Rescue") would fly over the Straits of Florida to drop supplies to migrants and help with their passage to the U.S.
The defining moment came on Feb. 4, 1996, when a Cuban MIG-29 fighter jet killed four of the activists by shooting their plane down in international waters. Cuba claims the Brothers to the Rescue plane encroached the island's airspace.
Because President Clinton was seeking reelection and wanted to win Florida, Diaz-Balart made sure to get the embargo put into federal legislation, known as the Helms-Burton Act, that the White House would be politically pressured to sign.
"Clinton won Florida," Diaz-Balart once said. "That wasn't a coincidence."
What's next: Diaz-Balart penned a memoir, Sketches From a Life, that was slated to be published later this month.