The American far left appears equally unprepared. Two members of the Squad, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose reaction to these cries for “Libertad” was: “DSA stands with the Cuban people and their Revolution in this moment of unrest. End the blockade.” By “Revolution,” they don’t mean the protesters in the streets now—they mean the 1959 revolution that plunged the island nation into decades of totalitarian Communist rule. By “the blockade,” they mean the American trade embargo of Cuba, which successive Cuban leaders (there have only been three since 1959) have blamed for their country’s economic woes, corruption, and anything else that might stick—despite the fact that the United States is the only country in the world to enforce such an embargo against Cuba.
Those with the best knowledge of Cuban life and politics, the Cuban people, seem to have a difference of opinion with the DSA. The whole point of these marches is the rejection of Fidel Castro’s old cry of “Patria o Muerte”—instead, the protesters are chanting “Patria y Libertad,” and more recently, “Patria y Vida.” Cubans want freedom, not the Revolution.
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