Blowback - S2 Bonus 10 - "Havana (Derangement) Syndrome"

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Guests Helen Yaffe, José Pertierra and Marta Núñez Sarmiento discuss the protests in Cuba during July 2021. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Christiana Manpur in Amsterdam, Sarajevo, Afghanistan. Carlos Fernandez de Kossier, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining us this evening. Do you seriously believe that your people believe that the United States has instigated these protests? Is that not just some old revolutionary, you know, cover that your government has been using for the last 60 years? Clearly there's a fight, a political fight, you know, an embargo, an economic fight between the United States and Cuba.

But we've seen people react to desperate poverty, needs and shortages. You think they believe that the U.S. instigated these protests? Christian, there's an evident operation of regime change led by the U.S. government today against Cuba. The embargo, I believe most of the world thinks that it is a cruel and useful. useless form of collective punishment. That it doesn't topple the regime and the privileged people, such as yourself, but it does topple the very right to life of the people there. They take exception with your personal attack that I'm a privileged person.

You have no evidence to say so, and there's no evidence that anyone said to say that I'm a privileged person. I resent that. Okay, I'm sorry you resent that. I obviously didn't mean personally, but I do mean that you occupy a position of privilege as a member of the government. I think that inconservative. Speak about this last sign.

Speak about this last sign. Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James, and this is episode 10, Havana. derangement syndrome. This is our final bonus episode for season two. And in this final episode, we're going to touch on the recent protests in Cuba in the summer of 2021. And we had originally recorded a final episode, a final bonus episode earlier this year, sort of a general discussion about the incoming Biden administration, the potential of his Cuba policy or lack thereof, things like that. But of course, by the time of the show's release, Cuba entered the new cycle.

Many of you noticed, in fact, that the protests kicked off the day of our show's wide release of the main episodes, which was a strange coincidence for us to say the least. And obviously, we knew we had to do a bonus episode. So we'll be speaking to our guests, Helen Yaffe, author of the book, We Are Cuba, how a revolutionary people have survived in a post-Soviet world. Helen was in Cuba at the time of these protests and has also spent decades now living in, studying, and writing about Cuba. We'll also be speaking again with Jose Pertier, the Cuban-American immigration lawyer, commentator, and who, among many other things, represented the father of Ileon Gonzalez. And finally, we will be speaking with Marta Nunei Sarmiento, Cuban sociologist, who was also in Cuba during the protests at home in Havana. Today, as part of our continuing fight against communist depression, I am announcing that the Treasury Department will prohibit U.S. travelers from staying at properties owned by the Cuban government.

So at the time of this recording, it's been a little over a month since the summer protests. And the basic details were this. On Sunday, July 11th, protest kicked up in several spots. Among them, San Antonio de los Banos, outside of Havana and in Matanzas, an area that was hit hard recently by COVID-19. The demonstrations were reported on as protesting hardship due to the economy in COVID, but alternatively and increasingly, they were reported on as a kind of ideological pro-democracy, anti-government revolt. These demonstrations, and certainly in America, if they had happened in America, they would have been covered as riots.

They left things tense on the island and were immune. immediately picked up by the international press, the Western press in particular, as a moment of truth in Cuba, perhaps even the end of the revolutionary government, which was portrayed as carrying out a brutal assault on its own people once the protests broke out. Social media exploded just as quickly, pretty much right on cue with a hashtag SOS Cuba. We're also further restricting the importation of Cuban alcohol and Cuban tobacco. And this all happened after several years now of the worst sanctions that Cuba has ever experienced from the United States. Under Donald Trump, the track to normalization with Cuba started by Barack Obama was completely wiped out, and 243 new sanctions were imposed by the U.S. government. Today we proclaim that America will never be a socialization.

socialist or communist country. And I'm going to add that word. Then, after COVID-19, the pandemic swept the earth. Cuba not only struggled yet succeeded as a poor country to develop its own vaccines and treat its population with a shortage of some key medical gear. But it also coped with empty coffers as tourism, its key industry nowadays, shut down to contain the virus. All of this still under the now supercharge. U.S. embargo, or blockade, as people call it. And we'll hear more from our guests about what this has made life like in Cuba.

When it comes to Cuba, what is your current thinking on American sanctions toward Cuba and the embargo? And today your press secretary said that communism is a failed ideology. I assume that's your view. I was wondering if you could also give us your view on socialism. Now, of course, once the protests broke out this summer, they required comment from U.S. President Joe Biden, who was in the middle of a visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. And I don't see socialism as a very useful substitute, but that's another story. Biden, who some had hoped prior to this event,

would return to his Democratic predecessor Obama's policy of normalizing relations with Cuba, Biden not only refused to lift the pre-existing sanctions on Cuba before the protests, but in fact after the protests imposed new ones. As you just heard, he called Cuba a failed state, while in the same breath addressing the assassination of Haiti's president, an assassination that we would be remiss not to add, is tied now to at least two American ex-law enforcement informants. Elsewhere in the American scene,

one could find near universal condemnation of the Cuban government in politics, including from progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to the mayor of Miami, who suggested that President Biden order airstrikes on the island. What should be being contemplated right now is a coalition, a potential military action in Cuba, similar to what has happened in both administrations, in both Republican and Democrat administrations, opportunities in the history of... Are you suggesting air strikes in Cuba? What I'm suggesting is that that option is one that has to be explored and cannot be.

just simply discarded as an option that is not on the table. Protests in support of this reported pro-democracy anti-government movement in Cuba overflowed the streets in Miami itself, where Cuban Americans unraveled, among other things, Trump and MAGA flags to show their solidarity with the people of Cuba. Over the next week or so, the media's coverage of the protests hit a fever pitch. On CNN, Christian Amunpur cited one Cuban writer as evidence that the revolution was about to lose its base of support. A Spanish newspaper, meanwhile, reported that a vice minister of the government had resigned,

soon proven to be false. Elsewhere, it was reported with quote-unquote video that protesters had in fact taken over Kamwei, the island's third largest city smack dab in the middle of the country. This too was proven to be false. You could also read that Raul Castro, for fear of his life, had slipped into Venezuela during all of this, or that Caracas was, in fact, about to send troops into Cuba to, quell the supposed uprising. Social media was super saturated with what was later discerned to be dubious images and video coming out of the island and infographics under the SOS Cuba hashtag

informing people that there was a quote genocide happening in Cuba. And of course, celebrities, chiefly American celebrities voicing their support and raising their voice for whatever may or may not be happening in Cuba. Not only is this a Cuba event, a Cuba thing. This is a world event. This isn't about politics. This is about saving lives. This is about unity, not division. And bottom line, this is about taking action. Yet as all that was happening, the actual scene in Cuba calmed down. Things cooled off. Cuba was definitely hurting. It remains hurting. But reality did not quite live up to the picture of imminent collapse painted by the media. And soon, the story, as far as they were concerned,

was over. And the world moved on. So in this episode, we will be speaking with our guests, sort of weaving in and out of the different interviews, about what they saw, what they think. So without further ado, here's our final bonus episode. So, Marta, in the middle of July, what did you see going on? What did you hear going on? What was it like for you? Well, first of all, surprise. Sadness and also fear.

Why surprised? Because never before, thousands of Cubans violently protested in the streets against the revolution. I had never seen them. I'm 75 years old. I was 12 in 1959, so I've never seen them. Why fear? Because events such as these could lead to overthrow the revolution. And sadness, because if the revolution ended, all the Cubans would suffer from chaos, from military intervention. And I, once more thought about this could resemble Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. So that was why I was so sad for that. The first thing I knew about it was when I was watching the Euro Championships final. England was playing in the final. And at half time, the broadcast was interrupted by a live speech by the president, Miguel Diascanal, who informed the Cuban population about what was happening. That there were protests, some of which that had turned violent,

happening in different places, different cities and towns, was the information was delivered by the president himself to the Cuban population. The first thing is really important to point out is he said, we recognize the legitimate concerns and complaints of Cuban people, including protesters who have gone out. But we ask you, do not allow yourself to be manipulated by a US instigated campaign, which is working to achieve destabilisation. And then he ended with the sort of most impassioned speech I've seen him give so far

and said the streets belong to the revolutionaries. And that was a signal following that thousands of Cubans in towns and cities throughout the island went out with Cuban flags and went to demonstrate their support for the Cuban government and for socialism and for Miguel Diascanal. Now, what I understood later, and I saw myself when I, you know, subsequently accessed the internet was that many of those images of thousands of Cubans on the street had been circulated as if these were anti-government protests. For example, there was one of the main Cuban-American politicians,

were speaking on one of, I think, Fox News or something, and in the background they put these images, but that, you know, someone had blurred the slogans on the placards. So that was a conscious decision to manipulate the symbolism of those images. Now, saying that, I don't want to underplay the significance of the protests because for Cuba, and that's a really important prefix, for Cuba, they were quite shocking to see, you know, hundreds of people out in the street chanting and some places turning violent, it was a shock.

Why? Because the last violent protest in Cuba was 27 years ago during the worst period of the special period in 1994, the Malaconosso. Those unincline to give Cuba or its government the benefit of the doubt would say about those pro-government rallies, you know, oh, well, those are all just full of people paid or threatened to go out there by the government. government how does that scan to you is that is that a credible idea really no i think that's absolute nonsense to be polite i mean i've been in cuba as you know i've lived in cuba one and off for what 27 years and see many of these protests and they've always said that they've always said that you know people a million people go out on mayday because they're forced to or they lose

their jobs it's absolute nonsense that quantity of people there's no one there registering you know, unless you go to the workplace to get the transport and the rest of it. But I actually have many friends who said, oh, you went to the protest when I, you know, put photos on social media and stuff. And you're talking about the pro-government rallies. They were like, no, we didn't go because when they announced it the night before, so that's the quantity of people who were out the night before, they said attendance is restricted because of COVID.

And I know plenty of people who wanted to be there but didn't go. So I'm quite sure if they had opened the gates and said, you know, let's do a Primero de Mayo, you know, first of May, there would have been much more significant numbers. I also know people who before Miguel Diascanal went on the television, had seen on social media the protest and fake or real images and had immediately, without anyone calling them up, gone to their workplace. or gone to their place of study to be there because that, you know, these are the institutions through which Cubans mobilized.

Afterwards, we knew that many people that went into the protest when they were spontaneously went to the protest, really were protesting for things that in fact are happening in Cuba, but after they saw that they had other things like liberty and free press and human rights said they ran away from them. So there were, let's say, I would divide the causes into two. First, the immediate causes of that Sunday and the more structural long-term one. Among the immediate causes, yes, there were real things happening in Cuba still are like we are exhausted after 60 months suffering from all kinds of shortages, like a food, of medicine

and of toiletries. We have to stand in line three or four times a week. COVID infections and death soared since June due to the more aggressive virus strains, mainly the Delta strain. And immediately before July 11, in several cities where this happened, there were three to six hours of blackouts during several days. Some of these electrical failure over Cuba happened with very old these thermoelectric stations and there was a slow vaccination process going on. These were actual things happen, actual problems. The next day was more interesting for me because I had to travel quite a bit through Havana where I stay to get into the centres, a long journey, public transport and taxis and went into the centre.

of Havana. And I have to say, it was completely calm. It was a tense calm, but it was completely calm. And that morning, Miguel Diascanal, the president, and basically, I think most of the ministers of government were appeared in a discussion show talking very openly about all of Cuban's problems, recognizing the complaints, but explaining things to people in the way that Fidel Castro always did in his four-hour speeches, which were so often mocked, you know, when he's talking about the price of importing chicken or rice and, you know, and how much the state charges. And in other words, how much is subsidized the price of energy. You know, that famous speech, he says, no one here knows the price of energy. No one knows because they don't pay. So,

and doing that sort of dissection of the problem, so in San Antonio, which may have been the first place where protests were sparked or certainly where they became violent, the place where Miguel Diascanal had been before he came onto the television and did his live information broadcast, that area had suffered energy blackouts for a couple of days. Now, energy blackouts in Cuba, I mean, energy blackouts are awful anywhere, but in that searing heat of August, you know, when there's no lights, no air fans, your fridge stops working so your food goes off,

and all of these things. But in Cuba, they have an additional signification because they are sort of a reminder of the very tough 1990s, a special period of economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. So people had gone out to protest in San Antonio, but the minister was explaining why we had these blackouts, a mixture of, you know, U.S. sanctions have specifically set out

to target. Cuba's ability to import fuel. They have different kinds of generators that require different kinds of fuel, the problems that have had replacing supplies that have been cut off, technical problems, you know, problems of the equipment. So explaining in that sort of forensic detail, which, you know, most people might find boring, but I think that for a lot of Cubans, it was probably an important insight. So that was what happened on the next day. And we were walking through central Havana, all of the taxis and cars parked up at the side of the road. were tuned in on radio, all of the workplaces that we walked past were tuned in on the television.

Subsequent to that, I didn't see any anti-government protests. I was working. I was traveling around interviewing people. I was all over Havana. And I didn't see anything. The only thing that I saw, and I went to, you know, as my journalist accreditation, I went down to the Malacon, the seawall in Havana, where there was a pro-government demonstration. people were out of a sort of defiance, you know,

a feeling of, you know, we're here and we support the government, we support socialism with between 100 and 200,000 people, Miguel Diascanal, the president spoke, so did Harado Hernandez, who, you know, has some experience of the Miami opposition and what they're capable of, having infiltrated in the 1990s to prevent acts of terrorism against Cuba. So, subsequent to that, I know the next day, A protest did take place, again on the outskirts of Havana, it turned violent, civilians, police, protesters who were injured, one person was killed.

But I have to say that, subsequent to that, the spark that I think many of Cuba's critics and enemies had hoped, what's the word, it's spluttered out. Another perfect storm generated the July 11 demonstrations in Cuba. of food on the island, scarcity of medicine on the island, you have a pandemic sweeping not just Cuba, but the world, and you combine it with a blockade that has been strengthened by Trump through 243 different sanctions, including the inability of people to send remittances to Cuba. And you've asked any country in the underdeveloped world, including, for example, Mexico, what remittances mean to those countries, and they mean a great deal. So you cut off remittances, the pandemic has forced Cuba to close its borders to tourism, so there's a scarcity of dollars

coming into the island. The sanctions make it virtually impossible for Cuba to deposit dollars in international banks. All of these things combined to create a perfect storm. The press, The press in Miami and the corporate press in the United States loves to say the Cuban government is at fault because they don't know how to administer the economy. Well, maybe errors are made in the way the economy is administered. But let me tell you, when you're facing that kind of a blockade with $20 million a year in regime change efforts by the most powerful country in the world against you, just to stay afloat, I think, is brilliant. So these things should be put in a wide context. And also, the United States has no standing to tell Cuba about how to run its economy, not only because Cuba doesn't belong to the United States, but because the United States is actively trying to undermine the Cuban economy. So how can the United States criticize Cuba for having an economy that is not to their liking when they're trying to undermine it?

That Sunday, there was an unprecedented number of messages flooding the social networks. That Sunday and the days before, showing that Cubans protested in the streets against the government, presenting an image of chaos, visions of an apocalyptic violent Cuba, on the verge of overthrowing the government. There were also lots and lots of entertainment influencers who represented. produce them. Many of them are no longer talking about them, but at that time, during those days, they did. So even Brandon, Cubans living abroad called family members and friends in living here anxious for their safety that Sunday, July 11. I received those calls. My husband also received those calls, my friends too. So that afternoon, the manifestations pro-government,

took place in the same streets where the anti-government protest took part. And they helped clean the mess, the looting caused by anti-government protests. Since then, well, Cuba has regained a peaceful way of living, but the network kept multiplying fake news. There is an attempt to portray this as a sort of spontaneous reaction or rejection of the government, behind it is an incredibly well-oiled, well-funded, very well-planned and strategized campaign to use social media, to get into people, to influence them in their home.

So, for example, there is a Spanish journalist, I'm sure you've seen it, he's done an analysis of the tweets that were going out on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of July. Yeah, the analyst here is Julian Maseyes Tovar, people want to look. This hashtag SOS Cuba, you know, seems to have come spontaneously in response to concern about the people in Matanzas because there was a COVID surge there and the medical infrastructure and personnel are getting overwhelmed. And of course, Cuba's capacity to respond has been massively crippled by sanctions and stops them even buying spare parts for ventilators, medical ventilators for their ICA. EU units and all of that. So this hashtag SOS Cuba is suddenly being retweeted, impossible rates that can only be explained by robots, you know, retweeting. One account was retweeting five times per second. And as Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister said when he discussed this in a talk

on the 13th of July, he said, I challenge you to the international journalist, Gabbard. He said, I challenge you to try that. Five retweets a second for, you know, a thousand retweets. I think I could do it. Do you reckon you're struggling with WhatsApp? That's true. That's true. I take it back.

As far as the corporate press is concerned, they don't risk their careers, these corporate journalists. They want to see which wind the wind is blowing on a particular issue. And then they go with the flow. You saw it during the Iraq war. It's not just a Cuba issue. During the Iraq war, these folks were willing. to risk their lives as embedded journalists, but not their careers.

How many of them criticize that war? And right now they know that the winds are blowing against Cuba, and they're going to be criticizing Cuba. You see, the New York Times to little newspapers in Iowa and Idaho, all of a sudden they've discovered just a little island called Cuba, and we're going to criticize it. And let me give you an example of this. The other day, I watched a very well-respected journalist, Christina Amunpour, on CNN.

She's very well-known, very well-respected journalist, and she was interviewing the guy in charge of U.S. policy in Cuba, Carlos Fernandez de Cosillo. It was a terribly hostile interview, which is fine, but it was filled with false narratives on the part of Ms. Amampur. She was saying that she had information, that people. people had disappeared in Cuba. No one has disappeared in Cuba. She had information that people were detained without trial. Everybody who was detained has been given due process, a lawyer and has either had a trial or is waiting for trial. But she took these things to be truths and she was confronting and hostile to the guy until she said, well, you lead a privileged life, which is ironic coming from a woman who earns $5 million a year to be a journalist and is

worth $50 million, telling a guy who is a diplomat in Cuba, and anybody who knows, diplomats in Cuba knows the way they live. They live very humbly. The taxi drivers make more money than these guys do. But there are things, Brendan, that happens, that really happened, in fact happened, but they were manipulated to show Cuba as a failed state. That's the main, for me, that's the main question. The main, the root of everything is showing Cuba as a failed state. Remember that, I can't remember, it was the 14th or the 15th in a press conference, Biden made with Angela Merkel. He was asked about this, and he said, no, this is because it is a failed state, it is a failed, he started to say, failed communism or failed socialism, I'll talk about

afterwards, and that's the main idea. So this was a perfect moment to show that this was a failed state, but it didn't work out because it's not. The Biden administration has no Cuba policy. It has a Miami policy. Its policy is to prevent Republican legislatures from keeping their seats in the house or to promote democratic legislatures. who think the way they do against Cuba to propel them into the house. They think they can play in Miami and in South Florida, but they can only play with an anti-Cuba agenda. Also, they seem to be obsessed with this notion that they can carry Florida and all of its electoral votes in an ex-presidential election. So what you're seeing is a Miami policy. It's geared an entire

to Florida and against Cuba, but not because of anything Cuba is doing, but because everything that's happening in Florida. You add to that $20 million a year in regime change programs, most of which stays in Miami to fund these anti-Cuban groups. It's an industry. To oppose Cuba in Miami, it's an industry. You can make a lot of money on it, and people do. And so you see folks organizing around this theme, is social media lit up in Florida and throughout the United States among the Cuban American right wing, which is a lot. That combined with what happened in Cuba on July 11, and you have a perfect storm. This is a continuation of the dual track policy of the United States, which was articulated in that memorandum in 1960 by Lester Mallory.

We need to squeeze Cuba to induce hunger and suffering. Why? Because there's too much support for the government only through these mechanisms, economic deterioration, can we make the people rise up to overthrow the government. So, you know, what we've seen that, we've seen, this is the contemporary version. Trump's 243 new action, sanctions and measures to really eliminate all of Cuba's workarounds it's developed to try and get round the blockade to make sure that food can still come in, that fuel can still come in, that it can still sell products to the international market and so on.

And the result has been, you know, it has been effective. Life in Cuba is extremely difficult, daily life. People are waking up at dawn. In the house that I stayed in, people were getting up sometimes at 3.30 in the morning to try and get to the front of a queue for a shop or a distribution center where goods wouldn't come. in till 10 or 11. How is this linked? Well, it's creating that context of social discontent and frustration. And it's real people are exhausted because this has all been on top of COVID-19 pandemic, very strict social distancing, mask wearing, which is really awful in that heat and that humidity to everywhere you go, you have to have a mask and so on. And also the closure of all these forums for

networking, whether it's social, you know, parties and fiestas, or whether it is the street meetings that happen of the local councils, your street committee and so on, workplace meetings, they've all been put on hold and cancelled. And lots of people are at home, they're working for home or they're not at work, and young people are out of schools or they're not, and universities, they've been sent home. And this creates a sort of vacuum in which, so, social media has increased in its significance and as a key influencer of people's attitudes and thoughts because they don't have those other collective forums to bounce off their neighbours or colleagues or peers and so on. The timing has worked really well for the opposition that has invested so much with so little product after 60 years, you know, millions, billions invested in creation. an internal opposition with almost nothing to show for it.

And this is, you know, this was their first, you know, the first spark, the first bit of, you know, of fruits of their investment. The hypocrisy of U.S. policy towards Latin American countries, supporting those countries that are friends of the United States and vehemently opposing those who are against the United States, there's nothing new. This has been happening since the U.S. started dealing with Latin America. remember the famous words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt about Somosa the father. He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.

So we support Somosa, and we don't support guys that are not, or countries that are not friendly to the United States. So you see a situation where Colombia, not only are people upset in Colombia about the pandemic and the economic inequality there, people in Colombia who take to the streets are being shot at by members of the armed forces in Colombia. And here nobody says a word about it. And who were those Colombian forces trained by? They were trained by the United States government. In the assistant national security officer for Latin America, is a guy named Juan Gonzalez, who calls themselves Cartaguaneros in Cartagena, the city in Colombia, because he's Colombian origin. You read his post and, He's praising Colombia to the hills, and he's attacking Cuba at every turn.

So it's a U.S. policy advisor for Biden who seems more to be an advisor for the Colombian government than he does for the U.S. government. Now, during the last 32 years from 1992 today, we have been living in a constant crisis. It started by the fall of the Berlin Wall. It started by the disappearance of the Soviet Union. which became the Russian Federation. And it started by another strengthening of the blockade with the Hamsford Law of 1996. So we cannot forget that. We plunge in the 90s in the deepest crisis that I can remember.

It's deeper, believe me, Brendan, it's deeper than the one that we're living now. We're living in something completely different. That was horrible. ball. Now, because it impacted the living standards of all Cubans who had benefited from 30 years of upward social mobility. All of a sudden, 14 hours of blackouts in Havana. In other parts of Cuba, there was no electricity. And like that, we all went skinnier, we had to ride bicycles. We didn't have food at that time. Cuba's achievements are widely acknowledged. Even the enemies acknowledge our achievements. But the main one, the main one,

for me, is what I was talking about. There has been an upward social mobility of all Cubans favoring the poorest and more discriminated back 62 years ago. But this has a accomplishment, let's say, negative or contradictory bias. Not saying negative, contradictory. The present young generations whose grandparents were among the poorest and with low standards of living 62 years ago claim now higher access to consumer goods that the revolution cannot generate cannot guarantee them

they have very high expectations these are Cubans 45 years old and younger so they were born at the end of let's say the 1970s they lack evidence of what Cuba was before in 1959. But during their childhood and adolescents, they experienced extreme shortages of a crisis of the 90s. So that's the face they have been seeing of

socialist. No. At the same time, parallel to this since they were born, they enjoy the benefits of having access to education, healthcare, jobs, food, hygiene conditions, cultural activities, whatever, including computers and

cell phones in the last 12 years, years. But at the same time, low salaries for their highly qualified workforce. Only at the beginning of 2021, the salaries for professionals and the salaries in general in the public sector were increased, which was something that didn't happen since 1980. So it's true that they were confronting low salaries for their highly qualified workforce. Few had access to hard currency linked to tourism, to joint ventures and to remittances. And they suffered from the lack of housing when they wanted a house of their own to create a new family. They forget that they live in houses owned by their parents and that no one can evict them from them.

That's ancient history. That's pre-history. And they also seek for information through the digital networks full of messages elaborated out of Cuba. The same goes with the entertainment program. So they sort of live in a media cocoon in a bubble that has nothing to do with the real Cuba. So summarizing the context, giving way to the July 11 events, first Cuba is going to the latest socialist experiment. I'm talking about the structural long-term ones causes, with 75% of Cubans born after 1959 plus a younger generation, born at the end of the 70s, and suffering from the contemporary version of the blockade, that I would say a contemporary version of the Monroe Doctrine.

Cubans have been suffering for about two years, quite acute scarcity in these cues and so on, to wear them out and drain them compounded by COVID-19 and, you know, terrible deaths for a country that has such a great healthcare system and a pediomological record. and yet it's worth stating that it's still doing comparatively well and, you know, for the region, but also compare it to Britain. It's quite an outstanding achievement, let alone for a country, small island nation blockaded, it's lost its revenue from tourism and so on. So this juncture, we may well see more conflict, more street protests.

I think that's highly likely. On the one hand, the social media campaign, the funding for regime change programs is certainly not going to decrease. If anything, it's going to increase. On the other hand, I suspect that Cuba's enemies in the United States, in Miami, the Cuban-American community, are frustrated because this didn't turn into a spark that set fire to Cuba. you know, it has dissipated. And the other point is that in some ways it was quite useful for the Cuban government and Cuban society in general because it has forced them to address accumulated problems,

socio-economic and political problems, that, you know, they were aware of to a degree, perhaps not to such an extent. And what you will see, I know this from discussions I've had with people is the same pattern that I have outlined in the book, right? This capacity that the Cuban revolution has to rejuvenate in the sense of finding new creative solutions to new problems. And so they will be addressing what is going on in those marginalised communities where people are outside work and outside education. education. They will be strengthening the political institutions. They will be reopening the forums

for debate discussion. I mean, they have some big political consultations coming up. They're going to have discussions about the family law and other issues that were raised in the process of approving a new constitution. So Cuban socialism goes on. The institutions will be rejuvenating and reassessing. I think there's been some very critical assessments of the work that, shall we say, hasn't been being done. And we'll see. I mean, you know, I have no doubt that the Cuban revolution remains resilient. It's difficult for us here in Cuba in the midst of the pandemic, in the midst of the worst moment of the embargo, to continue. being able to survive and to develop things. It's very, very difficult. And Americans don't know

about that. Americans don't know about that. Americans listen. I don't think they even listen to Biden's or Jen Saki's, I mean, interviews. Maybe that's why all of them came like flooded Cuba since the Obama lifted some sorts of the things that blocked them to visit Cuba, they simply flooded us. And if people could be convinced, normal people, I'm talking about normal people, people with money, the ones that came with a democratic, with a pro-democratic, a non-republica, democratic trend, they could be convinced that Cuba was not,

the failure was not, the communist thing, that they had been learning about or knowing about through the media, they were convinced in one week or less than one week, just coming, watching, word of, not word of mouth, the seeing is believing, and we talked to them, and that was all. They went away, but then afterwards they forgot, and afterwards they forgot. All right, we'd like to thank our guests, Marta, Helen, and Jose on this episode, and the rest of our guests for the entire season. We'd also like to thank you for listening.

If you're interested in our sources, we get a lot of people asking for reading lists and the like. Those are available on our website, blowback.com show for both seasons one and two. and a reminder for those who have asked for the music to the show, the blowback soundtrack for season two. It's out now on Spotify and Apple, et cetera. Thank you to those who have listened. It's been doing well. So that's it.

This is the actual last episode, season two. So on behalf of Noah and myself, thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time. Adios. You know, and