March 4, 2025 at 11:28 p.m.

His death was announced by U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R), a younger brother who won Lincoln’s Miami-based seat after he declined to seek reelection in 2010. The cause was cancer, said Daniel Díaz-Balart, Lincoln’s son.

Mr. Díaz-Balart hailed from a political family sometimes dubbed the “Cuban Kennedys.” His father served in the Cuban congress, as did a grandfather and an uncle, and held an appointment under President Fulgencio Batista before Fidel Castro toppled the U.S.-backed government in the communist revolution of 1959.

Lincoln Díaz-Balart was traveling with his parents in France when Castro took control in Havana. His father had been one of Castro’s most vocal critics, at one point denouncing the young guerrilla as “nothing more than a psychopathic fascist.” Castro, for his part, railed against the Díaz-Balarts as his most “repulsive enemies.”

Unable to return home, Lincoln Díaz-Balart grew up in Spain and in the United States, where he ultimately settled in Florida and carried on his family’s political tradition. He rose through the Florida legislature before winning an open congressional seat in 1992.

“I’m friends with anyone who’s fighting Castro,” Mr. Díaz-Balart once told the Miami Herald, “because that’s the supreme cause.”

There was a second cause at the center of Mr. Díaz-Balart’s work, however. Resisting pressure from fellow Republicans who took a harder line on immigration, he was a reliable defender of people who came to the United States seeking safety from political violence, or simply a better life.

He was one of three Republicans who refused to sign the Contract With America, the platform that helped the GOP claim the House majority in the 1994 Republican “revolution” led by Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, because of its provisions to cut Supplemental Security Income for legal immigrants.

Throughout his career, Mr. Díaz-Balart supported efforts to guarantee schooling for the children of undocumented immigrants as well as children who entered the country illegally.

He was a principal author of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 that protected tens of thousands of qualifying immigrants from deportation.

He kept a framed photo of Nicaraguan immigrants lifting him into the air after the bill passed, once telling The Washington Post that it was “the most emotionally impactful moment” of his years in Congress.

After living for a period in the United States, Mr. Díaz-Balart moved with his family to Spain, where he graduated from an American high school in Madrid. He returned to the United States for his higher education, graduating in 1976 from the New College of Florida in Sarasota and in 1979 from Case Western Reserve University’s law school in Cleveland.

He worked for a legal aid organization in Miami and later served as a prosecutor.

Mr. Díaz-Balart began his political life as a Democrat and became a Republican in part because of his affinity for President Ronald Reagan and the stance his White House took against communism. He was elected to the Florida state house in 1986 and several years later to the state senate, where he remained until he won his seat in Congress.

Mr. Díaz-Balart, who rose to become a senior member of the Rules Committee, was widely credited with drawing Cuban American voters into the Republican tent.

The New York Times, March 4, 2025

As a congressman in 1995, he was arrested outside the White House while protesting President Bill Clinton’s Cuba policy, which was pushing for more engagement, and later helped craft the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which codified the trade embargo and other sanctions into law. The legislation kept Mr. Clinton and subsequent presidents from unilaterally lifting the embargo without the support of Congress. Critics of the embargo say it has failed because Cuba’s communist regime remains unchanged.

Lincoln Rafael Díaz-Balart was born on Aug. 13, 1954, in Havana, the second of four sons of Hilda (Caballero) Díaz-Balart and Rafael Lincoln Díaz-Balart. His father, a lawyer, was the majority leader in the Cuban House of Representatives before Fidel Castro seized power in 1959. A grandfather and uncle were also in politics. An aunt, Mirta Díaz-Balart, was Castro’s first wife and the mother of his son Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, known as Fidelito.

“He was just a statesman in every sense of the word,” said Mr. Curbelo, who first interned for Mr. Díaz-Balart when he was 15. “He definitely served during a time where bipartisan collaboration was a lot more common, and there wasn’t this insurgent element in the House Republican conference like there is now.”

Mr. Díaz-Balart is survived by his wife of 48 years, Cristina (Fernández) Díaz-Balart; their son, Daniel; his three brothers; and two grandsons. Another son, Lincoln Gabriel, died in 2013.

Before his death, Mr. Díaz-Balart wrote and completed a memoir titled “Sketches From a Life,” which has yet to be published.

“Lincoln was a defender of the silenced and the oppressed,” José Díaz-Balart said in closing an MSNBC broadcast on Monday. “He lived a life of service, and did so in the most generous, effective and compassionate way.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/us/politics/lincoln-diaz-balart-dead.html

National Review, March 5, 2025

Lincoln’s paternal grandfather was Rafael José Díaz-Balart. He admired President Lincoln greatly. He named one of his sons “Rafael Lincoln Díaz-Balart” — and that boy would name a son of his own “Lincoln.”

More names. Lincoln’s paternal grandmother, América, admired Emerson greatly. So, the other son in that family was “Waldo.”

Lincoln Rafael Díaz-Balart was conscious of bearing the name “Lincoln” (as well as the other two names). He knew a lot about our 16th president. His office was decorated with Lincoln memorabilia. There was also, I recall, an image of José Martí, the Cuban independence leader. Chiefly, there were photos of Cuban political prisoners. Lincoln Díaz-Balart thought of them all the time.

It was he who made me aware of a statement by Martí — one I have quoted many times, about Russian dissidents such as Vladimir Kara-Murza, for example: “When there are many men who lack honor, there are always others who have within themselves the honor of many men.”

Lincoln Díaz-Balart was a member of the U.S. House from 1993 to 2011. He passed away on Monday, at age 70.

He was a friend of mine, I’m grateful to say. We talked and corresponded for many years — mainly about freedom, democracy, and human rights. In Cuba, sure, but everywhere else, too. Lincoln was a universalist. He did not want human rights for a select few.

Lincoln was born in Havana in 1954. He was four when Fidel Castro took power. The family was out of the country at the time. Otherwise, we would never have known the Díaz-Balarts. Castro forces looted and burned their home.

Rafael Lincoln Díaz-Balart had been a prominent politician. He was the majority leader of the House of Representatives. Before that, he had been a friend and roommate of Fidel Castro’s.

Castro married Rafael’s sister, Mirta. By the way, Rafael’s wife, Hilda, never liked Castro — even when he and her husband were close friends. In fact, she hated him. Castro and Mirta had one child, a son, Fidelito.

While in power, Castro would sometimes receive U.S. congressmen, and he enjoyed telling them, “Say hello to my nephew, would you?” Meaning Lincoln, of course. Occasionally, Lincoln would be asked about his “family” in Cuba — Fidelito and others. He would respond that his real family was composed of freedom-and-democracy activists, in prison and out. Those were his true Cuban “relatives.”

Mirta and Castro soon divorced. She remarried and had other children. Did she ever, truly, in her heart, break with Castro? Did any of Castro’s women (and there were many)?

Those interested in this subject might consult a book of mine, Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators.

In May 1955, the Cuban government issued an amnesty for Castro and his comrades. The amnesty was widely popular, broadly supported. A dissenter was Rafael Lincoln Díaz-Balart. On the floor of the House, he said,

Fidel Castro and his group have repeatedly declared, from their comfortable prison, that they will be leaving prison only in order to continue plotting new acts of violence and whatever it takes to achieve the total power they seek. . . .

They do not want peace. They do not want a national solution. They do not want democracy, or elections, or fraternity. Fidel Castro and his group seek only one thing: power, and total power at that.

Díaz-Balart called his onetime friend, and onetime brother-in-law, “a psychopathic fascist, who could choose to align himself with communism only because fascism was defeated in the Second World War.”

He ended his speech with this:

I believe that this amnesty — so imprudently adopted — will bring days, many days, of mourning, pain, bloodshed, and misery to the Cuban people, even though these very people do not see it that way now. I ask God that the majority of the people and the majority of my fellow representatives present here be the ones who are right. I ask God that I be the one who is mistaken — for Cuba’s sake.

He was not mistaken. In later years, some people called him prophetic. As Lincoln explained, “He wasn’t prophetic. He just knew him.”

Once, I talked with both Lincoln and his brother Mario, who had joined Lincoln in the U.S. House. (Mario was elected in 2002, and still serves in the House.) Sizing up Castro’s Cuba, Lincoln said, “It’s a mixture of medieval feudalism and Al Capone.” Mario added, “With a touch of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest thrown in.”

In another conversation, Lincoln spoke further with me about this matter of Castro, fascism, and communism. Castro went to a Jesuit high school in Havana, Belén, and was taught by Spanish priests. They were excellent teachers, and they were also very anti-communist, for good reasons. Castro’s heroes were Primo de Rivera, Hitler, and Mussolini.

That was not in fashion after 1945. So . . .

Whether the boot is black or red, who cares? It’s still a boot stamping on the human face.

Like many other Cubans, the Díaz-Balarts found refuge in Miami. Rafael and Hilda had four sons, who flourished: the congressmen, Lincoln and Mario; Rafael (another Rafael), a businessman and civic leader; and José, a television broadcaster. By some, they were dubbed “the Cuban Kennedys.”

Their father said, “They’re 100 percent American and 100 percent Cuban.” For many, this would not add up. But for the Díaz-Balarts, in my opinion — and that of many others — it does.

Lincoln was a Democrat. Then came the ’80s, when the Democratic Party moved left on foreign policy and a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, was defending freedom, democracy, and human rights. His first U.N. ambassador was a Democrat: Jeane Kirkpatrick. Lincoln admired Kirkpatrick a great deal. He saw the world as she did.

Kirkpatrick switched her party registration to Republican in April 1985. So did Lincoln. So did his wife, Cristina, and his brother Mario.

Years after his retirement from politics, Lincoln said to me, “One of the best things about serving in D.C. was being able to become her friend.” We were reminiscing about Jeane.

He had a political career, Lincoln did: the Florida House and the Florida Senate, then the U.S. House. But he was a bookish, intellectual man, always reading, always inquiring. When we talked, it was seldom about politics — the daily tumble of politics. It was about ideas.

In Congress, Lincoln dealt with the issues that all congressmen deal with, but he placed a special emphasis on Cuban affairs. He made no apologies for it. “How can you do otherwise,” he said, “if you know what’s going on?”

He talked about Cuba with anyone who would listen. He wanted his fellow Americans to know the truth about his native land, about which there are many illusions. Celebrities and academics would troop down to Havana to sit at Castro’s feet, cooing over him. Lincoln said to me, “For the life of me, I just don’t know how Castro can seem cute after forty years of torturing people.”

As you can tell, this must have been in 2000 or so.

Over and over, he named the names of Cuban political prisoners on the House floor. (Jeane K. had done this on the floor of the United Nations. In particular, she named the names of Soviet political prisoners. They heard about it, and it mattered to them.) Lincoln Díaz-Balart was, and is, a hero to Cuban dissidents. Many have told me so.

They also speak glowingly about Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a retired congresswoman, and a precious handful of others.

Lincoln wanted the American media to do more — to do more about Cuba, to rouse themselves. In an impassioned speech, he said, “I ask the press, the media, to please cease treating Cuba’s pro-democracy activists as though they did not exist.”

To say it once more: Lincoln Díaz-Balart wanted freedom, democracy, and human rights for everyone. Not just Cubans or Americans. (The same is true of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.) He cared about political prisoners in China, Russia, Syria — wherever. His highest term of praise was “freedom fighter.” He applied it to the activists and prisoners, of course — but also to politicians and writers who lent a hand.

“He’s a freedom fighter!” he’d say with pleasure and gratitude. “She’s a freedom fighter!”

He admired Reagan, and George W. Bush, and Jeb Bush, his fellow Floridian. In the course of extolling Jeb to me once, he said, “And he speaks excellent Spanish, too — fluent.”

Lincoln’s father passed away in 2005. “He taught me how to live and taught me how to die,” Lincoln told me. In 2013, he and Cristina had to bear the unbearable: the death of their son Lincoln Jr. at the age of 29.

It was in 2011 that Lincoln retired from Congress. There was an event in Miami — a lunch, as I recall — in honor of Lincoln. Much of the Florida political establishment was there. I remember Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, and Marco Rubio, the Republican.

Lincoln had asked me to come down and introduce him. Being an opinion journalist — very opinionated, and open about it all — I said, “Of course, an honor.” Which it was.

I think again of his father’s phrase: “100 percent American and 100 percent Cuban.” Lincoln was 100 percent devoted to the people he loved and 100 percent devoted to his ideals.

In the summer of 2021, protests broke out all over Cuba. Lincoln and I talked by e-mail. He said,

I am optimistic. The young people of Cuba have decided they will not become another lost generation. There is a deep unity now; it happened recently. It is unprecedented. Canel the Castro-puppet is totally despised. Freedom is inevitable. Un fuerte abrazo, querido amigo!

Un fuerte abrazo, Lincoln, mi querido amigo. Thank you for your marvelous work.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/from-havana-and-miami-a-freedom-fighter/

House of Representatives, January 4, 2000

[House Hearing, 106 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

DRUG TRAFFICKING IN THE CARIBBEAN: DO TRAFFICKERS USE CUBA AND PUERTO RICO AS MAJOR TRANSIT LOCATIONS FOR UNITED STATES-BOUND NARCOTICS?

HEARINGS

before the

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION

JANUARY 3 AND 4, 2000

Serial No. 106-178

 

STATEMENT OF LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. It is my honor to be able to welcome you, Chairman 
Burton, and Chairman Gilman, Mr. Mica, Mr. Ose, along with our distinguished colleague and friend, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, to the 
district that I am honored to be able to represent in south Florida. I want to thank Mayor Diaz and the entire city for their hospitality.
    I especially would like to send a message of hope, as well as solidarity, to the people of Cuba who are listening to us 
today. They too will soon be able to hold meetings on issues of their choice and they, more than anyone else, know that nothing 
of magnitude, especially activities for profit, can take place in Cuba without the acquiescence and the complicity of the 
totalitarian tyrant.

    Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to include my entire statement in the record.

    Mr. Burton. Without objection.

    Mr. Diaz-Balart. I will not read it all. It begins delineating the substantial evidence in the public domain that 
has mounted, showing that the Castro dictatorship is aggressively involved in narco-trafficking, at least since the 
early 1980's; goes into detail with regard to the indictment that was issued in 1982 here; continues with specific cases, 
for example, with direct logistical assistance by the Cuban armed forces of drug trafficking into the United States; and it 
goes on giving specific examples.

    Prior members of the committee, their statements have talked about the April 1993 Miami Herald leak from the U.S. 
Attorney's Office. After that investigation was shelved by the Clinton administration, it was leaked. The grand jury's draft 
indictment was leaked to the Miami Herald, and I think it is of extraordinary importance that we actually read a few parts of 
what the Miami Herald was able to make public.
    The draft indictment states, "The Cuban government facilitated the transportation and distribution of large 
quantities of cocaine destined for the United States, including south Florida."
    The indictment, the Miami Herald stated, is historically significant because it names the entire Government of Cuba, 
including its armed forces and its Interior Ministry, as criminal organizations. The indictment of the Cuban Government 
was the result of months of secret testimony before a Federal grand jury in Miami.

    Now one of the witnesses who testified before that grand jury spoke to me later and talked to me about another witness' 
testimony. And they personally connected Raul Castro and the other high ranking members of the dictatorship to narco-
trafficking of cocaine into the United States. The indictment reads, "In return for substantial sums of money, Raul Castro 
exploited his official position by offering narcotic traffickers the safe use of Cuba, including Cuban airspace, as 
a location for the transshipment of multi-hundred kilogram loads of cocaine destined for the United States."
    Among the other allegations in the indictment, in exchange for millions of dollars, Raul Castro assured Colombian cartel 
leaders that the Cubans would protect their shipments. Special radio frequencies were provided to make Cuban airspace friendly 
to drug pilots, who were also allowed to land on Cuban soil with their loads of cocaine. With this special frequency, 
traffickers could enter and exit Cuban airspace without molestation.
    The draft indictment states Cuban officers used their radio facilities to warn smugglers of approaching United States Coast 
Guard cutters. Drug planes were allowed to drop their cocaine loads to smuggler vessels waiting in Cuban waters. Colombian 
cartel leaders were allowed to live in Cuba, provided with housing, cars, security, entertainment. That is in the indictment.
   
Mention was also made, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, of the Cabrera bust in 1996. I think it is important to read 
also what was leaked to the Miami Herald when that investigation was quashed, because Cabrera was arrested--he was 
busted in January 1996. He started offering at that time substantial assistance to the DEA to the United States Attorney 
here, to Customs, personally tying Fidel Castro to drug trafficking and offering to go back into Cuba, arrange another 
deal with Fidel Castro and cocaine traffickers in Colombia, and that that deal could be under surveillance--he offered that.
    Now it would be my suggestion to the committee that has done an extraordinary job on this subject, Mr. Chairman, Mr. 
Gilman and members, with regard to the bust by the heroic Colombian police in December just a year ago of over 7 tons, 
that you focus upon the Cabrera bust as well, because the lawyers for Cabrera and the other drug traffickers, when one 
speaks to them, it is very interesting. They were obviously-- they talk about the fact that DEA and Customs and the U.S. 
Attorney's Office down here, they were amazed obviously when this case broke and they started to receive the direct evidence 
of Castro's direct participation in drug deals. As a matter of fact, the substantial assistance was treated obviously in the 
highest, most confidential manner, and the investigation continued. 

And all of a sudden in July of that year, after 6 months investigation, the investigation was leaked to the Miami Herald, 
Mr. Jeff Lein wrote it, front page of the Miami Herald, "Traffickers tie Castro to Drug Run." 
And at that time then,  the U.S. Attorney's Office told Cabrera's lawyer, sorry, the investigation is over, 
your client lied to us. The lawyer said well, how? Well, we will deal with that at the hearing.

The lawyer was waiting for the hearing so that the evidence would be put forth as to how Cabrera lied in the substantial 
assistance that he was giving the authorities. But the U.S. Attorney's Office, the day of the hearing, dropped the lying 
charge and Cabrera was sent away pursuant to the sentencing guidelines for 19 years for his plea for smuggling, and was 
fined.

Cabrera's lawyer, as I said before, says that his client had offered to help set up a cocaine shipment from Colombia to 
Miami that American authorities could monitor and, quote, that shipment would come through Cuba in full view, it would go 
unnoticed, it would go unseized, Colombian drug traffickers would be embraced in Cuba. Cabrera's lawyer says, also told 
agents and prosecutors that they would be in a position to catch Miami-based ``mules'' who would collect the cocaine once 
it arrived, and the money launderers, who would wash the profits. The government, however, was not interested.

What we have seen from the government, Mr. Chairman, is quite interesting. Chairman Gilman and you and others have 
pointed out that despite your committee's investigation with regard to the seizure of over 7 tons of cocaine in December 
1998 by the Colombian police in northern Colombia, not only was the Cuban Government not placed on the major's list, as has 
been stated before, but you, Mr. Chairman, received a letter, along with Ms. Ros-Lehtinen and I, from Mr. McCaffrey, after 
the Colombian bust. This letter was dated January 28, 1999, and it states there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that the 
Cuban leadership is involved in criminal activity. This is the letter. 

Cuban officials cite lack of resources for the government's inability to patrol its territorial waters.

Not only, as it has been mentioned, was the Cuban dictatorship able to shoot down unarmed planes in February 
1996, but just this last weekend, again in a small private airplane leased by a pilot who used to be in the South 
Vietnamese Air Force, the Cuban Government immediately intercepted that pilot as soon as he went over Cuban space and 
followed him, the Cuban MiGs followed him until he left Cuban airspace.

    So not only were the Brothers to the Rescue able to be intercepted in February 1996, but if there is a lack of resources for the government's 
inability to patrol its territorial waters, they sure were able to patrol them a few days ago when the former South Vietnamese pilot decided to fly 
an unarmed civilian plane, and he was immediately intercepted. So with all due respect, in my opinion, there are two possible causes or 
explanations for the Clinton administration's drug policy as it relates to Castro's Cuba. 

The first possibility is that it is a policy of naivete to the point of ridiculousness. The second possibility is that it is 
one of purposeful cover-up. I really cannot believe that those in leadership positions on this critical issue in the 
administration could be so inept as to be responsible for a policy rooted in the first possible cause. I believe that the 
Clinton administration covers up the Castro regime's role in narco-trafficking because the Clinton administration's policy 
of appeasement of Castro at all costs could not be maintained if the American people learned the truth.

    That is why it is so important for Congress to continue investigating and not simply give up based on the fact that 
there is only 1 year left of this administration. It is the duty of Congress to continue investigating. That is why I 
commend you, Mr. Chairman, members of this committee, as the committee charged with oversight of the Executive under the 
law, to proceed, so the American people can realize what the truth is with regard to Cuba and specifically Castro's regime 
in narco-trafficking and the American people can make up their minds as to how their democratically elected government should 
proceed to protect the security of the American people.
    
Thank you very much.
    
Mr. Burton. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz-Balart, for that very insightful and eloquent statement.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg69521/html/CHRG-106hhrg69521.htm