The Daily Signal - She Was Imprisoned in Her Native Cuba. Here's How She Describes Life Under Communism.

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Lala Mooney, born in communist Cuba, was imprisoned there at age 19. As protests erupt in the Caribbean nation, Mooney, mother of Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about what life there is like. "At the economic level, we lost everything," Mooney says. "My mother's family owned a sugar mill and they put a gun on my uncle's desk and say, 'Sign it over.' We lost everything." Mooney says her father was dean of engineering at St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic University in Havana, which the communist regime of Fidel Castro confiscated in 1961, expelling American and European Anglicans who administered it. "Once we were in prison, my father said, 'There's no sense for me to stay here if they put me in prison.'" "Engineering was a very important topic in Cuba," Mooney adds, "because Cuba was [one of the biggest] producers of sugar in the whole world, and engineering is how you run the sugar mills." We also cover these stories: In a speech, President Joe Biden criticizes election reforms passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures. Democratic state lawmakers from Texas, fleeing a vote on an election bill there, hold a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in support of congressional Democrats' legislation to impose election requirements on states. So far, no Democrat has signed on to a resolution from Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., to support the protests in Cuba. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, July 14th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Rachel Diljudis. Lala Muni was born in communist Cuba and was imprisoned there at the young age of 19. Mooney, who is also the mother of Congressman Alex Mooney, who represents West Virginia's second congressional district, joins me today on the Daily Signal podcast to talk about what life under the communist regime of Cuba is like. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

And now on today's top news. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden gave his speech on voting criticizing conservative state election bills. Here's what he had to say about the right to vote via CNN. But some things in America should be simple and straightforward. Perhaps the most important of those things, the most fundamental of those things,

is the right to vote. The right to vote freely. The right to vote freely, the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted. The democratic threshold is liberty. Within anything's possible. Without it, nothing, nothing. And for our democracy and the work and to deliver our work and our people, it's up to all of us to protect that right. He also called the Georgia Voting Reform Law racially discriminatory per CBSN.

Focus will be on dismantling racially discriminatory laws like the recent challenge to Georgia's vicious anti-voting law. Biden also said that he has asked the Justice Department to double the size of their voting rights division. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the United States Department of Justice is going to be using its authorities to challenge the onslaught of state laws undermining voting rights in old and new ways. The focus will be on dismantling racially discriminatory laws like the recent challenge to Georgia's vicious anti-voting law. The Department of Justice will do so with a voting rights division that my request is doubling its size and enforcement staff. Texas State Democratic lawmakers held a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol calling the federal government to pass H.R. 1, also. known as the For the People Act, along with the John Lewis Voting Act. We are here in D.C., our nation's capital, because we want to protect the civil right to vote for millions of Texans. We were quite

literally forced to move and leave the state of Texas. We also know that we are living right now on borrowed time in Texas, and we can't stay here indefinitely to run out the clock to stop Republican anti-voter bills. That's why we need Congress to act now and pass the For the People Act, said State Representative Reda Bowers during the press conference. Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner elaborated on Texas State Democrats' plans further stating, quote, our intent is to stay out and kill this bill this session and use the intervening time, I think 24 or 25 days now, before the end of this session, to implore the folks in this building behind us to pass federal voting rights legislation to protect voters in Texas and across the country.

The same 50 Texas House Democrats boarded private jets on Monday from Austin bound for Washington, D.C., to deny the Texas Special Assembly session a quorum needed to conduct business. The lawmakers fled the state in an attempt to prevent voting on new statewide election integrity legislation. In response to the Democratic lawmakers fleeing the state, the Texas state legislature voted overwhelmingly to send law enforcement after the missing members to force them to return to the legislature, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the offending Congresspeople would be arrested upon their return back home.

Here's Abbott via KVUE. As soon as they come back in the state of Texas, They will be arrested. They will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done. Everybody who has a job must show up to do that job, just like your viewers on watching right now. State representatives have that same responsibility. The Democratic lawmakers signaled that they would not return to the state until the end of the special legislative session in August. Only Republicans have signed on to a resolution from Representative Mario Diaz-Bowler of Florida to support the protests in Cuba that began on Sunday.

day as thousands of Cubans protested in the streets due to the dire conditions brought about by the Cuban nation's communist regime. Dias Ballard's resolution is in support of the Cuban people in their calls against the brutal oppression of the communist dictatorship in Cuba. No Democrats have signed on to the resolution. In a statement, Diaz Ballard said, for 62 years, the Cuban people have struggled for freedom and human rights under a brutal, repressive dictatorship. Diaz Ballard added, on this day, which also coincides with the anniversary of the tugboat massacre, we also remember the regime's decades of malevolence, including the brothers to the rescue shootdown, the firing squads, torture,

arbitrary arrest, killings, human trafficking, those who flood in makeship rafts through shark-infested waters, and the many activists who have suffered or perished for simply daring to speak against the regime. The Cuban people will be free, and they will remember those who stood with them. According to data released by the Labor Department on Tuesday, consumer prices rose 0.9% in June compared to an increase of 0.6% in May. Additionally, data gleaned from the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, showed inflation had increased to 5.4%. Per the hill, many economists had expected the CPI to rise by only 0.5%, lower than in May. The 0.9% increase in prices represents a massive hike, rivaled only by a full 1% increase in consumer prices back in June 2008, while the rise in inflation represents the highest increase since another

5.4% increase back in August of 2008. One third of the month's increase in inflation came from price hikes for used cars and trucks, whose price index rose by 10.5%. Other notable increases came from energy prices at an increase of 1.5%, gasoline prices increasing 2.5%, and food prices at 0.8%. Labor Department data also noted that due to the increase in inflation, workers' real wages were down as well. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Lala Mooney on Growing Up in Communist Cuba. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear lectures from some of the biggest names in American politics? The Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live.

These events are free and open to the public to find the latest heritage events and to register. visit heritage.org slash events. We are joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Lala Mooney. She is the mother of Congressman Alex Mooney, who represents West Virginia's second district. Lala, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you. It's an honor. So you just wrote a book.

Congratulations. It's titled Leaving Cuba One Family's Journey to Freedom. Can you start off by telling us about your story and why your family flood Cuba? Well, I never thought this was going to happen, but when Fidel Castro took over, he said, I'm green like the palm trees, and I'm not red, communist. In two years, the country was upside down. And my dad was a professor of engineering at the university. I was a university student.

So they closed the university. They said, Fidel Castro said, you know, that the, then they came to my dad and they said he had to give them all the names of all the students and all the information. And we felt very persecuted. And then what happened was on the day of Beio Pigs, on that day, Fidel Castro sent his army out to pick up prisoners. And you would not believe that in one day they picked up. 100,000 prisoners. How did he do it? He had planned it.

He had the biggest army in Central, you know, in Central and South America, and he had forbidden anybody to have any arms, but he had bought himself, you know, a lot of arms from Russia. So he didn't have where to put all these prisoners, so he put them in the big places, like the Army barracks and the theaters, any place. My dad ended up at the entrance of Havana in a fortress called La Cavaña, and at nighttime he could hear the executions. And he could even a few times, he even talked to people that were about to be executed. And he helped them say prayers, and he helped them write goodbye letters to their family.

He himself was not involved in actual underground, so ultimately we were allowed to leave the country. I was put in prison in a woman's prison in Wanabacoa, and there I witnessed one of the worst things, which was when they want to transfer some prisoners to a worst jail, the prisoners did not want to go. So they plan a strategy on Mother's Day to give them visits from their mothers, put them all in a separate room, and then they brought fire trucks and 500 firemen. And with the force of water, they force all these women to get into the vans to go to the other place. One of these women was pregnant, and the beautiful thing is, on one side the firemen aimed the hose at her stomach. They wanted to kill the baby. So all the other women surrounded her and saved the baby.

And beautifully, a couple of months after that, the baby was born. And I witnessed that. I could see it from my prison cell. Wow. So you get the impression that no matter what you do, these people are going to be mean. And also that this was the advice of the Soviet Union. representatives that were by then telling Fidel what to do.

You mentioned that you were imprisoned in 1961. What was that experience like? And what do you remember from it? And how old were you when you were in prison? I was 19. And the speech, you know, it was very scary. We, on the night, I was questioned by the militia man. And I saw my dad there, you know, also was going to be questioned.

and here this man who was the most important man in my life with his head down. And the following morning in prison, they would bring the newspapers with the names of the people executed. And one person would read them aloud. And I couldn't even, if I knew the person, I couldn't even say I knew the person or cry. because we knew that inside the prison there were spies. So it was just, you know, incredibly desperate. Can you tell me about the day that your home was invaded by the soldiers? What happened that day?

I know you had shared a story about something that your boyfriend had given to you for protection that was illegally given you a gun. Can you go through that story what that day was like and what you remember from it? Right. Well, that very morning my boyfriend came and he had had a gun and he wanted to hide it. The reason was he was afraid they were going to check his house. So he brought it to my house thinking that I wasn't under any problem. So I put inside a shoebox.

And then I'm like, what if they come here? So one of my dad's workers was there, and I said, what do I do? You know, I didn't even want to tell my dad. So he said, let me bury it. So he buried it in the ground. And then a couple of minutes after that, I look out the window, and my house was surrounded by militiamen. And one of them signaled to the other ones to go in, like if it was a fortress or something. So they came in and they checked the whole house.

Everybody goes to the living room and they checked the whole house. They were looking for any evidence that we, you know, were against the government. But fortunately, they did not see the gun. I could see the militia men with their boots walking over the area where I knew it was buried. But strategically speaking, the guy who buried it, buried it among two little tiny bushes. and there were a lot of bushes around it. So you could not see that the earth had been removed that morning. If that would have been found, my dad would have been killed.

Wow. How was your family impacted specifically by the Castro regime? Did you have family members who passed away in prison? And I know you had shared a story, too, about your mother and how visits to her home caused her to go into shock and some pain that she experienced. So how is your family directly impacted by this regime? Well, you know, at the economic level, we lost everything.

You know, my mother's family owned a sugar mill, and they put a gun on my uncle's desk and say, sign it over. So we lost everything. Once we still, once we were in prison, my father said, there's no sense for me to stay here if they put me in prison. before that, you know, like before he was even able to think about the decision, he was still in prison, they came and they told my mother something that really scared her, which was my dad, okay, there was a Villanova school in Cuba. Most people don't know it because, but it was, my dad was a dean of engineering. And this was very important engineering was a very important, um, talk. topic in Cuba because Cuba was the first producers of sugar in the whole world.

And engineering is how you run the sugar mills. So they told my mom, my dad had a little laboratory with a small-sized engine, you know, model of a sugar mill. And they told my mother that my dad's students had hidden there ammunition and explosives and some plastic to-do bombs. and if that were to be found, then my dad would be blame and executed. And my mother couldn't take it. So my mother went catatonic, which if you, you know, you hardly ever see anybody that way. She couldn't speak.

She couldn't move. She was just like frozen like this. So we took her to the doctor and the doctor said the only way to get her out is to do electro shocks. So they put this wires on her head. And I left the room while they shocked her. Then I came back and helped take the wires off. And then she came out, you know, real peaceful and real, you know, subdued. So we hid her. We didn't take her back home. We hid her in some of the relative's house, waiting for my dad to be free. Unfortunately, at that moment, we didn't. We discovered that we had a connection to the Brazilian embassy, and the Brazilian embassy asked the

Cuban government to release some prisoners, and they did release my dad. So once it was free, we have a very common name, Suarez. So there was a ferry boat that was bringing things to Cuba, and so the owner helped us in getting my dad into the ferry boat. So my dad, my dad, went to the bottom of the ferry boat where there were some freezers. And he hid in one of those freezers. So when the police came to check, they didn't see him. But later on, the ferry boat was in the seas. He said it was like rats coming out of the basement of the ferry boat.

The people are hidden there. So once my dad came to America, then in two weeks, we were able to come legally. we were able to get documentation. And at that point, the Cuban government did not control everybody, let some people go. We don't know why, maybe because they knew we were going to take everything, or maybe because they still did not have enough control. So we were able to come. Two of my own, two of my dad's brothers were left behind.

One of them died in prison with, you know, cancer. We never know the conditions. We never know what happened. And then another one is a beautiful story because his son rescued him. His son ransomed him. He rented a boat in Miami and is one of only two or three cases ever. And he came to Cuba. He ransomed him.

And that weekend, Fidel was having an international kind of gathering. So he said, I'm freeing this man because he's old, he's sick. and he has a son that's very brave. So when they release him, my uncle said to his son, okay, you know, who's maneuvering the boat? They said, he said, me. And he said, well, you don't know how to do it. So he said, I'm going back to prison. When he looked back, the police car was gone.

What a story. Yeah. What a courageous man. Yeah. What was it like for you to go from living in Cuba to then coming to the United States in living here? What was that transition like? What did you notice about, you know, obviously living in Cuba and that communist regime and then coming to the United States? What was that transition like? Okay. It was very interesting. I would always sit to any place looking at the door because I didn't know

who was coming in. And I got a job in a hospital. In an emergency room, I was the secretary. And people would buy me a cup of coffee. You know, I'm going to my coffee, Lala, bring you a coffee. You know what I would do with that coffee? I would throw it in the bathroom. Because why would people give me a cup of coffee unless they wanted to poison me? And it took me six months to get over it. And finally, I said, this is not true. I don't have to be that scared.

Isn't that something? That is something. Yeah. Are there any other things that stuck out to you is, maybe weird or just something to get used to where you have this one mode of living. You're used to living in this communist country, not being able to trust anyone, and then coming to the United States and just having it being a totally different environment. I really have to be very thankful to the Catholic Church and the people in America. My dad had studied in Villanova in Pennsylvania.

So he told us, you know, in America, do like Americans. So the transition was an easy one. Wow. That you have an amazing story. I wanted to ask you, too, so your son is a United States congressman. He represents West Virginia's second district. What was it like to raise a son who went on to be a congressman and also tell us about your other children? It was wonderful.

I myself was raised in a boarding school. So I was in a boarding school in Havana. and I could only see my parents on weekends or on festivities. So I really enjoy my children. My son Alex, he joined a debate club. And I sat there and I helped him prepare his debates. And I help him in many little ways. So I really enjoy mothering.

And I really enjoy the American way in the schools where they have a lot of sports and they have a lot of freedom for the children. But I also have to thank the Catholic Church and religion in general. I believe on God and I believe in this case that you have to do things for your country. What is the state of Cuba like now that you've been here? I know you mentioned you've been back several times. What have you witnessed when you've gone back?

Is it better? Is it worse? I know you've talked about some of the misconceptions that people in the states think that things have improved. What have you seen? Okay. This is the most important part. There is such a myth that Cuba is doing better. Cuba has one of the most powerful intelligence apparatus in the world. And they have convinced everybody.

And when I went there, when my first trip was in 1999, racial, I cried every day. The Cuban people had to console me because the condition was so desperate. And my relatives will fix dinner for me. They wouldn't eat with me because there was no food. The water, you know, the water and the shoes, I ended up giving them my shoes. I came back on flip-flops. The situation was very extreme.

And the technique that they use is to keep people hungry. They have a ration card. They don't have enough food. So everybody steals. Who do they steal? They steal from the government. So when the journalist, American journalists, there's one in the economists, go visit Cuba. and they ask people, how do you do?

Oh, I have a ration card. But nobody has seen the ration card. And then they're going to say, okay, I'm stealing. So if you work in a school, any time you go next to where the beans are, you grab a bag of beans and you put it in your purse or in your pocket. They have a whole bunch of black market kind of strategies. Wow, that is really sad. Can you speak a little bit to the emotional state of the Cuban people?

I know you mentioned you just recently here at Heritage and talked about your new book and had mentioned the high rate of suicide in Cuba and also the problem they have with prostitution. Can you speak to those two issues that you've witnessed when you've been there? Well, the suicides is very important because I have a friend, Maida Donati, who at that point was working in Cuba in the health department, and they assigned her to do a study. So they did an intense, statistically careful study

of all the suicides in three months, and they classify them. And they came up, the numbers that came up was that Cuba has practically the highest suicide rate in the world. So when Fidel Castro's people realized that, first of all, they said, this is a national secret. You cannot tell anybody.

And if you do, you'll be punished. Now, my friend ultimately left Cuba, went to Barry University and wrote her master's on it. So you can see her, Maida Donate. So it's not fabricated, you know, it's there. The beautiful thing in a way, or hopefully they maybe try to prevent suicides. But what they do is they said if you commit a suicide, the data, instead of saying that she committed suicide,

say she fell off the truck or she drowned or whatever. You must change the data. So you cannot believe the data that Cuba produces now. One of the saddest part in the data is that the rate of women committing suicide is as high as men. and that is not true of the data any other place. So the desperation of the women is very noticeable. They have the highest suicide rate in the world, the women. What is the state of health care like as well in Cuba?

I know you had mentioned you told a story about a woman who is trying to get diabetes medicine to her husband and what she was having to go through to do that. So what does that look like in Cuba? Rachel, this was amazing. when I was in prison, the first prison I was a temporary prison. In the second floor, there were women, first floor men. And in the middle, there was a guard. So all of a sudden, one of the women prisoners is carrying on with this guard.

And we all noticed it. So we all sort of hid, and they went into a room. We couldn't believe it. Well, the next day, this is the true story. Her husband was in the first floor, and he was diabetic. and he needed medicine. So she had, you know, she made herself available to this guard, and then the guard got him medicine for diabetes.

And the lesson to me was, what would I have done in that situation? Probably would have done the same thing. And that is the case of prostitution in Cuba, that people do it just because it's the only way they can get ahead. That is so heartbreaking. I know you've been back to visit a lot. I think you said nine times. What is the role of the church in Cuba and also what is the state of religious freedom like there?

I'm really proud of the church. What I hear from the young people is the only place where you can really talk. The church has done a lot of supportive work. Not only the Catholic Church, but a lot of Protestant churches and Jewish. When I go, I bring medicines for them and I deliver them. I go to the synagogue. I go to the different churches. It's so incredible.

I bring the strips for the people that are diabetic. And then the church announces that people can come and check their diabetes on Mondays and Fridays. They cannot give you the diabetic strip because, you know, So a church, most of the churches, have a pharmaceutical assistant. And the public medical doctors call the church and say, I have somebody here that needs hypertension medicine. Do you have any? So the church has taken that role, but also at the spiritual level, also very important, because people naturally want to believe on God no matter what.

What would your message be to many young people? A lot of my peers who are young Americans, they're finishing school, they're entering the workforce, and yet they're attracted to communism, socialism, they hire lectures in school. They have friends who are getting friendly to the idea. Some of them visit Cuba, and they don't actually see the reality of it.

So if you could tell them one thing, or tell them a couple of things, what would your message be? Well, I tend to compare the case in Cuba with the case of abused children or children who are sexually abused. If you ask a kid who's sexually abused, he's not going to tell you. Because first of all, he's been threatened with death. You know, if you tell anybody I'm here playing with you, you know, I'm going to do this and that. So the Cuban people cannot speak. So those people who travel, first of all, the translators that are given, the interpreters, are all, you know, communist and all afraid themselves.

So they cannot say the truth. So what you see is not the truth. And they're constantly watching you and they're constantly brainwashing you. So you have to be smart and you have to seek the truth. Lala, I can't thank you enough so much for being here with us today. You've shared so many incredible insights, and thank you for your story, and just thank you for being here. Thank you, Rachel. Bye. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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