Quotes from this article:
1.) We denounce any embargo on the Cuban people, whether imposed from abroad or from within, by any states, United or otherwise. We radically support the full deployment of our people’s creative capacities—their self-organization, self-subsistence, and self-liberation—in a world that needs more solidarity and cooperation.
This is just really beautifully written.
To make geopolitical arguments right now about the place of Cuba in imperial global strategy, to argue that the anti-government protests in Cuba are inevitably paid for by the Cuban right wing in Miami, that the protesters are simple criminals looking to loot, that the true revolutionaries are with the government—these are all arguments that describe a significant part of reality, but they miss it on one point. The people of Cuba have just as much right to protest as those of Colombia and Chile. What’s the difference? That they are oligarchies with different origins? With more or less brutal practices? More or less distinguishable camouflage? More or less servile postures towards the US government? More or less sublime ideas to justify their privileges? All of these immense differences among the Colombian, Chilean, and Cuban oligarchies are reduced to zero when on a beautiful Sunday morning you discover that, in addition to the mafioso oligarchies in Colombia and Chile, the Cuban oligarchy is also—before an unarmed populace—armed to the teeth. A little more or a little less, to crush you and your brothers, your body and your mind, if it merely occurs to you to question the normality that they manage.
“If you protest, an even worse government will come to power.” This is a pretext that any government can employ to justify suppressing opposition—and practically every government has. If we legitimize this excuse, we are siding with a section of the ruling class against ordinary people like ourselves, denying that they know what is best for themselves. If we refuse to extend solidarity to exploited and oppressed, they will inevitably gravitate to the right—as they have across the former Eastern Bloc. To abandon rank-and-file protesters in places like Cuba is to give the far right a golden recruiting opportunity.
In some ways, I feel like the second bolded statement is an excuse that a lot of people outside the Eastern Bloc have had for not having solidarity with a lot of people or organisations here.
There are legitimate concerns (we do have "anarchists" who align with questionable people, including nationalists), but there are also a lot of people pushing back against that and trying to organise better organisations and networks. (And it feels like a lot of people who aren't in this region just... are trying to force us to "get our house in order" before they even deem it fit to stand with us in solidarity, and that's... not helpful.)
But yes, I agree. If we rationalise this view, we're going to be abandoning people and provide the far-right recruitment opportunities.
We should understand what is happening in Cuba in a global context. People are not simply protesting in one nation. People have been protesting in France, in Hong Kong, in Catalunya, in Lebanon, in Ecuador, in Chile, in the United States, in Belarus, in Russia, in Tunisia, in Brazil, in Colombia. Countless people in dramatically different geopolitical contexts, under dramatically different regimes, have been adopting similar tactics to express similar grievances. This suggests that what is going on here is deeper than the failures of the Cuban government or the manipulations of the US government.
Though the protests in Cuba were triggered by specific economic developments, we can identify a few common threads that connect practically all of the aforementioned examples. First, everywhere across the board, we see increasing wealth disparities and austerity measures—from the barefaced capitalism of the United States to the democratic socialist countries of northern Europe to authoritarian socialist countries like China and Nicaragua. Second, at the same time that they are cutting social programs and protections, all of these governments are investing considerable resources in intensifying state violence and surveillance. Consequently, practically all of them are facing crises of legitimacy, whether those take the form of national independence struggles, populist movements, demands for “more democracy,” or bona fide horizontal social movements.
Yep. I also feel like there's a lot of conversation that focuses on the "improved standards of living" for countries like Cuba and China that don't consider whether those "improved standards" have actually improved life for people there and in what ways. (In many ways, the "democratic socialist" countries that saw "improved standards of living" also neglected that same question. If we presume the "improved standards" are enabling people to have lives they're content with, why are they unhappy and protesting? Certainly something deeper must be happening.)
It is not within the power of anarchists to prop up authoritarian regimes from the 20th century, nor should we seek to. To tie our hopes to the receding prospects of a state project, associating our aspirations for liberation with its shortfalls, will only discredit us, the same way that the collapse of the USSR discredited socialism in Russia and the failures of Syriza paved the way for the far-right New Democracy party in Greece. We have to build a new generation of movements based in contemporary grassroots struggles, in order to grapple with the problems that capitalism poses on a global scale. Our responsibility is to the ordinary people in Cuba, not to those who rule them. We should make contact with those who are experimenting with principled forms of self-defense and self-determination in order to act in solidarity with them—under the regimes that prevail today and under whatever regimes may succeed those tomorrow.
ALLW: We haven’t been spared harassment and intimidation in this process, since in Cuba university reform ended up being taken over by the state, which dominates the university administration and student organization (the Federation of University Students, Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios, FEU) together with the Communist Party. In intimidating students out of organizing, the state has employed the same pretext used to discredit the protests: that we are confused.
ALLW: Apart from my role in university circles, I’ve also done what I can to support the gestures of solidarity that have been taking place since before the protests to confront the health crisis gripping the country. These days, it’s one of the most relevant self-organized processes in Cuba, and our collective agrees that it’s important to participate in. Connecting this with other current movements will also be an important step towards overcoming conditional solidarity that ends up disappearing or being swallowed up by the state.
This reminds me, but I think more work needs to be done in activist circles that understands how co-option works. It's something that we need to better understand, both in terms of the state and people who seek to build a career on their activism.
Another aspect we need to explore in conjunction to this is that sometimes things are temporary; while some things have longevity (and that's not bad), we also need to recognise that things can be temporary and that we can move on from them to other work. We need to be aware that this temporary nature is neutral. Sometimes things are temporary because we simply no longer need them, and they have served their purpose; other things may be temporary because they are causing harm and are seeking to do harm, which can also include trying to obtain control and power over others.
The protests began due to the failure of the hospitals in Matanzas and the lack of medication. Through social media, reports began to give spiritual strength to the province. Other provinces had the same problems, just less severe, and would soon find themselves in the same situation. It was an impulse, from this situation and others, that provoked an explosion from people, not simply on social media but out in the street.
They were cutting off the electricity for six hours a day because a thermoelectric plant was having problems. On Sunday, July 11, through social media like Facebook, you could see the people who decided to take to the streets in the provinces calling out to the world for humanitarian aid to help with the situation on the island.
This parallels well even with places that do not have a US embargo placed on them and are supported (in order to manipulate people in their own country) by US politicians. Hong Kong is a great example of this. Promise Li has discussed this quite a lot, including in this episode of China and the Left. (This isn't to say that the embargo "isn't harmful" because it is.)
When people are struggling and are seeing how impossible it is to get what they need from where they are, they do often turn to the structures that many so-called superpowers and their allies have created and used in order to manipulate them and find access points to invade (in a multitude of ways): aid.
The same Cuban state that, to confront Yankee imperialism, created an omnipresent political police force to combat the society under its control. The same Cuban state that, in the name of socialism, destroyed all the working-class organizations that, with their histories of struggle, would have made socialism’s declared victories into an everyday reality. That same Cuban state that has turned solidarity into an international brand identity while keeping us submerged in distrust and fear between neighbors. The same Cuban state that—in the middle of the intensified Yankee embargo—builds more hotels for foreign tourists than infrastructure to produce food, fruit, and milk. The same Cuban state that has produced the only vaccines against COVID-19 in Latin America, but makes its health personnel function essentially as unpaid members of the political police.
Both neoliberal capitalism and the socialist administrations that answer to it leave all of us increasingly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of markets and global supply chains. In an agriculturally productive country like Cuba, a lack of affordable food is an absurdity produced by capitalism, mediated through a socialist government that has prioritized integration into the global economy over sustainable food production.
