When it comes to Cuba, there’s a lot of hypocrisy from the right and from the left
strators.
At least one protester was killed, and about 200 have been arrested, beaten, tortured or “disappeared” in the regime’s crackdown on the largest social protest in several decades, human-rights groups say.
But instead of defending the Cuban people’s right to express themselves peacefully, these and other members of the region’s Jurassic left joined the dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in blaming the U.S. “blockade” for the protests in Cuba.
In fact, there is no “blockade.” According to Cuba’s own official figures, the island conducts trade with 70 countries around the world, including the United States. There is an embargo on U.S. trade with Cuba, which Washington imposed in 1962 after the island’s regime expropriated U.S. companies there.
And the U.S. embargo has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. The United States is one of Cuba’ s 15 largest trading partners and the biggest exporter of food and agricultural goods to Cuba, according to U.S. government figures. .
The United States ships about $276 million a year in food and medicines to Cuba. In addition, U.S. residents send $3.5 billion a year in family remittances to the island, and more than 500,000 U.S. tourists visited Cuba in 2019, at the height of Trump’s sanctions.. In other words, the United States is one of Cuba’s main sources of income.
The leaders of the U.S.
Black Lives Matter movement issued a statement on its official Twitter account calling for an “immediate” end to the U.S. embargo. It didn’t include a single word about the Cuban people’s right to protest peacefully.
It seems that Black
Lives Matter doesn’t care about the fact that most of the protesters on the streets were Afro-Cubans, or that Cuba has been run by a nearly all-white dictatorship for the past six decades.
Ironically, Black Lives Matter was born as a movement to protest police brutality against African Americans in the United States, but it looks the other way when white police beat peaceful Black protesters in Cuba.
There’s a lot of hypocrisy on the right, too. It starts with former President Trump, who tried to subvert democracy in his own country by refusing to accept his 2020 electoral defeat, though he pretends to be a champion of democracy in Cuba.
Despite his justified criticism of Cuba’s dictatorship, Trump did a huge disservice to the cause of democracy and human rights by happily embracing dictators in North Korea, China, Russia and Turkey. That left the United States with no moral authority to lead any international effort to restore democracy in Cuba, or anywhere else.
Likewise, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Marco Rubio and Miami Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez are trying to portray themselves as champions of the struggle for democracy in Cuba.
But they lack credentials to speak about democracy. How can they call for democracy in Cuba, when they tacitly endorse Trump’s little-disguised attempt to stage a coup d’etat in the United
States?
President Biden is doing the right thing in not listening to Black Lives Matter and other members of his Democratic Party’s left wing, who want him to revamp economic ties with Cuba. Former President Obama tried that in 2014, and Cuba didn’t respond with any meaningful steps to allow fundamental freedoms.
Biden must be more pro-active. His vow to find ways to provide free internet to the Cuban people is a good first step.
Washington could, for instance, help provide free VPN access to Cubans, so that they could download Whatsapp, Telegram or other social media without being blocked by Cuba’s government censors.
Biden should do this immediately. And he should do it as a matter of principle, without paying attention to hypocrites on the right and on the left.
Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 8 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera