5 Days in Havana, Part 5: Us vs. the Blockade
Regardless of any lingering questions, ending El Bloqueo is the only moral conclusion
A month ago I traveled to Havana as part of a 44-person delegation from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). We left Havana with a shared understanding and mission:
The blockade is inhumane and evil, and we must end it.
THIS IS ONE PART IN A SERIES OF “FIVE” POSTS:
- Part 1 provides foundational knowledge on the blockade
- Part 2 covers some of its effects on travel and schools, but counters with how revolutionary solidarity empowers the Cuban people to withstand those challenges
- Part 3 describes the harrowing impacts it has on medicine in Cuba and worldwide
- Part 4 focuses on the beauty of Cuban resiliency and its imperfect, ongoing socialist project within the Revolution
- Part 4.5 continues what turned out to be too much for one part
- Part 5 concludes with questions left unanswered and a call for action
Recap and Intro
In this series of posts, I have attempted to talk about my trip to Havana within the context of the blockade. My goal was primarily to make sure you not only got to see the joys of all I learned and experienced in Cuba, but that you also came to understand how the blockade continues to affect each and every part of life there—and, by extension, everywhere—in a way that is unthinkable. I hope that I’ve met the mark and that you are at the very least equipped to discuss and be critical of media coverage regarding this unseen war that has been waged behind the majority of our consciousnesses for over 60 years.
Of course, even with this trip, I still have so much to learn about Cuba, its history, its people, and its possibilities. Here, I’ll outline some questions and concerns that I have around Cuba’s trajectory from my current level of understanding before outlining what some organizing around the blockade looks like.
Regardless of what you may think about Cuba’s politics upon the conclusion of this series, there is one thing that we must never lose sight of:
Ending the blockade is the only clear moral conclusion.
The Blockade vs. Ideas
In Part 4, I touched on how the United States’s distorted education on Cuba leads to stifling our imagination of how our society could look drastically different than it does today—how it creates a blockade of ideas.
This feature of the blockade affects our understanding of how political will from the bottom up can make advancements in humanity and society. There is no hard reason that we need to maintain our current status quo of catering to a ruling class that we must beg for even just our basic rights and necessities to live.
Cuba isn’t some kind of political paradise or socialist endgame. Even those in the highest positions with the most bureaucratic power that we met were first to remind us that their society and their version of socialism is a project—a constant work in progress.
And when they admitted as much, it didn’t seem to be in the vapid way that US politicians talk about creating “a more perfect union” in a country where the ruling class laughs as it handpicks our binary “choices” of representation; where voter “surges” are defined as 62.8% participation in a presidential election year and 47.5% in an off-year.
“No one has the truth,” admitted Homero Acosta Álvarez, Secretary of the National Assembly and Council of State, during a Q&A session in which he talked about the necessity of building consensus among disagreements. Based on what I experienced in Cuba, I’m inclined to take that sentiment and sincerity at face value.
One idea that the blockade affects is our understanding of what “democracy” means and how it can be realized in a way that is completely foreign to what we are told in the United States and countries like it. It affects our ability to ascertain what is “democratic”, “undemocratic”, and even “authoritarian”.
We are told that Cuba’s one-party system, for instance, is “authoritarian.” We are expected to accept that at face value, and the majority of us do, unless you have a personal will to do a deep dive into how democracy works in Cuba.
The reality is much more complicated, though. In Aviva Chomsky’s book, A History of the Cuban Revolution, she writes that the Cuban people have a saying: “Before 1959 we had plenty of political parties, but no democracy.”
After my trip, I have a better understanding of what this means. In fact, I wrote a lot about it but am saving the content for a potential future post because of length. But better doesn’t mean complete.
Cuban democracy is defined in a major way by mass public participation in the people’s socialist project. One of the big questions I personally have after my trip revolves around how much influence local committees and community groups have on party decisions outside of major referendums like the ones on the 2019 Constitution and the 2022 Family Code.
Part of ending the blockade is opening oneself up to learning the truths behind that which we are told in regard to Cuba. We need to decide for ourselves what we accept and don’t, and how to apply that to our vision for the future.
From the inside out
During our visit, one of our comrades, Maria, independently organized a conversation with writers of La Tizza, an independent publication in Cuba that you can read online. The chat raised as many questions as answers—we spent only a few hours with them but could have easily spent days.
The chat was especially enlightening on the topic of political divides within society and within the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) itself.
They referenced the influence of social media. Prior to these platforms, it wasn’t that different ideological tendencies didn’t exist among the Cuban people, but that they were less visible on mass scale.
Tendencies are only allowed to be so explicit within the PCC because, above all, they need unity to fight against the United States’s continued attempt to influence regime change.
For example, in DSA, some members organize caucuses. Each caucus has a different vision on how to achieve the wider organization’s goal of winning socialism. That type of organizing isn’t allowed in the PCC.
Perhaps their most interesting point was around whether they should act as “defenders of the past” or act towards a new future. My understanding is that sometimes the PCC gets too caught up in defending the Revolution rather than letting it evolve into the future. The result is a government that is too top-heavy with its decision-making, which in turn makes them more successful in socializing property (housing, food, etc.) than socializing power, as they put it.
I’ll get into this a bit later, but for example, the government’s openness to injecting “market solutions” to combat its economic situation under the blockade isn’t a socialized reform—it’s not a product of socialized power—in that the people haven’t been called to weigh in on it.
If you’re reading this and are suddenly inclined to use this example as a strawman to declare the government authoritarian, I encourage you to take a step back. In this talk of the PCC exercising top-down reforms in a way that is perhaps antithetical to their socialist ideology, keep in mind that what is top-heavy to the Cuban people is probably way different than what is top-heavy for us. In Cuba, any bureaucratic reform that doesn’t consult more popular bodies of power—or doesn’t consult them to a high degree—is going to feel less democratic. But compared to our culture, with its dearth of popular decision-making, their version of what lacks democracy could still be much more democratic than our norm. Without longer conversations and more details, we can’t discern how democratic/undemocratic decisions are.
What if…?
Ending the blockade is a must. There is no question about that. However, ending it doesn’t just mean that Cuban socialism will suddenly be put on steroids and all will be right with the country. There will be major challenges that will test whether a Revolution that could withstand extreme poverty can also withstand opening the floodgates to extreme capitalist influence.
Consider when the Obama/Castro negotiations loosened restrictions how the likes of Chanel and the Rolling Stones put on huge shows. When the blockade is ended, bastions of materialism—not just from the U.S., but from all over the world—will press their influence down on the Cuban people. The tension of a rubber band stretched to the limits under a particular condition for decades will be released, slinging hard to its unknown opposite side.
Our Cuban friends from La Tizza, who, to be explicit, are members of the PCC, already had concerns over the creeping influence of capitalism.
For some context, Cuba has injected some capitalism into their society in the past. For example, Fidel opened markets during the “Special Period” in the early ‘90s when there was an economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this was temporary. Raúl Castro and current president Miguel Díaz-Canel have been much more open to injecting market “solutions” into the Cuban economy to combat their current situation.
Our friends wondered whether it is possible for their socialist project to hold while the economic conditions of their society change. They noted that, rather then thinking about injecting capitalism as a temporary necessity, some in the Party believe in creating a “new” type of socialism where capitalist elements will be a feature of helping them provide resources to support socialist distribution. At least one of them believes that there are straight capitalists in the Party.
They expressed a concern that de-socializing the economy would fail their successful socialization of property, noting that “If socialism has ‘last names’ no one knows what it means” (e.g., market socialism; probably even democratic socialism). They worry that with a lack of popular power over these reforms, the Cuban people won’t be able to fight against moves towards capitalism.
In the face of this Siren’s song, will the Cuban people and its government be able to tie its socialist project to the mast? It’s a question I had before the trip, and it’s one that deepened both during and afterwards.
We can’t possibly know the answer, but it is not for us to decide. The Cuban people will determine their own destiny.
We Have to Go Back
I think that I can speak for all of my comrades when I say that the trip was way too short. There’s so much more to learn. I want first and foremost to go back with Jen, but I also want to take friends there, as well as make more political-oriented visits.
Before I do, however, I need to learn Spanish. It’s a must. Our trip allowed us the privilege of meeting with Cubans from many walks of life, but the majority of our interactions were with officials. It’s important to me that when I go back, I lean in on having conversations with everyday folks on the street. In particular, I want to talk to people who interact with their local committees; as I touched on earlier, I want to come to have a deeper understanding of how they influence decisions that are made in their community, province, and country. If possible, I’d like to travel to parts of the island other than Havana.
I also am very curious about the Revolution’s relationship with Art. In 1961, in his “Words to Intellectuals,” Fidel stated, “Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.” These words and the directive that spurred from it greatly influenced Art—what was allowed, what wasn’t. Chomsky does a great job setting up the contradictions and evolution of this policy in her book, but I need to know more.
Call to Action
As one of our comrades from La Tizza put it, first and foremost, the Cuban people just need to be able to live.
Ending the blockade is the only way for that to happen. And the only way to end the blockade is for all of us to come together and take action.
The heroes of the Revolution knew that popular mobilization was the only path to victory, too. While their guerrilla warfare campaign was a key part of their struggle to seize power from an oppressive regime, it was only one part of what was a mass movement. Without the support of the people—without their collective action—the Revolution would have crumbled.
Here are actions within four tiers that you take moving forward:
Tier 1: Learn
Keep reading and learning about Cuba through books, media, and social accounts.
Book: Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution (free here)
Podcast: Blowback Season 2 (link)
Video shorts: Belly of the Beast: The War on Cuba (link)
Film: Castro’s Spies (free here)
Other accounts of this trip:
Social accounts to follow:
Tier 2: Show up
Look for any actions in your around ending the blockade. If you live in larger cities, especially D.C. and New York, you’ll likely see protests happening organized by the likes of the National Network on Cuba.
Show up. Listen to the people taking action. Have conversations. It’s as simple as that.
Tier 3: Organize
Your voice is amplified exponentially when you organize and take part in a mass movement.
Of course, I advocate for joining the Democratic Socialists of America. Consider DSA’s ability to organize this trip and gain audience with high-ranking officials in Cuba—including, as I hadn’t yet mentioned (but I think I’ll touch on later in a bonus post when I have media), the president himself.
However, you don’t have to join DSA to take action even if it would give you immediate access to resources to bolster your effort. Hosting teach-ins, movie nights, book clubs, etc. with friends and your community are great steps to take.
One effort that DSA (among other orgs) takes part in is attempting to get cities to pass resolutions to pressure our president to take Cuba off of the State Sponsors of Terrorism list—the first and easiest step in ending the blockade. If you’re interested in exploring that, reach out!
Tier 4: Experience
Of course, there’s nothing like experiencing Cuba and talking to the Cuban people yourself. As I mentioned in Part 1, getting to Cuba isn’t the easiest, but there are ways to do it. One of our trip organizers noted how getting a visa to enter Cuba is the easy part—abiding by U.S. regulations, since you can’t go as a tourist, is what’s difficult. But there are travel companies and organizations out there that can help with that (NNOC links to some brigades on their website, for instance).
Fin, for now
Wrapping up, I want to thank:
Jen—for editing all of these posts and having to endure my obsession.
My comrades—I didn’t include them in many pictures because I don’t know their comfort level of that sort of thing, but it was such a pleasure to experience Cuba with such an incredible group of people; I’m thankful for all of the friends I made.
The trip organizers—for working so hard to put together an unbelievably fulfilling and diverse program and keeping things so smooth from orientation to now.
The Cuban people—for their hospitality and warmth to those that come from the place that has caused the most harm to them, and for their spirit and solidarity in showing us what’s possible even the face of impossible odds.
You, the reader—for getting this far, being curious, and having an open mind.
As I have reiterated in every post in this series, I don’t claim to be an expert on Cuba. Reading and listening to material over the last year and a half and visiting the country once doesn’t make me an authority on anything.
I look forward to continuing my education and hope to be acting with you to end the blockade soon. If you have questions, I’m happy to answer them as well as I can. Please don’t hesitate to ask.
I have no doubt as I continue learning I will blog more about Cuba. For now, I return to what most of you all didn’t come here for: Final Fantasy XVI.
Hasta la victoria siempre,
Greg
PS: A better world is possible—join DSA today and let’s fight for it together 🌹
PPS: Some photos are mine but others are from other comrades on the trip (who I won’t name for anonymity’s sake unless any of you reading this wants credit!).