Cuba Once Again Reminds Us that Socialism Never Fails to Fail
Let what's transpiring in Cuba serve as both an inspiration and a warning to us
Something aspiring took place in Cuba this week.
Without any formal organization and risking their lives, thousands of Cubans marched from Havana to Santiago, chanting "down with the dictatorship" and "We are not afraid." They staged the largest anti-Communist government demonstration in decades.
The protesters have three main grievances. First, the worsening economic situation. Socialist Bernie Sanders once claimed that " Cuba has solved some very important problems. I didn't see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people. Cuba today not only has free health care but very high-quality health care." But the truth is that there is a persistent shortage of food, medicine, and essential products in the country. Cubans have never experienced an abundance of food supply under Castro's Communist regime. Still, the current food shortage is the worst the nation has seen since the 1990s. Most shelves in grocery stores are empty. People often stand in long lines in the brazen heat, waiting to buy food, soap, cooking oil, and other basic items.
Cubans are forced to be creative. The BBC reports that Cuban farmers have begun to sell pumpkin-based bread in many provinces due to the lack of wheat flour. Many farmers simply gave up food for sale in the market because they need the food to feed their families.
Thanks to rising inflation, whatever food and supply people could find in the black market or government-run stores come with hefty price tags. Economists predict that inflation will worsen in the coming months, which means prices for food and essential items could quickly rise another 500 percent to 900 percent.
According to BBC, the Cuban government opened specialty food stores last year, allowing Cuban to buy food and other essential items with foreign currencies. The government's move made many ordinary Cubans angry because they are paid by Cuban pesos. They have a hard time exchanging to other foreign currencies due to the government's strict capital control. Therefore, Cubans see the government-run specialty stores as a tool to extract every bit of foreign currencies from the population to help the cash-strapped ruling Communist Party.
There is also an ongoing power shortage. Cubans have experienced regular blackouts with no powers amid unbearable heat.
Besides food, basic supply, and power shortage, essential medicines such as Aspirin have become scarce in pharmacies and hospitals. The Communist Party likes to brag that the island nation is a healthcare powerhouse. It offers free healthcare to its people. But what's the point of "free" healthcare when people cannot receive primary care? Cuba has seen outbreaks of scabies and other infectious diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The second grievance protestors have is the Communist government's poor handling of the pandemic. The Cuban Communist Party has taken pride in that it sends medical missions worldwide every year to “help” other nations in need of quality healthcare. However, these medical missions are nothing but forced labor programs to help the Cuban Communist Party earn foreign currencies to sustain the regime. Cuban doctors and nurses who participated in these programs saw the Cuban government took most of their pay. They do not have the freedom to move around in foreign countries where they work. They all have been told by government handlers that if they refuse to return to Cuba, their families and loved ones back home will suffer. The U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report gave Cuba a failing grade for its forced labors problem in its foreign medical missions.
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out last year, rather than keeping the medical professionals at home to take care of Cuban people, the Communist Party continued to send medical missions abroad because it saw the pandemic as an excellent opportunity to earn foreign currencies. Such an approach backfired as the number of COVID-19 infected cases and deaths in Cuba kept rising. The latest official report on COVID-19 claims the island nation has 6,750 cases and 31 deaths. However, many Cubans said the actual numbers of cases and death toll are much higher. Some posted on social media stating that the hospitals are so overly crowded that their loved one died home without receiving medical help.
Before the Cuban Communist government shut down the nation's internet, the hashtag #SOSCuba was trending on social media as desperate Cubans are calling for the foreign intervention of what they call a humanitarian crisis in their country.
The third grievance protestors have is the Communist party's restrictions on people's civil liberties. The Castro brothers had ruled the island nation with an iron fist. The Freedom House gives Cuba a score of 14 out of 100 for the nation's repressions to civil liberty. The country has remained a one-party Communist state since 1959. It bans independent media and has brutally suppressed oppositions and dissents.
Autor Antonio García Martínez wrote that the first thing he felt in Cuba when he was there during a reporting trip in 2017 was fear, “you as an individual exist naked without any recourse against the depredations of the state…The Founding Fathers’ warnings about tyrannical kings and their obsession with habeas corpus hit differently when you’re confronted with an unaccountable state machine and no recourse to rule of law or individual rights.”
Since last Sunday's protest, people worldwide witnessed the Communist party's brutality through social media: Cuban police and secret agents beat up and arrested protestors, and the government quickly shut down the nation's internet to prevent images and news of suppression from getting out. A young protestor found a way to talk to the outside world on social media from his home. Secret police broke into his house and arrested him in the middle of his live stream.
None of the Cuban protestors' grievances, except for the pandemic, is anything new. Anyone who lived under Socialism, including me, is only too familiar with the constant hunger, the persistent shortage of everything, and the brutal political suppression. We've seen the same thing happen in every self-proclaimed socialist regime, from Communist China, the former Soviet Union, East European Communist countries to today's Venezuela. What's happening in Cuba today is only another reminder that Socialism never fails to fail.
While I cheer for the Cuban people's courage and bravery to call out the Communist Party and demand for freedom, it is disheartening to see that here in the United States, liberal elites are pushing for a Marxist revolution. A growing number of young people are indoctrinated to believe that socialism is a much desirable system than the free market economic system we have.
Our dishonest and corrupt corporate media couldn’t even bring themselves to acknowledge the root cause of Cuban protests this week is the result of failed socialist policies. Instead, they accused Trump and the U.S. embargo of being responsible for Cuban’s misery. But Trump was out of office since January 20th. The U.S. embargo has exempted food and medicine from its restrictions since 2001. In fact, the U.S. is the largest exporter of medicine to Cuba. The White House spokesperson Jen Psaki refused to blame Communism/Socialism for the misery in Cuba. Instead, she said the Cuban government only “mismanaged.” Where are all the fact-checkers when we need them?
What’s even more outrageous is that the Biden administration’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned this week that the U.S. would turn away Cuban refugees who seek asylum in the U.S. by boat. This is the same administration that has caused a humanitarian crisis in our southern borders by welcoming all illegal border crossing with open arms. But apparently, the Biden administration has deemed that illegally enter into the U.S. on “dry foot” is okay but on “wet” foot is not. It will accept asylum seekers based on the need to escape Central America’s drug gangs but rejects asylum seekers who have to run away from a brutal Communist regime. Let this sink in -- the Biden administration is so left-learning that it defies long-standing U.S. foreign policy and the United Nation’s definition of asylum and openly refuses to lend a helping hand to victims of Communism/Socialism.
Someone told me that "Cubans can be successful anywhere in the world except in Cuba." I pray that Cuban people will enjoy the freedom and prosperity they deserve in their home country someday, hopefully soon. I also pray for my home country, the United States of America. I pray that all the freedom-loving Americans will recognize our crisis and let what's transpiring in Cuba serve as both an inspiration and a warning. Antonio García Martínez reminds us that “the sad thing is that countries can and do choose to commit suicide…some mistakes a free people get to make only once.” Now is the time that each of us needs to find the courage to stand up, speak up, and do what's necessary to defend our liberty and preserve this republic. So our children and grandchildren will never have to live under a Communist/Socialist dystopia like the Cubans.
Op-ed in Newsweek
Despite its flaws, standardized testing is still the best metric to evaluate education outcomes objectively. It levels the playing field for students from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds and helps them achieve upward economic mobility through their own effort and merit. Getting rid of standardized testing will do a disservice to these students who have nothing else to fall back on. Read it here.