Responding to Carlos Gutierrez and Alan Gross on Cuba policy

Question asked and answered

Some of the Cubans killed by the Castro regime during Obama detente

 Secretary Carlos Gutierrez's observation would be more accurately directed at the Obama Administration that legitimized a dictatorship, distanced itself from dissidents, freed terrorists that planned attacks on U.S. soil and killed Americans, and looked the other way while diplomats and their dependents were being harmed in Cuba.

This was not a foreign policy but wishful thinking that was also doing the bidding of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Agriculture lobby to open up credits to the Castro regime that would saddle Americans with the bill, and perpetuate the Castro dictatorship at the expense of the Cuban people.

Victims of state violence in Cuba during Obama detente

Oswaldo Payá, and Laura  Pollán, opposition leaders that would have overseen a democratic transition were killed, and repression exploded without consequences during the Obama years. Extrajudicial killings of fleeing Cubans continued but during the Obama years high profile activists also met untimely deaths that appear to have been carried out by Castro's state security service. The same spy agency that Obama's October 2016 Presidential Directive on Cuba ordered the CIA to share intelligence with.

Explosion in arbitrary detentions during Obama detente with Castro regime

Finally, with regards to the point raised by Alan Gross on agricultural export sales. They collapsed on President Obama's watch because they were no longer politically necessary to purchase leverage in the American political process. The Castro regime was getting everything it wanted through unilateral concessions.