For about 40 years, I’ve had the same position regarding Cuba: The tyrannical Castro (and post-Castro) regime ought to be blasted and the US economic embargo on Cuba opposed. That always seemed a no-brainer to me because both screwed the people of Cuba. But too many on the left focused on Washington’s war on Havana and were soft on Fidel and his brutal dictatorship. (Yes, I know, free health care, free education—but no free press.) And the right fixated on the repression and the old reliable boogeyman of communism, while supporting an embargo that caused great economic harm to the Cuban population, separated family members, prevented people-to-people contacts, and provided the Castro brothers a phony justification for crushing political freedoms. With this week's outbreak of unusual and intense anti-government protests in Cuba—in which thousands of people denounced food shortages and the government’s failure to deliver vaccinations and thwart the COVID-19 pandemic—it may once again be too easy for Washington to get Cuba wrong.

In a statement issued on Monday, President Joe Biden declared:

We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime. The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.

That sounds fine, though Republicans and the diehard anti-Castro Cubans of Florida inevitably criticized Biden for not being more belligerent. But part of the economic suffering underway in Cuba is the direct result of US policy. Following President Barack Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba—which led to an economic surge—the Trump administration reversed course and ratcheted up sanctions. The ensuing crunch and the collapse of its tourism industry caused by the ongoing pandemic have together yielded an economic calamity on this island of 11.3 million people. The United States might “stand with the Cuban people” when some are willing to protest and defy the dictatorial government. But we don’t do much for them when they face serious privations and the ravages of a pandemic.

For decades, the Cuban American right wing has sought to punish the Castroites, ignoring the consequences for the people of the island. Force the Cubans into economic chaos and the government will fall—that was the callous rationale underlying an embargo that repeatedly failed. Now that Cubans are overwhelmed by the coronavirus crisis, perhaps the protests sparked by this policy of enforced cruelty will finally have the potential to threaten the nation’s Communist rulers. The Castro-less Castro gang deserves the boot, but it’s tough to feel triumphant about the moment.

I asked Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive and noted expert on Cuba, for his thoughts as he monitors this week’s events. He replied:

Cubans are understandably frustrated and angry and hurting with the dire pandemic-related economic situation, some of them (but not many so far) boldly willing to openly protest the conditions they are experiencing. And Covid is still spreading on parts of the island. There were similar angry, brief, protests back in 1994 in the middle of the "special period" after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But there are key differences between now and then worth noting. Fidel Castro was in charge then, but both Castros are gone now. There was no social media/internet, or cell phones in 1994, but there is now an ability for Cubans to communicate, share, and receive information. In the 1990s, there was an escape valve for Cubans to flee to the U.S. via the sea, but that was largely closed off by Obama's decision to normalize migration and end the wet-foot/dry-foot policy, and by Trump's decision to shutter the consulate which prevents any normal organized exodus.

Finally, Cubans have lived through the several good years of economic change and expansion that came with the Obama opening to Cuba that Trump reversed. Biden's inaction on Cuba has left the country bereft of prospects for a return to that brief era of prosperity. Dashed hopes and expectations and extreme economic conditions are a powerful social force, especially in the Cuban summer when the electricity is being turned off due to fuel shortages. Biden now owns Trump's policy of deprivation, the logic of which was to foster shortages and foment the type of discontent we are seeing today. It is flagrant hypocrisy to claim to "stand with the Cuban people" when our current US officials are in charge of policies explicitly aimed to hurt them (cutting off remittances, for example) and undermine their ability to re-build a private sector that had begun to flourish under the Obama opening.

Complimenting the Cuban people for “bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights,” as Biden did, is easy. The harder and more important task is doing what’s possible to enhance the wellbeing of a repressed population battered by economic devastation and threatened by a pandemic. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, pointed this out in a Twitter thread in which he remarked, “One simple objective should guide U.S. policy on Cuba: how can we improve the lives of the Cuban people.” The Biden administration, he suggested, “should offer assistance on COVID vaccines (if the Cuban govt refuses, that’s on them). We should do the same on other basic shortages related to food and medicine.” He added, “Biden and his team know all this well. I hope more than anything they take steps that can make things better for the Cuban people.”

Yet so far, there’s no sign that Biden wants to shake up the Trump-imposed status quo. Perhaps his team is nervous about the politics of Cuba and/or more concerned about a possible refugee crisis (coupled with one coming out of Haiti). And certainly the Biden crew wants to remain focused on domestic policy and deliverables for the 2022 midterm elections. But one thing is undeniable: It will take more than a 94-word statement from the White House for Biden to show solidarity with our neighbors in Cuba.

Cuba: A More Personal Perspective

For many years, I’ve been thinking about how to be a critic of the Cuban dictatorship without assisting the pro-embargo crowd. In the early 1980s, I was part of a group that traveled to the island. We were hosted—and minded—by several government officials. There were about eight of us, mostly lefties enthralled with Cuba. (Have you ever seen such a clean and for-free hospital?!) In meetings with Cuban educators and civic leaders, my fellow travelers were prone to give rousing speeches in support of the Revolution. As opponents of US interventionism, they celebrated Castro for his defiance of misguided US foreign policy. I took a different approach, constantly arguing with our hosts about the suppression of independent media and the repression of gay and lesbian Cubans, which was in the news at that time. I had a sneaking suspicion these Cuban officials enjoyed our back-and-forth more than the hallelujah chorus of the Che-wannabes. I repeatedly asked if I could meet with dissidents, and they repeatedly said yes before coming up with scheduling issues. My goal was to show them that not every lib was in love with Castro. Not sure it mattered much.

Nearly 20 years later, in 1999, I traveled to Cuba to cover an exhibition baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team. (The O’s won.) That week, a bunch of American musicians and Hollywood celebrities were in town for a concert at Karl Marx Theatre to promote Cuban American cultural exchanges. The group included Bonnie Raitt, Joan Osborne, Jimmy Buffet, David and Don Was, Michael Franti, Mick Fleetwood, Burt Bacharach, Woody Harrelson, and others. There was much justifiable decrying of the US embargo but not much conversation about political repression.

I visited a Cuban writer named Luis, and we discussed the most recent crackdowns on freedom of expression. (The government had enacted a harsh anti-sedition law that severely punished Cubans involved in disseminating "subversive" information.) Luis used to work for foreign media outlets, but now he couldn’t. If any of these publications published material deemed “subversive,” he could end up in jail for years. In a subsequent column, I wrote, “Luis yearns for American periodicals and books, which the U.S. government does not permit to be sold in Cuba. A family member craves a copy of Dr. Strangelove, which she has never seen and which is not shown in Cuba. Luis spoke of a Cuban who went to America and wanted to buy a computer printer he could not acquire officially at home. The U.S. government, citing the embargo, would not permit him to bring the printer back to Cuba. It is madness that Washington makes the plight of people like Luis harder.”

One of my last pieces for the Nation, written in 2007, really pissed off Ricardo Alarcón, then the president of Cuba’s National Assembly. He had contributed an article to the Nation’s website about C. Wright Mills, the noted sociologist and author. His focus was Mills’ book Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba, which was based on long conversations Mills had with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the summer of 1960. In this article, Alarcón condemned the FBI for having spied on Mills—who had a “passionate love of truth”—and for using dirty tricks back then to undermine his book. I wrote a response:

Alarcón’s concern for the plight of this one author is comical–in a dark fashion–for he heads a government that does not allow its citizens to challenge openly the conventional wisdom of the Castro regime. There is no free press in Alarcón’s country, no freedom of expression. There is no “passionate love of truth” among the rulers of Cuba. Alarcón is crying for Mills, while his government does even worse to Cuban writers than the FBI did to Mills...It takes nerve for a person who runs one of the ten most censored countries to praise a pioneering and influential free thinker.

Alarcón, I later learned, was offended and puzzled by my article. It came at a time when, unknown to me, the Nation was trying to pull together a special issue on US-Cuba relations that would include contributions from Cuban academics—not an easy feat to pull off. Alarcón suspected my column was an internal plot designed to sabotage this project. It had to be explained to him that writers at the Nation (especially at the Nation!) were free to disagree with each other and fight it out in public. The value of dissent and debate was a lesson that he and his comrades never got. (And one that some in the United States today seek to undermine.) Let’s hope the current protests in Cuba will result in more space for free expression—and, maybe ultimately, a smooth path to a post-Communist state that is democratic, stable, and prosperous. The Cuban people deserve to be free of the embargo and the regime.

What to Read, Watch, and Listen To

MLK/FBI. Whenever I walk past the J. Edgar Hoover Building—the FBI headquarters in Washington—I cringe. Hoover, the longtime FBI director, was a villain for decades, waging war on political dissent, poisoning American culture, and utterly destroying many lives. He was an American version of a Soviet commissar. And nothing demonstrates this more than his crusade against Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI wiretapped the civil rights hero, gathered evidence of his apparent extramarital sexual activity, and tried to use this material to encourage King to kill himself. Sam Pollard’s documentary, released last year, chronicles this disgusting chapter of American treachery. Pollard deftly handles the sensitive matter of King’s personal life, while focusing on Hoover’s obsessive effort to destroy King, whom the paranoid G-man considered a Soviet dupe and a threat to the (white) American way of life. It’s a gripping and infuriating tale of racism and abuse of power. True-crime shows are all the rage now. MLK/FBI covers one of the worst true crimes of the 20th century. (It’s available on various streaming services.)

Tenet. I watched Christopher Nolan’s time-bending (or -breaking) thriller, and it made me feel dumb. I don’t mind having to think hard while watching a movie, but this one seemed like a Mensa test. I’m a fan of Nolan’s work. The Dark Knight is the best superhero film ever; I have trouble clicking past it whenever it is on television. But Tenet was too much work. A US intelligence operative has to stop a Russian oligarch from using “time inversion” to destroy the world. Got it. Still, I was lost from start to climactic (in real and inverted time) finish. But viewing the film reminded me that it generated one of the greatest movie reviews of all time from NPR’s Bob Mondello. He begins with this setup: “Tenet is so complicated I couldn’t spoil this movie even if I wanted to.” I won’t spoil the rest. Give it a listen.

Send me your all-time favorite movie reviews. And if you have any feedback on the above or recommendations of what I should be reading, watching, or listening to, send them to thisland@motherjones.com.

Read Previous Issues of This Land

July 13, 2021: A coming referendum on Donald Trump; a suggestion for Hunter Biden; a new book on how the super-rich screw us all; and more.

July 10, 2021: Why the Republicans are right to be terrified of the new House committee investigating the 1/6 attack; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Joni Mitchell’s Blue 50; and more.

July 7, 2021: How The Summer of Soul counters the GOP’s season of hate; a debate on the recent UFO report; Garry Trudeau, American Dostoyevsky; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 3, 2021: Donald Rumsfeld, Christopher Hitchens, the Iraq War, and me; the perils of taking a home DNA test; Dumbass Comment of the Week; a Springsteen story; and more.

July 1, 2021: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and perjury; Adam Serwer’s new book; Cézanne’s crime scene; and more.

June 29, 2021: How the new UFO report is bad news for UFO believers; my own UFO tale; HBO Max’s Hacks; an anti-racist anthem; and more.

June 26, 2021: Is Josh Hawley dumb or evil? (The answer is not both); Dumbassery that encourages mass “executions” in the United States; renowned guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson’s new tour and new book (and his claim regarding the best strings arrangement ever on a popular song); MoxieCam™ (before and after photos!), and more.

June 24, 2021: How an alleged 1/6 conspirator who called for executing Trump’s foes hooked up with a prominent Republican Party official; new Los Lobos; and more.

June 22, 2021: Why the GOP is pushing “political apartheid”; Ted Cruz wins Dumbass Comment of the Week; recommendations for an Apple TV+ series and a book on the curious origins of the universe; the first Clash tour of the United States (and being trapped in a van driven by a punk on acid); MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.