SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
communism
What Does It Mean to Be a Good Cuban American?
Being a good Cuban American means to support the people, and to fight for what's right and just for them, not for the government; American or Cuban.
Mar 15, 2026
What does it mean to be a good Cuban American? If you'd have asked me that question six years ago my answer would have been the standardized one, because it was an answer that had been etched into my mind since I was young.
To be a good Cuban-American I had to:
- Vehemently hate the Cuban government and revolution;
- Oppose anything that remotely resembles communism or socialism; and
- Thoroughly support the Embargo on Cuba.
Those were the three basic pillars for being a good Cuban-American, and they were not optional. They still aren't. At least, that's what the loud Cuban-American voices in Miami and South Florida want you and me to believe.
For me, being a good Cuban American means stopping the embargo. Stop suffocating my people.
I was born in Cuba a few years before their “periodo especial,” which lasted from about 1991 to 2000. Essentially, it was an economic crisis that was highlighted by extreme reductions of already rationed foods and severe energy shortages (apagones). For the duration of my childhood and young adult life, I was taught that these burdens that Cuba felt were the sole fault of Fidel Castro and his government. That it was communism's fault, and that Che Guevara was the main architect of Cuba's torture. As a result, I grew up the way most Cubans who live in the USA do, with a severe mistrust of anything socialist or communist, fully believing that the embargo was choking the Cuban government, and having the lowest possible opinion of Castro and Che.
When I started college, I got involved in activism, and worked very closely with right-wing ideological organizations. Although at the time, I didn’t realize their beliefs were right-wing, I just felt that it was the only way to think and act as a Cuban. I was taught a lot by them, and of course, deep within all of those lessons were the continued lessons on hatred of communism and socialism, Castro and co., and supporting the embargo. This went on for many years, and I eventually became president of a local university-aligned organization. One day, I had a conversation with someone who had also been heavily involved with dissident work. We began discussing trips to Cuba; he'd said it would be his fifth trip over to the island, and I mentioned I hadn't been back since I left back in 1994. He questioned why.
I began listing all of the reasons that had been so eloquently placed into my psyche for the past 20 years: traveling to Cuba was dangerous, it only benefited the Cuban government, my money would never reach the people of Cuba, I would be blacklisted here in the USA because I would be seen as a communist sympathizer, and so forth.
He looked me right in the eyes and said all of the reasons I'd mentioned were American propaganda, and served no other purpose than to instill fear into people who would otherwise see a situation for what it truly was—cruel and unusual. A situation that only hurt the people of Cuba. A situation that was orchestrated by the American government under the guise of hurting the Cuban government, but the real objective was to obtain control of the small sovereign nation.
Over the last five years or so, I have done a lot of unlearning, and while I still feel very strongly about the Cuban government and their crimes toward the Cuban people who oppose them, I do not believe the issue of Cuba is as black and white as the loud voices in South Florida want you and me to believe. The one thing, however, that is very black and white is that the embargo does nothing but hurt the people of Cuba. The embargo does nothing else but cut off an already limited supply of items, medicines, and tools that the Cuban people need to survive.
If you ask me now what it means to be a good Cuban American, my answer is simple, yet in true Cuban fashion also very complex. Being a good Cuban American means to support the people, and to fight for what's right and just for them, not for the government; American or Cuban. Being a good Cuban American means to call for an end to the decades-long embargo that has done nothing but strangle an already struggling country. Being a good Cuban American means recognizing that NO government is without flaw, but understanding that at times when you are pushed into a corner, there are only a handful of ways to stay alive.
For me, being a good Cuban American means stopping the embargo. Stop suffocating my people. Stop oppressing my people, and stop using their suffering as the excuse to blame another government. Not in my name.
End the embargo. Help the Cuban people. If this calls to you, please join Cuban Americans for Cuba. We have poured our hearts into an open letter against the current US policies toward Cuba (CubanAmericansForCuba.Org/Letter), which is a call to our fellow Cubans to stand with us and show the world who we truly are and what we truly stand for.
Our movement is a blend of members across the United States who don't all think alike, but who share one unshakable conviction: that the future of Cuba belongs to the Cuban people, and to them alone, free from American interference and manipulation.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Niemöller Was Wrong: When They Came for the Communists, People Didn’t Just Stay Silent
Not just silence, but liberal “appeasement” of the right has brought us here.
Oct 25, 2025
It’s one of the most rousing calls to conscience to come out of the 20th century. I’m thinking of Martin Niemöller’s “First they came for the communists.”
You know how it goes. It begins, “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.” And it ends, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
It’s a powerful statement, and you’ll see it on T-shirts and posters and placards at demonstrations. But when you actually look at our history, it’s not just that good people didn’t speak out. It’s that many Americans threw other Americans under the bus.
The story of the Danish king who wore a yellow star in solidarity with Jewish Danes during World War II is apocryphal. It never happened. So too, while our cultural memory about the McCarthy era romances the refuseniks, hundreds of Americans did comply with the Red Scare, identifying colleagues or associates as communists to protect themselves or preserve their careers. The Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy reports that of the more than 500 people who were called to testify in front of Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, only about 100 invoked the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions on self-incrimination grounds. The rest went along.
When someone comes for the anti-fascists, the odds are that some will say, “Antifa is us.” But how many?
This phenomenon was even more pronounced before HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), which paralleled McCarthy’s Senate investigations. The “Hollywood 10” refused to testify, but Elia Kazan wasn’t alone in supplying the committee with lists of colleagues who had supposedly suspect ties. Their cooperation frequently allowed them to continue working in the film industry, while those who refused were blacklisted for years.
So too, in our time, when the press and the pundits, and the politicians, and the courts have come for the abortion providers, the anti-Zionists, the teachers of critical race theory, and the nonconforming queers, many didn’t just stay silent. They actively participated in creating suspicion around those people and their principles.
Citing electoral calculus and political pragmatism, liberal “compromises” on abortion law, dating back to Roe v. Wade, contributed to the erosion of reproductive autonomy well before the 2022 Dobbs decision. After 2021, laws restricting “race-conscious instruction” spread to 45 states meeting minimal resistance.
LGBTQ rights have always been dispensable—depending on the political climate. Today, trans Americans, even kids, are isolated, afraid, and at the nation’s highest risk for suicide.
Not just silence, but liberal “appeasement” of the right has brought us here.
Now President Donald Trump and his mob are trying to vilify “Antifa,” an entity that he thinks exists but really doesn’t. Are we going to allow “anti-fascist” to be made suspect?
Innumerable signs held by countless Americans at No Kings protests suggest it won’t be easy. From the older women carrying versions of “Auntie Fa’s cookies don’t crumble for kings” to the green-clad members of Amphifa (Amphibians Against Fascism), to the 76-year-old who walked in Washington, DC with a straightforward “I am Antifa” sign. When someone comes for the anti-fascists, the odds are that some will say, “Antifa is us.” But how many? Others will always seek refuge in cowardice and caving. Our history is brimming with both.
I had a chance to talk with longtime organizer Dolores Huerta, and theater artist Ellen Gavin about their new short video “The People United” recently on my TV and radio program, Laura Flanders & Friends. Find out more at lauraflanders.org.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Bankrupt 'End of History' and the Trump Scam's Inevitable Failure
The yawning gap between the returning president's over-the-top MAGA rhetoric and what he’s really delivered should be instructive.
Jan 20, 2025
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” So declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ah, if only it had proved to be so.
Although my respect for MLK is enduring, when it comes to that upward-trending curve connecting past to present, his view of human history has proven to be all too hopeful. At best, history’s actual course remains exceedingly difficult to decipher. Some might say it’s downright devious (and, when you look around this embattled planet of ours today, from the Ukraine to the Middle East, deeply disturbing).
Let’s consider a specific, very recent segment of the past. I’m thinking of the period stretching from my birth year of 1947 to this very moment. An admission: I, too, once believed that the unfolding events during those long decades I was living through told a discernible story. Although not without its zigs and zags, so I was convinced once upon a time, that story had both direction and purpose. It pointed toward an ultimate destination — so politicians, pundits, and prophets like Dr. King assured us. In fact, embracing the essentials of that story was then considered nothing less than a prerequisite for situating yourself in the ongoing stream of history. It offered something to grab hold of.
What does this head-scratching turn of events signify? Could History be trying to tell us something?
Sadly enough, all of this turned out to be bunk.
That became abundantly clear in the years after 1989 when the Soviet Union began to collapse and the U.S. was left alone as a great power on Planet Earth. The decades since then have carried a variety of labels. The post-Cold War order came and went, succeeded by the post-9/11 era, and then the Global War on Terror which, even today, in largely unattended places like Africa, drags on in anonymity.
In those precincts where opinions are manufactured and marketed, an overarching theme informed each of those labels: the United States was, by definition, the sun around which all else orbited. In what was known as an age of unipolarity or, more modestly, the unipolar moment, we Americans presided as the sole superpower and indispensable nation of Planet Earth, exercising full-spectrum dominance. In the pithy formulation of columnist Max Boot, the United States had become the planet’s “Big Enchilada.” The future was ours to mold, shape, and direct. Some influential thinkers insisted — may even have believed — that History itself had actually “ended.”
Alas, events exposed that glorious moment as fleeting, if not altogether illusory. For several reasons — Washington’s propensity for needless war certainly offers a place to start — things did not pan out as expected. Assurances of peace, prosperity, and victory over the foe (whoever the foe it was at that moment) turned out to be false. By 2016, that fact had registered on Americans in sufficient numbers for them to elect as “leader of the Free World” someone hitherto chiefly known as a TV host and real estate developer of dubious credentials.
The seemingly impossible had occurred: The American people (or at least the Electoral College) had delivered Donald Trump to the pinnacle of American politics.
It was as if a clown had taken possession of the White House.
Shocked and appalled, millions of citizens found this turn of events hard to believe and impossible to accept. President Trump promptly proceeded to fulfill their worst expectations. By almost any of the measures habitually employed to evaluate political leadership, he flopped as a commander-in-chief. To my mind, he was an embarrassment.
Yet, however inexplicably, Trump remained to many Americans — growing numbers, it would turn out — a source of hope and inspiration. If given sufficient time, he would redeem the nation. History had summoned him to do so, so his followers believed, fervently and adamantly.
In 2020, the anti-Trump Establishment did manage to scratch out one final chance to show that it was not entirely bankrupt. Yet sending to the White House an elderly white male who embodied the politics of the Old School merely postponed Trump’s Second Coming.
No doubt Joe Biden was seasoned and well-intentioned, but he proved to possess little or nothing of Trump’s mystifying appeal. And when he stumbled, the remnant of the Establishment quickly and brutally abandoned him.
So, four years on, Americans have reversed course. They have decided to give Trump — now elevated to the status of folk hero in the eyes of many — another chance.
What does this head-scratching turn of events signify? Could History be trying to tell us something?
The End of the End of History
Allow me to suggest that those who counted History out did so prematurely. It’s time to consider the possibility that all too many of the very smart, very earnest, and very well-compensated people who take it upon themselves to interpret the signs of our times have been radically misinformed. Simply put: they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Viewed in retrospect, perhaps the collapse of communism did not signify the turning point of cosmic significance so many of them then imagined. Add to that another possibility: Perhaps liberal democratic consumer capitalism (also known as the American Way of Life) does not, in fact, define the ultimate destination of humankind.
It just might be that History is once again on the move — or simply that it never really “ended” in the first place. And as usual, it appears to have tricks up its sleeve, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House arguably one of them.
More than a few of my fellow citizens see his election as a cause for ultimate despair — and I get that. But to saddle Trump with responsibility for the predicament in which our nation now finds itself vastly overstates his historical significance.
Let’s start with this: Despite his extraordinary aptitude for self-promotion, Trump has shown little ability to anticipate, shape, or even forestall events. Yes, he is distinctly a blowhard, who makes grandiose promises that rarely pan out. (If you want documentation, take your choice among Trump University, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Taj Mahal, and even Trump: the Game.) Barring a conversion akin to the Apostle Paul’s on his journey to Damascus, we can expect more of the same from his second term as president.
Yet the yawning gap between his over-the-top MAGA rhetoric and what he’s really delivered should be instructive. It trains a spotlight on what the “end of history” has actually yielded: lofty unfulfilled promises that have given way to unexpected and often distinctly undesired consequences.
That adverse judgment hardly applies to Trump alone. In reality, it applies to every president since George H.W. Bush unveiled his “new world order” back in 1991, with his son George W. Bush’s infamous 2003 “Mission Accomplished” claim serving as its exclamation point.
Since then, at the national level, American politics, especially presidential politics, has become a scam. What happens in Washington, whether in the White House or on Capitol Hill, no more reflects the hopes of the Founders of the American republic than Black Friday and Cyber Monday express “the reason for the Season.”
In that sense, while Trump’s return to the White House may not be worth celebrating, it is entirely appropriate. It may well be History’s way of saying: “Hey, you! Wake up! Pay attention!”
The Big Enchilada No More
In 1962, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson remarked that “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.” Although a bit snarky, his assessment was apt.
Today, one can easily imagine some senior Chinese or Indian (or even British) diplomat offering a similar judgment about the United States. America’s imperial pretensions have run aground. Yet the loudest and most influential establishment voices — Donald Trump notably excepted — continue to insist otherwise. With apparent sincerity, President Biden all too typically clung to the notion that the United States does indeed remain the planet’s “indispensable nation.”
Events say otherwise. Consider the arena of war. Once upon a time, professing a commitment to peace, the United States sought to avoid war. When armed conflict became unavoidable, America sought to win, quickly and neatly. Today, in contrast, this country seemingly adheres to an informal doctrine of “bomb-and-bankroll.” Since three days after the 9/11 attacks (with but a single negative vote), when Congress passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, war has become a fixture of presidential politics, with a compliant Congress issuing the checks. As for the Constitution, when it comes to war powers, it has become a dead letter.
That he, too, will disappoint his followers, no less the rest of us, is, of course, foreordained. Yet his failure might — just might — bring Americans to rethink and renew their democracy.
In recent years, U.S. military casualties have been blessedly few, but outcomes have been ambiguous at best and abysmal — think Afghanistan — at worst. If the United States has played an indispensable role in these years, it’s been in underwriting disaster, spending billions of dollars on catastrophic wars that were, from the moment they were launched, of distinctly questionable relevance to this country’s wellbeing.
In his inconsistent, erratic, and bloviating way, Donald Trump — almost alone among figures on the national stage — has appeared to find this objectionable and has proposed a radical course change. Under his leadership, he insists, the Big Enchilada will rise to new heights of glory.
To be clear, the likelihood of the incoming administration making good on the myriad promises contained within its MAGA agenda is close to zero. When it actually comes to setting basic U.S. policy on a more sensible course, Trump is manifestly clueless. Buying Greenland, taking the Panama Canal, or even making Canada our 51st state will not restore our ailing Republic to health. As for the team of lackeys Trump is assembling to assist him in governing, let us simply note that there is not a single figure of Acheson’s stature among them.
Still, here we may find reason for at least a glimmer of hope. For far too long — all my life, in fact — Americans have looked to the White House for salvation. Those expectations have met with repeated, seemingly endless disappointment.
Vowing to Make America Great Again, Donald Trump has, in his own strange fashion, vaulted those hopes to a new level. That he, too, will disappoint his followers, no less the rest of us, is, of course, foreordained. Yet his failure might — just might — bring Americans to rethink and renew their democracy.
Listen: History is signaling to us. Whether we can successfully interpret those signals remains to be seen. In the meantime, brace yourself for what promises to be a distinctly bumpy ride.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular