Welcome to CubaCurious
Thanks for checking out my weekly dollop of Cuba news, weighted toward human rights, the ongoing protests, and the aftermath of the historic uprising of #11J (country-wide anti-regime protests of 7/11 and 7/12/2021).
Each Thursday evening I’ll send out a short (about a 5-minute read) update with three news bits from Spanish language sources, mostly two podcasts, Yoani Sanchez’s “Cafecito Informativo” (Havana) and Diario de Cuba’s “Cuba a Diario” (Madrid). As far as I know, this is the only English summary of these two respected Spanish podcasts out there.
CubaCurious is my attempt to do my bit for my native homeland and to help fill the news gap I see in my adopted homeland. I want to keep the spotlight on the plight of political prisoners and give you a view of what average Cubans’ lives are like.
Why this matters
Independent journalism is illegal in Cuba, and the state controls the media. Reporters Without Borders consistently ranks Cuba as the worst Latin American country for press freedom. Free speech is permitted only if you agree with the 65-year-old unelected, single-party that declared itself “irrevocable” in its 2019 constitution. There are 600 known political prisoners in Cuba’s cells for participating in the 11J countrywide protests of July 11 and 12th 2021. According to NGOs like Prisoners Defenders, the total number of all documented political prisoners in Cuba is over 1000.
Cuba’s an important player, if often only behind the scenes, on the world stage. For a small island country (about 11 million people), it makes regional and world headlines more often than you’d expect—but for logical reasons.
Since the earliest days after the 1959 revolution, it has sent troops to fight in foreign conflicts, from Angola to Zaire (today The Democratic Republic of the Congo). Right now, it has military personnel helping to train and direct the armies of two notorious dictatorships in our hemisphere: Nicaragua and Venezuela. The three countries are connected to the mass migration crisis we’re seeing from Central America to our southern border.
Cuban is one of the most avid defenders of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine and consistently disseminates Russian talking points within and outside of Cuba. It was one of seven repressive countries that voted against Zelensky in September 2022 in a failed attempt to prevent him from addressing the General Assembly.
The government has cited the current economic crisis for its new war-time economic policies: price controls and other measures aimed at controlling inflation and closing a massive fiscal budget gap (GDP declined 2% at the end of 2023) . Economists and Cubans alike say the economic hardships today are worse than those during the so-called Special Period, when, in the early 1990s, the Soviet Union stopped subsidies and the economy imploded.
Protests are breaking out regularly across the country over non-stop power outages, runaway inflation, increasing repression, erratic economic policy changes, food shortages, public transportation debacles, and dismal health care. It doesn’t help when Cubans see luxury hotels being built and fully lit at night while they’re in the dark, or brigades of doctors being sent to Italy when they can’t get appointments for their children or an ambulance when they need one. Average Cubans don’t blame the embargo for their hardship. They didn’t shout “down with the embargo” during 11J. They shouted libertad and abajo la dictadura.
So Cubans are leaving. The largest exodus since the 1959 revolution is underway. In early July 2024, Cuban authorities reported at the National Assembly that more than one million Cubans left the country from December 2021 to December 2023—a shocking 10% of the total population of 11 million people.
The Cubans are coming. We need to understand why.
About Me
I’ve been drawn to Cuba lovingly, reluctantly, and exasperatingly ever since my working-class family fled the revolution we’d initially supported. That was in 1967. I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday. That sudden loss of my Cuban life and the bumpy start of a new one in New Hampshire have inspired much of my writing and storytelling.
I’ve got family and other contacts on the island, and I’ve returned twice to live as average Cubans live, without air-conditioning, watching food supplies on the shelf, wandering the city looking for black market suppliers of cooking oil, eggs, and pillowcases.
I’ve written about Cuba for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. My commentaries and storytelling have been featured on national broadcasts of NPR’s All Things Considered and in PBS’s Stories from the Stage.
My writing allows me to tap into some of what I’d learned about Cuba at Smith College, where I majored in economics and Spanish literature. Those studies included a year of liberal arts coursework at la Universidad de Córdoba, Spain, where I went, in part, to reconnect with my culture. Instead, I learned what should have been obvious. Spain was in Europe and could not offer the sense of “home” I was searching for, despite the echoes of Latino-ness in bits and pieces of its people and culture. Still, it was an unforgettable and beautiful year.
I hope you’ll subscribe and join the community I hope to form here, where curious people with a little time can think about something big that’s happening just 90 miles off Key West.
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