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March 4, 2025 17:28-18:35 - CSPAN
01:06:53
Cuban Official Discusses U.S.-Cuba Relations
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patty murray
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Up next, a look at U.S.-Cuba relations with Cuba's deputy foreign affairs minister.
He also talks about migration, alleged Chinese military bases in Cuba, and the implication of U.S. policies on Cubans.
This hour-long conversation is hosted by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Good afternoon and welcome to the Institute for Policy Studies.
My name is James Early, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Policy Studies.
I was just reminding myself I've been on this board now for 30 years.
It's a pleasure to have you all here and to have the listening audience from C-SPAN join us.
Important information to go around the country.
First, I want to thank all of our sponsors and ask Director Vicki Gass of the Latin American Working Group to also offer some welcoming remarks and to also thank the Friends of Latin America and the Black Alliance for Peace who have been a part of the co-sponsorship of this program.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you and good afternoon, everybody.
Welcome to IPS and Log's office.
We actually have office space here on the floor.
I want to thank everybody here who's online and also everybody in the room to come hear the important words from the Deputy Minister Fernandez de Casio.
It's great to have you here and also thank you to the co-sponsors in IPS for inviting us.
I'm not going to talk long and I'm going to say up front that I might leave due to a family emergency.
So my apologies in advance.
I think this is an important discussion today and I can't wait to hear what you have to say about Trump administration and its policy towards Cuba.
I think we all know here and online that the U.S. policy towards Cuba is a failed policy and all indications are that the Trump administration is not going to change that.
And I think there are a couple of things that are indications of that.
One is on February 12th of this year, Mauricio Claver Caron had an interview with Politico.
And in that he said, first of all, that the Trump administration's policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean would be one of non-imperialistic expansionism.
Right.
We don't know what they were smoking at that time.
And if anybody could define that, I'd appreciate it very much.
And then the second is today.
Just before this event, I received an email that Representative Corey Mills has co-sponsored House Resolution 450, which is the FORS Act, which would keep Cuba on the SSOT the state sponsor of terrorism forever by law.
By law, so they could not be removed and really U.S. Policy towards Cuba is simply one of collective Punishment.
It doesn't resolve anything.
I think here in this country people might begin to learn what collective punishment looks like.
Perhaps, perhaps not.
How we address this with this administration and Congress is still a question mark, but I'm really hoping that the Deputy Minister could shed some light on what we might do.
So thank you again for this opportunity and thank you for being here.
Very good.
Thank you.
It is always difficult for me to come in this room without thinking of the late Saul Landau, who was a major interlocutor across the U.S. public with Cuba since 1959.
And in 2009, he and Philip Brenner, Professor Philip Brenner at the International Affairs Program at American University, published an article, The Death of the Monroe Doctrine.
Wow.
Well, the Monroe Doctrine, it's been 202 years since the imposition of American control or attempt to control all of the destinies in this hemisphere has occurred.
And we're now seeing a very reckless, crude, chaotic imposition from Panama to Haiti, to Venezuela, to Nicaragua, to Brazil, to the U.S. citizenry, not just the immigrant community in the United States.
And so that is a context in which it is important for us to have an opportunity to look at and hear about what are the implications of the Trump administration policy towards Cuba, given that in, was it 2014 when President Raul Castro and President Barack Obama brought the United States into the standard affairs of national interactions, where with respect,
countries found mutual beneficial relations and found peaceful and respectful ways to debate their differences, not through imperial imposition, as we have seen in the case of Cuba and as we are now seeing intensified.
There is a lot of developments going on both inside the United States as well as the United States directive not only to Latin America and the Caribbean but also to Europe.
Information is flying everywhere.
The expulsion of immigrant communities and some people with resident cards is one of the more recent developments I hope that we will hear about from the ambassador.
So it is indeed a pleasure both for the audience here and for the listening audience of C-SPAN to welcome the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Cuba, Carlos Fernández de Cosillo.
Thank you both of you and thank you all for being here.
It's a pleasure to be here at IPS and to have the opportunity again to share views and to provide some information from our side from Cuba on bilateral relationships and on on the reality of Cuba today.
IPS is an institution that has traditionally believed in the possibility of a better relationship or a constructive relationship between Cuba and the United States and the need for that to happen.
And it has made an effort through sharing information and allowing people to be exposed to Cuba and to the bilateral relationship in order for people to understand.
We are firm believers in the notion that if Americans as a whole would have better information if provided with the facts about the nature of U.S. policy towards Cuba, there would be an overwhelming rejection in this country.
And we don't think it is so because of ideological reasons, but because of common sense and ethical sense that one tends to think that prevails in most society and certainly would prevail in the United States.
That is why it is so important to use opportunities like this to be able to share views.
The reality today is that for the past eight years, Cuba has been under increased aggression, basically economic aggression from the U.S. consistently.
And that did not change under the Biden administration.
There was a promise at the beginning that they would do a review and there was a promise even before, during the elections of 2020, that there would be swift change, which never occurred.
And in practical terms, in terms of the economic warfare, what the Biden administration did was to implement the set of measures that Trump qualified as maximum pressure on Cuba during that period, which we in Cuba call the reinforcement of the economic blockade.
It was not until a few days before leaving office that some slight changes were made, among them the removal of Cuba from the State Department list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
And it's very irritating because it makes one think, why would he do that on the 14th of January of 25 when he could have done it on the 14th of February of 2021?
Nothing really changed.
The same intelligence, the same views, the same information that was in the hands of the agencies in the U.S. that evaluate these things was there.
It was a pure political calculation that, again, even though it happened during the Biden administration, it's irritating that it occurred at a moment when it occurred.
And, of course, with a full understanding by him and by the administration that this would changed when the new administration will come in.
Of course, it is something that we expected that would happen.
The current government has come in, at least from the State Department point of view and from the people that are in State Department, with a declared commitment to make life for Cubans all Cubans even more difficult than it is today, and the commitment to mobilize the full power of the United States, which is very overwhelming and has an impact all over the world,
to make sure that this punishment is is presented upon the people of Cuba with the aim of cutting all our sources, of the remaining sources of income, to be able to cut our access to technology, to markets, to financial institutions, in other words, to try, like if we were in a medieval context in the dark ages,
to siege Cuba totally, cut any source of the, the progression of life and well-being and survival of the population of Cuba.
They will, of course, continue to fail in the ultimate goal of bending the will of the people of Cuba, but they will be successful in causing harm, which is the aim they will be successful in, in limiting the capacity of Cuba to achieve development, and they will be successful in limiting our capacity to achieve economic growth, which is what Cuba, as any country,
needs to provide for its people.
It will be, of course accompanied, as it is, by the the discourse that Cuba is a failed society, that the system has failed, but they are, having carrying out a a very strong policy for over 67 years, or 66 years, trying to make sure that it fails.
Cuba has not had one day of for of the opportunity to play like any other nation on a level playing field and try to prove or to demonstrate if what, if the path, if the fate is, the system that the people of Cuba have put in for themselves is successful or not.
And this is accompanied, of course, with false narratives that are typically repeated in the United States, and unfortunately it's what is received by most Americans that there are Chinese military bases in Cuba.
Nobody, Cuba is not a large country.
You can you can drive from one end of the island to the other within 12 to 13 hours.
It's not a country with desert, deserts or snow or something that makes it impossible for people to look, and nobody has been able to pinpoint where those alleged Chinese embassies and there's military bases are and there's an embassy, big embassy of the US in Havana.
There are over a hundred diplomatic foreign missions in Havana.
There are foreign journalists in Havana and none has been able and this is a story that's been going up already for a year and a half none has been able to identify where that those Chinese bases are.
If they are there and you can't logically have Chinese military base if there are no Chinese soldiers and we don't look Asian in Cuba and nobody has been able to find a soldier, a platoon, a battalion or a company or anything of Chinese origin.
As we've said many times, you can't even find a good Chinese restaurant in Cuba, And yet it's a legend that is repeated.
The Wall Street Journal would every two or three months carry a story and put that the evidence is there.
Nobody's seen it.
And the current Secretary of State repeats it constantly.
And nobody challenges that.
It's repeated.
As when they were repeating the story about the acoustic attacks, that science has demonstrated that it's impossible.
Or when they've repeated the idea that there were 20,000, then they went to 30.
At one point, they spoke about 40,000 Cuban soldiers in Venezuela.
Nobody ever saw a platoon, a battalion, but it was repeated.
And it became common, accepted truth because there was no challenge for it.
And the main media simply repeated it, either out of ignorance or perhaps they're out of complicity.
But that's what occurred.
And that's how this is all presented.
There's a new narrative that Cuba is a threat to humanity.
Anyone that looks at a map would understand that and sees the size of Cuba, that we cannot be a threat to humanity.
Yet it is repeated constantly.
Plus others that continue to exist and will exist, which includes, of course, the allegation that Cuba sponsors terrorism with no basis whatsoever.
On January 14th, when the former president removed Cuba from the list, it was said that the agencies in charge of this in the United States came to the conclusion that Cuba doesn't sponsor terrorism.
Of course, they already had that conclusion, but he said so.
But we were put back in the list without any excuse.
It was just put back in the list because I'm going to do it.
And we have the opportunity to punish these people.
Let's continue doing it.
And I suspect most people understand the impact of being in that list, which is not simple slander.
By law, a country that's in that list automatically triggers, or the law automatically triggers, a set of coercive measures against that country, which has huge limitations for financial relations anywhere in the world.
And in the case of Cuba, as in most countries, has a limitation for an industry so important for Cuba as tourism.
Because it threatens citizens from third countries, Europeans, for example, that if they travel to Cuba, the U.S. government at the other side of the Atlantic threatens citizens of Europe, regardless of what their governments feel, that if they travel to Cuba, they will be punished by losing their possibility of traveling to the U.S. or making it more difficult because they would need to request a visa.
And some have already been notified that that visa would be lost.
A few days ago, the government of the U.S. announced that the countries, that Cuban officials involved in Cuban medical services around the world, would be punished with the refusal of visas.
But the audacity of this is that they go as far as threatening the governments of countries that have Cuban medical presence there.
We're talking about 70 countries, most of them in Africa, many of them in the Caribbean, in Central America, that will lose, will be punished by the U.S. if they continue to have a medical brigade, which on almost all cases have professionals working in the most depressed and unprivileged areas of those countries.
So you would deprive those communities, perhaps, of the only health care service that they've ever received because of a decision of the US government and deprive the opportunity of those governments to provide for their people with quality health care that they arrange through a totally legitimate reciprocal or bilateral agreement with the government of Cuba.
This is done with pretext that Cuba is carrying out slavery and trafficking in persons, all of which can be easily argued if one just look at what slavery means, what trafficking in person means, and the nature of the arrangements that Cuba has with official bilateral agreements with every country.
That's the reality in which we're living today.
If we follow the statements coming out of the U.S. government and the politicians now in place, there's no indication that the situation will improve.
These people have been able to take a very narrow interest, very narrow interest, and put it in the center of U.S. foreign policy to mobilize the full weight of the United States, a superpower, against a small nation in the Caribbean, with impact in the standard of living in the population, in the capacity of the economy to provide for its people, and naturally,
as many have witnessed, naturally, provoking what is normally provoked when you depress the living conditions of any community, which is migration.
People would, at least a segment of the population, would want to move from where they are.
That happens in cities in the United States.
It happens in cities in every country.
For those are of Irish origin, know what happened with the famine of 1845.
People ended up in the United States.
Because when you depress the living conditions of a population, migration inevitably is a natural outcome.
They, of course, will claim that people live because the system in Cuba is not able to provide for its people.
They can argue that, but stop punishing us and then demonstrate that it is our system, the one that is incapable of providing for our people.
In the basis of all of this, in the center of all of this also, is a failure, a consistent failure by the government of the political class of the United States of understanding and accepting that Cuba is and has the right to be a sovereign nation with the right to self-determination.
That the U.S. has no right to pretend to govern Cuba, and we do have the right to govern ourselves and defend ourselves and provide for our people in the way that we feel as Cubans that is appropriate.
That is the situation we have today.
We continue to have, until today, formal diplomatic relations with little dialogue, few communication.
There's an embassy in Havana.
There's an embassy here until today.
We have in place migration agreements.
We have in place a set of agreements that at this moment we don't know if they're going to continue active or not.
There is no indication by the U.S. government.
There is no unwillingness from Cuba to stop them.
We can continue to do it in spite of or work with them in spite of our differences.
But truly, We don't identify a wish, a motivation currently in the United States to pursue them.
Again, including migration, which is an issue that historically has been of interest and importance for both governments, and it's the reason why they exist.
So I will stop here and prefer to respond to questions, to comments.
Thank you.
As I look around this audience, I see a number of people.
We've known each other, some of us for decades, many with expertise in Latin America and the Caribbean, and specifically with regard to Cuba.
As you raise your very brief and pointed questions, I would ask you to keep in mind that we have a national audience who may not be as adept in the history and the current politics between the U.S. and Cuba,
the U.S. and Latin America and the Caribbean, and that you consider as you raise your questions how we may play a role in the public education to inform our fellow citizens and resident communities and migrant communities across the country that they might be informed and take advantage of how to use the exchange that we have here today.
What I want to suggest to the Deputy Foreign Minister is perhaps we would take three questions at a time so that we can maximize the issues of interest in the audience.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
Please state your name and our affiliation.
Yeah, my name is Andrew.
I'm representing the People's Power Assembly from Baltimore, Maryland, and the Struggle for Social as a party.
Something I'm curious what your analysis is, is with the actions Trump is taking, you know, it's kind of curious to me that there isn't more of a split in the ruling class amongst the corporate powers.
And, you know, the Democratic Party has seemed to sort of just hold their hands out with no answers, no real fight back.
So I'm wondering, you know, if your sense is that there's any growing split amongst, you know, even in the Trump administration, but the Trump administration versus the rest of the ruling class.
Something for us to explore.
Thank you.
Yes, ma'am.
The lady right here, you raised your hand?
Yes.
Do you want me to stand up?
Oh, yes.
Okay.
My name is Lily Bernard, L-I-L-I-B-E-R-N-A-R-D.
Born in Santiago de Cuba, visual artist, actor from Los Angeles, California.
Take your time.
This is my friend Catherine Murphy, who's a very important documentary filmmaker, done excellent movies on Cuba.
I was telling David from here that I was born in Santiago de Cuba and my parents took me out when I was two.
And so I looked at Cuba from the lens, from their lens.
And in going back multiple times, I learned the truth about the wonderful things that Cuba can offer the world.
Like their literacy program, education.
I mean, they're so highly educated.
So I'm a co-founder along with Alberto Liscai, a great Cuban artist, of a project called Art Roots Mombi.
And it's a family-run Art Roots Mombi.
The Mombias were the insurgent Cuban soldiers that fought against Cuba's Wars of Independence.
I'm a granddaughter of one, and Alberto Liscai, a very famous Cuban painter, is a grandson of one.
Together, we have a project, humanitarian aid, cultural exchange program between artists in Los Angeles, California, and Santiago de Cuba.
We've gone already for three years, and it's a wonderful project.
But what I want to ask you is from a very interpersonal relationship, that America does make it very difficult for us to run our project.
And how can you help support us in making our project manifest?
For example, very briefly, what is that called it?
I tried to do a GoFundMe page, and GoFundMe blocked the page.
And I had to talk with their lawyers, and I couldn't have a GoFundMe page.
My brother, through Bank of America, sent me $700 for my plane ticket.
They didn't allow to go in because he said, This year he made a donation and they wouldn't block it.
So there are all these America is making it very difficult for us to run the project.
How can you, Cuba, help us to run the project?
We'll take one more in this round.
Thank you, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Schlenker with Georgetown University and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Two quick questions.
Yesterday there was a report of 104 deportees from the United States to Cuba and a mention from the Cuban Foreign Ministry of a previous return flight on January 23rd.
Can you state Cuba's position regarding these repatriation flights and if there's others that are planned?
And regarding the visa restrictions for Cuban government officials and foreign government officials, are there any reports or evidence of which countries, asides from Venezuela, which was mentioned in the State Department press release, whose officials have been notified that their visas have been revoked?
Thank you.
So in the spirit of inclusion, I'm going to break my rule and take at least one comment from online now and turn it over to you and then we will come back and make sure that we get the online commentary and with your commentary.
Okay, I'll read.
It's two of them.
Just read one for now or yes.
Okay.
John McMowf says, Trump has flipped U.S. policy on Ukraine and appears to be doing the same on Venezuela.
Do you think that could happen in Cuba as Jeff Sachs speculated yesterday?
The Miami right-wing is very worried about that possibility.
All right, thank you.
I'm not sure and we don't have the capacity to gauge if there is a split in the ruling class as you asked.
We do know by experience and by years of having engaged with members of Congress of both Republicans and Democrats, of officials in the U.S. government,
both before they're in the government, during the time they're in the government, and after they left the government, that there are many people that have always believed or that with time have come to believe what was said at the beginning here, that Cuba and the United States, in spite of differences that exist and will continue to exist, should have a better relationship.
That Cuba is no threat whatsoever, nor does it have the interest of being an enemy or an adversary or a threat to the United States, nor has the capacity to be.
And that it is possible.
It's not only wished, but it is possible for the two countries to have the kind of relationship that Cuba has with the rest of the world.
The exception is the United States.
So by experience, we know that there are differences of opinion.
And I'm sure that even within the current Republican Party, even though it is not aired, and even within the current administration, there are people who have a firm belief that that is possible, but then they move depending on how the leadership is guiding at this moment.
How to support what you're doing, we're very limited within the United States.
We can support it a lot inside Cuba.
It is true that if you make any transaction, not only in the U.S., from anywhere in the world, and you mentioned Cuba or Cuban, there's a high possibility that it will be frozen.
That's the long arm of the U.S. punishing Cuba, not as a bilateral one-directional embargo, but as an extraterritorial blockade that is trying to choke the Cuban economy as well.
But within Cuba, we can do a lot, and depending on the type of project, the type of plan, we can many times become very creative in trying to support what you do.
Or any project that tries to engage with our people, including those of Cuban origin, which is much easier with Cubans or descendants of Cubans anywhere around the world, more difficult in the U.S., where paradoxically is the greatest number of people which are born in Cuba or descendants of Cubans and believe identify themselves as Cubans.
Regarding the deportees, Cuba and the U.S. have bilateral migration agreements that go back to 1984.
There are several of them.
And based on those agreements, it includes the deportation of Cubans that have made illegal entry in the United States.
It was conceived in 2017, basically.
It existed before that, but after 2017, by the official commitment of the U.S. government to stop what here they call the wet foot, dry foot policy.
In the past years, there have been regular monthly flights from the U.S. to Cuba based on what's provided in this agreement and the way that both countries arranged based on mutual interest and the identification by mutually conceived goals for those deportations to take place.
These agreements, all of them, are aimed to ensure the mutual commitment of having regular, orderly, and secure migration between the two countries, knowing that migration is a phenomenon.
We had one flight already on the 23rd of May of January of this year, in other words, within this administration, and there was one yesterday.
We know that it appeared in some news as something exceptional.
It is a regular thing.
It happens between our two countries.
And it is also regular for the U.S. to return irregular migrants through the sea.
And thousands have been returned during the year.
So it is no surprise because we have agreements that commit Cuba and commit the United States to these type of deportations.
Now there's an additional issue to this because there's a threat of massively deporting Cubans that don't have a regular admittance or a regular status in the United States.
Now most of the people aware about the migration and the relationship between Cuba and the United States know that there has been a very strong push factor that motivates Cuba to leave Cubans to leave their country of origin because the US policy, as I said at the beginning, is aimed at depressing their standard of living and their sources of living in Cuba.
And the natural outcome is for these people to migrate out of Cuba.
And it is natural for them to come to the US, first because there are many Cubans here already, and secondly, because there has been a decades-old policy of privileging Cubans above citizens of any other country in the world, that if they reach the border of the United States, if they enter the country, they will be accepted.
Now, this policy was not invented by the Cuban government, of course, nor by these Cubans.
They feel that they have been invited to the U.S. for decades.
Cubans are born with a flag, with a hymn, with a coat of arms, and they believe that if they try to migrate to the United States, they will eventually get there and be accepted.
And the ones that are here are the result of those policies.
So it is quite cruel to now tell these people that have come to the U.S., pushed by the U.S. policies and invited by U.S. policies, pushed from Cuba and invited into the U.S. by U.S. policies, that after they've made a family here, they have jobs, they've made their living, they've sold their home, they sold their vehicle if they had it in Cuba, or they sold their farm if they had it, that they now will be massively returned back.
Sometimes, if they made a family with people that already lived here or with Americans, breaking their family, separating families, which is the logic of doing that when these people did not break, they did not have to tear down a wall to enter the United States.
They were invited by the U.S.
So that's an issue that needs to be taken into account when we do this.
And we've said this officially to the U.S. government, not now, we said it in migration talks when we've had them.
In terms of if there could be a flip in the Trump administration, I think anything could happen.
It's not what we foresee at the moment, at least with the people that are in charge of this policy.
But if anyone can make a suggestion in that regard, we wouldn't be against it.
Other questions?
Yes, sir.
Good afternoon, Deputy Minister.
My name is Perné Samaritula.
I organize with the Metro DC DSA's Internationalism Working Group, and I'm actually about to go to Cuba in a couple months as part of the May Day Brigade through the National Network on Cuba, which I'm very excited for.
Thank you for your remarks today.
They've been very informative.
My question is about the shifts that we've been seeing sort of in the global order more broadly over the last few years.
People have been talking about the emergence of multipolarity, the rise of China, but also more multilateral south-south cooperation.
I know Cuba recently joined the BRICS as a partner state.
And I'm wondering if these shit, if from your perspective, and from the perspective of the Cuban government, if these shifts in the global order, if that opens up opportunities for Cuba to have more breathing room as there's more room for multilateral support and solidarity from other countries apart from the U.S., obviously, as you said, the U.S. is a very long arm that extends around the world.
But it also does seem that in some ways the U.S.'s hegemony on the world stage is declining and other shifts are happening.
And I was wondering how you see that.
Thank you.
Let's take two from our online questions.
John Waller says, I know that there's a meeting in DC this weekend between the embassy and Cuban Americans.
What hopes and perspectives do you have for support from the Cuban-American community, many of whom do oppose the blockade or at the very least want to support their families in Cuba?
And John, are you asking this up to John with a lot of questions here?
This is another one from the same person that asked the first question.
Why doesn't Cuba go to the International Criminal Court or Security Council to challenge the unequal treaty of 1903 and 1934 that gave the U.S. access for only a coaling of naval station?
Legally, shouldn't you be able to block its use as a migration detention center or prison?
Okay, one more from the Institute audience.
Yes.
I Leonardo Fradis from the Alliance for Cuban Casino Response.
Could you talk a little bit about USAID's role in Cuba?
Right.
We, of course, reject the notion of a world depending on one sole superpower that is the only pole of power in the world.
And we do believe in a multilateral world.
We believe the notion inscribed in the UN Charter of equal sovereignty of all states.
I myself don't like, and I know most of us in Cuba don't like the notion of multipolar because multipolar could be resembling the old colonial distribution of regions of influence and so on.
So truly in Cuba we prefer more multilateralism than multipolar.
But we don't of course fight with those that like the term multipolar.
For us south-south cooperation, which is not new, is something that began to be defined and gain strength at the end of the 1960s.
And when the new international economic order was approved in the UN, it was put as one of the main features, not as a substitution of the cooperation that should exist from the north to the south as a colonial debt, but as a way of strengthening the resilience and the capacity of developing countries.
That is what we do, when we provide medical care.
That is what we do when we provide teachers, when we provide scientists to many developing countries.
And the record of Cuba is very, very long.
I would say unequal, unmatched, unparalleled, that's a correct word, in the way we've been doing it.
We believe that the emergence of BRICS is an important and relevant international event.
We still have to see how far it goes.
Cuba was accepted as an associate last year.
We'll begin to participate in the regular meetings.
And we hope that we can benefit from our relationship with this new grouping, as we always hope that we can benefit in the relationship with any grouping around the world.
The nature of BRICS is that it seems that it is a new group of countries that has the capacity to be more independent than in the past from the traditional colonial or former colonial or imperilist powers.
That's what it seems.
And that gives a different opportunity for a country like ours that is very keen on defending its independence and striving for a more just world.
We are believers that the current world order is unfair and is unsustainable.
And it's a threat to peace and security.
and that it needs to be transformed if humankind pretend to survive in the next hundred years at least.
Meeting with the Cubans.
Yes.
It is normal for us when we visit a country, Cuban officials anywhere around the world, that to have to try to find an opportunity in the agenda to meet with our compatriots, the Cubans that live there.
or the descendants, anyone who identifies itself as a Cuban.
So whenever we visit any city, we try to find the time and we meet with them.
We discuss many issues.
Some want to discuss on how to improve the relationship between the two countries.
Others want to discuss about their migratory status.
Others will give a suggestion of what we should do in Cuba to fix the problems that we have.
We listen to all, we try to incorporate any idea that comes and we try to explain to the extent possible the reality we have, that we have, and the reality of the relationship that we have with the country that we are visiting.
This is in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and including in the United States.
And that's the kind of meeting that we're planning to have now.
Why haven't we taken Cuba's claim for the return of the territory of the military base in Guantanamo to the International Court of Justice?
The first question is, let's think that the court will come with a decision that Cuba is right and the U.S. should remove that base and return the territory to Cuba.
Which would be the outcome?
None.
The U.S., first, doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the court in the first place.
Second, does that have more power?
Because that would be decided by a group of judges.
In the best of cases, unanimously.
But does that have more power than the vote of 187 member states of governments representing their people in the UN, consistently year after year, demanding the U.S. to lift the economic blockade, and yet the United States doesn't pay any attention?
So what would be the point of doing this?
There's one reason that I'm mentioning.
And secondly, we don't see this as a legal issue.
This is a political issue.
We simply believe that it's not acceptable for any government to impose a military base in the territory of another country against the will of that country.
It is clear that it's not the will of the Cuban people.
Why do we need to go to a court in Europe to ask a few judges what they believe when this is such a simple question?
It's a political question.
So we treat it as a political question inherited from colonialism.
Because that agreement from 1902 was a result of military occupation for four years by the U.S. government before granting Cuba the formal but untrue independence in 1902.
The relationship of USAID with Cuba, we can identify it in two ways.
The international commitment of USAID with some international organizations, UN organizations, FAO, the World Food Programme, UNICEF, UNDP, when it existed, benefited developing countries and to some extent also benefited Cuba.
So we cannot say that when we received aid from UNICEF or from the World Food Program, there are no U.S., historic U.S. resources there.
As part of the UN community, we've benefited.
That's one part of USAID.
But it is also known that the U.S. government has channeled through USAID the financing of organizations whose reason of existing is to destroy the Cuban government, overthrow the Cuban government, fabricate dissent, fabricate opposition.
And a lot of that money, we also know that even though it was destined for people and organizations in Cuba, never even left the territory of the United States and has been the source of fortunes of many people in this country.
That is what we know about the involvement of USAID with Cuba.
Do we have other online?
12 minutes.
All right.
From the audience.
Questions?
Observations?
Yes.
Critiques are complaints.
Have there been official contact or conversations with the incoming administration, either the State Department, the White House?
I mean, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Sector of Defense went to Guantanamo.
Were there any military-to-military contacts before or during those visits?
And just more generally, what is the prospect for discussions, dialogues on some of these more sensitive issues with officials in the administration?
There have been no contacts beyond the bureaucratic, diplomatic communications, and sometimes, in other words, to organize your flight, their operational communication, but no meetings, no let-sit-down.
What are we arguing about?
That doesn't exist.
I've been traveling to Cuba for almost 50 years in my 32 years at the Smithsonian Institution as Assistant Secretary for Education and Public Service and Director of Cultural Heritage Policy, as well as in my PhD work in Latin American and Caribbean history, particularly interested in the relationship between Cuba and the influences of Africa.
Today we're talking to one of the sons of a Cuban household who's a member of government, as are the women who work in government.
They come from Cuban households.
There's no parallel universe of over here come ministers or the president of the country.
These are people who come out of ordinary everyday households who are elected by their fellow citizens to do it.
And as we talk about the implication of the Trump administration policy or the Biden administration policy, or even going back to the Roosevelt policy or the Ronald Reagan policy or any government,
U.S. government policy towards Cuba and talking to an official of the Cuban government, one of the things that I think we must consider is what are Cuban citizens doing in relationship to their government.
I want to pose that question to the Deputy Ambassador and to prime it by saying that over the 50 years that I've traveled to Cuba, I'm always amazed at whatever the constrictions are imposed by the U.S. government, whatever the limitations are in Cubans figuring out their own internal development.
There is always an uplifting perspective in life where Cubans are looking forward.
Conferences on puppets or dance or the education of other abled citizens, convening conferences and binational art gatherings from the entire world,
always, despite whatever the immediate gratification or the immediate limitations, always looking forward of what might a brighter world be and how...
how might that be shared with the rest of the world, for example with people in sports or medical technology.
And I think that is important for us who have some experience and expertise around Cuba in this realm, to communicate to our fellow citizens across the United States who were tuned in on C-SPAN.
Go to Cuba and find out what the implications are for you.
And one of the first implications, in this new political environment that we're living in, is that you will be limited and where you can stay.
The United States government dictates where you might stay, and so what are the implications for us?
Not just what are the implications for Cuba but, with my personal commentary, I would like your reflections on that.
I believe the question was, how, how do we cope with this in Cuba?
Right, more or less right.
Well, for those that are better informed, and one analyzes the the, the relate the, the links between Cuba and the United States.
In the past 67 years, life in Cuba has been in practical term as a country under aggression.
The fundamental aggression, and the most persistent one, has been the economic blockade.
But during these years we have suffered military invasion terrorism, attempts of assassination sabotage, bacteriological warfare, plus a huge propaganda invasion that continues on.
In spite of that, there has never been one night of curfew in Cuba all these years, as there have been some in many countries around the world and in cities and communities in this country, and people in Cuba, in spite of all of this, live in peace and want to live in peace and want to have, want to enjoy life.
So anyone who would visit Havana Santiago, Santa Clara, would see a vibrant cultural life, a vibrant educational life, in a humble way, in the way we can have it in Cuba.
I think we are.
We just had the book fair in Cuba.
We're having the salsa festival today at this moment still going on.
We had the jazz festival, we had the film festival, we had the ballet festival, and this is just in Havana.
This is replicated all over the country and that's how we cope with it, with a lot, a lot of trouble.
Going to work in Cuba today is a problem because of public transportation, making sure that your, your income allows you for the full month, in terms of what you eat, the food available for you and your children is a problem.
Securing the medicines that you need for yourself, for your parents, your grandparents, for your children is a problem in Cuba today, which is new because for over 60 years all Cubans had that insured, either for free or highly subsidized, and that is a problem today.
Sometimes you go to work and there's no electricity.
You have to go back home.
We have industries that have been shut down because they're high consumers of electricity and in spite of that, life in Cuba is joyful.
Of course, the aim of the policy as described as early as 1960 is to generate Lack of material wealth, and therefore to create desperation and irritation.
And there is irritation.
And if you, people in Cuba sometimes feel fed up.
If you are working all day and then there's a power cut where you work and then it comes back, it makes an effort, it makes it very difficult to get in public transportation to get home and when you arrive there's a blackout.
Of course there's irritation.
And you complain and you maybe blame the government or you blame the people in your building that were spending too much electricity because they have three air conditioners on when you only have a ventilator.
So there's irritation.
It's part of what the policy is aiming at.
And there's a lot of that in Cuba today and there's complaint and there's protest and people are many times irritated in spite of all of this.
But when one describes life, there's no depression in Cuba.
There's no sadness in Cuba.
People have a positive and constructive view of life and some even think as an escape that I'll sustain and eventually I'll migrate.
At least you have that in the future.
So that's the reality that we face.
We wish it could be better.
And to give you an idea, during 2015 and 16, the U.S. government introduced very narrow and very few exceptions to the policy of economic blockade.
Very, very few.
And with those little steps, you could see a change in reality, both in the growth of the economy, in life in the city, and the possibilities, even of foreigners traveling to Cuba and trying to rediscover Cuba.
Which is a symbol not of how much the government of Obama did, but of how much he could have done.
Because with a simple introduction of this, it shows how overwhelming this policy is against the Cuban economy.
Let me take out of time.
One from online.
Okay.
I'm going to ask you to hold.
My name is Cheryl LaBash, and I'm one of the co-chairs of the National Network on Cuba.
If what you heard here today has moved you, there is a lot that we can do.
Like the Deputy Foreign Minister said at the beginning, and as he said yesterday as well, the power rests with the people of the United States to oppose this genocidal policy.
This is the 65th anniversary of the Mallory-Rubottom memo that laid out as inconspicuously as possible that hardship should be imposed on the people of Cuba.
For 65 years they've carried it out.
They wrote books, 500-page books saying what they're going to do to Cuba.
And what they want is for Cuba to deny the rights of the people, to deny the right to health care, to deny the right to have a home over their head, to not be in the street, the right to education, and the right to self-determination.
We have the power, the people in the United States.
117 resolutions have been passed in cities all across in Baltimore, in Washington, in New York City, in Chicago, by labor unions and labor councils.
We have the power, but we have to be organized.
We encourage you to join with the National Network on Cuba, the solidarity organizations in your town, to go to the conference in New York, March 15th and 16th.
Be part of the solution.
The solution that Cuba affords is also a solution for us.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
Me?
I was, the question I was going to raise is on what is the role in this moment of citizen diplomacy from the U.S.
An important point on which I will make some commentary in closing, but I would be remiss, and I have been remiss in not acknowledging Ambassador Estorres, who is with us today.
The U.S. policy towards Cuba, I think has been pointed out, is in the hands of U.S. citizens, but it is being executed by the elected officials of the United States government.
There is wide latitude in the executive body through the presidency to do things, but that is also an elected position, at least up until this moment.
The embargo, I don't use the term blockade in this instance, the embargo is a legislative measure by the elected officials of the U.S. Congress, who we, the citizens of the United States, vote to send to the U.S. Congress to represent us both on domestic interests and aspirations, as well as our perspectives about how to engage with people around the world.
It's a clear implication.
We have to be more active as citizens about our interest.
In our interest as artists and intellectuals with exchanges, with prestigious institutions in Cuba, world-renowned like Casa de las Americas, we are a country that is very ignorant of the rich intellectual and artistic and cultural traditions south of our borders.
The Caribbean has produced more Nobel laureates than any place on planet Earth.
The Caribbean, I'm not speaking of Latin America now.
Cuba exists in the Caribbean, and of course it is culturally related to Latin America.
We must exercise our right to travel and to go and see for ourselves and to build the relationships we want.
Cuba would rather trade in certain goods from the southern states of the United States, including the state of Florida, all the way to Mississippi, because it would be more economically sustainable for those exchanges than to have to trade all the way down to Brazil or other places in the world.
I'm not just speaking of small entrepreneurs, I'm speaking of big entrepreneurs.
We have to exercise our right as citizens to go and see for ourselves and to force our policymakers to reflect what our interest is.
So for those of us who are sort of students or activists around Latin America and the Caribbean, we must engage fellow citizens who may not be as current and up to date about the dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean and between the U.S. and those countries as we are.
But I urge you and the C-SPAN audience to go to your policymakers.
Demand your right to travel and to see for yourself.
Demand your right to establish economic, respectful economic relationships with Cuba.
Your right to have exchanges in Cuba.
Your right to benefit from the health offerings that Cuba provides for the entire world.
During the crisis of COVID, The Cubans, despite the imposition, the constraints on them, produced five usable anti-COVID vaccines used not only in developing countries, but in places like Italy.
Mexico reaches out for Cuban doctors.
Brazil reaches out for Cuba doctors.
Of course, Africa and Asia have benefited.
So I want to thank the Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos Fernandes de Cocio, for engaging us today.
Thank you all.
Thank you very much.
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c-span bringing you your democracy unfiltered discover the heartbeat of democracy with c-span's voices as we hear from you ahead of president trump's address to congress We're asking what you'd like to hear from the President during his speech.
My name is Laurie Goglersh from Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
I like to hear the President talk about why he acted the way he did with Zelensky.
I think that it's a disgrace, really.
It was an embarrassment for all Americans to see that performance in the Oval Office.
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I'm from Chicago, and I'd love the President to talk about keeping the Antiquities Act the way it is.
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I'm from Prescott, Arizona.
I work for the VA there.
I would like to have the President address the back to work for all employees.
Some of us employees work very well at home, and when our VA building is cramped for space as it is, I think it would be very beneficial if a lot of the employees were able to stay at home and continue to work like we have been.
I think it should be according to our productivity and not just because of our location.
I think you're doing a great job and I'm very happy with everything, but that would be a subject I'd like you to address.
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