Cuba's hunger and poverty were made in Washington

The early 1990s were Cuba's "special period", and it was misery for anyone not well connected to black marketeers or apparatchiks of influence. Thirty years ago, the island smelled of the sea, tobacco and famine. Havana street dogs were skin-on-bones and- so hungry; they had no bark or bite- left in them. As for the Cubans who lived in the run-down, paint-peeled, rotting apartments and homes of the capital? They weren't much better off than the city's street animals. Rationed rice, beans, and an unlimited supply of cheap local cigarettes were the diet for most residents on the island. Meat for a meal was a rarity because resorts for foreigners had first dips on chicken and pork for their US dollar-paying clients.

What was old is new again in Cuba because a new "special period" has returned to the island nation thanks to an ever-increasing draconian US embargo along with a tourism industry disastrously weakened by Covid and a worldwide cost of living crisis which has kneecapped the nation's economy.

Photo by JF Martin on Unsplash

Cuba was famished in the 1990s like it is now- not so much from a communist revolution that had grown corrupt, but because of their rightful divorce from the American empire and its capitalism in 1959, when Castro overthrew the US-backed dictator, Batista. The USA scorned- is a vengeful beast and has proven that to Cuba for the last 65 years. It has done everything possible to destroy the prosperity and future of the Cuban people for over six decades lest others think they too have a right to be sovereign from the one way street of US capitalism.

During those seasons of hunger three decades ago, I was briefly but closely acquainted with Cuba. My employer, a private family-owned Canadian television company, wanted to expand their lucrative sports and tourism side hustle into Cuba.

On many occasions, I was sent there as a video producer to manufacture promotional commercials which sold our company's niche sports and recreational tourism packages. Making videos about first-class vacations for sport-minded tourists kept me far from Cubans queuing for scarce basic foodstuffs. Hunger and despair happened- off the resorts I stayed in.

The unhappiness of millions was something that occurred far from the lens of my video camera. It was something whispered about by Cubans employed to facilitate my work when our government minder was out of earshot.

America's wrath against the Cuban people was not tangible to me until I travelled, on my own, to Havana and saw the "real Cuba "in January 1992. Then, I was a callow 29-year-old who used sarcasm to make myself seem cynically wiser than my years. I didn't know shit- because the nature of all my experiences, which were sometimes unpleasant, were suburban and came from a vantage of privilege.

I booked myself into the Hotel Colina, which was situated- near the University of Havana. The Cubans I knew called it Hotel California because "you can check out anytime you like, But you can never leave."

It was 25 bucks a night cheap, and the accommodations were spartan even by 1990s standards. A herd of cockroaches the size of prawns squatted in the shower stall of my room 24/7 because the electric system, due to the US embargo, was in a perpetual state of brownout.

The other residents were a mixture of seedy sex tourists and young foreign left-wing students taking courses in Spanish and revolution at the university.

Havana, in the winter of 1992, was desolate, where cars on its road were few and far between owing to a shortage of fuel. The port was widowed from trade and barren of freighters or cruise ships. At the Malecon, the city's seawall, Cubans with makeshift fishing poles cast their lines in the seawater hoping to catch their evening meal. The city's famed and fading Payret cinema marquis announced without irony that Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy was showing that week. Nearby, The Kid Chocolate Sports Complex façade flaked in the Caribbean sun, while the building cast a slumped shadow over the pavement below.

Cubans, pencil-thin from starvation rations, darted through the streets in clothes faded but immaculately clean towards their official work or off to make real money in the underground black market economy.

In the evenings- owing to power shortages, street lights were dimmed as if it was wartime. In those dark, warm winter nights, I was led around the city by a small group of Cubans- whom I had befriended- during the other times I was in the country for work.

All of them were working class and young. They weren't revolutionaries-maybe their parents were in the 1950s and 1960s. But that was another generation's war. They were just youthful people who felt that the politics of America and Cuba had betrayed their desires for a future. They were the ones throughout history who- during economic, social or political revolutions- were quickly forgotten, ignored or repressed into non-existence.

They were the ones who couldn't do a; yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir for long or with any conviction to either the boss of a capitalist's factory or a Red Commissar. They drank rum, smoked illegal weed and had fantasies that the West was a place where they would have the freedom to make their destiny. Like Moscow to the Three Sisters in Chekov's play, The USA for these Cubans was a place where happiness and wealth were in abundance due to counterfeit nostalgia and propaganda.

It was of course- a fantasy. It was like the fantasy I saw constructed by refugees in Calais who lived in squalor at the camp called "The Jungle." Those desperate people on the French side of the English channel told themselves the fairy tale that if they reached British shores-Britain would treat them as human beings. It is the narrative desperate people always create to give them the optimism to get out of bed in the morning and either dream or build plans to escape an oppressive, unfair present reality.

Photo by Darius on Unsplash

That 30 years later in 2024, I feel a sense of Deja vu for Cuba. It's just another generation's turn to have their hopes and dreams crushed by US Imperialism, along- with a Cuban revolution that long ago lost its way because it didn't have to reform owing to outside threats from America. Although this time, I think there will be blood on the streets of Cuba. But I also think there will be blood on the streets everywhere because the American Empire is a dying star. Our age is in a state of flux and we are living like the people of Pompeii in 79 AD in the shadow of a Volcano that was about to erupt.

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