Migration from Cuba to the United States is at a peak. Photo: NBC 6 South Florida
October 7, 2022—The name of the small boat said it all: Libertad. On the stern, the words “Si, se puede” said a lot. They reflected the passengers’ determination to make a new life. Yes, we can.
They reached U.S. shores around 3:00 a.m. on the shores of Key Biscayne, just outside of Miami.
The vessel fit 26 passengers. Looking at the boat, it’s a wonder how they would have fit in the boat for the trip. When there’s a will, there’s a way.
Cubans have been fleeing from the communist island in record numbers in recent months.
In a sense, the trend is not new. They’ve escaped to brighter shores since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Once in control, it didn’t take Castro long to nationalize private property and punish opponents. That drove Cubans to flee for secure shores by the tens of thousands. Some estimates suggest 250,000 Cubans fled the island in the years following the revolution.
Cuban Migration to the United States Spikes
Political repression in Cuba never really stopped. Neither did the quest for a better life—a life where one could speak freely and make a decent living.
This year the number of international migrants reaching U.S. borders swelled to new highs.
From October 2021 to August 2022, U.S. border patrol agents encountered 2.49 million migrants along various borders. Of those migrants, 197,870 came from Cuba, according to encounter statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Most of them coming are single adults. They don’t all come on boats arriving in Florida. Many arrive along the Southwest Land Border. Others are found along the Northwest Land Border in cities like Detroit, Buffalo and Seattle.
It is often a dangerous and expensive voyage. And still, they come.
June 24, 2022–In a milestone suggesting warmer relations between two adversaries, the U.S. government is permitting airlines to resume flights to Cuba. Southwest, United, American Airlines, JetBlue and other airlines now offer service to Cuba. Destinations include Havana, Varadero, Santa Clara, and Holguin.
In May, the State Department reinstated the Cuban Family Reunification Parole (CFRP) Program, allowed more remittances to flow to the island nation, and increased consular services and visa processing. Furthermore, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said, “We will support new avenues for electronic payments and for U.S. business activities with independent Cuban entrepreneurs, including through increased access to microfinance and training.”
Background
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. government restricted US-to-Cuba flights to Havana.
In 2020, the U.S. Transportation Department issued a notice suspending charter flights to Cuba, with a limited exception on flights to Havana. That came after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Donald Trump-appointee, requested the restriction. Pompeo said the goal was to “strengthen the impact of the Administration’s policy of applying economic pressure on the Cuban regime,” particularly in light of the nation’s support for Venezuela.
General Lecret and Colonel Figuretti inspect Cuban recruits for the Spanish-American War. Drawing by William Glackens (approx. 1898)
In their earliest relations, the United States and Cuba bonded spirits in a fight against an evil empire: Spain. The Spanish Empire had ravaged the island, leaving people starving, homeless, and dying in numbers by the masses.
The “fair and fertile land” to the South of the United States was “lying desolate” under Spain’s rule, and people were dying by the masses, wrote Percy Magan, a writer and academic. “The people of Cuba pleaded for their inalienable rights and liberties. Spain was determined that they should not have them, and their pleas were met with mockings and with war.”
Americans held great sympathy for the people of Cuba. Spain was not fighting fairly against Cuban insurrections. The fighting “was not civilized warfare, but only extermination,” Magan wrote.
The United States entered the war in April of 1898 and won it in only a few months. Spain relinquished sovereignty over its remaining colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands.
With the signing of the 1898 Treaty of Paris and with payment to Spain of $20 million for the Philippines, the former colonies became territories under U.S. control. That launched America’s experiment with imperialism.
Ceding of Territory
The treaty articulated the details of the handover.
“Spain relinquishes all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba,” the Treaty of Paris said. “And as the island is, upon its evacuation by Spain, to be occupied by the United States, the United States will, so long as such occupation shall last, assume and discharge the obligations that may under international law result from the fact of its occupation, for the protection of life and property.”
Occupation Begins
The goal in entering the 1898 war against Spain was to secure the sovereignty of Cubans to the Cubans, according to Theodore S. Woolsey. “To secure this was our avowed object in waging war; everything else which has been won, was an accident.”
The accumulation of the other territories, namely the Philippines Islands, complicated the U.S. republic’s values.
According to Woolsey, a professor of International Law at Yale University, the United States needed paths forward for ruling the new territories. In Cuba’s case, the goal was to protect the island for foreign intrusion while giving Cubans a degree of autonomy to suit them for eventual independence.
“This is a protectorate,” Woolsey wrote. For “the experiment to turn out well,” the U.S. government needed to “give them a prosperous life.”
October 18, 2018–As U.S. diplomats held an event at the United Nations to discuss political repression in Cuba on Tuesday, Cuban diplomats disrupted speakers by banging the tables and shouting.
“This is a sick joke,” Kelley E. Currie, U.S. representative to the UN Economic and Social Council said at the outset of the meeting as noisemakers interrupted her opening statement. Pressing on, Currie outlined her concerns about the Cuban government’s detention of its citizens for political purposes.
Political Prisoners
According to Currie, Cuba authorities arbitrarily detained 5,000 of its nationals for political reasons in 2017. She said the government sentenced many “on arbitrary charges like contempt of Cuban authorities” and classified others for being “pre-criminal” or socially dangerous.
“More and more, Cuban repression relies on raids on homes and offices, short-term detentions and public denunciations known as repudio,” Currie said, adding, “which I think is what we may be seeing right now.”
Boisterous shouting continued throughout the event as other panelists spoke of their experiences.
Why Highlight Cuba Alone?
Currie later held a press conference and complained about the disruptions of the event. “If the diplomats behave this way, how do the police behave?” she asked. “It has no place in the United Nations.”
One reporter asked her why the United States focused its attention on Cuba when other countries also practice political repression.
The matter of political prisoners in Cuba is “under highlighted and needs attention,” Currie said. “We feel it’s important to shine a light on a regime that is undermining security across Latin America,” Currie said, referring to Cuba’s influence in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
May 21-As Cuba ended its official two-day mourning period following the loss of life in a May 18 plane crash outside of Havana, investigators from Cuba, Mexico and the Boeing Corp. began searching for the cause of the crash.
Cuba’s national airline, Cubana de Aviacion, had rented the 39 year-old Boeing 737 airplane from a Mexican charter company named Damojh Aerolíneas, also called Global Air. Of the 110 people killed in the crash, 104 were passengers and six were Mexican crew members. Three people survived the crash and are in critical condition in a Havana hospital.
About half the people who died were from the Cuban province of Holguín, 400 miles east of Havana, where the plane was headed.
Mexican-Owned Plane Had Previous Problems
The plane itself had been previously barred from an airport in the South American nation of Guyana after its crew had overloaded the plane destined for Cuba with cargo.
According to a news story by the Associated Press, Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told reporters the Cuban airline had been “renting the plane for less than a month under an arrangement in which the Mexican company was entirely responsible for maintenance of the aircraft.”
The official added that it is routine for Cuba to rent planes because the U.S. embargo on Cuba makes it difficult for its airlines to purchase its own aircraft.
March 2–The U.S. government announced it is making its previous staffing reductions at its embassy in Havana, Cuba permanent.
The U.S. State Department cut its staff by roughly half last September following an unexplained medical conditions experienced by 24 U.S. personnel who heard sonic noises in their homes, the embassy and in their hotel rooms in Havana, Cuba.
The staff cuts are scheduled to become permanent on March 5.
“The embassy will continue to operate with the minimum personnel necessary to perform core diplomatic and consular functions, similar to the level of emergency staffing maintained during ordered departure,” a State Department statement said on March 2. “We still do not have definitive answers on the source or cause of the attacks, and an investigation into the attacks is ongoing. The health, safety, and well-being of U.S. government personnel and family members are of the greatest concern for Secretary Tillerson and were a key factor in the decision to reduce the number of personnel assigned to Havana.”
It is a set back for advocates of improving relations. About two dozen travel agencies had asked the State Department to restore its staff in Havana and ease its travel advisories to Cuba.
Furthermore, proponents of strengthening U.S.-Cuban relations said the staff reductions have caused a backlog in the processing of visa applications. James Williams, president of Engage Cuba, released a statement saying it could open up opportunities for U.S. adversaries. “This decision will be applauded in Moscow and Beijing, as both countries are poised to take advantage of Cuba’s historic transition of power while the United States remains on the sidelines,” he said.
Feb. 20 – One year after the United States first sent a diplomatic note of protest to the Cuban government regarding strange sonic noises impacting the health of U.S. government officials working in Cuba, relations between the two countries remains frayed. In the wake of the sonic attacks impacting 24 Americans and eight Canadians, the United States cut its diplomatic staff by half and ordered 15 Cuban diplomats out of Washington.
Even now, investigations into the strange noises have not resulted in any substantial answers.
As the mystery remains unsolved, U.S.-Cuban relations face a crucial test. The U.S. State Department is expected to decide by March 4 whether to send diplomats back to Havana or whether to make its staff reductions permanent.
The Sonic Story
A detailed and thorough Feb. 14 report by ProPublica presents a clear picture of the timeline of events, the ongoing investigations and the recent history of U.S.-Cuban relations. The report is based on interviews with more than three dozen U.S. and foreign officials and a review of confidential government documents. While the entire story is intriguing, perhaps what is most fascinating is the lack of answers.
“After nearly a year of investigation that has drawn on intelligence, defense and technology expertise from across the U.S. government, the FBI has been unable to determine who might have attacked the diplomats or how,” wrote ProPublica Reporters Tim Golden and Sebastian Rotella. “Those frustrations have roiled the U.S. national-security community, putting the FBI increasingly at odds with the CIA over the case.”
Here’s what the reporters discovered:
The first indication of a problem came when U.S. CIA officers working under diplomatic cover heard cicada-like buzzes in heir homes in Havana’s Western suburbs in late November 2016. They reported that the noise seemed to be directed toward them.
In addition to the U.S. embassy, incidents occurred at the Hotel Capri and Hotel Nacional.
Symptoms varied widely, ranging from headaches, hearing problems, nausea, tinnitus and dizziness.
The FBI ruled out its initial hypothesis on a sonic device attack. The CIA did not concur. Meanwhile, the State Department says, “No cause has been ruled out.”
Investigators say there’s a possibility “sound was used to mask some other harmful agent or technology.”
The Cuban government insist they “had nothing to do with the incidents.” FBI investigators did not find any evidence of Cuban involvement, and they privately attest to the Cuban government‘s cooperation with the investigation.
Russia is an “obvious suspect” with a possible motive and ability to carry out the attack, but officials have not found any real evidence of their involvement.
The Canadian foreign ministry handled the situation differently, maintaining its staff level and asking for assistance from the Cuban government.
For more on this story, follow the link in the above story to the ProPublica report.
The BBC looks at changes in the U.S. policy on Cuba.
Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national adviser in the Obama Administration, says that despite the rollback of opening up relations, a “psychological barrier” has occurred between the two countries.
“We’ve crossed a certain threshold that we can never really go back to.”
In September 2017, the U.S. State Department announced that U.S. embassy employees in Havana, Cuba had been targeted by mysterious attacks, which caused 24 U.S. officials and their spouses to fall ill.
Symptoms included hearing loss, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping.
Evacuation and Travel Warnings
The State Department ordered the evacuation of much of its Cuban embassy staff and warned U.S. citizens against traveling to Cuba. “Because our personnel’s safety is at risk, and we are unable to identify the source of the attacks, we believe U.S. citizens may also be at risk and warn them not to travel to Cuba,” the State Department warning said.
The U.S. Embassy in Cuba also warned that attacks have also occurred in the Hotel Nacional and the Hotel Capri — two upper-scale tourist accommodations.
Evidence & Information Sharing
The incident has further frayed relations between the two countries as a majority of U.S. diplomats left Havana and the U.S. government ordered 15 Cuban officials to leave their embassy in Washington, D.C.
The Cuban government denies responsibility for the attacks and says there is no evidence proving the attack against the Americans. In November, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez met with about a dozen of U.S. senators and House members and communicated that Cuba is cooperating on the investigation.
By December, physicians treating the victims found evidence of brain abnormalities. Specifically, doctors discovered changes in the white matter tracts that act like information highways between brain cells, according to the Associated Press. “It’s the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains,” a Dec. 6 AP article said.
Doctors are now referring sonic attacks as “directional acoustic phenomena,” according to the Associated Press. The physicians’ findings are expected to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Mystery Remains
Much of the mystery over the attacks remains, and U.S. investigators are being careful about sharing information.
“We are convinced these were targeted attacks,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a Dec. 6 news conference in Brussels. He added the United States has reservations about sharing information about its findings for two reasons: to respect for the privacy of the victims and to prevent the perpetrator from gaining useful information about its effectiveness.
“What we’ve said to the Cubans is a small island, you got a sophisticated security apparatus, you probably know who’s doing it, you can stop it. It’s as simple as that,” Tillerson added.
It was the first full day of the trip. I awoke early, ate breakfast and met my tour guide Rose and travel companions in the hotel lobby. It would be a full day touring by foot and bus.
We were eight adventurers–George and Barbara, a couple who ran a family furniture business in Florida, Mike and Ana, a couple living in the Pacific Northwest who were just months away from expecting their first baby, Joel, a man in his 30s or 40s from California, two women from Alaska, and me.
Clouds over head kept the air cool as we walked around Havana. Back at the Plaza de Armas, the story of Cuba unfolded.
Christopher Columbus had landed there in 1492, declaring the island to be “the most beautiful land human have ever seen.” Twenty years later, the Spanish took it as their own, using mostly uneducated former convicts to savagely enslave the natives to work gold mines. Within 20 years, the local population disappeared.
“They left,” said Rose.
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“They died,” she said.
Defeated and enslaved, the native population fell to illness, exhaustion and suicide, leaving no sign or imprint of their way of life. Some of their bloodline may have survived, as Spaniards took the native women as wives. But their peaceful, half-naked and polygamous culture disappeared.
By 1513, the Spanish began importing Africans as slaves. In the three and a half centuries where slavery was legal under the Spanish monarch, more than a million African slaves would be brought to Cuba.
Meanwhile, Havana flourished. It became a key stop on the trade route to the New World. Using the sweat of the slaves, Spaniards in Cuba traded in gold and cultivated sugarcane and tobacco.
Today, you can see signs of both legacies in the people and architecture: A majority of Cubans derive at least part of their heritage from enslaved ancestors, while the majority of the historic landmarks originate from Spanish rule. Today, both legacies are celebrated.
Modern Day Cuba
For many Cubans, history did not begin until 1959—the year of the Revolution.
You cannot understand modern Cuba until you see from where it came. Before the revolution, Cubans lived under the military dictatorship rule of Fulgencio Batista. He ruled with an iron fist, limiting speech and human rights. Batista appointed U.S.-based mobsters to key government posts, and made himself a rich man by feeding off the corrupt system he created.
You won’t find statues or murals of Batista in Havana, but he left immoveable marks on the city. One of those marks is located on Calle de Obispo. It’s a rectangular building with glass exterior.
“Batista tore down one of the most beautiful buildings in Havana to build this one,” Rose said. “He built it so he could put a heliport on the roof.”
The symbolism is striking. One can imagine Batista flying over the heads of common Cubans in a helicopter, perhaps never encountering the ordinariness of pedestrian life nor appreciating its beauty.
Ordinary life is valued in modern-day Cuba, at least on tours certified as people-to-people by the U.S. State Department.
We traveled by bus to Central Havana to visit social services projects. One was a senior day care center.
It was in an old building with a courtyard and wide open spaces. Retirees sat around big tables discussing plans for the center. Whatever the specifics of their meetings, the seniors seemed to take the conversation seriously.
The idea behind the center was that if older people had a place to go during the day, they would not need to be sent away to retirement homes. They could live with their families.
“We care about our parents,” Rose said.
“We have senior centers too,” I said, trying to assure her Americans care about their parents too.
We visited a senior community center. In this photo, retires are meeting in committees.
Next, we went to a small center where children go after school and on weekends to work on crafts, sing songs and meet with American tourists. The girls wanted to know one thing.
“What do you think of Cuba?” they asked.
We all nodded, saying we liked it. The girls studied our faces. They wanted to know more. What specifically did we like?
“Have you been to the Malecón?” they asked.
The Malecón is the five-mile sea wall extending from the old harbor through Central Havana and to the Vedado neighborhood.
“Yes,” said Mike and Ana, assuring the girls they enjoyed it.
The visit with the children ended with a dance and a photo. It put everyone in a good mood.
