let cuba live
what I wrote on return from Cuba in January
the campaign of starvation against Cuba continues, and now the Treasury accuses this country that they are desperate to stamp out with financially backing leftist groups in the U.S.. I feel really helpless in the face of what the embargo is doing to a free and autonomous country. this is a draft of a piece I wrote on return from the island in January.
apagonia
I left Havana with a sore throat and everyone coughing. Two small boxes of grey market Azithromicina in my pocket. The last two espressos were good, cost two dollars, but we paid in the pesos we were desperate to get rid of. The electricity went out twice while we were waiting for the agent to print our boarding passes.
On the way to the airport, we saw lines of people on highway on-ramp corners flagging down collectivos. Our friend and guide Miguel explained that now that there is almost no gas, they might be charging higher fares, and fewer are driving. We had ridden around in our driver Rafael’s Cubataxi minivan for 9 days without any gas trouble, thanks to his constant ballet. Sometimes he would wait in line an hour to fill the tank, and when the stations was out he would call a taxista friend who inevitably had some stored in his garage. He did all of this outside the hours of 9-4 when he was with us. I am explaining this to you because I think it will elucidate the anxiety of the Cuban situation. However, Rafael explained it to me without alarm. When will we learn to see?
Leaving both Playa Larga and Cienfuegos, there were large groups of people on the curb leading up the highway hoping to flag down a ride, some of their faces said they were in for a serious wait. Kids waited with their parents, some with suitcases, across the street from a neighborhood agroponico.
Entering Miami, a camera has replaced the border guard, and we waltz in. Leaving Miami for Boston, I am seated next to a tan old white man who struggles to stand up when I appear at our row. He has brought two ergonomic cushions onto the plane with him. The man turns on an audiobook, and I see it is titled “The Invisible Coup.” Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s face is on the cover lined up with others I don’t recognize. The man and I appear to have the same cough, I am masked, and he is not. It comes up deep from the diaphragm area and leaves us wheezing.
The author he listens to believes that young progressive politicians have silently seized control of the seats of governmental power. He is ailing, he is coughing, and will be met at the plane door with a worker and a wheelchair, dependent on care I bet he would prefer not to support for other people. In the country I left, both men like him and the people he’s afraid of stealing his government would have free healthcare and free education. They would have the right to subsidized food. They would be offered a guaranteed job placement after college. They harangue imperialism and the rapacious violence of empire on their monuments. An entire suburb of Havana wears Zohran campaign T-shirts. I am certain most of the people I pass in the Miami airport don’t know the definitions of imperialism and empire, and I am still trying to work them out myself. In the country I left that morning, there is almost no gas, and it’s rare to have power for more than a few hours at a time. Medicine is scarce and expensive. Food too. People struggle to maintain their homes and gardens with aging materials. Trash piles up on corners in the capital and alongside roads in the country. People and dogs pick through the trash. Many young people are leaving how they can. It would cost nothing to American citizens to lift the embargo.
We land in the north, I drop my father off at the bus station, and drive in a daze to a Whole Foods in Lexington. I cannot shop efficiently. I zig and zag and touch large grapefruits I know will hurt my throat if I buy them. I am ashamed even to look at the strawberries so out of season. It would cost nothing.
Six days after our return, the headlines say that the Havana airport can no longer refuel the vessels that land there. Russia sends a plane for their tourists. I keep thinking about Miguel, and how he said it’s hard to get enough data to listen to podcasts, and what he would do if he were here with all this opportunity and so many salads. I send him a Whatsapp message. He says his university has gone online and he’s been at home practicing the ukulele.
Trying to write about Cuba and all my best pens are running out of ink. There’s a place very close to here where it’s quite hard to buy a coke or a Heineken. If your stomach is bothering you and you opt for a soda over a meal, you’ll have a Santa Cola (made in Spain) or a Pepsi with a strange aftertaste, like the corn syrup grew fuzz on the long ship ride it took to get here.
The People’s Forum, among other orgs, is fundraising to bring solar panels & solar generators to Cuba as their fuel, food, and public health crisis worsens.
Consider donating what you can: https://www.letcubalive.info/