Category Archives: sanctions

Cuba VI – James Baldwin, racism, imperialism and ourselves

In the 2010 interview when Fidel Castro apologized to gay Cubans for his government’s treatment of them in the 1960s, he asked, “Why hate the United States, if it is only a product of history?”

At the same time, we need to name what is going on. For the sake of describing the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, and also economic, political and military power exercised in the world today, sometimes we talk about “Empire.” But there are moments, such as in discussions of Cuba (or in the wake of 20 years of war in Afghanistan), when we need to be more direct, and talk about imperialism: coercion and force used by stronger states against less advantaged peoples.

James Baldwin: “I attest to this: The world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank.”

For the gay African-American writer James Baldwin (1924-87), the way that the United States behaved abroad was tied to racism and homophobia at home. In an essay on Baldwin, the Indian writer and academic Prakash Kona wrote: 

“In sustaining the hegemony of powerful global elites who serve as engine for corporate capitalism America is guilty of keeping alive the notion of a civilization obsessed with its own sense of racial, moral and political superiority.”

To make his argument, Kona drew on Baldwin’s reflections on “American innocence” — “an innocence trapped in an unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s actions” that for Kona is most “clearly revealed than in their foreign policy in the third world.” That particular quality of “American innocence” is demonstrated perfectly by Dick Cavett in a question to Baldwin that opens Raoul Peck’s brilliant film, I am not your Negro (2016, currently streaming here). 

Peck again took up Baldwin’s themes in an essay in The Atlantic in 2000, saying that the people of the United States need to heed Baldwin’s words:

Why can’t we understand, as Baldwin did and demonstrated throughout his life, that racism is not a sickness, nor a virus, but rather the ugly child of an economic system that produces inequalities and injustice? The history of racism is parallel to the history of capitalism. The law of the market, the battle for profit, the imbalance of power between those who have all and those who have nothing are part of the foundation of this macabre play. He spoke about this not-so-hidden infrastructure again and again:

“What one does realize is that when you try to stand up and look the world in the face like you had a right to be here, you have attacked the entire power structure of the Western world.” And more pointedly: “I attest to this: The world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank.”

Cuba holds firm

While many other attempts to break free of U.S. hegemony over the Americas have been suppressed (Dominican Republic in 1963 and 1965; Chile in 1973; Honduras in 2009—to mention only a few examples) and others are under siege (Venezuela today), Cuba holds firm.

Yesterday (Sept. 16), Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador welcomed his Cuban counterpart, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, to events marking the 211th anniversary of the beginning of Mexico’s fight for independence.
“I have said and I repeat: we can be in agreement or not with the Cuban Revolution and with its government, but to have resisted for 62 years without submission is an indisputable historical feat.”  Texts of their speeches (in Spanish).

Many of us from the global North get involved in the global South out of a partly-formed sense of solidarity or misguided charity. We only start to think about imperialism when we see that our goals of social justice or an end to poverty are blocked outright by U.S. imperialism (the history of invasions and coups) or by systemic oppression and exploitation (debt, banking and trade rules, etc.). Social movements find that their way towards liberation is blocked by systems imposed from the richer, Northern countries.

Their starting point in Latin America was usually the problem Gustavo Gutiérrez described: poverty—and then what to do about it. My starting point has been among various expressions of liberation theology, social gospel or the preferential option for the poor, and aligning myself with similarly-inspired actions. Hence my support for political options like those taken in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and most recently (and still tentatively) Peru, and movements like the MST (landless people) in Brazil and the Zapatistas in Mexico. Those movements may not set out to be anti-imperialist, but to the extent that they are opposed by capitalism and its proponents, they must become anti-imperialist.

Gail Walker (left) of Pastors for Peace speaks to a gathering at College Street United Church in Toronto in July 2018.

By way of conclusion, some ways to connect with others who work in solidarity with people in Cuba.

Pastors for Peace and the larger coalition of which it is part, the Intereligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), are based in New York City and led mostly by African-American and Latinx people. P4P has done a superb job of undercutting the US blockade of Cuba by simply breaking it: people go to Cuba in caravans, provide aid, and support US students to study medicine in Cuba. You can join their mailing list here for updates on Cuba.

In Canada, there are a variety of solidarity networks, including the Canadian Network on Cuba and the Canadian-Cuban Solidarity Association (CCFA) that promote friendship and share information. CUBAbility, a Toronto-based group, sends musical instruments and other aid. Some churches (notably The United Church of Canada) and trade unions work with partners in Cuba.

Cuba III: Churches emphasize the value of dialogue and mutual listening

When protests broke out on Sunday, July 11, President Miguel Díaz-Canel went to the streets of San Antonio de los Baños, southwest of Havana, to talk with protesters about their grievances—something the presidents of Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Guatemala and Haiti never did despite months of protests in their countries.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel hears from the people of San Antonio de los Baños on July 11 (Photo: Estudios Revolución). Right: Bishop Griselda Delgado of Cuba’s Episcopalian (Anglican) Church (Photo: Jim Hodgson)

In the wake of the protests, Cuba’s churches called for dialogue. The Catholic bishops warned against “a rigidity and hardening of positions” and encouraged “mutual listening.” The bishop of the Episcopalian (Anglican) Church, María Griselda Delgado, said: “There will always be divergences, diverse opinions, different thoughts; there is the richness and integrity of being a People. It is necessary to raise the value of dialogue to seek understanding.” (Several of the church statements are posted in English on a Facebook site related to the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) On Aug. 6, the Cuban Council of Churches and leaders of its member churches met with President Díaz-Canel, along with the Student Christian Movement and other ecumenical groups.

Like many Canadians, I made my first visit to Cuba as a tourist. That was in 1992, at the height of the “special period” when Cubans faced hardship as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and sought new ways to engage with the rest of the world. 

From 2000 to 2019, I had the privilege of visiting the country almost every year. For two decades on behalf of The United Church of Canada, I worked alongside Cuban churches and their ecumenical organizations (the Cuban Council of Churches, the Evangelical Seminary of Theology in Matanzas, the Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue in Cárdenas, and the Martin Luther King Memorial Centre in Havana).

Canadians visited Cuba; Cubans came to Canada. The relationships were lively: rooted in love and mutual respect, and not immune from political and religious controversies. We learned together and taught one another in formal and informal settings—academic exchanges (faculty and students), congregational twinning, and participation together in international settings (World Social Forum, Hemispheric Social Alliance, World Council of Churches, ACT Alliance, and others). And we worked with U.S. churches to help maintain and strengthen their ties with Cuban churches in the face of official U.S. hostility to Cuba. My occasional conversations with Cuban government staff and politicians were friendly and informative.

All of those efforts are about building bridges, sharing stories, promoting dialogue. We could even find common ground with the government of Canada’s “constructive engagement” policy approach to Cuba and, for many years, collaborate in official development assistance projects.

And so, I welcome the voices of those Cuban churches that work in favour of dialogue and realistic approaches to solving problems.

Theology in Revolution

For the Cuban churches, the years following the Cuban Revolution were challenging. The new government was suspicious of churches that had aligned themselves historically with the elites or that operated as “missions” that were dependent on U.S. support.  The government restricted religious activity. Many ministers and priests left the country, though there was more enthusiasm for the revolution among lay people. Atheism became official state policy and religious believers were discriminated against in employment and education.

View of Matanzas from the Evangelical Seminary of Theology (SET); Sergio Arce in 2007. (Photos: Jim Hodgson)

Some among those who stayed—or, as in the case of Presbyterian theologian Sergio Arce Martínez, returned—developed a “theology in revolution” in the 1960s. Arce was concerned not with a God “up there,” but rather with God “down here” as experienced in human history, especially in the revolution against poverty, exclusion and imperialism. Christians from other parts of the world attended the 1966 Tricontinental Congress in Havana, and then the Cultural Congress held in Havana in January 1968. That event was attended by several Catholic priests whose declaration was read aloud by Fidel Castro at the closing.

Elsewhere, other processes were underway: the Roman Catholic Church’s II Vatican Council (1962-65) and the meeting of Latin American bishops in Medellín in 1968; the growth of Christian base communities; Priests for the Third World in Argentina in 1966; the World Conference on Church and Society, held in Geneva in 1966, that identified the close relationship between peace and justice; and emergence of the National Organization for Social Integration (ONIS) in Peru in 1968, the Golcanda group in Colombia, also in 1968, and Christians for Socialism in Salvador Allende’s Chile in 1971. All of these currents—including the Cuban Revolution itself—influenced each other and played a role in the articulation of liberation theology by Gustavo Gutiérrez and others in the early 70s. The confluence of those processes, plus the Catholic Church’s articulation of the “preferential option for the poor” in the late 70s, and patient work by Christians in Cuba to overcome the revolutionary government’s early distrust of organized religion, resulted in the Communist Party’s decision in 1991 to drop its requirement that party members be atheists. More Cuban Christians began to attend worship and join churches.

Use and abuse of organized religion

The U.S. government has made no secret of its intent to use religious groups to subvert the Cuban Revolution. Most blatant in this regard was the May 2004 Report to President G.W. Bush by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, chaired by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. The commission promised to use religious organizations in “building a free Cuba.” It also proposed to “differentiate the leadership of the Cuban Council of Churches” from its members (p.64). 

Read now, almost two decades later, the report is as ludicrous as other Orwellian lies from the Bush era, like the ones about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that Afghans would welcome foreign invaders. 

Even so, you can see the effects of the approach in the attacks today on the Cuban Council of Churches in responses to its social media posts. 

With graver consequences, networks of conservative Christians oppose gender equity, same-sex marriage and Trans rights as if they were attacks on the “traditional family.” Any criticism of the fundamentalist view draws charges from the U.S. government that Cuba is attacking religious freedom. (I’ll look at LGBTI rights in a future post.)

In facing the alignment of fundamentalist Christian religion with right-wing politics, Cuba is not alone. Across Latin America and beyond, many of these groups seek to use state power to impose their narrow moral agenda. I have written about this phenomenon previously (in the context of Colombia) here.

Next week: Unwrapping development, Cuban-style; LGBTI rights and inclusion; and something along the lines of “how to confront imperialism without losing your soul.”

Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, met Sept. 9 with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and with scientists who developed Cuba’s Covid vaccines.

Cuba I – The U.S. blockade is a failure

A recent article The Guardian begins with the proposition: “If the U.S. really cared about freedom in Cuba, it would end its punishing sanctions.” Yes, but I would argue that the U.S. cares nothing for Cuba: only that it cease to present a model of how to set social priorities for the common good ahead of narrow economic ones that benefit a wealthy minority, and that it cease to offer a pretty good model of human and ecological development that advances largely outside the global capitalist system.

The whole point of sanctions against Cuba (usually referred to more generally as the blockade or the embargo) has been to cause sufficient dissatisfaction so as to provoke regime change. 

“The blockade was not simply, as many believe, the cutting of an umbilical cord with the United States,” Colombia’s Nobel-prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez wrote 1975. “It was a ferocious attempt at genocide promoted by a power almost without limits, whose tentacles appear in any part of the world.”

The U.S. logic for the blockade was identified in soon after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in a memorandum written by Lester Mallory, deputy assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, to his superiors on April 6, 1960 while Dwight Eisenhower was still president: “The majority of Cubans support Castro.… The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” [Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.]

With dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington escalated measures intended to strangle Cuba, including the Torricelli Act (1992), Helms-Burton law (1996) and a portfolio of measures announced by G.W. Bush (2004). These measures included severe restrictions on financial transfers (including those by U.S. churches to Cuban churches) along with travel and exchanges of all kinds.

The administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001) allowed increased travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens. This was an attempt to “change” Cuba by encouraging grassroots contact that would spread new ideas in Cuban society. But what happened was that the minds of U.S. visitors were changed: they returned and advocated for an end to the embargo and for a more profound understanding of what has gone on in Cuba since the Revolution in 1959.

Late in the Barack Obama years, some sanctions were eased, diplomatic relations restored, and the U.S. president visited Havana in March 2016. His successor, Donald Trump, instituted 243 new measures against Cuba.

The new administration of Joseph Biden (the 11th president since Eisenhower) refuses to dismantle the sanctions, including those imposed by Trump. Among other things, those measures severely restrict remittances from and travel by Cuban-Americans to their homeland and visits by Cubans to the United States. 

After more than 60 years of trying, the strategy has failed. In June, the U.S. blockade was again condemned by 184 nations in the United Nations General Assembly, this time with only Israel supporting the U.S. position. Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil abstained.

In the wake of scattered protests in Cuba on July 11, Biden’s gang added even more pointless sanctions. Much that is said and written about Cuba in the weeks since those protests is full of insight. See, for example, articles by Rick Salutin and Vijay Prashad who both compared Cuba’s situation with that of Haiti, which still suffers the consequences of the punishment France exacted after people held in slavery liberated themselves in the 1804 revolution. (Haiti was forced to pay the equivalent of about $25 billion in today’s dollars to compensate the former slave-holders, a debt that wasn’t fully paid until 1947, almost a century-and-a-half later.)

But there is also a lot of drivel emanating from the U.S. state department and the Miami exiles that shows up in mainstream media. Solutions will not come from north of the Straits of Florida, but rather from processes within Cuba. 

Every country on the planet encompasses different opinions just now about responses by governments to the pandemic. In that sense, Cuba is not different—though the government’s capacity to act efficiently is limited by that one simple fact: that the blockade continues. In effect, the United States has used the pandemic as an ally in its effort to suffocate the Cuban revolution.

Cubans struggle with income lost from the U.S. ban on remittances. The tourist industry suffers as the pandemic inhibits travel. Blackouts derive from the U.S.-induced crisis in Venezuela that has sharply reduced the supply of petroleum-based energy. There is inflation that is related to a complicated currency reform. 

On Feb. 18, 2021, U.S. and Cuban churches wrote to Biden, asking him to restore travel, remittances and trade with Cuba; to remove Cuba from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism;” to rescind Trump’s mandate to use extraterritorial provisions of the Helms-Burton law; and to rebuild U.S. diplomatic presence in Cuba. 

Meanwhile, Cuban scientists developed Covid vaccines (Soberana and Abdala, which each require three doses for maximum protection), but the blockade hampers production and slows delivery of syringes and personal protective equipment. 

Difficulties notwithstanding, by Sept. 2, Cuba had administered at least one dose to 5.7 million people among a total population of 11.3 million. Of those, 4.6 million had received their second shots and just over 4 million their third. Vaccinations of adolescents and children began Sept. 3, using the Soberana-2 vaccine.

In days and weeks ahead, I will share some thoughts about Cuban history, religious issues that impact political debate, approaches to development and participation in Cuba, gender equity and LGBTI rights, and the broader struggle to overcome imperialism.