US embargo of Cuba | Here is Havana

Hello from Havana everyone. If you haven’t heard the news of Cuba going dark and then getting Oscarized, cue my envy: what we are living here is duro, and more difficult still due to the world’s longest, strongest sanctions (a friend calls it ‘the slow Gaza’), decimated support systems (no one is immune to emigration and loss), and the hate emanating from here, there and everywhere zooming around the Internet.

Anyone who is not on the ground cannot know what we are going through, so here’s a quick summary, followed by ideas of what you can do to help during different stages of the recovery process.

Why the italics? For you newbies, I’ve lived and worked in Havana for 22 years as a journalist and volunteered in the Cuban campo in August 1993: I tasted the ‘special’ in Special Period. I’ve reported through many hurricanes here, and accompanied Cuba’s Henry Reeve medical team in post-earthquake Pakistan (2005) and Haiti (2010). I lived through 9-11 in my hometown. I know what disaster looks, feels and smells like. When the national electrical grid crashed last Friday morning, and several times again after that, we were plunged into disaster.

The first 72 hours of any disaster are critical. It depends on the type and scale obviously, but some disasters give you warning – like hurricanes. Others – earthquakes for instance – hit suddenly and hard, like an anarchist’s brick through a Starbucks window. This was the latter. There’s little anyone outside can do to help in these first days, especially on an island – unless you’re like, Joe Biden. Oh wait! [Duuuuuuude. Where is your humanity?]

We’ve been having scheduled (and not) blackouts for a couple of years now. The city is divided into sections called bloques; the electric company publicizes the weekly schedule widely. Before Friday, Havana was typically without lights 5 hours a day, a couple, three times a week. We managed and adjusted our washing, charging, cooking, reading, whatever-takes-electricity schedules and maintained families, businesses, sanity (or tried to).

This was different. This was the entire island for days. Some longer, some shorter (and as I write this, some places are still without). Every single electronic apparatus ground to a halt, lost its charge or waited for a generator to kick in. For days in Havana, no water was being pumped and there was no refrigeration – in a tropical metropolis with a violent trash collection (and creation) problem. As food rotted beyond redemption, it was thrown out. And it kept piling on and piling on. We have a friend who was horribly sick with dengue when the country shut down. She lives on the 10^th floor. She had no water except what we hauled up those 10 flights. I wondered aloud how many people had been stuck in elevators when the grid collapsed? Cuban friends shared Special Period horror stories.

We switched into disaster response mode: the able-bodied hauled buckets of water from cisterns, others collected rain to bathe and flush. We treated drinking water and brought it to friends, whether we had to bike or walk or hoof up 10 flights of stairs. With our cell phones dead and no connection, we relied on landlines. Remember those? Handy during the attack on the Twin Towers, handy this past weekend. We kept fridges shut, cooking furiously when the food was just about to go bad and only opening big freezers to safeguard neighbors’ meat. Assuring water and food and attending the most vulnerable: this is what the first hours of a disaster are about.

After 72 hours, the situation looks different. Generators have run out of gas, perishable food is toast, nerves are frayed and frustration high. And that’s when Hurricane Oscar hit the eastern part of the country. Disaster heaped upon disaster.

As a starting point for this ‘what can I do?’ conversation, I ask you to consider the following. Can you send your family or friends a generator, food, or phone chargers? Yes. How about solar panels and glucometers? Those too. This will help your immediate circle and those they choose to help (if they choose to help). But what about everyone else? To paraphrase the Cuban Ambassador to the US: most Cuban families don’t have this option. What about them? Thinking about the whole, together with your personal loved ones, is critical right now – Cuba, and Havana especially, are experiencing rapacious individualism of unprecedented proportions.

Vamos al grano: here is how you can help in the next weeks/months both in the macro and the micro:

MACRO

– What’s the best nation? DO-nation: You can’t save the electrical grid, collect the garbage or rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Guantanamo. Contact your nearest Cuban embassy or consulate to make monetary donations to the emergency fund or to organize large donations and shipments.

– Leave it to the pros: Many organizations, foundations and projects have been supporting Cuba for years, in good times and bad. They already have the necessary paperwork, connections, shipping partners, experience and, in the case of USA-based entities, legal ability to make large donations, now. This includes Let Cuba Live, which launched an emergency fundraising campaign this week, Global Links, MEDICC, and Global Health Partners in the health sector, and Hope for Cuba in the education sector and for general humanitarian aid.

– Take to the streets/Internet to change inhumane US Policy: US sanctions are killing Cubans, encouraging people to emigrate, destroying families, and causing trauma. Plus, they’ve shown they don’t work. Biden has 90 days to make good on his campaign promises (grrrr) to revert to Obama-era policies – he can achieve this with the stroke of a pen.

Contact the White House to demand Biden do the right thing
Write to your Congressperson imploring them to lift sanctions against Cuba
Sign the petition to get Cuba removed from the SSOT list (already halfway to goal of 1 million signatures)
Rally for the US to lift sanctions ahead of the annual UN vote to lift the blockade (all times local):
- Oct 27, 1pm, Grand Central Terminal, NYC
- Oct 29, 8pm (EST), Virtual online picket to end embargo via Zoom
- Oct 30, 6pm, Lafayette Square, Washington, DC
- Oct 30, 6:30pm, Federal Plaza, Chicago

MICRO

The mental health toll is real: Call or write your loved ones to let them know you care. Don’t ask what they need, offer to fix what you can’t or expect a rapid response – this is all a burden in a traumatic, post-disaster situation. Just call and listen. Accompany.

Send supplies: Every family can use something and donation packages can be purchased via any online retailer and sent via Crowley shipping direct to recipient’s door. They have different options, but donations cost $1.99/lb, plus a small handling charge and a minimum customs charge in pesos cubanos, paid by the recipient. There are a minimum of 4 sailings a month. This is an efficient, professional service with over 20 years’ experience. Tip: don’t ship what you think your friends or family need, ask first. They know best. For instance, a generator is typically less useful than an inverter (one takes gasoline, the other runs off a moto/car/truck battery).

Bring supplies: Individual travelers can bring items for their friends and family, as long as they do not run afoul of Cuban customs regulations. All customs duties are waived for people coming in with food and medicine until the end of the year.

Cuba Libro has been administering targeted donation programs since 2014. We maintain a list of the most-needed ‘regular’ crisis items, updated regularly with our community and counterparts, on our website. With the grid failure and hurricane double whammy, we’ve also created an Amazon list for those items most needed during this super crisis.

Send food, medicines and more to individuals: Since pandemic lockdowns, several reliable e-tailers deliver food, medicines and more direct to homes across the country. These are the ones we have used:

Travel to Cuba: You’ve been here or you’ve dreamt of coming. Now is the time. We will mutually lift each other’s spirits. Laugh and joke (one going around right now is ‘at least in the Special Period we had milordo. Now we’re without sugar AND water!’) and connect as humans. Don’t believe what you read on the Internet, experience it in the flesh, while helping a person, a family, a barrio, a country, to feel more whole.

Cuba Libro volunteer prepares donation for Guantanamo hurricane victims

Compost: This is for everyone reading this on the ground and for those visiting who can convince their friends what a big, immediate impact this can have for us here. A typical Cuban home generates about 75% organic waste, 100% of which goes into dumpsters, improvised garbage piles and landfill. It is heavy and creates methane. It overflows our bins and creates rivers of garbage and more work for the already over-worked. If even a fraction of households and restaurants started composting, we could reduce waste, improve health and hygiene, and create super enriched soil at the same time. It isn’t a resource barrier that keeps people from composting, it’s cultural. Here are over a dozen different DIY compost bins, some of which are perfect for our context.

Will write more soon.

Sending everyone much love from Havana where the lights are on (fingers crossed), garbage is being bulldozed into open trucks and taken away, and we’ve finally been able to shower. Basically, we are doing whatever we can to return to some sort of normalcy (and not go mad trying).

[Disclosure: I’ve received no compensation whatsoever for products recommended in the links here]

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Why is money green?

Because lawyers pick it before it’s ripe.

To be fair, two of my closest friends are lawyers, which predisposes me to their ilk, but I had no clue how often I’d be relying on their craft when I landed in Cuba. To wit: the organization I work for is completely lawyered up and my husband and I required representation to get married. I’ve had clients advise me to retain counsel before they axed me unlawfully and I surely have a fat file somewhere in the bowels of the State Department (hopefully this will never be cause for me to call on my attorney friends).

I’m required to navigate all these legal hoops due to the simple, but paradoxically complex fact that I fell in love with a Cuban who, like 70% of his compatriots, was born under the US blockade. I’m based here in full compliance with US law, but no matter: I still require a phalanx of legal eagles.

The stated purpose of this 51-year old policy is to topple the revolutionary government. When a policy hasn’t worked for over half a century, it’s time to try something new, don’t ya think? Maybe I should write Poli Sci for Dummies for those bozos in the Beltway. In addition to failing to achieve its goal, it makes US administrations and the Florida PACs that yank their chains look like an abused spouse: they know it’s not working, witnesses and allies tell them it’s not working, but they keep coming back for more, taking a beating in the process (see note 1).

Sad and illogical for regular folks, but good for the lawyers.
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I grew up in New York, but didn’t see my first dead body until I moved to San Francisco and didn’t see my first gun until I moved to Havana. As might be expected on a blockaded island, weapons are extraordinarily rare in Cuba (the woman-to-woman withering stare and crippling bureaucracy notwithstanding) and Havana is the safest place I’ve ever lived or traveled (see note 2). But people talk…

Especially around Christmas and New Year’s, when money is both needed and tight, crime rates spike and run-of-the-mill rumors are spiced up with brazen robberies and cheeky scams. Since the daily papers and nightly newscast favor potato harvests over politics and international crises in lieu of the domestic variety, our only way of learning about heists, busts, or protests is through these rumors AKA radio bemba, the coconut wireless, and the grapevine.

As 2010 drew to a close, everyone was talking about the stick up at the Trimagen on 42 & 19. It wasn’t the ideal place to hit, what with the police booth and cameras on the corner adjacent. That area is a hive of activity too, meaning all of Havana was a-buzz with the story of the two masked gunmen and their derring-do. Robberies always dominate year’s end gossip, but the use of a gun distinguished this tale.

When a buddy of mine from rough and tumble Lawton shared stories of armed thugs robbing women for their gold chains in his neighborhood, I wondered aloud: ‘where are all these guns coming from?!’ (see note 3).

“There was a container full of guns stolen back in the 90s. They’re still floating around,” my friend explained.

Hearing about guns (or quakes or snakes) is one thing – coming face-to-face with them is quite another.

It was an inky, moonless night when we broke down by the side of the road. We were between here and there on Cuba’s main highway, called Ocho Vías for its eight lanes that in reality are reduced to four when you factor in all the potholes and horse carriages. This isn’t a highway in your sense of the word. Here, there’s no shoulder or lights, no roadside service or emergency call box. To get out of there we’d have to fix the Lada ourselves or walk to get help (we were too close to Havana to flag someone down – those days are largely over as suspicion displaces solidarity in the big city).

As I fretted about getting clipped by a passing truck on the side of that dark road, my driver – an ex cop who shall remain nameless – reached beneath his seat.

“Don’t worry. If anyone messes with us, they’ll be sorry,” he promised, brandishing the first pistol I’d ever laid eyes on. And I was worried about other drivers.
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Money: it makes even the most isolated, bull-headed island go ’round. This isn’t news – except perhaps for all those lefties whose rose-colored glasses are clouded by wishful thinking and dewy-eyed nostalgia. It has been a long time since Cuba was immune to The Market, marketing (Red Bull anyone?), and the opiate of the masses peddled by the likes of Steve Jobs, Barry Levinson, and Mark Zuckerberg. Cuba’s resistance was inspiring while it lasted and let’s give thanks that it lasted as long as it did. But those halcyon days? Konet.

I admit my relationship with money is fraught with difficulties and contradictions. I know we all need the green (some more than others, certainly), but I’m miserable at making it, more so at managing it. This is a deadly fiscal combination – especially in Cuba where it’s dreadfully hard to make money and life is expensive.

Playing the money game is something I’ve never been good at, which is painfully obvious when it comes to international banking – or lack thereof as the case may be. For those of you who don’t know, American credit and debit cards don’t work in Cuba. If your bank even so much as has a branch on US shores, your plastic is useless due to (again) the US blockade.

To give you an idea of how incredibly insidious this is, I ask you to consider the last time you traveled somewhere – even to the next town over – and couldn’t use plastic money of any kind (see note 4). OK, maybe during a long weekend in the woods or on an off-the-beaten track Asian odyssey, but living for months at a time, with no access to your bank account, nor capability to purchase anything with a credit card? How would you do it? (see note 5).

I’ll tell you how we do it. We mule in cash. Fat wads of Euros, pounds, Canadian dollars or whatever’s giving the best exchange rate at the moment (see note 6) are carried in by Americans forced to do so. As I type this, big stashes of cash are being tucked in bras and under clothing to wing their way from Miami to Havana.

Let’s hope there are no armed robbers lurking at Arrivals. My advice? Have your lawyers number handy just in case.

Notes

1. Many people have written on the economic boon lifting the embargo would mean for key regions in the US, notably Florida and the Gulf States.

2. Save for the Big Island which in so many ways is unto a class itself (see note 4).

3. It’s difficult enough to sneak in a hard drive or dried sausage these days past Cuban customs, let alone a firearm.

4. Residents of and visitors to the “cash is king” Big Island excluded.

5. I should mention here that there’s a Canadian outfit called Caribbean Transfers which sets up a totally usable card for you to use in Cuba to get cash and make purchases. I personally have not had luck with them, though I know other people who swear by this company.

6. Despite being called the ‘convertible peso,’ it’s impossible to procure or change (ie convert) Cuba’s hard currency outside of Cuba.