November 11, 2024 • 16 mins
CUBA'S ELECTRIC GRID IS COLLAPSING And this is really nothing new for the devastatingly poor socialist island paradise. I've got Mailyn Salabarria--lawyer and speaker with the Dissident Project--who was born in Cuba and fled to the USA in 2001. She recently wrote this column about how the power woes are nothing new in Cuba. The column is called Socialism Turned Off the Lights in Cuba for a reason and you should read it. She joins me at 1:30 to discuss it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am joined by a woman who was born in Cuba,
emigrated to the United States about twenty four years ago,
twenty two, twenty three years ago. And Meelan Salabaria is
with me now to talk about a column she just
did about the lights in Cuba. And Meelane, first of all,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
It's a pleasure to be here with you and your audience.
Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
So I want to kind.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Of start with your life story before we get into
what's happening now in Cuba. How old were you when
you left Cuba and tell me about that. How did
you come to the United States.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I came to the United States in two thousand and one,
so I left Cuba as a adult shortly after I
graduated from law school in the University in Havana. Literally
waited a couple of weeks to get the equivalent of
my transcripts and my diploma never registered with what would
be the equivalent of the war.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Here in the United States.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Otherwise I will have been set in a stone in
a government database and they will have never allowed me
to leave. Back then, we still have the Cuban Adjustment Act,
so we could come as refugees and have a legal
path with certain requirements until I became an American citizen
in two thousand and nine. So yes, I was born
and raised in communist Cuba while field culture was still
(01:19):
in power. So trust me, there is nothing about the
wonders of socialism quote unquote.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
That I have lived on my own life personally.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And I think one of the reasons that I'm happy
you're coming on to talk about this is because Cuba
is currently in a really bad situation.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
But this is the normal.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
End result of socialism. So tell me what is happening
on the island right now.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's very simple.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It is this is like the last chapter of any
econ one on one book that you can read onto
why centralized economy, collectivism and socialism doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And yes, you can have all the talking heads of
the world telling you that it's the fault of the.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Embargo or whatever is the few restrictions of the helm
Board and Act.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That we still have in place, which are not many.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
That reality is not that the Cuban government has been
consistently receiving a lot of money from other sources and
trading and doing business with the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
E said that with.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The United States, they have to pay in cash, and
still they haven't prioritized what really needs to be done
in the infrastructure of the country. And the collapse of
the power grid is just the latest example of a
whole line of neglect and mismanagement that again has the
root cause in a centralized economy that doesn't work. To
(02:46):
go back into some of the details that I had
restent that article that you were mentioned earlier, this.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Happened about two weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It was like a total collapse of the entire power
grid on the island. There is no amount of cheap
oil crude oil from Venezuela or chips that the new
president of Mexico and to Cuba that is going to
fix that. Why because the infrastructure is crumbling, and its
crumbling because the Cuban government and the Communist Party has
(03:15):
made a deliberate decision to prioritize other things. For example,
I don't know how familiar you are or your audience
is with the way that the tourism system and industry
works in Cuba. It's basically on and operated by conglomerate,
a government monopoly called Gaza, which is a front company
(03:37):
for the higher needs of a military. So this is
a company that is run and operated by the Quban army.
We are talking about that seventy percent of the revenue
that inter Cuba through tourism is controlled by this company.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What are they doing with the money they are reinvesting in.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hotels and spending in more tourist infrastructure. Are they being
demonstrated the low capacity instead of prioritizing critical infrastructure improvement
and development Like the case of the power grid, all
the power plants operated in QBA are thirty years or old,
if not more.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They all have really all technology. They have a huge.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Exodus professionals that are supposed to be working on that.
So here you have like a critical point, like a
perfose form of all their mistakes, just meeting in the
same place it happened last about two weeks ago. They
kind of stabilize it a little bit, and now in
the last three days they're collapsing again when they tried
(04:40):
to bring two of the powers into the national grid.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So we're back to the same position we were two weeks.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Ago, and literally people have no internet, they have no power,
They none of the septic or none of the sewers working. Oh,
so people have been thrust into the dark ages and
what should be a functioning economy. And I think part
of this, and I want to ask your opinion about this,
is this because Cuba has been being propped up for
(05:07):
decades now by Venezuela, by Russia. They send money, they
send oil, they send cheap goods and stuff like that. Well,
now Venezuela has collapsed inevitably as they were going to.
And now Russia is busy in redirecting all of their
energy and resources to the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
So is this exacerbated? It made it worse.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
It is exactly what you are describing. You have to
keep in mind that.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Since Castro took over, Cuba has never been a self
sustainable economy. First it was a direct pipeline from the
Soviet Union and all the communist countries in Eastern Europe.
When that got caught off when the Berlin Wall fell,
then they went into latching into Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Where Child's and Malua we're in there.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Now Venezuela has been following into the same disaster that happened.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
To Cuba a little bit faster.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And now that pipeline is also caught off and then
you have like the little key from China, little here
from Mexico, little hear from Russia, and still is not enough.
Why because the foundation of the economy of the country
is in crumbles. Just to give you a quick example,
this is something that we learn through a dissident reporting
from Cuba about a year ago, and is that putting
(06:18):
and the Russian government has given the Cuban government a
very good term loan of close to one to put
to one point two billion euros I believe, and it
was ear mark specifically for a power infrastructure improvement and
to build and rebuild and repair new power plants. The
(06:43):
only condition that put input on the Cuban government was
that they needed to come up with ten percent of
that money as a down payment. They didn't do it,
and the high ideal through why it fell through because
the equivalent money that would have matched that ten percent
man did they decided to use it into They keep
(07:03):
building hotels, they keep building these tours, resources, all these tours.
Infrastructure is still empty, and that's where they are prioritizing
investing the little money that they're getting in the country.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
That's why when I was writing that piece, I.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Was referring to, you know, the second twisted priorities. Somebody
has to pay for the rolicxs that the canels wears.
Somebody has to pay for the Gucci bags and the
shoes that his wife is touting all over the world,
where regular women and people.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
In Cube are literally starving.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
So and like you were saying before, the collapse of
the power grid includes a series of connecting effects that
made the daily life for the other Cuban even worse
than they are that they were before. You have to
keep in mind I left in two thousand and one
and living with the scheduled blackouts was my normal life
for the twenty seven years that I was in Cuba,
(07:58):
so that has always been the quote unquote normal. So
now you have these areas, especially in the rural areas,
they always try to prioritize the capitol. And still in
the last two days even the capital has been in
total blackout. Last news that I read this morning, some
neighborhoods in the outscirts of Havana have been without power
(08:20):
for ninety hours. So, like you were saying, you don't
have running water, the source system is collapsed, you don't
have internet. However, all the tourist hotels, resources, all the
buildings of the higher elits of the army body, you know, officials,
the neighborhoods where the embassies are, all those peoples.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
They never know what a blackout is.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
We have to see, you know, we have to see
the priorities, like everybody is equal, but some people are
more equal than others exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
And I was, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And what happened that is a little bit different in
this last week and when the set bround of this
collapse happened, is that it hit really bad these supurban
working class neighborhoods in Havana, and anyone that can go
to Twitter or ex can see how people I don't
know how they have been charging the phones or putting
(09:15):
out the little life out in the Internet. People are
starting to bang in pots and pants as a form
of protest because of.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
How many hours they have been without power.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Now to add insult to injury, you have people in
Cuba that have you know, they have gone to the
offices of the local municipalities, the local government to ask
for an answer, what's happening, what's the plan?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
When is this going to be solved. They're obviously being
given all this, you.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Know, which you watching responses, and then you have the cannel,
which is the aun elected you know, appointed here of
the Castros plantation that is now acting as a president,
coming into the news yesterday and saying, well, this is
just like a hay campaign and fake news being put
out on the internet by the ego ynkeys people that
(10:05):
hate us, and we are here where there are being
of revolutionarily some blah blah blah, not one sentence about Okay,
what are you doing to fix the power?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Great problem? And on top of.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
That, then they're sending out the brown chers, the political police,
the black wis, which is what would be the equivalent
of the swat teams in the police here in the
United States.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
They're sending them now.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
To those neighborhoods that have been without power for ninety
hours because people there to bang their pots and pants as.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
A form of protest.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I was talking to a young person not so long ago,
and he said, I don't understand why the Cuban people
or in We started out talking about Venezuela, and then
I turned to the Cuban people. He said, I don't
understand why they don't you rise up? And I'm like, well,
they don't have any weapons. That's the first thing, because
zach Castro, you know, in order to promote safety, took
(10:57):
away all the guns and now they're reduced to pots
and pants the streets. I want to ask you, Mayleen,
because I love to travel and a friend of mine
was going to Cuba and I said, I am not
going to give Cuba any of my money. And you
just confirmed what I have been told, and that is
while the hotels and the tourist district they have full restaurants,
they have everything they need. Regular Cuban people can't get
(11:19):
bell peppers, they can't get onions, they can't get the
basic staples to eat because they're bleeding them dry. But
I want to ask you this one question. Is this
like a last gasp attempt by the regime to create
any kind of economy. And if they did create any
kind of decent tourism economy, do you have any confidence
(11:40):
that the people of Cuba would benefit from that in
any significant way?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
What guy is this military conglomery in Cua have been
doing with tourists since they were lean Wolf felled down.
It's not to improve the economy of the country. It's
for them to enrich themselves. That's why they live like
the pigs in animal farm. That's why they have all
their kids buying properties abroad everywhere in Spain, in South America,
(12:08):
and that's why they're you know, laundering the money and
taking it out of Cuba.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
They have never given a.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Flying rat about you know, the economy of the country
or the welfare of the Cuban people. Otherwise they will
have shown some acts or some you know, actual measurable
outcome after sixty five years. So I have absolutely no
confident in that they are. That's the propaganda that they
want to put out for the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Obviously, and clearly we have.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Like like they them self defined masses of useful idiots,
not only in the United States but all over the
work eating completely all that propaganda. But I have no
confidence that they're doing that for the Cuban people. They
don't care about the country's economy, They don't care about
the other's Cuban They only care about themselves, how they live,
and how they keep lining their pockets with more money.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Melan. Every time something catastrophic happens in Cuba, I think
to myself, this could be the thing.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
This could be the breaking point where.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
The Cuban people rise up and unarmed rush the rush
the capitol and do something.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Well, how bad does it have to get?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I mean, we see what happened in Venezuela where people
were literally starving, and they still have the regime in
place in Venezuela.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
What has to happen?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Do you think before we get on a significant regime?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Don't know? Yeah, honestly, I think it's gonna have It's
I was talking with a friend of mine, also Cuban American,
and he left.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
He's an older generation.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
That means obviously his parents took him out of Cuba
when he was younger, and he told me something that god,
you know, got stuck in my head because I never
thought about it from that angle, And is that the
generations of Cubans that had any fire left inside they're dead?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, they're gone.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
I mean you have to understand by the time that
I was born, that Cuba that was before nineteen fifty nine,
or that Cuba of that first generation that is still
fought when they realized what Caustle was really trying to
impose is gone.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That Cuba was already gone by the time that I
was born. So here we have another.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
You know, political science and equal one on one lesson,
and what happens when now you're dealing with three or
four generations of Cubans born, raised and brainwashed under this
system that tells you that firearms are bad, that that
is stas the one that is going to take care
of you, that everybody's equal again until you realize that
(14:38):
some people are more equal than others. So I think
it's going to take a longer process. It's going to
take a longer awaken it. That being said, there is
a lot of courageous people in Cuba literally inside the monster,
speaking out, reporting the things in jail, protesting.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Being made up, you name it.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
But I think that the fact that it's now an
entire society with several generations that don't know how it
was before, is gonna make that process harder. Like you
mentioned the fact that the first thing that Castro did
when he took over was, you know, taking away all
the firearms the island per se geographically speaking, as a present,
(15:18):
you don't have borders, you don't have a way to
get help from anyone else unless someone consciously, you know,
it's really invested.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
In helping the people inside.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Clearly the change is gonna come from within, but I
think it's gonna take time, probably onto all this cloud
elite of the old you know, revolutionaries from those years.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
We feel that castro dye and seeing what happens with
the new one.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I mean, it would be a sweet irony if it
would be blackouts on the darkness what definitely, finally, once
and for all, brings that tyranny down.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
I love Cuban culture, I love Cuban food, I love
Cuban music, I love Cuban people. I want that island
to be free because I'd like to be able to
go visit it in good conscience before I die. So
here's here's my little prayer that Cuba gets it gets
it together. Maelan Salabaria, thank you so much for your
time today and the great article of it.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, that everybody should share with their.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Young people who think that socialism is a viable system.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Maylan, thank you so much. We'll talk again in the future,
I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Okay, thank you, all right, thank you.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
That is Maelan Salabaria
I am joined by a woman who was born in Cuba,
emigrated to the United States about twenty four years ago,
twenty two, twenty three years ago. And Meelan Salabaria is
with me now to talk about a column she just
did about the lights in Cuba. And Meelane, first of all,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
It's a pleasure to be here with you and your audience.
Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
So I want to kind.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Of start with your life story before we get into
what's happening now in Cuba. How old were you when
you left Cuba and tell me about that. How did
you come to the United States.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I came to the United States in two thousand and one,
so I left Cuba as a adult shortly after I
graduated from law school in the University in Havana. Literally
waited a couple of weeks to get the equivalent of
my transcripts and my diploma never registered with what would
be the equivalent of the war.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Here in the United States.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Otherwise I will have been set in a stone in
a government database and they will have never allowed me
to leave. Back then, we still have the Cuban Adjustment Act,
so we could come as refugees and have a legal
path with certain requirements until I became an American citizen
in two thousand and nine. So yes, I was born
and raised in communist Cuba while field culture was still
(01:19):
in power. So trust me, there is nothing about the
wonders of socialism quote unquote.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
That I have lived on my own life personally.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And I think one of the reasons that I'm happy
you're coming on to talk about this is because Cuba
is currently in a really bad situation.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
But this is the normal.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
End result of socialism. So tell me what is happening
on the island right now.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's very simple.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It is this is like the last chapter of any
econ one on one book that you can read onto
why centralized economy, collectivism and socialism doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And yes, you can have all the talking heads of
the world telling you that it's the fault of the.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Embargo or whatever is the few restrictions of the helm
Board and Act.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That we still have in place, which are not many.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
That reality is not that the Cuban government has been
consistently receiving a lot of money from other sources and
trading and doing business with the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
E said that with.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The United States, they have to pay in cash, and
still they haven't prioritized what really needs to be done
in the infrastructure of the country. And the collapse of
the power grid is just the latest example of a
whole line of neglect and mismanagement that again has the
root cause in a centralized economy that doesn't work. To
(02:46):
go back into some of the details that I had
restent that article that you were mentioned earlier, this.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Happened about two weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It was like a total collapse of the entire power
grid on the island. There is no amount of cheap
oil crude oil from Venezuela or chips that the new
president of Mexico and to Cuba that is going to
fix that. Why because the infrastructure is crumbling, and its
crumbling because the Cuban government and the Communist Party has
(03:15):
made a deliberate decision to prioritize other things. For example,
I don't know how familiar you are or your audience
is with the way that the tourism system and industry
works in Cuba. It's basically on and operated by conglomerate,
a government monopoly called Gaza, which is a front company
(03:37):
for the higher needs of a military. So this is
a company that is run and operated by the Quban army.
We are talking about that seventy percent of the revenue
that inter Cuba through tourism is controlled by this company.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What are they doing with the money they are reinvesting in.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hotels and spending in more tourist infrastructure. Are they being
demonstrated the low capacity instead of prioritizing critical infrastructure improvement
and development Like the case of the power grid, all
the power plants operated in QBA are thirty years or old,
if not more.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They all have really all technology. They have a huge.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Exodus professionals that are supposed to be working on that.
So here you have like a critical point, like a
perfose form of all their mistakes, just meeting in the
same place it happened last about two weeks ago. They
kind of stabilize it a little bit, and now in
the last three days they're collapsing again when they tried
(04:40):
to bring two of the powers into the national grid.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So we're back to the same position we were two weeks.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Ago, and literally people have no internet, they have no power,
They none of the septic or none of the sewers working. Oh,
so people have been thrust into the dark ages and
what should be a functioning economy. And I think part
of this, and I want to ask your opinion about this,
is this because Cuba has been being propped up for
(05:07):
decades now by Venezuela, by Russia. They send money, they
send oil, they send cheap goods and stuff like that. Well,
now Venezuela has collapsed inevitably as they were going to.
And now Russia is busy in redirecting all of their
energy and resources to the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
So is this exacerbated? It made it worse.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
It is exactly what you are describing. You have to
keep in mind that.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Since Castro took over, Cuba has never been a self
sustainable economy. First it was a direct pipeline from the
Soviet Union and all the communist countries in Eastern Europe.
When that got caught off when the Berlin Wall fell,
then they went into latching into Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Where Child's and Malua we're in there.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Now Venezuela has been following into the same disaster that happened.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
To Cuba a little bit faster.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And now that pipeline is also caught off and then
you have like the little key from China, little here
from Mexico, little hear from Russia, and still is not enough.
Why because the foundation of the economy of the country
is in crumbles. Just to give you a quick example,
this is something that we learn through a dissident reporting
from Cuba about a year ago, and is that putting
(06:18):
and the Russian government has given the Cuban government a
very good term loan of close to one to put
to one point two billion euros I believe, and it
was ear mark specifically for a power infrastructure improvement and
to build and rebuild and repair new power plants. The
(06:43):
only condition that put input on the Cuban government was
that they needed to come up with ten percent of
that money as a down payment. They didn't do it,
and the high ideal through why it fell through because
the equivalent money that would have matched that ten percent
man did they decided to use it into They keep
(07:03):
building hotels, they keep building these tours, resources, all these tours.
Infrastructure is still empty, and that's where they are prioritizing
investing the little money that they're getting in the country.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
That's why when I was writing that piece, I.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Was referring to, you know, the second twisted priorities. Somebody
has to pay for the rolicxs that the canels wears.
Somebody has to pay for the Gucci bags and the
shoes that his wife is touting all over the world,
where regular women and people.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
In Cube are literally starving.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
So and like you were saying before, the collapse of
the power grid includes a series of connecting effects that
made the daily life for the other Cuban even worse
than they are that they were before. You have to
keep in mind I left in two thousand and one
and living with the scheduled blackouts was my normal life
for the twenty seven years that I was in Cuba,
(07:58):
so that has always been the quote unquote normal. So
now you have these areas, especially in the rural areas,
they always try to prioritize the capitol. And still in
the last two days even the capital has been in
total blackout. Last news that I read this morning, some
neighborhoods in the outscirts of Havana have been without power
(08:20):
for ninety hours. So, like you were saying, you don't
have running water, the source system is collapsed, you don't
have internet. However, all the tourist hotels, resources, all the
buildings of the higher elits of the army body, you know, officials,
the neighborhoods where the embassies are, all those peoples.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
They never know what a blackout is.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
We have to see, you know, we have to see
the priorities, like everybody is equal, but some people are
more equal than others exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
And I was, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And what happened that is a little bit different in
this last week and when the set bround of this
collapse happened, is that it hit really bad these supurban
working class neighborhoods in Havana, and anyone that can go
to Twitter or ex can see how people I don't
know how they have been charging the phones or putting
(09:15):
out the little life out in the Internet. People are
starting to bang in pots and pants as a form
of protest because of.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
How many hours they have been without power.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Now to add insult to injury, you have people in
Cuba that have you know, they have gone to the
offices of the local municipalities, the local government to ask
for an answer, what's happening, what's the plan?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
When is this going to be solved. They're obviously being
given all this, you.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Know, which you watching responses, and then you have the cannel,
which is the aun elected you know, appointed here of
the Castros plantation that is now acting as a president,
coming into the news yesterday and saying, well, this is
just like a hay campaign and fake news being put
out on the internet by the ego ynkeys people that
(10:05):
hate us, and we are here where there are being
of revolutionarily some blah blah blah, not one sentence about Okay,
what are you doing to fix the power?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Great problem? And on top of.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
That, then they're sending out the brown chers, the political police,
the black wis, which is what would be the equivalent
of the swat teams in the police here in the
United States.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
They're sending them now.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
To those neighborhoods that have been without power for ninety
hours because people there to bang their pots and pants as.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
A form of protest.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I was talking to a young person not so long ago,
and he said, I don't understand why the Cuban people
or in We started out talking about Venezuela, and then
I turned to the Cuban people. He said, I don't
understand why they don't you rise up? And I'm like, well,
they don't have any weapons. That's the first thing, because
zach Castro, you know, in order to promote safety, took
(10:57):
away all the guns and now they're reduced to pots
and pants the streets. I want to ask you, Mayleen,
because I love to travel and a friend of mine
was going to Cuba and I said, I am not
going to give Cuba any of my money. And you
just confirmed what I have been told, and that is
while the hotels and the tourist district they have full restaurants,
they have everything they need. Regular Cuban people can't get
(11:19):
bell peppers, they can't get onions, they can't get the
basic staples to eat because they're bleeding them dry. But
I want to ask you this one question. Is this
like a last gasp attempt by the regime to create
any kind of economy. And if they did create any
kind of decent tourism economy, do you have any confidence
(11:40):
that the people of Cuba would benefit from that in
any significant way?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
What guy is this military conglomery in Cua have been
doing with tourists since they were lean Wolf felled down.
It's not to improve the economy of the country. It's
for them to enrich themselves. That's why they live like
the pigs in animal farm. That's why they have all
their kids buying properties abroad everywhere in Spain, in South America,
(12:08):
and that's why they're you know, laundering the money and
taking it out of Cuba.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
They have never given a.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Flying rat about you know, the economy of the country
or the welfare of the Cuban people. Otherwise they will
have shown some acts or some you know, actual measurable
outcome after sixty five years. So I have absolutely no
confident in that they are. That's the propaganda that they
want to put out for the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Obviously, and clearly we have.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Like like they them self defined masses of useful idiots,
not only in the United States but all over the
work eating completely all that propaganda. But I have no
confidence that they're doing that for the Cuban people. They
don't care about the country's economy, They don't care about
the other's Cuban They only care about themselves, how they live,
and how they keep lining their pockets with more money.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Melan. Every time something catastrophic happens in Cuba, I think
to myself, this could be the thing.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
This could be the breaking point where.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
The Cuban people rise up and unarmed rush the rush
the capitol and do something.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Well, how bad does it have to get?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I mean, we see what happened in Venezuela where people
were literally starving, and they still have the regime in
place in Venezuela.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
What has to happen?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Do you think before we get on a significant regime?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Don't know? Yeah, honestly, I think it's gonna have It's
I was talking with a friend of mine, also Cuban American,
and he left.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
He's an older generation.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
That means obviously his parents took him out of Cuba
when he was younger, and he told me something that god,
you know, got stuck in my head because I never
thought about it from that angle, And is that the
generations of Cubans that had any fire left inside they're dead?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, they're gone.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
I mean you have to understand by the time that
I was born, that Cuba that was before nineteen fifty nine,
or that Cuba of that first generation that is still
fought when they realized what Caustle was really trying to
impose is gone.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That Cuba was already gone by the time that I
was born. So here we have another.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
You know, political science and equal one on one lesson,
and what happens when now you're dealing with three or
four generations of Cubans born, raised and brainwashed under this
system that tells you that firearms are bad, that that
is stas the one that is going to take care
of you, that everybody's equal again until you realize that
(14:38):
some people are more equal than others. So I think
it's going to take a longer process. It's going to
take a longer awaken it. That being said, there is
a lot of courageous people in Cuba literally inside the monster,
speaking out, reporting the things in jail, protesting.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Being made up, you name it.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
But I think that the fact that it's now an
entire society with several generations that don't know how it
was before, is gonna make that process harder. Like you
mentioned the fact that the first thing that Castro did
when he took over was, you know, taking away all
the firearms the island per se geographically speaking, as a present,
(15:18):
you don't have borders, you don't have a way to
get help from anyone else unless someone consciously, you know,
it's really invested.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
In helping the people inside.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Clearly the change is gonna come from within, but I
think it's gonna take time, probably onto all this cloud
elite of the old you know, revolutionaries from those years.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
We feel that castro dye and seeing what happens with
the new one.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I mean, it would be a sweet irony if it
would be blackouts on the darkness what definitely, finally, once
and for all, brings that tyranny down.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
I love Cuban culture, I love Cuban food, I love
Cuban music, I love Cuban people. I want that island
to be free because I'd like to be able to
go visit it in good conscience before I die. So
here's here's my little prayer that Cuba gets it gets
it together. Maelan Salabaria, thank you so much for your
time today and the great article of it.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, that everybody should share with their.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Young people who think that socialism is a viable system.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Maylan, thank you so much. We'll talk again in the future,
I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Okay, thank you, all right, thank you.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
That is Maelan Salabaria
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