Cuban Engineer Exposes Cuba’s Pain—But Misses the U.S. Blockade’s Full Role

A Cuban engineer describes blackouts, food shortages, medicine scarcity, and despair—while blaming Cuba’s government more than the six-decade U.S. blockade.

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Summary

Cuba’s suffering is real, but the source of that suffering must be honestly named.

The interview with Cuban mechanical engineer Rudy Cabrera exposed the frustration of people living through shortages, blackouts, unemployment, and despair. His anger at Cuba’s government is understandable. But the conversation also showed how U.S. policy has obscured its role in Cuba’s crisis. The blockade is economic warfare designed to force submission. When desperation grows deep enough, people can misidentify the source of their pain and accept dangerous “solutions” that may return them to exploitation.

• Cabrera described shortages of electricity, food, medicine, and jobs, especially outside Havana.

• He blamed much of Cuba’s government, but comparisons to China ignore the unique U.S. blockade and global dependence on China.

• The Helms-Burton Act extends U.S. pressure by discouraging foreign companies and banks from doing business with Cuba.

• Castro first sought engagement with the United States before U.S. hostility pushed Cuba toward the Soviet Union.

• The interview showed how economic pain can make people blame the wrong forces, much like working-class Americans misled by right-wing propaganda.

Cuba needs reform, accountability, and relief, not surrender to imperial pressure. Independent journalism must expose how concentrated capital, sanctions, and misinformation turn suffering people against their own long-term liberation.

The interview is in Spanish. Use the YouTube English captions to watch.

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KPFT’s People News co-host Richard Hanna arranged an interview with a Cuban man, Rudy Cabrera, to get an on-the-street view of the realities in Cuba. Richard asked me to conduct the interview because Mr. Cabrera spoke solely in Spanish.

I must admit that the interview did not go as expected. I will start with a snippet from the middle of the interview. After Mr. Cabrera expressed the people’s frustration with the suffering they endured, I made the following statement without context: “Maybe the country needs a traumatic event.” But before I could properly contextualize, Rudy interjected, “Yes, that’s it. Because it has been 67 years of saying they [the government] would change.”

The statement took me aback because he inferred that many would accept a US invasion just to break the status quo. That is what happens when a country's economic situation leaves its citizens in a desperate situation.

Mr. Cabrea begins the interview by reiterating what many of us have already heard. Electricity is hard to come by, especially in rural areas. Medicines and food are in short supply. He said it is not as bad in Havana. Nonetheless, one cannot use appliances such as washers. After discussing the suffering, I asked if the people understood that it was largely the US government's complete blockade of Cuba that caused the destruction of the Cuban economy.

He partially agreed but inferred that most of the responsibility for Cuba’s failed economy lay with the government. He pointed out that if China were able to bring a quasi-market economy. In his opinion, the Cuban leaders should have been able to do the same.

Mr. Cabrera may not have realized that the US did not have a permanent blockade of China. More importantly, the US has outsourced much of its manufacturing base to China, which has left some American workers living the same fear and distress of Cuban, albeit with amenities nonexistent in Cuba. Additionally, you can’t blogade or impose your will on a country you depend on to finance your debt, manufacture your goods on the cheap to obscenely enrich your capitalists, or out number you by many multiples.

Mr. Cabrera said Cuba’s major problems were exacerbated after the COVID epidemic. He said the government did little to invest in society. Unfortunately, when your economy is held hostage, finding hard currency to fulfill the needs of your population suffers immensely. This is not an excuse but a statement of mathematical fact.

Mr. Cabrera is an unemployed mechanical engineer. He made it clear that he was the only family member with a professional degree, and yet, he is without a job. I reminded Mr. Cabrera that under Batista, black people were relegated to cleaning, dancing, or singing. Imposed suffering often affects the identification of villains and creates a false nostalgia.

The frustration I heard on the other side of WhatsApp was astounding and understandable. But it was distressing that, while he had been living in a country at war with the US, a blockade is a war measure, and he was unaware of the extent to which it contributed to Cuba’s despair.

It is worth noting that Castro attempted to be a US ally and was rejected by the US, which threw them into the arms of Russia for a decades-long alliance. Additionally, it is incumbent on anyone discussing Cuba to be aware of the Helms-Burton Act, which enforces extraterritorial sanctions on foreign commerce with Cuba primarily by denying US market access to third-country companies and banks that do business with the island. This forces global firms to choose between trading with Cuba and accessing the US economy. Cuba’s economic disaster made it clear that the sabotage had worked effectively.

Too often, the aggrieved does not realize the source of their angst, pain, economic insecurity, and more. We see this phenomenon throughout the world, including the right-wing movement that is amplifying misinformation right here in America and around the Western world. Mr. Cabrera seemed to even buy into the fallacy that Cubans, or foreigners for that matter, could just follow “capitalist market” rules to success without understanding the coercion that is material in the United States, which is creating an ever-growing underclass.

Independent Journalism must continue to inform and facilitate communities that seem disparate, but are united by the same forces causing them economic harm. Mr. Cabrera is living through a 67-year-old war in which many of the causal parameters are clearly unknown or forgotten by too many. One hopes that Cuba does not fall for a short-term reprieve, as it will signal a return to Batista more effectively than Trump’s attempt to return us to Jim Crow and Robber Barons.

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