Tangle - Cuba, the U.S. embargo and why people are protesting; with Jorge Felipe-Gonzalez

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

In today's podcast, we sit down with Cuba expert Jorge Felipe-Gonzalez to discuss what's happening in Cuba, what the U.S. should do about the embargo and why Cubans are in the streets in the first place.Felipe-Gonzalez is a history professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and has recently been published in The Atlantic. You can read his latest article here.Tangle is podcast produced in partnership with Imposter Radio. To subscribe to our newsletter, go to readtangle.com.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some reasonable debate, and independent thinking without the historical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and today I'm recording from our fresh new office space, which has not really been broken in or set up. So I'm going

to apologize in advance for maybe a little lower sound quality than usual, but I am so excited for our guest, Jorge Felipe Gonzalez, who's here to discuss some of the happenings in Cuba. Jorge received his BA in history from the University of Havana, Cuba, and a PhD in history from Michigan State University. He does a lot of research on the island and the history of Havana, Cuba, and a PhD in history from Michigan State University. He does a lot of research on the island and the history of Cuba. He's writing a book right now about transatlantic slave trade. And he's also gotten some attention for a piece he recently published in The Atlantic, kind of criticizing the Black Lives Matter organization response to the situation in Cuba, which I thought was really interesting and actually shared in the newsletter. Jorge, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me, Isaac. So I think before we jump in, it'd be really good for our

listeners to just sort of set the table a little bit for this conversation. And you are certainly much more qualified to do it than I am. Maybe you could give us like a 90 second, two minute breakdown of what's going on in Cuba right now, what's happening on the streets and sort of how we got there in your view. I know that that's a big ask given the rich history of the island and so many things that are at play, but I'd love to just sort of start there really broadly and then drill down on a few things. Sure. So let's start by the causes of the event. What triggers this protest in Havana? I should say that this is a combination of political circumstances and economic. In the political case, there has been a systemic lack of civil liberties in Cuba for the past 60 years.

Because there have been many changes in the political states in the 1990s, among them the erosion of the institution that used to have control over the Cuban population, people are being more outspoken about their lack of freedom. So they are now demanding freedom of speech, of assembly. And in that sense, a few months ago, a group of artists, of Cuban young artists, started posting on social media their discontent with the government. They started organizing what is called the San Isidro Movement. And the police went to their places, jailed

them, the crackdown was also filmed on social media, and as a result this tension has been growing. Now Cuba is on top of the usual scarcities that Cuba has been experiencing for the past 30 years. Cuba right now is in a particular critical humanitarian situation due to all the events that have to do with COVID, that has to do with the mismanagement of the government, partial embargo.

So people went to the street that was on July 11, in a small town 16 miles from Havana, and the news spread all across social media. And it's important for everyone to know that only recently the Cuban government allowed Cubans to have internet. That happens in 2018. So three years later, it's a small movement, it's a small town close to Havana, turning to a nationwide rebellion, which is what we were seeing in the news in the past weeks. At the moment, the crackdown has been pretty violent.

Human Rights Watch organizations report that around 400 people are in jail. There are summary trials with no due process. Those who are being sentenced to one year, eight months to prison, many of them are university students who were filming the rebellion, who were chanting down with the castros or freedom. And right now that's the circumstances of Cubans

at this particular point. There is a crackdown against those who led the protest on last July. I'm curious, I mean, for you, I imagine you have friends or family who are still in Cuba. What are you hearing from people who are on the ground there? I mean, what's the mood? What's some of the, I guess, the word from the streets from your perspective, or what kind of things you're hearing from Cuba right now? Well, the first thing that happened right after, and I heard about this,

I heard from friends and families and people that I know in Cuba, they were posting this info in social media and Facebook, especially. What is happening right now is a sort of repression like heavy repression people obviously many people are scared that people i know have been sent to jail and we don't know what is happening to them at this point so what i say is this sort of a state of discontent among the people but especially among those who are young. They don't believe in the Cuban rhetoric, the old, old war socialist Cuban rhetoric that has been going on for 60 years. And I think that that is quite old fashioned and really for many, even ridiculous.

And what you can see is that for the first time, Cubans are being extremely outspoken about the situation. That's historical. That's historical. That's unprecedented. Yeah. And, you know, I'm curious, too, to hear from you. I mean, the response from people who are on the island in Cuba, to me, has seemed pretty consistent. But the sort of political response here in the United States, once it gets put through that United States lens,

has naturally fallen into some partisan lines and divisions, and people are all sort of turning it into the story they want it to be. And I found you and came across your work because of this piece that you published in The Atlantic, which was criticizing the Black Lives Matter response, the official statement from the organization, that, you know, when I read it, it sort of made my eyebrows go up because, you know, I think for anybody with some knowledge of the history of Cuba and the political dynamics there, it was clear that they were sort of aligning themselves with a talking point that's very common from the regime, which is just critical of the United States and sort of pointing the finger at the United States. I'd love to hear from your perspective why you wrote that piece. I mean, what about that response and that statement provoked you to criticize them? And why do you think what they said was sort of so off base? I think that my main point in that piece, and it's something that triggered my writing about it, is that what I see is, and I understand where this is coming from,

but this is a sort of subordination of what is going on in Cuba to U.S. politics. US politics. So Cuba, in this case, became this sort of political tool to make a point for domestic US policies. But Cuba is not just a political tool. It could be, and it has been used both from the right and by the left as a political tool to make political arguments. But Cuba is not only that. There, in actual, real Cuba, where there are real people living. There are people who are suffering and right now they are experiencing repression and they are asking for freedom.

And what I perceive in this particular statement, and I know because there are news about it as well, that Black Lives Matter as an organization is fraction. There are different opinions about it, but this particular statement for the Global Network Foundation, what triggers me was that this is exactly, as you mentioned, the talking point of the Communist Party in Cuba. This is exactly what they have been doing for 60 years. Any type of discontent, any type of malfunctioning of the economy, the lack of civil liberties,

they always blame the U.S. and the U.S. embargo specifically. And there is much more that has to be said about it. And what triggers the protest is not the U.S. embargo. What triggers the protest is the systemic lack of the Cuban government. It's something internal. It's something domestic. And it cannot be explained only by U.S. foreign policies toward Cuba. That was a main point of that piece. I'm curious, I mean, given that, so let's put that aside for a second. What do you view as the impact of the embargo? I mean, what do we think the tangible impact for the Cuban people of the US embargo is? I mean, I wrote about this a little bit in the newsletter.

Obviously, it has some impact, but it's not as if the U.S. and Cuba don't have trade and tourism and exchange goods together. I mean, that stuff happens. So, you know, what's the reaction on the island to it? No, certainly the U.S. embargo has had an impact in Cuba. That impact has been happening for a while. As you know, as a result of the US embargo, some companies cannot trade in Cuba. American companies cannot invest in Cuba. American tourists cannot go to Cuba. They're probably with banking and financing in the global market. And that clearly affects the in the global market, and that clearly affects the foreign economy or the relation of Cuba with the global market.

But the embargo itself is not, and that's one of the main points I also try to make in this piece, I don't consider to be, and there are studies pointing in that direction as well, the embargo as the main cause of the q1 problems the problem the main problem in q is the qa works under a full-fledged estate control of the economy but what that means what that means is that the cuban government own literally they own everything in cuba they own hotels they own factories they stores, they own the way products go, are imported or exported in Cuba. And that economic model is not working. It has never worked. It didn't work before during the other experiments, same type of experiments that were

done in the Soviet Union, in the Eastern Bloc, even China at some point that experiment was eroded, they opened the economy to free trade. And that's what Cuba needs to do. Cuba needs to undertake internal changes from within. And the embargo, I think, once that happened, even could play a major role in the sense of affecting Cuban economy. But right now, the main problem for Cubans and in Cuba is the lack of disposition of the government to change, to do reforms that are meaningful and they actually led to more prosperous Cuba. One of the questions now is sort of,

should the embargo be lifted? And my understanding is there are sort of two arguments that come up when you say that. One is lift the embargo, it will relieve some economic pressure on the island, and it will help the Cuban people. The other argument is that if you lift the embargo, and some of that relief comes, that the regime will use it as sort of more propaganda to say, look, life is good. We're trading with the United States, whatever. What's your perspective on that? I mean, should if you had a vote, would you vote to lift the embargo? Why or why not? How do you feel about kind of the what the outcome would be? That's a that's a great question. I think that the

closest we were to a Q1 without embargo was under the Obama era, where he lifted some of the sanctions, not the whole embargo, but some of the sanctions. And what we saw was an avalanche of Cuban, sorry, of American tourists going to the island. And what does that mean on the ground? That's a question. So what that means on the ground is that that boosts the small, emergent private economy in the country. And that, for the Cuban government, is bad news. Just to be sure, the lifting of the embargo and the lifting of the restriction of remittances

is going to benefit the Cuban government. That's a fact. But it's also going to benefit people on the ground. And that's where we are locked in this situation. That how do you make the situation of those on the ground better? Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,

Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. But at the same time, you're going to be benefiting the Cuban government. But I think in the long run, lifting the sanctions, the US sanctions to Cuba, meaning more tourists coming to Cuba, more businesses and more money circulating, let's say, on the island, that strengthened the civil society. And I saw that in Cuba in 2018, for example. You saw people were investing more in private businesses, and this is important

because QY is still a totalitarian state. And by that, I mean that as long as people are more disconnected from the state, it's better for a possible change in the future. I don't know if that makes sense, what I'm trying to convey here, that by boosting the civil society, by letting people do more businesses, by having more independence from the state, that erodes the power of the government. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And sounds like your opinion is that it would probably be a net positive, but you'd have to accept the fact that the government would obviously benefit from the embargo being lifted along the way. I do, yes. And the problem right now is that the situation is more complicated

because even if the Biden administration, let's say, wanted to lift some of the sanctions, right now it would be really hard for him to justify doing so after all this crackdown and the repression and the violation of human rights that is happening in Cuba right now. So I don't know.

I don't see any possibility immediately that the Biden administration will lift the embargo after all that is happening in Cuba right now. But at the same time, I do believe that lifting the embargo first is going to take out of the government the imperialist aggression happening in Cuba right now. But at the same time, I do believe that lifting embargo, first,

it's going to take out of the government the imperialist aggression and the genocidal embargo, which is what the Cuban government uses. So the government is going to have less propaganda at their disposal to justify mismanagement and violation of human rights. And second, I think it's going to benefit the civil society in Cuba on the ground, which is in the long run, really bad news for the government. In fact, I do believe that part of these protests that we are seeing right now are the result of the strengthening of the civil society,

that people are less afraid, they are more disconnected from the government. Just to give you an example in 1980 every cuban citizen was an employee of the state every cuban citizen then in the 1990s field customers took some reforms allow some private businesses let's say like like small restaurants and those working for those private businesses are not employees of the state anymore so they don't need to be obedient to the rules of the state. And if we expand this logic, then the state loses power. And eventually that

can trigger change in the government. But even more importantly, is that that's going to benefit people's dinner table. They are going to have finally something to eat. Like the situation right now is desperate, like really desperate. Yeah, I want to talk about that. I mean, what is the real life, the real world living situation and quality of life like right now on the island? from a lot of the mainstream news reports is that there's shortages of food and medicine and the COVID vaccine rollout there has been basically an abject failure. I mean, what is life like right now

for your average middle or lower class Cuban civilian? Well, in the sake of fairness, I'm not quite sure that the vaccine was a failure. I think it has, for what I read, and that was not from the state media, I think it has a success rate close to the Pfizer, if I'm not mistaken. The problem is that they haven't really real obstacles to distribute the vaccine. Right, right. That's what I mean, is that the rollout has been a struggle. Yes, there is a struggle about that.

But the problem, the main problem with Q1 that we have to, you know, we have to give the evil devil his due is that beside the vaccine, putting the vaccine aside, in Q1 right now, to put this into perspective, most of the products that you need for your everyday life, let's take the example of cooking oil, which is something that most people use every day. They are really hard to find and they are rationed by the government. So people have to wake up every morning at 4 a.m., go to do these enormous lines. Probably they are not even going to get the product

when they get to the store because they're gonna run out. And that just gives you a glimpse of, if you multiply that every other material item that you need for your everyday life, that's the situation right now in Cuba. In terms of income, to give you another perspective, let's say a neurosurgeon in Cuba has an average salary of around $60, $50 a month. And that's not enough for even living for a week. So that means that most of Cubans live out of the black market.

most of Cubans live out of the black market. And the black market is this highly inflated prices that is getting harder for most people to get access to it. In addition, I think Cubans right now are having serious electric outages, which are affecting right now in the middle of the summer, which is really critical for Cubans for, you know, turning on their fan or AC or whatever. And that's the situation right now goes more or less in that direction. It's very desperate, but it's not new. Right now it's worse than it has been in 20 years since the 90s.

But it's a very bad situation right now. 11 million people live in Cuba. bad situation right now. 11 million people live in Cuba and a lot of the news reports of the last few weeks have focused on these thousands of people that have protested in the street. What do we know about the island as a whole and its current support or feelings about the regime? I mean, obviously there's discontent because if there wasn't discontent, we wouldn't be seeing these protests from, you know, the eastern to the western part of the island. But is the regime as a whole actually losing support? I mean, if there were actually a free and fair election right now, what would happen? I mean, do we have any sense of that about

how the whole population feels about the government right now one problem to answer that question is that we we i may mean to answer that question in let's say more like rigorous way is that we don't have let's say the equivalent to gallup polls in cuba cuba is not a system, so we don't have like statistics on the percentage of approval of the government. That's not the case in Cuba. But something that I can tell you is that the Cuban government has been losing support for a long time, since the 1990s. So the Cuban government is still locked in this old-fashioned socialist rhetoric, where they keep promising people that socialism is the future of the country

and actually is the future of the world. And they are going to be better off by supporting the government. But what they see in their everyday life tells them a completely different story. Social inequalities are abysmal in Cuba right now. People cannot, as I mentioned before, afford everyday living items. And I do think most likely that, of course, there are people supporting the government. Some of them are part of the government themselves.

Some of them are connected, let's say, with the military or the touristic industry, which is controlled by the military in Cuba. And older generation, we still believe in the government. But let's imagine this is a case scenario, and I think I'm going to be very conservative here. Let's say that 40% of the population right now does not support the government.

That means that in the current state of the Cuban politics, 40% of the population does not have a political voice in Cuba because there is no fair elections in Cuba. There is no freedom of press in Cuba. In fact, it's illegal according to the Cuban constitution to have any type of newspaper or podcast or blog that goes against the government interest and that's embedded in the constitution. And journalists has been detained constitution and journalists has been detained john journalists has been detained for running podcasts and running blogs against the government that means that none of these people have political representation in cuba and the government does not give them a voice

so i do believe that the going go if there is an election in cuba right now using the hypothetical example you presented i think that the chances are extremely high that those in power are not going to be elected, if that's the question. I'm curious. I mean, it's hard not to look at this from a U.S.-centric lens as an American. I'd love to hear your perspective about what role the U.S. could play in the future of Cuba. I mean, do you think that we have a responsibility to act? And if so, what should we do? What would be a helpful course of action right now? At the moment, one of the best policies that I have heard about,

and I think it was first proposed by, the first time I heard about it, I think it was from Marcos Ruyo, and then actually President Biden repeated it later, is to finding ways to provide satellite internet to all Cubans for free. Because that would be a very important transformation in Cuba. One of the first measures that the government adopted during the protests was shutting down the Internet. There is only one Internet provider in Cuba, which is controlled by the Cuban military. And it's extremely expensive, by the way. It's as expensive as any cell phone plant here in the United States. And take into consideration that neurosurgeons make $50 a month. And then the first thing they did was shutting

down the internet. And if the government, if the US government and the technology is there to do, allows this to happen, that's going to debilitate the credibility of the Cuban government and it's going to open more for voices inside the island. Otherwise, I think that Cubans should solve their problem by themselves. I think that they should be, as there has been in other humanitarian crisis, humanitarian help organized by the civil society. Cuba needs humanitarian help. But in terms of US direct interference in the political matters, I do believe that Cubans should

solve the problem domestically. There has been a long history in Cuba, for example, let's mention the extreme case of intervention, for example. There has been a long history of intervention in Cuba. That has never ended well. That has never ended well in most places in Latin America. So that let's rule out out of the equation. The embargo, which is the other policy, hasn't worked for 60 years. Let's rule out that rule out of the equation. So what else is left? I think that what is left is in the long term, when things calm down, if the government survives this, which is another question, if the Cuban government is going to survive this, which is not clear if they will, I think the long term it will be a good strategy to just normalize relations with Cuba. Jorge Fude Gonzalez, if people want to follow your work or keep up with your writing, is there a good place to do that? Do you have a website or a Twitter account?

I don't. I don't have Twitter. I have time to keep myself out of Twitter. Twitter account? I don't. I don't have Twitter. I have time to keep myself out of Twitter. Yeah, that's probably a safe bet. Yeah. Smart these days. Well, listen, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it. It's a fascinating perspective on conversation. And I hope to keep in touch as the story unfolds. Okay, thank you, Isaac, for having me. Today's podcast was produced by Tangle Media in partnership with our friends over at Impostor Radio. If you enjoyed the podcast, be sure to give it a five-star rating, share it with your friends, and go check out readtangle.com for more. Thanks for watching! Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.