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Secretary Rubio Delivers Remarks at the Lech Wałęsa Solidarity Prize Awards Ceremony in Miami, Sep. 2, 2025

September 2, 2025 · U.S. Department of State · 0:07:06

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered remarks at the Lech Wałęsa Solidarity Prize Awards Ceremony in Miami, Florida, on September 2, 2025, according to the State Department broadcast.

The prize honored Cuban dissident Berta Soler. Rubio said what has always struck him about Soler is that “she has refused to leave” — refusing to live quietly under conditions he called incredibly oppressive, including denial of the right to go to church on Sundays, when leaving would often be easier. He said she was not a political person in a country where activism is rewarded only on behalf of the regime, and that her willingness to act peacefully against oppression “has defined the rest of her life and imposed on her tremendous cost.” He used the occasion for a broader argument: that freedom “is not actually a natural human instinct,” that nearly all of human history was defined by oppression, and that rights understood as coming from God rather than government are a concept only a few hundred years old that must constantly be sustained.

Why it matters

A short ceremonial speech, but the Secretary’s clearest statement of the freedom doctrine behind his Cuba and hemispheric policy — delivered in Miami, in the community he repeatedly cites as his own formation, on a prize named for the Polish leader who faced down communism in Europe.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio Delivers Remarks at the Lech Wałęsa Solidarity Prize Awards Ceremony” (official upload, embedded above; Miami, Florida). Remarks as delivered 2025-09-02; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store; full transcript at state.gov.