By Amanda Yee
Final month, I went to Cuba as a part of a 20-person delegation to ship USD 60,000 in crucial life-saving most cancers medicines and medical provides to 2 pediatric hospitals there. This delegation was organized by Hatuey Mission, a volunteer-run group that usually brings medical and humanitarian support to Cuba. As a part of the 10-day journey, we met with representatives of various Cuban organizations, establishments, and even members of Parliament. By means of these exchanges, we realized about how the folks of Cuba are engaged in its ongoing revolutionary course of, their mission of constructing socialism, and the impacts of US coverage on on a regular basis life.
Listed below are three key classes I drew from our delegation.
All of Cuban society has been impacted by the US blockade
The US blockade on Cuba, in place because the Nineteen Sixties, is an act of financial warfare. The political motivations behind it have been clear because the very starting: to make life so depressing on the island that the Cuban folks will direct their frustrations in opposition to the Communist Get together and overthrow it, making approach for US enterprise pursuits to take maintain once more. This has been US coverage towards Cuba for over 60 years.
As representatives we spoke to emphasised, there isn’t any sector of society that the blockade doesn’t contact. Circumstances are actually worse than ever: The blockade has led to excessive shortages in meals, flour, and gas. Electrical blackouts have gotten an increasing number of frequent.
In the meantime, farmers can not develop meals on a mass scale, as a result of the blockade denies them the pesticides, fertilizers, and gear to take action. Many have relied on nations corresponding to Mexico donating tractors, hoes, and different farm provides.
When receiving our medical supply, a health care provider at a youngsters’s hospital in Santa Clara relayed to us that medication is what’s most wanted and but most affected by the blockade. The blockade not solely prevents essential medicines from reaching the island, but additionally the uncooked supplies and science and know-how wanted to supply them. And as the best most cancers remedies are sometimes US-produced and docs do not need entry to these, they typically search various remedies that aren’t as efficient. This has an apparent affect on survival price.
The docs additionally lamented that gas shortage makes it extraordinarily troublesome for households of sufferers to journey backwards and forwards from their houses to the hospital. On high of that, meals shortage creates much more hardship for these households. As we got here to know, the blockade doesn’t simply have an effect on particular person issues in isolation; it creates overlapping crises with which on a regular basis Cubans should contend.
That is the merciless value that the Cuban folks proceed to pay for his or her socialist mission.
Cuba reveals us that one other world is feasible
Cuba is an instance {that a} future exists past capitalism, and that future is value preventing for.
Cuba’s authorities represents a democracy nearly unknown to us in the USA. On our final day, we met with a number of members of Parliament, or the Nationwide Meeting of Folks’s Energy—the nation’s highest political physique. In contrast to within the US, these authorities representatives don’t obtain a wage nor do they signify any teams with sure political pursuits. Nor have they got election campaigns or obtain marketing campaign funding.
As one member of the Meeting instructed us, “Coverage will not be a enterprise. It’s a duty of the revolutionary mission we now have constructed.”
Common session between authorities officers and neighborhood members is a vital democratic precept in Cuba. Each new potential legislation is debated and refined by way of this course of, together with the brand new Households Code handed in 2022. The excessive stage of political participation among the many Cuban folks can probably be attributed to their religion on this democratic consultative course of.
And despite the blockade, Cuba mobilizes what scarce assets it has in service of its folks, particularly its most weak. We had been always in awe with how a lot Cuba did with so little. On the hospitals we visited, our delegation—accustomed to navigating the byzantine for-profit US healthcare and insurance coverage techniques—was immensely impressed on the dedication of employees to offer complete and high quality care to sufferers regardless of the intense hardships introduced by the blockade.
We additionally visited the Quisicuaba Agricultural Camp in Artemisa Province, an assisted dwelling middle for the homeless, in addition to the aged who want help of their later years. Since landlordism was abolished in Cuba after the revolution, the situations which drive homelessness there are totally different than within the US In Cuba, homelessness is normally attributable to psychological well being points, alcoholism, or lack of household help, relatively than eviction.
Quisicuaba supplies residents with lodging, scientific and psychological remedy, three meals a day, together with workshops and every day programming. There’s a farm on the camp the place, collectively, residents develop bananas, candy potatoes and cassava, together with livestock. The camp fosters a neighborhood setting amongst residents, and its main objective is safety and rehabilitation to ensure that them to be reincorporated again into society. Assisted dwelling facilities like Quisicuaba are backed by their provincial governments.
In the meantime within the US, over half 1,000,000 folks expertise homelessness with no authorities help, and confronted with the substandard situations of most homeless shelters, they typically select to stay on the streets relatively than search refuge. That is an unconscionable actuality of dwelling within the US—our authorities spends billions of {dollars} on battle and to bankroll Israel’s genocide in Gaza whereas homelessness skyrockets, folks can’t afford fundamental requirements, and infrastructure crumbles.
Nevertheless it doesn’t must be this manner. Cuba reveals us that one other world is feasible, one which facilities humanity and dignity of life over revenue.
We should firmly reject despair in preventing for this new world
But regardless of the hardships created by the blockade, we had been struck by how heat the Cuban folks had been towards us, the pleasure they exuded when speaking about their revolution, and their steadfast dedication to not kneel to US coverage. One in all my favourite components of the delegation was a visit to the Middle for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, a analysis institute in Havana.
The scientist we spoke to there recalled that one of many proudest moments of his life was contributing to Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccine. They named that vaccine “Abdala,” after a poem written by Cuban nationwide hero José Martí during which the titular character defends his homeland of Nubia in opposition to Spanish occupiers. Martí wrote that poem throughout Cuba’s Ten Years’ Battle in opposition to Spain. On the forefront of individuals’s minds is their wrestle for sovereignty and nationwide liberation, all the time.
The scientist instructed us, “When your thought is appropriate, you could struggle to the top.”
This was a key takeaway for me as somebody dwelling within the US, particularly given the extent of cynicism and pessimism amongst some sectors of the Left right here. The US blockade has now been in place for over 60 years. Most Cubans alive now have lived their total lives beneath blockade. If the Cuban folks stay so decided to defend the good points of their revolution, in the event that they preserve their sense of revolutionary optimism even beneath probably the most extreme of situations, what excuse do we now have to really feel despair about what we’re up in opposition to? About preventing US imperialism?
I consider that kind of pessimism is a luxurious afforded to us, however we should reject it. Despair is a shirking of our collective duty as these dwelling within the coronary heart of empire. Our personal authorities has robbed the Cuban folks of a lot over the course of centuries, from occupation to the present blockade. It’s our duty to fight the vicious insurance policies of the US. Solely when US imperialism is overturned will nations like Cuba be allowed to breathe and develop to their full potential. We do that at first by way of getting organized, in order that we are able to construct capability to weaken imperialism from inside. That could be a duty all of us share as these dwelling within the stomach of the beast. We owe it to folks in locations like Cuba.
Amanda Yee is a journalist and organizer based mostly out of Brooklyn. She is the managing editor of Liberation Information, and her writing has appeared in Month-to-month Evaluation On-line, The Actual Information Community, CounterPunch, and Peoples Dispatch. Comply with her on X @catcontentonly.
