Rev Left Radio - Cuba Today: The Question of Markets, Reform, and the Future of Cuba

Episode Date: March 5, 2018

Andres Pertierra graudated in History from the University of Havana and currently works as a Legal Assistant at an immigration law firm in Washington, D.C. He has written on topics related to Cuba in��The Nation and Jacobin Magazine. Andres is on Twitter as @ASPertierra. Andres joins Brett to discuss present day Cuba, Raul Castro, the Embargo, Centralization, Markets, and much more! Here is the podcast (AskHistorians Podcast) that Andres hosts: https://askhistorians.libsyn.com Reach us at: [e-mail] follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio" Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo. You can listen and support their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/track/red-black This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, and the Omaha GDC. Check out Nebraska IWW's new website here: https://www.nebraskaiww.org

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and liberate the proletarianist mind. Five for the working class. Five for equality. Fight against the right free to fascist ideology. Welcome to hit in and turn it up loud. Revolutionary Left Radio starts now. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Ann Comrade, Brett O'Shea,

and today we have on Andres Perthier to talk about Cuba and the reforms and the future of Cuba and a lot of really interesting stuff. Andres, would you like to introduce yourself and say a bit about your background? Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Andres. I'm a Democratic Socialist by, that's how I identify politically. My family is from Cuba originally, at least on my dad's side.

And I did my undergrad in Cuba where I obtained my bachelor's in history, doing a thesis on American spies in Cuba in the early 19th century. Interesting. So I know you touched on it a little bit, but, Can you talk about what initially got you interested in Cuba, I mean, aside from your family, and what have your experiences been in the country? Can you let our listeners know about all the experiences you've had with Cuba? Basically, when I graduated from high school, I didn't really know what I was going to do with my life.

I got an offer for a full ride in Cuba to study whatever I want. I ended up studying history, and fortunately, I really liked it. And while I was doing the undergrad program, I realized that I probably wasn't going to end the program very well equipped to study like ancient history or something like that so I ended up studying U.S. Cuban relations because given my background, my knowledge of both languages

it seemed like a good fit and that's proved pretty true. I mean it helped me with my undergraduate thesis. And just the continuing issue of U.S. Cuba relations and how it

shapes so many of the lot. of Cubans because of things like the embargo, the Helms-Burton Law, and other things. I feel that I need to study it further and participate in those discussions because we need to really, because I feel like I can contribute things and hopefully push popular opinion towards some kind of solution. So that's kind of what my interest is in a more professional sense. Now, before we started recording, you were talking about, I know some of our audience

may be a little young to remember this, but about Elian Gonzalez and that whole situation, can you kind of just really quickly talk about your experiences with Elian and what kind of happened in your family with him? Sure. So my father is an immigration and human rights attorney, and he was kind of the strategist behind the Cuban government's legal case, though he wasn't to face of the Cuban government's public campaign to get Elian Gonzalez back. Elian, for listeners, was a little boy whose mother kidnapped him and went on a lancha, which is like a little rickety raft across the Florida Strait. It fell apart in the middle of the trip, and everyone but Elian and two survivors died.

and Elion was taken in by family members in Florida, distant family members on his mom's side. And they wanted to keep Elian for themselves, but Elian's father, who hadn't known where his son was for the past few days, wanted him back with, you know, Juan Miguel was his name. When Miguel wanted the Elian back in Cuba, and there was this huge, you know, legal fight between Cuba and the United States over it. And so I remember when I was, I was, what, Jesus, it was like 11 around the time, 12, Elian was even younger, he was like six. And I met Elian when he was already rescued from his distant family member's house in Miami and brought to the D.C. area. And he actually came to our house and there were FBI agents like guarding the street and he had

cake and stuff. And then I've seen him a couple more times visiting Cuba since and seems pretty happy and well-adjusted and glad that he's back home. Yeah, that's a super interesting little chapter in the very long book of Cuban and American relations. And I urge people to go kind of check that out and learn about that because it was really just shocking. And it was covered very, very heavily here in the U.S. I remember being pretty young and pre-political, but still having, it's sort of like the OJ trial for me. I was very young, but it was so ubiquitous. in our culture that I remember it and I remember I love the images from it.

And quite possibly we have the Elian Gonzalez chapter to thank for W. Because Janet Reno who actually had planned originally to continue her political life in Florida after she was Attorney General

under Clinton, she gave the go ahead for the SWAT team to go in and rescue Elion. But because she did that, and Clinton administration located, it alienated the Cuban-American community, which in 2000, in 2000 voted, at least enough of them voted in a voto-castigo, a punishment vote against the Democrats and against Gore to at least make the election close. Of course, it's possible that Gore still won, but that's a surprise. Wow, that's super, super interesting.

but that is not what we're going to be talking about today. Right. I just wanted to say that we have here at ReveLeft Radio, we've done an episode on the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro, and then we did a separate episode analyzing Che Guevara's life. So those are certain aspects of Cuba and the Cuban Revolution that we've already covered. Today what we're going to be focusing on is present-day Cuba, the reforms going on, the connection to Venezuela currently,

and then the future of Cuba. so if you want to have more of a background understanding you might want to go back and check out those earlier episodes but they're obviously they're not necessary you'll still get a lot out of this episode as well but what we want to do here at Rev Left is a lot of the earlier episodes that we've done on things we're going to come back around and touch them

again from a different angle from a different vantage point I know we have one coming up on Maoism again to take that a little deeper than we hit on the first time so this is one of those episodes for us and we're excited to do it. So let's go ahead and jump in. I know we have a lot to cover.

Let's just start off with a big, broad question. Some listeners may already be familiar with the answer to this question, but a big misconception about Cuba maintained through propaganda in the U.S. is that it's some kind of horrific dictatorship where the people are oppressed and have no freedom. Can you talk about Cuba as it really is? Sort of what was the support for the revolution initially, but more importantly, what is everyday life for Cubans like today? Sure.

Sure. Well, first of all, just as I'm sure the listeners are aware, this is a really huge question that we could probably talk about for a good four or five hours and still and still come up short because it's a very complex question because we're talking about Cuba, which has gone through many different phases over half a century. And circumstances have been different periods of time. But, I mean, one of the biggest issue that especially, I mean, even liberals who are in favor of dropping the embargo, even many of them don't really really understand or try to understand is that there has been a historic and longstanding support of Fidel in a major portion of the population, at least a plurality since 1959. And it's had different characteristics,

characteristics of different periods of time. It's had its ebbs and flows, but that there has been a consistent core of support of Fidel. I mean, I've, multiple people have throughout my time there, many of my visits there. I know families where you, you, not because like state security will come for you, but just like there are older people who will say, in my house, you do not criticize Fidel, just because of the, out of a sense of loyalty. I met this one working class woman who was working for pretty miserable wages. It was state wages at a cafeteria. And she was not a rich woman, but she said, no se communist, but I don't know about communist, but I'm a fidelist. And so there's, and this is not with the camera's going,

this is not before like a solidarity brigade. This is just people talking. And I was there for five years. You can't orchestrate, you know, a theater for me for five years. and may not be able to see a little through the veil. And I never, you know, this is something that that base of support has been pretty consistent. And still there despite, you know, the very tough years that have, that followed the collapse of the USSR. And this support has especially been powerful in families where they had nothing before the revolution. And especially in poorer eastern provinces, for example. It was especially strong in the eastern provinces, which were the most marginalized when Cuba, before the revolution, most of the prosperity that was coming to Cuba in the 1950s economic prosperity, you know, with all, you know, prosperity, which was very unequal and, of course, mixed with issues like prostitution, vice, criminality, and all the rest, was focused in and around Havana as a major, major

tourist spot and a couple of other spots around the island. But the sugar industry, which had been a major source of wealth for the country, especially going back to the colonial era, had kind of stagnated in the 20s and 30s, leading to a series of economic crises. And wages had stayed stagnant. There was a very brutal regime under Batista, which would, you know, his enforcers would just randomly kill people. It was a very tough, tough reality. and a lot of people just didn't have access to, I mean, we're not talking about high college education. We're talking basic education. Many people were illiterate.

The air was issues with parasites in the soil, which would get into people's feet, and they didn't have basic medical care. They didn't have, many didn't have shoes. Many had dirt floors. And so, especially older Cubans who remember that reality, many of them, at least many of those who stayed, remain very, very loyal to the revolution, even when they're able to recognize its faults. Younger generations, especially those born after the collapse of the USSR, are far more critical. Like, the middling generations, definitely, those born after the revolution don't really remember capitalism, but remember, but experienced more stability under the 70s and 80s, they're critical of many things,

and they're much more divided, but the newer generations, especially those born after 1919, 21. There's a lot more, there's a lot more criticism and many Cuban officials complain that gratitude isn't hereditary. This was one of the phrases that was used. It's, the issue is that many of them, the achievements of the revolution, universal health care, universal education, all the rest, they're just normal. But not only are they just normal, they're not new achievements, but they're actually chronically underfunded leading to them giving oftentimes very poor services. So the only reality that many younger Cubans know

is just this crumbling infrastructure where everything's just falling apart and a lot of people are leaving and that has led to a lot more people being much more critical. But with that said, most just want, they don't really know where they want the, there's a lot of different opinions on where the system should go, but most seem

to want just something that will be practical and which will fix things, which will raise salaries, which will create more economic stability, which will take away a couple of the older prohibitions and a lot of bureaucracy, which kind of hampers day-to-day life, and just let them live their lives and try and make their lives in Cuba without having to like bet on some kind of, that have, feel like their only option is to leave, because there are a lot of youth leaving. That's one of the major crises that Cuba's facing right now, which is that it's youth in the tens of thousands is just leaving, parodonde sea, for wherever, and the country's not even reproducing itself, and many of its youngest and brightest are leaving, and it's, it's

part of a huge crisis that the country is going through right now. So that's a basic summary of, like, where support towards Fidel is. The, in, in terms of what day, everyday life is like, it's, it's tough. It's oftentimes very tough, especially for those of those who don't have fe. Fé is a Cuban play on words. It's a double entendre. It's, uh, fe means faith, but it also can serve as abbreviation of family and in it ex-strangero, family abroad. So you have, if you have family abroad who can send your

remittances every month, that's, you know, like dollars, euros, whatever, you can at least get by, but the life for a lot of people, especially those outside of the tourist sector, or those outside of the sector, the services sector, providing services for those working in the tourist sector, those outside of them who don't have access to capital, who are working on government salaries, it's a very, very tough life. Many government salaries oscillate between about $20 to $30 a month. That's not, I'd say that a single person, a single person who has no dependence, no older parents, no kids, no spouse, needs about $80 a month to live in a pretty humble life. 20 to $30 doesn't get you through a week of basicness.

I mean, they don't, they won't starve. You know, the government does provide enough subsidies that even with $23 a month, you won't starve, but it, you won't be, there's, there's an issue of also not just calories, but healthy calories. I'm not talking about gourmet food, but I'm saying you'll have to live on a diet, which is heavy in grease, heavy in in wheat, in refried foods, in comida chatara, like junk food. in order to get your calorie intake. And you're going to have to wait in a lot of lines. And it's a very tough life for a lot of Cubans. And that's part of why Raul initiated the reforms, because the economy was just really not, even with the influx of Venezuelan aid and very favorable trade relations with Venezuela,

there was an important degree of stagnation. And, I mean, we've got to remember, I think it right now, the government is the employer of about 60% of the workforce. So if 60% of the workforce can't make ends meet with their state salaries, that's a big problem. And they haven't been able to do that since 1991. That's more than a lot of people have been alive, which obliges every, just about, everybody to participate in some way in the black market. And some of these black market activities are pretty benign. Older folks, for example, will sell cucurucho de mani, which are little peanuts, roasted peanuts, wrapped in a little paper cone that they would charge a peso, which is about

five cents for those. And those older folks would mostly go, unmolested by the police, not always, but sometimes, especially I'm talking pre-2008 reforms. But there were a lot of people who would also try to, who would take milk or cheese from the countryside into the city, there wasn't a license to do that, and they would face confiscation and the like. And there was one of the issues with the period of from 1991 to 2008 was that you had a system where basically you needed to participate in some way, shape, or form in the black market. But that same participation was criminalized. So people would be fine. Goods would be confiscated and people could go to jail. So it was kind of a dam if you do

damned if you don't situation. And if you're if you're being asked to sacrifice for just yourself, some people will do that. Many people won't. You know, because But some people will, but if you're asking somebody to not be able to provide basic, like not be able to afford with your state salary basic clothing, not great clothing, but just purchase a $10, if, you know, shorts are $10 and you earn $20 a month, a pair of shorts is half of your salary. So, you know, you can't ask people realistically to not participate in the black market when the option is, my child will go shoeless or I participate in the black market some way.

But at the same time, the state would criminalize them. So this is why the reforms came in, and while the reforms have had a thousand issues and have exploded inequality in the rest, you have, and, you know, with people being subcontracted to these private businesses, these small private businesses, there is exploitation and there is mistreatment, but at the same time, a private business will, I think the last time I was there, the mandated salary for like a cashier was $2 a day. So if you're, the state is paying $20 a month and the private business is paying $60, more or less, you know, it's a huge, they're still being exploited and it's still not a lot of money, but it's,

slightly better in people who are under the performs increasingly able to at least make minimum ends meet. Though, of course, you know, they'd also brought a lot of other issues such as capital accumulation and we're still in that period before the private sector becomes political because the government is very aware of this. Eventually, the private sector, especially once it gets you know, firmer in terms of laws, is probably going to go political and use some of that surplus value that is, that they've been making off of their work, off the work of their employees to probably, like, say, well, I'll repair the road if you vote for me for the municipal assembly or something. So this is still a very unstable transition phase, where they're

trying to figure out what's a system that works where they're, where everyday Cubans can actually afford their basic necessities but you can't but the monies can be redistributed in social programs infrastructure can be built up and other kinds of programs such as the cooperatives they've been trying to do urban cooperatives like a cooperative run laundry business um that those being encouraged as kind of a counterweight so there can be a state system a private sector and a cooperative sector with cooperatives being kind of the non-state ideal within the new system. So that was kind of a long tangent. But I think, I mean, that was a big question.

And I think what we're getting at, and we're going to get into the reforms, we're going to get into Raul and what's going on in the future of Cuba in a bit. But what I see here, and correct me if I'm wrong, is a legitimate attempt to, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, especially as Venezuela has entered crises. with all the economic hardship, finding a way to move forward as a society, without capitulating entirely to capital and without becoming just another capitalist society. We will get into that in a bit, but I do want to touch on this fact, because this is a crucial piece of the puzzle. What effect on the Cuban economy, as you've talked about many of the hardships of the Cuban economy,

what effect has the U.S. embargo had, and what effect obviously has the fall of the Soviet Union had? And how do those things contribute to these sorts of struggles in Cuba? It's difficult to even wrap my mind around the amount of damage that the U.S. embargo has done. Because, well, I mean, in this hemisphere, the major producer of many foods, of many medicines, of many manufacturers, technology, all this stuff, is the United States. The United States, pre-1959, I mean, the Cubans would call it Cuba was a neocolony. It was, the United States had a pretty hegemonic economic position within Cuba. Cuba, I mentioned already sugar.

Basically, when sugar industry collapses after, in the early 20th century, because all these other countries, including once in Asia, it starts producing sugar, there's a crisis of overproduction of sugar. So it ceases to be really that profitable. And the solution in the 1930s was a quota system. Cuba's guaranteed a certain quota of the U.S. market, the U.S. sugar market, sorry. And so from the 1930s to the early years of the revolution, Cuba's sugar is going to the United States.

I mean, not only to the United States, but mostly to the United States. And that's keeping the sugar industry, which is not a growth industry, but it's at least stable, okay. And that's a branch of the economy where a huge portion of the population is involved either directly, as jornaleros, braceros, as, you know, cane cutters, as colonos, which are the, which is what Fidel's family was, which are like, they own the land. and they hire workers to produce the sugar cane, they bring it to the factories, which the factories weren't actually owned by the clones, but anyway. So it's this very integrate, Cuba's economically integrated to the United States

to an insane degree. And then the, not only does the United States disintegrate, break off all these connections, which is an economic crisis in and of itself, but then tries to prohibit other nations, from engaging in trade with Cuba. Now, that kind of gets better after the 1960s and 70s when the organization of American states and other organizations

kind of back off of the U.S.'s hard-line position since the Cuban government obviously was going to survive, the U.S.'s attempts to overthrow it. But after Helms Burton, which is a 1990, I want to say, 1996 law was passed. Two things happened. One of which is that the United States can now sue corporations in third countries for trading with Cuba if they also trade with the United States. Wow. Because it accuses them of trading in stolen property. Basically, the Cuban government has money based off of goods they nationalized. The U.S. government considers those goods stolen property,

Therefore, the U.S. government will find them tens of millions of dollars for having traded with Cuba. And between that, bans on food, which that's kind of eased up. Cuba imports a lot of chicken and other products from the United States, and that's actually one of the reasons that a lot of Republican congressmen, especially on the House level, are actually pro-ending the embargo because there are states produce goods that are bought by Cuba. But you also have things like pharmaceutical drugs, which many of these are life-saving drugs, that Cuba really can't get elsewhere and those have harmed Cuba. But basically, between the, like, this obliges Cuba to create, to pay companies which do not trade with the United States and basically specialize in trading with Cuba and a couple of other nations.

and these can be shady characters who will charge much higher than market price for different goods and services to Cuba because basically Cuba is in a in a seller's market because they don't really have much of an option. They have a very short list of people who are willing to trade with Cuba.

And Cuba also has the issue of needing to wash its dollars and euros because of all these, because of all these Helms Burton and other laws which for example could potentially fine banks I think the Swiss the bank of Switzerland was fine I think $10 million or something like that

for holding Cuban money so I don't even know really how they're dealing with their cash flow right now but it's a very complicated situation which is probably affected it in I would say

at this point probably trillions of worth of value lost. It's basically been a country under siege for half a century. Sometimes worse, sometimes better. And I think the second half of your question was USSR, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So the USSR, to some extent, compensated for the loss of the United States.

It bought Cuban sugar and would buy it at higher than market value. It was a kind of subsidy. Cuba was very politically valuable to the USSR, so it was very convenient, it was politically expedient to give them preferable trade deals, which kind of indirectly subsidized Cuba. They'd sell oil for cheap, buy sugar dearly, and Cuba was also part of calming. I forgot the, that's the initials in Spanish, I forgot, what's the name of the socialist country trade organization? Yeah, well, in the Spanish, the initials spell out gamming. And so the, Cuba was part of that, and it traded with countries like the Eastern Germany, other countries

in the Soviet bloc, and that kind of offset the U.S.'s embargo, though not entirely, and Cuba obviously had to invest in a great deal. of, I mean, they had to keep their military, you know, ready to go because they, while there was a gentleman's agreement between Khrushchev and Kennedy, well, Kennedy was assassinated and Khrushchev left relatively soon after for other reasons. So it was never, never 100% clear if A, the United States would suddenly, you would get like, well, a Trumpian figure. And the United states would decide to randomly invade, number one, or two, if that happened, if the USSR would keep up its side of the deal. Because while Cuba was closely allied with the USSR, it was

never a satellite state, nor did it have, like, nor did it have full assurances all the time of, you know, what the USSR would do in extra Y situations. So, and, and, and, and, and, And the relationship would improve or get worse under different leaders. So it was a tough situation. Anyway, when the USSR and the rest of the, not just the USSR, but the rest of the Soviet bloc collapses, Kamen collapses, in the early 90s, we're looking at a collapse of about, say, 60 to 70% of Cuba's foreign trade. it was brutal and we're not talking about over 10 years

we're talking you know de noche de la manna one year to the next boom all those subsidies are gone and not only all those subsidies are gone but also I hope listeners just think about this Russian tech was not compatible with American tech

all those cars all those tractors all those blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah they no longer have replacement parts. Everything is different. Cuba no longer has a source of oil. Cuba no longer has a source of a lot of things. Cuba had been food dependent on imports. I'm pretty sure it's been dependent on food imports since at least the 19th century, I want to say.

Possibly the 18th century. This goes back to the colonial era. It was a really, really terrible period called the, called the period especial in time of in time of peace, which is the special period in times of peace, which is basically wartime rationing in peace time. People would go blind due to vitamin deficiencies.

People would, people who would never been thin a day in their lives were skinny as rails. People would leave Cuba in whatever they could. even if it's just like an inner tube, they would leave because there was just nothing. And it was a profound psychological trauma that I don't really think people really understand or I don't think I don't think I don't think I didn't live through it. And I don't think I'll ever fully understand what it was like to live through that. it's kind of a rough comparison, but does anyone, I'm sure some listeners have seen gone with the wind. It's a very different situation. This is a planter lady, but what's her

name, Scarlett, at the end of the Civil War, she goes into the backyard, grabs a carrot out of the dirt, and just starts eating it dirt and all, and says, I swear I'll never go hungry again. Well, it's obviously a very different situation, but just try and understand a level of profound psychological trauma towards poverty that profoundly changed the way many Cubans think. It was an apocalyptic moment, not just economically, but also ideologically, because everyone had been raised to believe that, well, maybe socialism won't triumph tomorrow, but it'll triumph eventually, and then Cuba was alone, truly profoundly alone for perhaps the first time in its history since the colonization. It was alone, and there was really, I mean, China wasn't even

getting there for it. I think North Korea would provide, if I'm just, this anecdotal, but they would have films at their, at the embassy, and the Cubans would come for the food, and they had to learn to give out the food after the movie because otherwise everyone would just eat and leave. It was just, it's a trauma that if anyone goes to Cuba and you get a good rapport with somebody, you might want to ask, how did you spend the period of Pesial just to listen to what they're willing to share

because a lot of people had to do also make a very hard decision during that period. it. So, I mean, just that's all horrific. And what that paints for me, and this is what I really want people to take out of this, is this is a total David and Goliath situation. Cuba is an island nation. It has limited resources, unlike huge countries like Russia or China or the U.S. that has broad swaths of territory that they can plunge for resources. And this has been a 60-year attack on a small island nation. You cannot understand Cuba's struggle economically right now and in the past. without understanding this history, you know, and the embargo. And I also want to point out that when Batista, the Batista regime, this horrific U.S. puppet dictatorship that you touched on earlier, when they left, they more or less ransacked the treasury. So Cuba started out with nothing, and they had to do their best to make things work. And then the U.S. comes in and poses this brutal embargo and starts threatening all other countries not to trade with little old Cuba,

which leaves it just, you know, with very few resources. And then the USSR, one of its only allies, you know, collapses, and then they have nothing. So when you hear reactionaries or even liberals talk about, look at Cuba, you know, people are fleeing on rafts to escape Cuba. Socialism always fails. What they're totally either cynically ignoring or are just ignorantly blind to is all of this history, all of this context that shows why that's happening. Cubans aren't leaving Cuba because they hate Cuba or because they hate socialism. they're leaving based on material desperation, and that material desperation is directly caused by large powers like the U.S. just brutalizing poor little Cuba.

I mean, I think that's the way to think about this. Would you agree with that? I'd agree in great part. I think that one thing that I've often found in conversations, the Cuban government did make a lot of major, major, not even getting into political mistakes, economic mistakes. Huge economic mistakes with huge consequences. But it is as major as the consequences of those things were. If you do not take into account that this is a nation that was embargoed and basically cut off from the rest of the economic system and then in the 90s had to

live on nothing, I really, if you don't take that into account, you're not, you're either not being honest or you're not you're not doing competent basic analysis of the economic situation there because you cannot understand Cuban reality if you do not understand that is a nation that is not only embargoed but

which has to make a lot of really bad foreign trade decisions based on the fact that they cannot do basic trade under the normal rule of law yeah and that's also important but like you know there have been many many errors and many mistakes but that's

true for, that's true for all countries. But the thing that makes, that makes this different is there's not that safety net of an international trade ability that, you know, the U.S. has or other countries have that Cuba can fall back and lean on in hard economic times. And so they have, when they go through hard times, they have nobody in their corner. When the U.S. or somebody else goes through hard times, there's other countries willing to step in, you know, in Europe or wherever to help them out. And so that's a huge difference. So while other countries can absorb errors from their own government, Cuba is like a do or die situation all the time. And that's so hard to live under.

Yeah. And it's a nation that's been besieged. It's a nation under siege. Right. And especially, and I'm not without apologizing for the errors, if you do not understand a lot of the decisions that were made in terms of, you just got to understand the decisions that were made. Many of them were made under a siege mentality.

It is, they were decisions made by people who, like, when a mistake, given, like, a mistake X would be made, There were a lot of people who within Cuba would be thinking, you know, well, you know, this is not right. But they didn't feel they had room to maneuver and make public pushback against that in part because they felt that any division would be used by a foreign power to justify further measures against Cuba. So it's the shadow of the United States covers, you know, influences all of these problems. Absolutely. Well, that was all very in-depth and extremely interesting, and I hope people really, really drilled down and understand that. But you did talk about the reforms, and you've talked about Fidel's brother Raoul. So since Raul Castro has taken over

from his brother Fidel, what exact changes in reforms have been implemented in Cuba, especially surrounding economic policy? And how do Cubans view these reforms, broadly speaking? Necessary. this is one of the things that I try to drill into people you can criticize the reforms and a lot of how they were implemented or the nature of reforms as long as you want as much as you want whatever we can have a discussion but you got to understand the system that they replaced did not work and there was a consensus pro and anti-government across the spectrum that whatever the system needs to change and what's what we have right now is not working um basically um in before i to get into the reforms i kind of got to give a background for how the economy worked um so in everyone's more familiar with the earlier reforms such as the

first agrarian reform and redistributed land to the peasants great that's that wasn't even necessarily a communist position. That was actually something that Hakobu Arben, a nationalist liberal in Guatemala had tried in the 1954, and he was overthrown for it by CIA Baku. Anyway, but then you started to get, really the major change comes in 1968 with something called the Grand Offensive Revolutionary, the Grand Revolutionary Offensive, where all private businesses are nationalized. All. I mean, I think the exceptions are, the only exceptions that come to mind are the peasants who had been given land were given the option to be part of agrarian cooperatives, but they weren't forced. But everybody else, all businesses

were nationalized. And so you had this system where it was a very centralized economy where nominally the workers would be able to decide things such as what's produced in theory they're supposed to be able to have the workers' councils are supposed to have decision-making power over how

what was made, how much was made, what people should earn, blah, blah, blah. But in practice, everything was hyper-centralized to these overly bureaucratic mechanisms, which really left minimal decision-making power at the lower end, and in fact disincentivized people from really, to use the phrase from Bunkmoreland from the Wire, giving a shit when it's not your turn to give a shit. It was a, it kind, it, even Cuban, Pro-government Cuban economists have criticized that it just, it really was devastating to the economy

because the system, as it was laid out, just didn't work. And the first reforms didn't begin after the USSR collapsed. They actually began in the 1980s, where they were attempts to try and kind of free up how, for example, the agrarian economy functioned, freeing up how peasants could buy in, and sell their basic goods but then that was shut down a few years later and still in the 1980s and possibly because

Fidel did not like how that was playing out in the USSR at the time he was not a fan of Gorbachev and so and then in the 1990s you had a second major wave of attempts to reform things

and again out of necessity, and you had these private businesses where you could rent a room in your home or run a restaurant out of your home, just you and your whoever else is living. You couldn't you couldn't really subcontract anyone, but you and your spouse and your kids could run the restaurant. With a thousand restrictions, you couldn't, you know, you had to pay every month doing well or doing badly. You had to pay, you know, a certain amount of tax. You had to, it was really hard to get ingredients legally. Many had to function on the black market, and some of them were criminalized for doing that. There was a lot of scarcity. Remember, I went to the Cuban in the late

90s, and it was when you would order at a restaurant meant for tourists, not even for the Cuban population. There was to be these large menus, but it was less of a question of what do you have, then what don't you have, than rather, what do you have? Like, there's this long menu, but you would ask, can I have chicken? Well, there's no chicken today. Okay, can I have beef? There's no beef today. Okay, can I have this? No, there's no that today. And so there was there's these, they had to deal with these huge scarcity. But with that said, these

businesses were permitted and they kind of, between the taxes that they paid, blah, blah, blah, there was kind of, you know, like a little bit of an uplift for those families. But then many of them were shut down a few years later at the end of the 90s and coinciding with

the uplift of Cuba under the connection with Venezuela from 1998 onwards. Cuba would provide expertise and doctors and all the rest and the technicians. Venezuela would send oil at very cheap prices, both providing oil to Cuba and allowing Cuba to resale that oil at market price, which was an important source of currency for the government. And that helped the government partially recover.

With that said, the Cuban government didn't recover 1989 GDP, until I think it's 2015, 2016. So even with Venezuela's help, the Cuba of the 2000s, the late 90s and 2000s under Fidel never recovered to its pre-collapse of the USSR days. And so with all that, so in the many of the openings

from the 90s, closed. And basically, the economy more or less grew to a certain extent, but it kind of stagnated infrastructure continued to fall apart throughout the 2000s. And building collapses started becoming more common, just the entire building collapses. When I was studying my undergrad buildings would just randomly collapse. Occasionally would kill a couple people. In other circumstances, the collapse would be slower so people could get out in time. But it was just, it was not, you know, it was not an economic recovery. And so when Fidel got sick in 2006, he and passed power over to Raoul, and then definitively and

officially passed power over in 2008, Raul announced that a series of reforms were coming. And this kind of ties into the issue of how the Cuban government has legitimized itself, because the electoral system has not been a source of legitimacy. Not really. Because without getting too deep into that, it's not taken too seriously by many Cubans. It's even pro-government Cubans. But one of the sources of legitimation that Raoul sought outside of, you know, Fidel had a legitimacy because he was Fidel and he did all the forms. He fought against Batiste and blah, blah, blah. But Raul sought to legitimize the government and its decision-making through line amiantos, which are guidelines.

And the guidelines would basically be, the government suggested a series of basic guidelines for where the reform should go. And then they allow it basically by popular plebiscite. A series of meetings happened across the country. It was there at the time. To ask for feedback. And a lot of those meetings were brutal.

The criticisms that the Cuban, everyday Cubans levied against a couple of the guidelines, you know, why didn't you add this? Well, what about this? And they just, they changed a significant number before they were, before the final phase. And basically, this, this, uh, created at least a kind of popular mandate for many of the reforms that were to come. Then Raul implemented a series of changes. Many of them long asked for. One of them was the elimination of the Cartablanca. The Cartablanca, or white letter, was a requirement by the Cuban government that for everyday Cubans to be able to leave the country. Basically, even if you had a Cuban

passport, you had to ask for special permission to leave Cuba. You had to ask the government for permission. You had to ask your local CDR, CDR, committees for the defensive revolution, for permission and recognition that you're a good person. And you had to ask your either your local I don't remember if the CETES, which is the workers' councils, I don't know, I don't remember about that, but I'm pretty sure you have to ask the party as well, your local representatives of the party, or the youth communist party for permission, and all of them had to say that you were, that it was a good idea for you to leave. If you did not, you could not, if you, if not, like, they didn't give you those avales, they didn't approve of you leaving for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for. whatever reason, including very petty reasons, you could not leave the country, even if you had a visa to leave from Mexico or France or whatever. That was eliminated, and a lot of people were very happy about that. Another of the reforms was the institutionalization of private businesses, but broader than just bed and breakfasts and restaurants, which is what people

had been doing. They called it Quenta propism is what the euphemism was. It's private businesses. It's capitalism. Limited capitalism, but capitalism. But the literal translation

for the term is work by yourself. And the government granted these licenses to do a numerous series of different types of jobs from

peluqueria, you know, barber shops and beauty parlors to, let's see, to, I mean, there's restaurants, but different types of restaurants, pizzerias. Most of it was service industry stuff and distribution kind of jobs. They also freed up the purchase and sale of agricultural stuff. Before, basically, the government was the only person you could buy or sell to. So basically, the government could, because you were basically an economic island, you had your plot of line, but you were an economic island, and everything coming in and out had to go through the state, they could de facto decide what you produced, how much you produced, and what you sold it for. This opened it up a bit

so that, for example, a Campesino, a peasant living in the countryside could sell his, I don't know, his avocados directly to a hotel and make some money off of that, instead of how having to sell it to the state, and then the state distributes an extra way, which helped the countryside recovered because you had actually large swaths of the countryside, which were increasingly abandoned. Cuba is an agricultural country, but large swaths of the countryside were just being outright abandoned and taken over by Marabu, which is this invasive weed, I think, from Asia, and just, and agricultural production was just plummeting and stagnated in the 90s and stagnating. Cows, there was, there was a, there's tight controls on cow production still

and a cow raising all this. But anyway, so you have these reforms which opened it up and basically the declared objective, a lot of these things, is to open. to basically push all this black market economic activity into the legal make it legal

push all this like black market capital into the light and then tax it and then redistribute that because health care is free unless you knew the doctor personally you would have to bring a chicken or a bottle of soda or pay them in cash

for them to treat you well. And so, because the doctors themselves could not live on their salaries. So they had to start asking for gifts. And, you know, I mean, I think it's, it, Marx wrote about the primitive community, you know, the shamans, what starts as gifts, then becomes, you know, tribute. And so, you know, a lot of these, these doctors and teachers had to be, had to be paid these tributes. And so, in theory the reforms which definitely raised the level of raise the wages because of the private the wages in the private sector raised the wages for a lot of folks upwards I mean it's almost 40% of the workforce right now in significant ways and you started seeing businesses that

provided services to those businesses and to people who are making money through those businesses And so you started to see this economic uplift, which under the reforms in 2000, as I said, 2015, 2016 finally hit, Cuba finally hit its, it's 1989 GDP again. So it's, the reform, with that said, the reforms have had a lot of issues. They've created, they've reproduced a lot of inequality. I mean, the inequality was there anyway. If you had family abroad, they were sending you money, and you could actually live without having to engage in, like, risky black market stuff. And, but now with the reforms, you have this legal inequality, and people who work for the state still are still living off of $20 to $30 a month. They raise the salaries for doctors a bit, but it's still nowhere near what a doctor needs to provide for themselves for a month.

much less, you know, if they have family, kids. Oh, another major reform. Raul legalized the sale and purchase of cars and the sale and purchase of, um, viviendas, homes. So apartments or houses, the housing unit, basically, could now be purchased and sold before you had to trade them

for something that was similar. And there was a lot of black market stuff there, and people would occasionally kill each other. to get and there was a lot of bribery going around and stuff like that to deal with the laws but now you can purchase and sell property um real estate property um you can't you can't be a real you know like a real estate magnet but you can purchase a home for yourself and live there um and so you've got this reproduction of all this inequality

uh you've got issues rooted in the fact that uh the reforms were implement and it only partially, for example, you're supposed to be able to buy, what do you call it, wholesale? There were supposed to be stores so you could buy wholesale products, but those who have it yet to be opened, and they've been promised for many years now, and that creates an issue where, for example, a private guy who's selling bread and whatever, you know, sandwiches, buys up all the bread at the shop that was meant to provide food for the entire neighborhood, and so now that all the good breads gone by the time everyday people get there. And so they're competing for the same limited amount of goods.

And so there's a couple of different problems. But with that said, the Cuba of today with all the issues that it has is still, everyday people, I see them are still better off than they were in 2008. And I think that that's, you know, ideological problems and real problems with reforms. you can have them, but centering does this has this helps people

in the working class people in their everyday lives it has. It's just it's undeniable and that's why the Cuban government has implemented them because it recognized that the pre-2008 order just wasn't working. It's the issue. So yeah, so I want to get into

because I see this tension building up a lot here and this tension is fundamentally between a sort of total political and economic centralization, which often is a manifestation of a siege mentality, you know, a sort of political crackdown that takes place in the context of being surrounded by wolves and attempted assassinations and military invasions and, you know, nuclear war threats, etc. It gives rise to a sort of necessary political sort of solidification. But this tension between total centralization and opening up is really where,

Cuba is right now. We're going to get into it in a bit when we talk about markets specifically, but let's lay the groundwork right here because in your article, hipster colonialism and the ruin of Cuba, you argue and defend certain reforms that will allow Cuba to build up its best programs while also criticizing what you refer to as quote-unquote hipster colonialism and the patronizing attitude that some American leftists take towards Cuba. Can you please spend some time summarizing the main arguments in that article and highlight what you mean by the term hipster colonialism? Sure. So, the main people I was taking issue with, with the hipster colonialism part, were mostly middle class, mostly white people, often of the slightly more liberal perspective,

who would oftentimes go to Cuba. And, like, they would see that there's no, for example, there's no ad saying, you know, McDonald's, come to McDonald's, or there's no, you know, there's no ads, there's not as much commercialism in Cuba, you know, which is true, and then they would fetishize it, and they would fetishize it, and they would fetishize the poverty that everyday Cubans would be like, because they're so humble, and they're so nice, and they didn't really, and they'd say that, you know, Cuba should just stay the way it is, and they just try to freeze, want Cuba to freeze in the state that it was in circa 2008 with all of its problems, despite the fact that you have this, you have this near consensus,

which in Cuba, consensus is difficult to come by, but there's near consensus that the order as it exists is not working, we need change. And because this order would break with this Cold War Museum that people love to visit so much, that people started pushing back against it for that reason. Not a profound criticism of how the reforms were being implemented, but rather because it was breaking with their little cube-as-a-time capsule. And so I saw it as this bunch of hipsters who just wanted to keep it to just, to just freeze and we're actually benefiting from the continued poverty of arguing in favor,

even if they didn't realize, arguing in favor of the continued poverty of every day of Cubans by asking that Cuba just freeze for their convenience, for their comfort zone. I see. And, yeah, that bothered me. I mean, there are other things that leftists do with Cuba, which don't make me very happy, but that was what I was going for in the hipster colonialism piece. Do you want to touch quickly on some of the things that leftists do take towards Cuba that you disagree with or that you think is wrongheaded? I think that leftists should go to Cuba.

If you speak Spanish, all the better, go to Cuba and visit. I'm arguing that everyone who's listening to this should go, they should travel, they should travel often, they should try and have a long stay. And they should listen to Cubans, everyday Cubans. Ask them, you know, how their lives were before they were formed. and ask them how their lives were after the reforms. And just listen, because what I, especially younger folks, I mean, I was, you know, when I was younger, I was very passionate and not always as informed as I should be.

There, I see a lot of, you know, uninformed folks firing off about Cuba and its history and its problems without really reading up on Cuba, visiting Cuba ever, talking to everyday Cubans, for example, one of the things that bothers me to no end is, for example, talking about the Cuban emigration to the United States as predominantly white people who lost everything during the revolution, well, I mean, that's just not true. That's empirically wrong. between 1959 and the mid-1960s, that might have been more or less true. But since 1980, the Madiel Bolt left, immigration has been predominantly popular.

And a lot, I don't have the stat in front of me, so I can't say mostly POC, but a large number of POC. I mean, we are talking about a complete change in the class composition, level of education, and ethnicity of the people going to the United States and also the political outlook. Most of those who left in the 90s, for example, were seeking a better economic situation and were not alienated with communism or whatever.

They were seeking just to escape the extreme poverty of the 1990s. So we have an immigration which also has gone in many different directions. Even within the United States, the immigration community, the Cuban Americans of Florida are not the same as the Cuban Americans of New Jersey, who are not the same as the Cuban Americans of other parts. It's a very diverse community. And I see people being very gung-ho, but not listening to Cubans, not reading up before spouting off.

And that's one of my big, it's kind of my bet noir. It's my kind of one of the, one of the big issues. But obviously, I'm, I've, I've, I've, I've said a lot of things today that are probably going to rub a couple people of the kind of person I'm speaking of the wrong way. But, you know, I want, you know, listeners who, you know, to understand, I'm not saying that everything that I've said today is some kind of gospel. I'm not saying, I am the Cuba Whisperer, hear me. You know, I'm saying, I want you to read more. I want you to speak more.

I want you to speak to people I disagree with or who disagree with my take. but I want you to be more informed before you spout off on Cuba stuff because it's not some of the things that are said are not helpful and some of the things said rub a lot of Cubans the wrong way and I think anytime you introduce a lot, a lot of nuance, it's going to challenge people all across the spectrum and one of the reasons why I have an episode like this is because here at RevLeft Radio,

we want all voices on the left to be heard and we want people to not just have some sort of superficial, shallow idea of what Cuba is or what the Soviet Union was or whatever, you know, whatever the situation is. We want to drill down and have multiple perspectives that go into the complexity and nuance of these situations because if we hope to pull off any sort of revolutionary movement here in the U.S., we can't be looking at it through rose-tinted glasses. We have to get down to the real nitty-gritty issues that we face. Now, one of the parts of this interview that's going to challenge certain people,

on certain segments of the left, is this question of marketization. Whenever, like most leftists, regardless of their tendency, they do not want to see Cuba become another capitalist wasteland with shopping malls and McDonald's on every quarter. And they do want to uphold a revolutionary line. And so when you talk about reforms that open up private markets and that increase in equality, you're going to have a lot of leftists, you know,

raising a suspicious eyebrow being like, well, is that what is the best of, best for Cuba and is that what we want the world to move towards? So let's get into this question of markets because I think this is important and I think this is a sticking point for a lot of people, including me. I struggle with this question. In your opinion, what role can markets play not only in Cuba but in any society that wants to move towards socialism? Are markets, especially when they're collectively regulated, democratically controlled and filled with businesses owned and operated by workers, are they viable tools for socialist to use, in your opinion? I mean, I think that markets are, to some degree or another, always going to exist, as long as we are

individually not self-sufficient. We're going to need to do some kind of trade. And it can't, I mean, I don't know of a single system which would allow for people to just, I mean, all the systems that I can think of that exist legally or illegally involve markets. The black market has existed in Cuba since forever. I mean, since forever. I mean, capitalism obviously also has black markets. But, you know, the black market has existed in Cuba, and it has met many of the needs that the system, as it existed, especially before 2008, just didn't respond to. And part of the problem is that the paternalistic overly centralized system as it existed pre-2008 didn't really involve much practical workers' power over how goods were distributed, what goods were made, and all the rest. That's one of the key issues.

And the private sector, permitting the private sector to exist and redistributing some of the surplus value that's produced, I think it was just a move out of necessity by the Cuban government. But I would definitely like to see more cooperatives with actual empowered workers making real decisions about, you know, what goods are produced, what services are given. and redistributing the value amongst themselves. I think that that is a model that can and should work, and that we should try to encourage. And the Cuban government, I think, is trying. They've been experimenting with cooperatives for several years now. Part of the problem is lack of capital.

Part of the problem is there's still a lot of restrictions on how these cooperatives work. And part of the problem right now with the pushback that's coming in the next few months over the reforms is a couple of these are cooperatives are allegedly, allegedly, but very pop probably, use serving as cover for private businesses. Like they're nominally cooperatives, but in practice, it's run like a private business with like a very small people of actual. a very small number of actual people in the cooperative, and then a lot of quote-unquote subcontracted people who are actually the people doing the work, which isn't, you know, that's not the point of the cooperative. So it's a really messy thing.

I don't think I have a definitive answer, but I do think that Cubans, I mean, I guess I'm saying, Cubans know their situation better than, you know, anyone else outside of the United States, across the political spectrum, including the party, economy's party, there is consensus that some degree of markets must exist because they just, for lack of capital, lack of other reasons, they just can't get the system working as they had originally conceived it. So whether or not it's the ideal situation, it's just, it's the reality and they and Cubans have already married themselves. The Cuban government has,

you know, already supported this as one of the pillars of their new program. So I guess it's, it's a question of let's give them a chance to perfect their system. And I guess I'll add my two sense here because this is a question, you know, I struggle with and I have struggled with a lot as a leftist thinking about these issues. You know, one of the downfalls of hypercentralization or total centralization of the economic and political power is all the normal stuff we talk about, but it brings about inevitably a bloated bureaucracy, and it brings about blind spots. When you have a ruling bureaucracy running things, it's not going to be able to cover every aspect of life on the ground because it's detached in major ways from life on the ground.

And we've seen that air pop up over and over again in hyper-centralized attempts to build socialism. when I think about markets markets are not I mean I can envision them as tools that can be separated from capitalism so when we're talking about health care we're talking about infrastructure and all those things of course you need

I would argue for some level for centralization in nation state contexts but when you're talking about running restaurants and stuff like that is it seems sort of clumsy to try to have a government that dictates how those those are run day to day. And so a cooperative model where workers on the ground actually own

businesses, they're based off, you know, Soviets or councils or however you want to think about it, that they run, they run industry, they run the economy democratically. You know, markets could still be a way to, you know, sort of have the relationships between businesses that are worker-owned. So I would argue that markets, insofar as they exist in socialist context, would have to be highly regulated, they'd have to be democratic, and they would have to be filled with businesses owned and operated by workers themselves, because when you allow private individuals to start businesses, well, that always leads, as it's leading in some areas of Cuba, to a resurgent bourgeoisie, and then class conflict comes into play, you build

up class societies, and once the bourgeoisie gets strong enough, you have the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which we have here in the U.S. So these are really complicated thoughts and complicated ideas. What do you think about what I said there? I think it's, it's, it's, it's largely right. I mean, we, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a reality. And we're just, and it's, and it's, and overly centralized systems just have a not, have not been working. The, the, the, the, the larger, not just, and this isn't a question of socialism. This is a question of, I mean, it's really just social, but I mean, like, in terms of a system, the bigger, more centralized the system the less efficient it's going to be and part of the reason that workers councils are

supposed to be superior to corporations and all the rest not just because they were just in terms of redistribution of the profits but also because the workers who receive the fruits of the you know the results of their labor they're they're you know they're compensated they also as parts at part and parcel of the business they have every incentive to make the business run as efficiently as possible, and not efficiently and humanely, but all, you know, to work function well because they have incentive,

because they are part of that business. And if the business does better, they do better in addition to society's a whole doing better. It's supposed, you know, that's how it's supposed to work. But if you have an overly centralized system, what you end up having is the state is the capitalist and all the workers are, you know, proletarians producing,

surplus value for the capitalist, but it's a very inefficient capitalist. Right. And I would argue that what are corporations, what are modern-day corporations, if not highly overly centralized bureaucracies in the marketplace? When you enter, you know, you want to talk about hyper-centralized governments, that's fine. There's lots of flaws there, but that's exactly what corporations are. They have strict hierarchies. They're dominated by the whims of stockholders and CEOs. Workers on the ground have little to no say in their daily life and where the value they create goes. So, you know, when you're critiquing centralization, you got to be critiquing corporations and private industry as well, because that's a highly

centralized, highly hierarchical form of running the economy. So we want to, if you believe in democracy and you oppose certain governments because they're not democratic enough, well, then you definitely got to oppose the corporate structure inherently because that is about as brutal and overly centralized and authoritarian as it gets. Exactly. And I'm sure every listener that you have can think about the inefficiency of the place where they work, but because workers are exploited and do not share in the profits. So they do not do certain things that could improve the business because it's not their problem because they aren't paid enough to care. And so, I mean, the capitalist system has its own major efficiencies, inefficiencies, you know, rooted in the same issue of over-centralization.

and, of course, the exploitative nature of the capitalist system. Exactly. Well, I think that's really interesting, and I really hope people, you know, sort of in good faith, debate these ideas and really mull them over and think about them. And I think what you've said all throughout this interview is so important. At the end of the day, what we as leftists should want is the best possible life for Cuban people, for the Cuban working class and for regular ordinary human beings all over the world. And we have to keep that at the forefront of our mind,

and we cannot let certain ideological purity or ideological dogmatism stop us or blind us to what actually is benefiting Cuban people. There's lots of problems with what's going on in Cuba, with the reforms, but it's not just black or white. There's lots of nuance and complexity there, and I hope this interview helps bring that to the fore. But before we wrap up, can you just one more time? I know you've touched on it in this interview, but maybe just reassert it as a way of ending this interview. What do Cuban citizens want to see happen in Cuba? What sort of society do most of

them want? And what are they scared of happening? Well, first of all, there is near unanimous, or is unanimous as I can see it, a position that the embargo should end, even among many opposition groups. Joani Sanchez is one of the opposition folks. She initially spoke out against the embargo, and then she got criticized publicly in the U.S. for it, and then she kind of backed off. But basically, the Cuban people just want the embargo to end. They were insanely happy when Obama tried to normalize in 2000, Jesus, is it, 2015 now? Yeah. I think so, yeah, yeah. A couple years ago. But, you know, they were, everyone was happy across the spectrum. Even the biggest critics of the government, no one wants, no one wants

the embargo. And another thing is, you know, speaking to everyday Cubans, you know, I think the listeners of this podcast would be against U.S. intervention, but in any case, it should be emphasized that the Cuban people do not want a U.S. intervention either. I have met, I think, one person in Cuba who's now gone. He's left the country, who supports U.S. intervention in Cuba. Oh, sorry, two. And the vast majority of the Cuban people are, again, you know, they have, even, you know, they have, Even the people who are big critics of the government are just like, just let us fix our issues.

You know, don't meddle in our system. A friend of mine, one of his childhood friends and his neighbor who criticized the government, you know, up and down and up and down, sat down with him one day and said, you know what? I really don't like Castro, but you know what, if the United States comes and starts throwing bombs, they're not going to say, shouldn't throw a bomb on this guy's house because he doesn't like cash. They're going to bomb my house the same. So if the U.S. comes, I would have to pick up a rifle too. Because it's, you know, Cubans are, so I mean, I don't think your listeners would disagree with, you know, this opposition to invasion, but I just wanted to reiterate that the Cuban people are nearly unanimous in that. And there are very few issues they're unanimous on. And in terms of what kind of society they'd like to see in

the future, they most want, just, first of all, better standard of living for working-class people is a major issue, you know, as I've touched upon with the salaries, but many, I'd say at least a plurality, if not a majority, want to fix the system, the achievements of the revolution, of the revolution, healthcare, education, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Even much of the critical opposition takes slightly more social democrat positions. Liberal, like a full-on liberalism,

even among the opposition, isn't as big, probably because they just, it's, you can't, you know, if you tell somebody, you know, no education, you know, private businesses would fix everything. It's not really a great sell. Right. Right. So, you know, most Cubans just want to fix the good things about the revolution, but, and have more, more say in their economic, political, and cultural lives. And just to be empowered and just to be left alone to figure out their own problem. And this is also rooted in the embargo again, you know, there would be a much more open and frank and critical. an active debate if many Cubans, especially, you know, including in the party, felt that they didn't have the shadow of the U.S. over them constantly. If that was gone, there were a lot of things

that they could debate much more publicly in order to try and achieve a much more, fixing all these economic issues, but also try and achieve a greater degree of control over their political lives as well. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's extremely important to reiterate that what the Cubans, as far as I understand, do not want, they do not want neoliberal capitalism. They do not want austerity. They do not want the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They do not want a sick, disgusting system like we have that gives rise to a Trump, that vomits up a Trump. They don't want that. They want better lives. They want better conditions. They want political sort of opening up and economic opening up, but they want to maintain, as you said, the gains of the

revolution. And from Venezuela to Cuba, what we see in these revolutionary processes is that everyday ordinary people's political and class consciousness get raised. They get educated on what brutal neoliberal capitalism actually is. And the people on the ground in both of those countries, for the most part, don't want any part of it. Whereas here in the U.S., our class and political consciousness of everyday ordinary working people is just, it just doesn't exist. It's been so brutally conditioned by propaganda and passive messaging and ideology that you go to talk to an average person on the street and they'll largely just regurgitate propaganda they were taught in schools but in these other countries where this revolutionary process has taken place

the the consciousness of the ordinary people are just raised through the roof in a really wonderful beautiful way and an inspiring way and that's what gives me hope ultimately Propagandas definitely has made some inroads a lot of people do certainly want they want to leave because they just can't figure out a solution for their lives in Cuba but a plurality at the very least want for there to be a fixing of

the system and for it to work effectively and just to try and figure out a solution a Cuban solution for their economic political and social issues and yeah and they and you know that plurality is definitely against you know the mass privatizations as we've just seen horrifically begun in in Puerto Rico exactly exactly all right well thank you so much for coming on it's really been enlightening so much nuance and complexity I really appreciate it I hope listeners walk away with a lot of questions to think about them all over and you know in our heart of hearts we want the best for

Cuba and the Cuban people, and these conversations are so important to have. Before we let you go, can you let listeners know where they can find you and your work online? So you can find me on Twitter as at AS, Perthira, my last name is a bit difficult, P as and Peter, E, R, T is in Tom, I-E-R-A, and I've also written pieces in The Nation magazine and Jacob and Mag. And I also co-hosts the Ask Historians Podcast. The Ask Historians podcast, awesome. I will link to that and when we posted on Twitter and in the show notes, we'll link to all of that so people can find you

and your work. Thank you again for coming on. It's been an honor and really interesting conversation. I appreciate it. Thanks, likewise. Weary blues from waiting. Lord, I've been waiting

so long. these blues have got me crying oh sweet daddy please come home the snow falls round my window heart Lord knows it died the day you left My dream world fell apart Weirri blues from waiting Lord long

these blues have got me crying oh sweet daddy please come home Oh sweet daddy please come home Through tears I watch, I watch young lovers, as they go strolling by

and of all the things that might have been God forgive me if I cry We're worried blues from waiting Lord, I've been waiting so long These blues have got me Oh, sweet daddy, please come home Oh, sweet daddy, please come home.