![]() ![]() Tourism is a huge industry that helps sustain the Cuban economy, so tourists like us are usually shielded from occurrences like this. ![]() Even those tours, full of hope and self determination, were plagued by outages. We toured neighborhoods in transformation, learning how Cubans were developing their own communities to have better access to medical care, food, and other life-affirming services. We sat through multiple power outages, even in a hotel that had decent fuel access. Leading up to May Day, a massive storm swept through the island, causing emergencies that the Cuban government couldn’t effectively deal with because of the lack of fuel. government that was causing shortages of all kinds in Cuba. media certainly reported on it, but without any mention that it was the U.S. May Day was scaled down this year due to fuel shortages-Cuba has to conserve the fuel it has for farming and other necessities. Usually for May Day, millions of Cubans rally in Havana, celebrating socialism and workers. We certainly saw misery with our own eyes. policy towards Cuba is to create misery, and it’s proudly displayed on the State Department website. is trying to starve socialism out of Cuba. The goal of these policies is explicit in the 1960 memorandum: The U.S. On top of the embargo, the Biden Administration keeps Cuba on a state sponsor of terrorism list, further restricting economic development. imposed a blockade that still restricts necessary items from entering Cuba and prevents other countries from selling them to the island. Not only were they kind to us, they were also hopeful for the kind of future we would build together-one where our two countries can base foreign policy on the person-to-person relationships we build rather than deferring to the dinosaurs in Washington who value the victory of their ideologies over millions of Cuban lives. wanted to counter the rise of communism in its backyard, it would have to deny “money and supplies to Cuba, decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and an overthrow of the government.” It stated that a majority of Cubans supported Castro, and if the U.S. In 1960, following the Cuban Revolution that propelled Fidel Castro to power, a memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs was written and later declassified. Thinking of it now, there was no better way to understand how dire the situation was than to see it for ourselves. We tried our best to hear, trying to silence all the background noise to no avail. The rest of the presentation sounded like faint whispers to the delegates sitting in the back of the room. Before they were done talking, the microphones went silent. We sat in a room upon our arrival, listening to our trip hosts explain the issue of fuel shortages on the island. blockade, and its impacts on everyday life. As members of CODEPINK’s youth cohort, our goal was to understand the Cuban political system, the U.S.
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