Hundreds of personalities and political figures pay tribute to Lincoln Díaz-Balart

Relatives and prominent figures of Cuban exile attended a Miami Catholic Church in the Catholic Church of Miami, in celebration of Lincoln Díaz-Balart, one of the Cuban American representatives with the greatest impact on the political sphere in the United States.

Hundreds of personalities attended the religious service that honors the prominent politician, among which the presence of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator for Florida, Rick Scott; Cuban-American Exempresist Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Democratic representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, activists Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez and Ramón Saúl Sánchez; State congresswoman Ileana García; Musical producer Emilio Estefan, lawyer Marcel Felipe, from Inspire America, among others.

Upon entering the church, Ros-Lehtinen offered declararations to Martí News in which he highlighted the instrumental role of Díaz-Balart when encoding the United States embargo on Cuba.

The Cuban-American ex-congressman said that the Helms-Burton law had to be called Lincoln Díaz-Balart.

The news of his death on March 3, in Miami, after a long illness, has shocked the Cuban -American community and its colleagues in the Capitol, where this week Several Democratic and Republican representatives have paid tribute.

Also the governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, ordered that Friday stay The flags of the United States and the state of Florida raised at halfthe in the state capitol in Tallahassee, and in all local and state buildings, facilities and lands of Miami-Dade County.

In his solid political career, his passage through the House of Representatives of Florida between 1986 and 1989, through the state Senate between 1989 to 1992; and from there to Congress in Washington where he kept his seat until 2011.

The lawyer born in Havana in 1954 promoted a crucial initiative in the United States policy towards Cuba, by coding as law the presidential decrees on the embargo against the Cuban regime.

Throughout his life, inside and outside politics he remained as a fervent defender of the cause for democracy in Cuba and supporting human rights defenders on the island through the La Rosa Blanca Institute, founded on January 28, 1959 in New York, by his father, the Cuban intellectual and statesman Rafael Díaz-Balart.

Another of his greatest achievements as a public servant was to obtain the approval of the Nicaraguan Adjustment Law and helps Central America in 1997 (Nacara), which granted legal residence to hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States who ran the risk of being deported.