“In Havana I witnessed poverty and pain. But I also saw how most of the people carried themselves with dignity, with pride. People kept flowers growing amidst the disaster. Music in most venues. Food and culture still thriving. Schools everywhere, including hearing students playing musical instruments out of windows.”
Editor’s Note: This story by Luis J. Rodriguez was first published on his Substack Blog here and is republished with permission. Please visit his blog and subscribe.
Cuba is dark now. Electricity is gone, goods inaccessible. Disease due to sewage backup will worsen. The United States is killing Cuba. This means many of the island’s 10 million people will die. The latest Trump administration’s use of increased sanctions for countries sending oil to Cuba is destroying a country that has not invaded or harmed the United States.
Remember this
The only reason Cuba is targeted, and lied about, is because it’s not part of the ideological or sociological sphere of the United States. And for that, for 65 years, the US has blockaded and squeezed Cuba for daring to be its own country. Now with the Trump Administration’s military blockade of oil, Cuba is becoming the US’s Gaza. Ironically, the only global ally in the US’s decades’s long blockade has been Israel, the perpetrator of Gaza’s destruction.
People can blame the Cuban communist government for many things. Much of it well deserved. But what ails the country most is not the government, which has endured the strangling pressures to stop governing. Hundreds of attempts on the late Fidel Castro’s life. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Even the murder of 32 Cuban guards when the US kidnapped Nicolas Maduro and his wife out of Venezuela in early January. Yes, it’s withstood just about everything.
I’ve visited Cuba three times since 2019–from before the Pandemic to last October. It’s a country I love. I love the people, the land, the spirit. But I saw upfront and personal the effects of the blockade–long food and gas lines; power outages; housing in disarray. Trash not picked up on many Havana corners.
But let me just add: For all that Cuba is suffering, it’s also one of the best countries in the hemisphere. Yes, in all the Americas. As Bad Bunny clarified at the Super Bowl Half Time Show this month, ”America” is many countries, many languages, many cultures, many voices. Many flags.
The so-called Monroe Doctrine is a 1823 foreign policy that warned European powers that any interference in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere would be a threat to US interests. Trump tried to reinvent this as the Donroe Doctrine in his grab for Greenland and the unlawful Maduro removal. However, the Monroe Doctrine is not law. Congress never approved it. It’s a policy position that helped make the US the dominant power in the hemisphere–whether anyone wanted this or not.
Even with the fomented dissensions among about 30 to 40 percent of the Cuban population, most aren’t inviting the US to destroy them or invade. It’s still their Motherland.
In Havana I witnessed poverty and pain. But I also saw how most of the people carried themselves with dignity, with pride. People kept flowers growing amidst the disaster. Music in most venues. Food and culture still thriving. Schools everywhere, including hearing students playing musical instruments out of windows. The old cars, mostly
from the 1950s, are kept running and clean. Many are used as taxis. No commercial billboards. Art on walls. One time with my wife Trini, we drove almost an hour outside Havana to visit an amazing organic farm, run by local farmers and their families. They had regenerative plants, animals, packing sheds, as well as a buzzing bee hive.
Havana in my view is one of the best cities in the Americas. I’ve seen worse poverty in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Peru… in fact, in the United States. I saw in Havana a few prostitutes, a couple of drunkards, a street thief or two. There are no drug addicts. Hardly any assaults or robberies. No gun violence. I could walk late at night. All day long. Mostly safe.
Even in Los Angeles, there are sections more maddeningly poor than in Havana. Encampments of the unhoused. Fentanyl and other drugs everywhere. I’ve seen thirteen year old girls selling themselves in the poorest streets. In some areas of L.A. the murder rates are as high as in the cartel-controlled parts of Mexico or the gang-ridden sections of Central America (the most violent places in the world outside of war zones). Including the US, these countries have some of the widest gaps between rich and poor.
By the way, those are capitalist countries.
Let’s compare some key stats. Life expectancy is 76.33 in Cuba compared to the US of 73.68. Cuba’s unemployment is 1.5 percent compared to the US’s 4.3 percent. Homelessness population in the US is estimated at 650,000; in Cuba near zero. Literacy is 99 percent in Cuba; 88 percent in the US. The US has life debt for healthcare and education; Cuba has free healthcare and education. The child mortality rate in the US is 5.61; Cuba’s is 3.94. The homicide rate in the US is 6.8 per 100,000 people; Cuba’s is 5 per 100,000 people. The US has 924 billionaires; Cuba has none.
Cuba has never invaded any country. The US has engaged in some 400 military interventions from 1776 to 2026. Half of these occurred since 1950 and over 25 percent occurred since the post-Cold War period.
The real center of terror and military engagements in the hemisphere is not Cuba or Venezuela, but the United States. The real center of the world’s drug trade (the largest drug market and worst gun violence) is the United States.
We have no moral or lawful standing to push Cuba, or any country, to the brink. Trump wants Greenland then we should be like Greenland: Free healthcare, free education, almost zero violence. Same with Cuba. Instead any destruction of Cuba’s government and infrastructure will bring it on par to other countries in the hemisphere.
Yes, Cuba is another country. Like Gaza. But it’s not really another world. It’s on this planet. Just as we must continue to stand with Gaza, we must stand with Cuba. You don’t have to like Hamas to demand no genocide in Gaza. You don’t have to like how Cuba is run to demand no destruction of its people. Our humanity must demand no more suffering anywhere at our hands. Because of our policies. Due to our sanctions.
It’s fine to love your country. It’s important to also love the world. That’s not my idea. Others have said this before. I got this idea from reading an essay from the renowned Rock Critic Dave Marsh, also a friend of mine. The earth’s best interests and our country’s best interests should align. Pitting the US against the rest of the world, as we’ve done for generations, only makes things precarious and dangerous for the world as well as the United States.
My issues with the US government notwithstanding, I will fight for its people and safeguard whatever freedoms we may still have left. Loving the United States is not about defending Trump or the administration’s policies. It’s about uplifting the foundations of a land from the original peoples all the way through striving, as generations before us, to make true its Constitution and the ideals of “liberty and justice for all.”
To keep the world safe and healthy for all, we need to make sure our own country is safe and healthy. At the same time, to ensure peace and well being in the United States, we must make sure there’s peace and well-being on earth.
Hands off Cuba!
