When I was growing up, the Cuba I heard about in stories was akin to a floating haunted house.
I spent much of my youth in Miami: an enclave for Cuban immigrants, many of whom arrived in the United States after 1959, when Fidel Castro and his army claimed victory over the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
I knew neighbors who were ejected from universities and family friends who were imprisoned for resisting the nascent communist government. In the writing of Reinaldo Arenas, I learned about labor camps that held gay Cubans in the 1960s, as well as Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses — even long-haired hippies who owned Beatles records. In grade school, we’d play a game of tag called “Fidel vs. the Cubans.”
Most of my relatives vote Republican. Most have never been to Cuba. My grandparents left as teens in the 1950s, then met while dancing salsa in Union City, N.J.
This is all to explain why I didn’t tell my family that in March, I followed a humanitarian brigade to Havana, under an oil blockade levied by the U.S.
Buildings in central Havana on March 22.
(Julia Cooper / For L.A. Times)
While I was flying over the island’s shore, the topography looked almost identical to the Florida Everglades. Inside the Havana Airport, those greeting me at customs were not the stocky officers in tactical vests I’d usually see in the States — but two friendly elderly women with clipboards, who could have been my tías. They clocked me through their bejeweled spectacles.
“Look,” said one tía to the other in Spanish. “She wears Cuba on her face.”
“Hi, honey, are you Cuban?” asked her colleague.
These women may butter up any old tourist, but at that moment, I forgot I was ever afraid of going to Cuba. I smiled and said: “Yes, the Expósitos were from Marianao.”
“People say ‘You’re propping up the regime’ by going to Cuba, but it prevents you from talking to Cubans and seeing for yourself what it’s like to live there,” said activist Danny Valdes, who sat next to me on the plane. “If you don’t, you’re hearing it from people who haven’t been back in 50, 60 years. It’s a different place, in good ways and bad ways.”
Born to Cuban parents in Miami, Valdes is a founder of Cuban Americans for Cuba, a collective for Americans of Cuban descent who demand the end of the U.S. embargo on Cuba and a turn toward “mutual prosperity.”
This group joined the Nuestra América Convoy — named after the essay by Cuban independence activist José Martí — a humanitarian mission that delivered more than 6,300 pounds of medical aid by plane, along with $500,000 worth of solar panels and hundreds of suitcases stuffed with nonperishable foods and toiletries. I went as part of the press delegation, which was a mix of journalists, podcasters and content creators.
Organizers from Code Pink, Progressive International and the Democratic Socialists of America coordinated the mission after the Trump administration escalated its 66-year embargo with Cuba into an oil blockade in January. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the highest-ranking Cuban American in the U.S., has since insisted that Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel step down.
Claudia Rodriguez, a delegate from the Nuestra América Convoy, answers questions from Cuban journalists in the Havana airport on March 20 in Havana.
(Julia Cooper / For The Times)
“Cuba’s economy needs to change, and their economy can’t change unless their system of government changes,” said Rubio.
But what’s intended as a blow to the government is punishing the Cuban people. “A U.S. blockade on oil shipments to Cuba has plunged the island into its worst energy crisis in modern history,” my colleague Kate Linthicum reported from Havana. Its Soviet-era power grid already needed upgrades before the blockade; now without fuel, Cubans can’t commute to work or school. Food spoils quickly without refrigeration. Locals apologize for the trash piling up on street corners, as garbage pickup has halted. Hospital patients are dying at accelerated rates without power for life-saving machines.
People express their discontent by banging pots and pans during blackouts. Protesters stormed a Communist Party building in Morón — a flashpoint during the July 2021 protests — but were quickly clamped down. Five people were arrested, including a local pastor and his son. Cuba announced on Thursday that it would soon pardon and release 2,010 prisoners as a “humanitarian gesture,” though it is unclear if any were protesters.
“[Rubio’s] goal is to enact maximum pressure, but it translates to maximum suffering,” said Valdes. “This is a campaign to economically isolate Cuba from the rest of the world. If my parents’ life went 10% differently, I would’ve been born in Cuba, experiencing the same inhumane and cruel things they’re experiencing now. So I come in solidarity with people who are being targeted by my government, in my name.”
Men converse on the streets of central Havana on March 21.
(Julia Cooper/For L.A. Times)
Once in Havana, I joined CAFC delegates as they roamed the city on foot. Daytime activities included volunteering at a soup kitchen, handing out food to families in Parque Maceo and dropping off N95 masks and meds at the towering Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras. We passed by hot rods, apartments listed for sale to foreigners and fishermen reeling in fresh catches off the coastal boulevard, El Malecón.
By night, darkness enveloped the streets, but electricity and reparto music bloomed sporadically from bodegas and bars. (Turns out the U.S. had quietly funneled small amounts of fuel to the private sector.)
In the Parque Central, Cubans asked for loose ibuprofen and imodium, as medicine grows scarce. They spoke approvingly of former President Obama and his two-year “Cuban Thaw,” in which he relaxed some travel and trade restrictions — before President Trump reversed it. (“The sweet years,” as a cabbie named Ricardo called it.) They’re reasonably anxious about Trump’s recent claims that “Cuba is next,” citing his January incursion on Venezuela, Cuba’s closest ally, and the arrest of its de jure president, Nicolás Maduro.
“Can you tell [Trump] not to bomb us?” asked a mother holding her sleeping toddler.
Under sanctions and threats of conflict, many express skepticism of the “freedom” touted by the U.S. government. Those who immigrate to the States risk the same fate as the 6,000 Cubans deported to Mexico, or one of 14 migrants who’ve died in ICE custody since January — like 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos, a Cuban whose death in a Texas detention center was ruled as a homicide. In March, the Trump administration froze immigration benefit applications from almost a million Cubans.
A woman from Santiago, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, hopes that diplomacy will win in the end, but that Cuba should retire the Castro dynasty. Rubio reportedly approached “Raulito,” grandson of former president Raúl Castro, about replacing Díaz-Canel.
“I don’t agree with how Trump treats immigrants,” she said. “But [the Castros] need to go. Que se vayan todos.”
“My father was involved in anti-embargo politics from a liberal capitalist perspective,” said CAFC co-founder and union organizer Justine Medina. “I grew up being told, ‘Once the Castros are gone, then policy can change.’ ”
When Raúl Castro left office in 2018, some things changed in Cuba: The people voted for a new constitution in 2019. It reaffirmed the one-party state — but also established presidential term limits (five years per term for a maximum of two terms), recognized private enterprise and dropped the prohibition of same-sex marriage, which paved the way for legalization in 2022.
Bay Area delegate Lavender Hernandez thought of her grandmother, who was persecuted in Cuba for her sexuality. It’s why Hernandez organized a drag show with seven community organizations in Havana, including gay advocacy group RedHSH and transgender collectives TransCuba and La Red Afro-Cubana de Personas Trans.
“Queer organizations here need HIV [and] HRT medications, bandages, condoms, lube, sanitary products, syringes, needles and non-perishable foods,” she said.
A folkloric dancer joins a performance by Cuban drag queen Sheryka at the Callejon de Hamel in central Havana on March 22. Delegates from the Nuestra América convoy brought humanitarian aid including medical supplies, vitamins, menstrual products and condoms to seven LGBTQ organizations on the island.
(Julia Cooper / For The Times)
CAFC lugged several suitcases of donations, as well as some solar panels, to the Callejón de Hamel, a vibrant sculpture garden and Afro-Cuban hub. Illuminated by fairy lights and a rosy sunset, a willowy queen named Sheryka lip-synced to Toni Braxton and danced to a brisk guaguancó number with a friend.
“It’s emotionally powerful that we’re in this place that we’re connected to by heritage,” said CAFC delegate Brian Gonzalez, who emigrated from Cienfuegos with his parents when he was an infant. “But we’re also connected by our ideals and values.”
On our last night in Havana, Valdes reiterated that the work of CAFC is not to make demands of the Cuban government, but to urge our own to respect the humanity and sovereignty of the Cuban people. The group is already in talks to make another journey to Cuba, on its own.
“There’s a huge variety of opinions about what’s working, what’s not, [and] the ‘incompleteness’ of the revolution — but even the most anti-government Cubans would rather have sovereignty than a U.S.-imposed regime,” said Valdes. An example he cited was Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory beleaguered by a temperamental power grid and excluded from congressional and presidential elections.
“The U.S. can have a friendly diplomatic relationship with Cuba,” said Valdes. “Just like it does with Vietnam, China and other countries it claims are ideologically opposed.”
This week, the U.S. allowed a Russian tanker to deliver roughly 730,000 much-needed barrels to the embattled nation. “If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem whether it’s Russia or not,” Trump told reporters on Sunday; though the blockade will continue on a “case-by-case” basis. The State Department has also coordinated humanitarian aid missions with the Catholic Church.
A wall mural depicts Ernesto “Che” Guevarra in central Havana.
(Julia Cooper / For The Times)
Before returning to the States, I meditated with a few CAFC delegates — who also didn’t tell their families about the trip to Cuba — on the cultural inflammation we inherited. Like any group that’s survived a civil war, those who left Cuba under duress and those who stayed are locked into a vicious cycle of spite that consumes our communities.
“Trauma gets passed on epigenetically, or socially, but when you’re further removed from it, [you] want to question it,” said Medina. “And with capitalism sucking more than it ever has now, in the richest country in the world, you realize: ‘Oh, I’ve only been taught one perspective.’ ”
It hit me in Havana, when I wandered into the studio of singer-songwriter Yary McCarthy, the Tracy Chapman of Cuba. She persuaded me to play a cajón for the first time as she strummed her guitar. “We carry the same rhythm in our blood,” she said.
Both sides dance to the same beat. Both sides speak with the same swing. Both sides are annoyingly opinionated, yes. Some are capitalists, some are communists, but we’re all Cubans, divided by chance, circumstance and the sea.
Back in Miami, I hopped a cab to my grandmother’s apartment. Now 81, my Nana — she prefers this title over “abuela,” which she said made her sound old — enjoys binge-watching true-crime shows and Fox News. I sat at her bedside and came clean: I followed the peaceniks on a mission to Cuba.
Nana laughed. She asked if I saw the “pink ladies” on the news, by which she meant the women from Code Pink. She laughed some more when I told her that their leader, Medea Benjamin, was a great salsa dancer. Nana didn’t seem to mind that I went to Cuba; but she wanted to know if I met anyone handsome there.
“You’re not mad at me?” I asked her.
“When have I ever been mad at you? I’m proud of you,” she said, holding my hand. I could feel my eyes start to well up. I wanted to meet the people my generation was made to fear; but I also wanted to see the place where the woman who raised me was a girl.
“Havana was the Paris of the Caribbean,” she said. “Can you take me back there? I want to see it again. It’s been so long.”
