Speaker 1: I am joined by a woman who was born in Cuba,
Speaker 1: emigrated to the United States about twenty four years ago,
Speaker 1: twenty two, twenty three years ago. And Meelan Salabaria is
Speaker 1: with me now to talk about a column she just
Speaker 1: did about the lights in Cuba. And Meelane, first of all,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here with you and your audience.
Speaker 3: Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 4: So I want to kind.
Speaker 1: Of start with your life story before we get into
Speaker 1: what's happening now in Cuba. How old were you when
Speaker 1: you left Cuba and tell me about that. How did
Speaker 1: you come to the United States.
Speaker 3: I came to the United States in two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: so I left Cuba as a adult shortly after I
Speaker 3: graduated from law school in the University in Havana. Literally
Speaker 3: waited a couple of weeks to get the equivalent of
Speaker 3: my transcripts and my diploma never registered with what would
Speaker 3: be the equivalent of the war.
Speaker 2: Here in the United States.
Speaker 3: Otherwise I will have been set in a stone in
Speaker 3: a government database and they will have never allowed me
Speaker 3: to leave. Back then, we still have the Cuban Adjustment Act,
Speaker 3: so we could come as refugees and have a legal
Speaker 3: path with certain requirements until I became an American citizen
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine. So yes, I was born
Speaker 3: and raised in communist Cuba while field culture was still
Speaker 3: in power. So trust me, there is nothing about the
Speaker 3: wonders of socialism quote unquote.
Speaker 2: That I have lived on my own life personally.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the reasons that I'm happy
Speaker 1: you're coming on to talk about this is because Cuba
Speaker 1: is currently in a really bad situation.
Speaker 4: But this is the normal.
Speaker 1: End result of socialism. So tell me what is happening
Speaker 1: on the island right now.
Speaker 2: It's very simple.
Speaker 3: It is this is like the last chapter of any
Speaker 3: econ one on one book that you can read onto
Speaker 3: why centralized economy, collectivism and socialism doesn't work.
Speaker 2: And yes, you can have all the talking heads of
Speaker 2: the world telling you that it's the fault of the.
Speaker 3: Embargo or whatever is the few restrictions of the helm
Speaker 3: Board and Act.
Speaker 2: That we still have in place, which are not many.
Speaker 3: That reality is not that the Cuban government has been
Speaker 3: consistently receiving a lot of money from other sources and
Speaker 3: trading and doing business with the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: E said that with.
Speaker 3: The United States, they have to pay in cash, and
Speaker 3: still they haven't prioritized what really needs to be done
Speaker 3: in the infrastructure of the country. And the collapse of
Speaker 3: the power grid is just the latest example of a
Speaker 3: whole line of neglect and mismanagement that again has the
Speaker 3: root cause in a centralized economy that doesn't work. To
Speaker 3: go back into some of the details that I had
Speaker 3: restent that article that you were mentioned earlier, this.
Speaker 2: Happened about two weeks ago.
Speaker 3: It was like a total collapse of the entire power
Speaker 3: grid on the island. There is no amount of cheap
Speaker 3: oil crude oil from Venezuela or chips that the new
Speaker 3: president of Mexico and to Cuba that is going to
Speaker 3: fix that. Why because the infrastructure is crumbling, and its
Speaker 3: crumbling because the Cuban government and the Communist Party has
Speaker 3: made a deliberate decision to prioritize other things. For example,
Speaker 3: I don't know how familiar you are or your audience
Speaker 3: is with the way that the tourism system and industry
Speaker 3: works in Cuba. It's basically on and operated by conglomerate,
Speaker 3: a government monopoly called Gaza, which is a front company
Speaker 3: for the higher needs of a military. So this is
Speaker 3: a company that is run and operated by the Quban army.
Speaker 3: We are talking about that seventy percent of the revenue
Speaker 3: that inter Cuba through tourism is controlled by this company.
Speaker 2: What are they doing with the money they are reinvesting in.
Speaker 3: Hotels and spending in more tourist infrastructure. Are they being
Speaker 3: demonstrated the low capacity instead of prioritizing critical infrastructure improvement
Speaker 3: and development Like the case of the power grid, all
Speaker 3: the power plants operated in QBA are thirty years or old,
Speaker 3: if not more.
Speaker 2: They all have really all technology. They have a huge.
Speaker 3: Exodus professionals that are supposed to be working on that.
Speaker 3: So here you have like a critical point, like a
Speaker 3: perfose form of all their mistakes, just meeting in the
Speaker 3: same place it happened last about two weeks ago. They
Speaker 3: kind of stabilize it a little bit, and now in
Speaker 3: the last three days they're collapsing again when they tried
Speaker 3: to bring two of the powers into the national grid.
Speaker 2: So we're back to the same position we were two weeks.
Speaker 1: Ago, and literally people have no internet, they have no power,
Speaker 1: They none of the septic or none of the sewers working. Oh,
Speaker 1: so people have been thrust into the dark ages and
Speaker 1: what should be a functioning economy. And I think part
Speaker 1: of this, and I want to ask your opinion about this,
Speaker 1: is this because Cuba has been being propped up for
Speaker 1: decades now by Venezuela, by Russia. They send money, they
Speaker 1: send oil, they send cheap goods and stuff like that. Well,
Speaker 1: now Venezuela has collapsed inevitably as they were going to.
Speaker 1: And now Russia is busy in redirecting all of their
Speaker 1: energy and resources to the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: So is this exacerbated? It made it worse.
Speaker 2: It is exactly what you are describing. You have to
Speaker 2: keep in mind that.
Speaker 3: Since Castro took over, Cuba has never been a self
Speaker 3: sustainable economy. First it was a direct pipeline from the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union and all the communist countries in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 3: When that got caught off when the Berlin Wall fell,
Speaker 3: then they went into latching into Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Where Child's and Malua we're in there.
Speaker 3: Now Venezuela has been following into the same disaster that happened.
Speaker 2: To Cuba a little bit faster.
Speaker 3: And now that pipeline is also caught off and then
Speaker 3: you have like the little key from China, little here
Speaker 3: from Mexico, little hear from Russia, and still is not enough.
Speaker 3: Why because the foundation of the economy of the country
Speaker 3: is in crumbles. Just to give you a quick example,
Speaker 3: this is something that we learn through a dissident reporting
Speaker 3: from Cuba about a year ago, and is that putting
Speaker 3: and the Russian government has given the Cuban government a
Speaker 3: very good term loan of close to one to put
Speaker 3: to one point two billion euros I believe, and it
Speaker 3: was ear mark specifically for a power infrastructure improvement and
Speaker 3: to build and rebuild and repair new power plants. The
Speaker 3: only condition that put input on the Cuban government was
Speaker 3: that they needed to come up with ten percent of
Speaker 3: that money as a down payment. They didn't do it,
Speaker 3: and the high ideal through why it fell through because
Speaker 3: the equivalent money that would have matched that ten percent
Speaker 3: man did they decided to use it into They keep
Speaker 3: building hotels, they keep building these tours, resources, all these tours.
Speaker 3: Infrastructure is still empty, and that's where they are prioritizing
Speaker 3: investing the little money that they're getting in the country.
Speaker 2: That's why when I was writing that piece, I.
Speaker 3: Was referring to, you know, the second twisted priorities. Somebody
Speaker 3: has to pay for the rolicxs that the canels wears.
Speaker 3: Somebody has to pay for the Gucci bags and the
Speaker 3: shoes that his wife is touting all over the world,
Speaker 3: where regular women and people.
Speaker 2: In Cube are literally starving.
Speaker 3: So and like you were saying before, the collapse of
Speaker 3: the power grid includes a series of connecting effects that
Speaker 3: made the daily life for the other Cuban even worse
Speaker 3: than they are that they were before. You have to
Speaker 3: keep in mind I left in two thousand and one
Speaker 3: and living with the scheduled blackouts was my normal life
Speaker 3: for the twenty seven years that I was in Cuba,
Speaker 3: so that has always been the quote unquote normal. So
Speaker 3: now you have these areas, especially in the rural areas,
Speaker 3: they always try to prioritize the capitol. And still in
Speaker 3: the last two days even the capital has been in
Speaker 3: total blackout. Last news that I read this morning, some
Speaker 3: neighborhoods in the outscirts of Havana have been without power
Speaker 3: for ninety hours. So, like you were saying, you don't
Speaker 3: have running water, the source system is collapsed, you don't
Speaker 3: have internet. However, all the tourist hotels, resources, all the
Speaker 3: buildings of the higher elits of the army body, you know, officials,
Speaker 3: the neighborhoods where the embassies are, all those peoples.
Speaker 2: They never know what a blackout is.
Speaker 3: We have to see, you know, we have to see
Speaker 3: the priorities, like everybody is equal, but some people are
Speaker 3: more equal than others exactly.
Speaker 4: And I was, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 3: And what happened that is a little bit different in
Speaker 3: this last week and when the set bround of this
Speaker 3: collapse happened, is that it hit really bad these supurban
Speaker 3: working class neighborhoods in Havana, and anyone that can go
Speaker 3: to Twitter or ex can see how people I don't
Speaker 3: know how they have been charging the phones or putting
Speaker 3: out the little life out in the Internet. People are
Speaker 3: starting to bang in pots and pants as a form
Speaker 3: of protest because of.
Speaker 2: How many hours they have been without power.
Speaker 3: Now to add insult to injury, you have people in
Speaker 3: Cuba that have you know, they have gone to the
Speaker 3: offices of the local municipalities, the local government to ask
Speaker 3: for an answer, what's happening, what's the plan?
Speaker 2: When is this going to be solved. They're obviously being
Speaker 2: given all this, you.
Speaker 3: Know, which you watching responses, and then you have the cannel,
Speaker 3: which is the aun elected you know, appointed here of
Speaker 3: the Castros plantation that is now acting as a president,
Speaker 3: coming into the news yesterday and saying, well, this is
Speaker 3: just like a hay campaign and fake news being put
Speaker 3: out on the internet by the ego ynkeys people that
Speaker 3: hate us, and we are here where there are being
Speaker 3: of revolutionarily some blah blah blah, not one sentence about Okay,
Speaker 3: what are you doing to fix the power?
Speaker 2: Great problem? And on top of.
Speaker 3: That, then they're sending out the brown chers, the political police,
Speaker 3: the black wis, which is what would be the equivalent
Speaker 3: of the swat teams in the police here in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 2: They're sending them now.
Speaker 3: To those neighborhoods that have been without power for ninety
Speaker 3: hours because people there to bang their pots and pants as.
Speaker 2: A form of protest.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a young person not so long ago,
Speaker 1: and he said, I don't understand why the Cuban people
Speaker 1: or in We started out talking about Venezuela, and then
Speaker 1: I turned to the Cuban people. He said, I don't
Speaker 1: understand why they don't you rise up? And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: they don't have any weapons. That's the first thing, because
Speaker 1: zach Castro, you know, in order to promote safety, took
Speaker 1: away all the guns and now they're reduced to pots
Speaker 1: and pants the streets. I want to ask you, Mayleen,
Speaker 1: because I love to travel and a friend of mine
Speaker 1: was going to Cuba and I said, I am not
Speaker 1: going to give Cuba any of my money. And you
Speaker 1: just confirmed what I have been told, and that is
Speaker 1: while the hotels and the tourist district they have full restaurants,
Speaker 1: they have everything they need. Regular Cuban people can't get
Speaker 1: bell peppers, they can't get onions, they can't get the
Speaker 1: basic staples to eat because they're bleeding them dry. But
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this one question. Is this
Speaker 1: like a last gasp attempt by the regime to create
Speaker 1: any kind of economy. And if they did create any
Speaker 1: kind of decent tourism economy, do you have any confidence
Speaker 1: that the people of Cuba would benefit from that in
Speaker 1: any significant way?
Speaker 2: Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: What guy is this military conglomery in Cua have been
Speaker 3: doing with tourists since they were lean Wolf felled down.
Speaker 3: It's not to improve the economy of the country. It's
Speaker 3: for them to enrich themselves. That's why they live like
Speaker 3: the pigs in animal farm. That's why they have all
Speaker 3: their kids buying properties abroad everywhere in Spain, in South America,
Speaker 3: and that's why they're you know, laundering the money and
Speaker 3: taking it out of Cuba.
Speaker 2: They have never given a.
Speaker 3: Flying rat about you know, the economy of the country
Speaker 3: or the welfare of the Cuban people. Otherwise they will
Speaker 3: have shown some acts or some you know, actual measurable
Speaker 3: outcome after sixty five years. So I have absolutely no
Speaker 3: confident in that they are. That's the propaganda that they
Speaker 3: want to put out for the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Obviously, and clearly we have.
Speaker 3: Like like they them self defined masses of useful idiots,
Speaker 3: not only in the United States but all over the
Speaker 3: work eating completely all that propaganda. But I have no
Speaker 3: confidence that they're doing that for the Cuban people. They
Speaker 3: don't care about the country's economy, They don't care about
Speaker 3: the other's Cuban They only care about themselves, how they live,
Speaker 3: and how they keep lining their pockets with more money.
Speaker 1: Melan. Every time something catastrophic happens in Cuba, I think
Speaker 1: to myself, this could be the thing.
Speaker 4: This could be the breaking point where.
Speaker 1: The Cuban people rise up and unarmed rush the rush
Speaker 1: the capitol and do something.
Speaker 4: Well, how bad does it have to get?
Speaker 1: I mean, we see what happened in Venezuela where people
Speaker 1: were literally starving, and they still have the regime in
Speaker 1: place in Venezuela.
Speaker 4: What has to happen?
Speaker 1: Do you think before we get on a significant regime?
Speaker 3: Don't know? Yeah, honestly, I think it's gonna have It's
Speaker 3: I was talking with a friend of mine, also Cuban American,
Speaker 3: and he left.
Speaker 2: He's an older generation.
Speaker 3: That means obviously his parents took him out of Cuba
Speaker 3: when he was younger, and he told me something that god,
Speaker 3: you know, got stuck in my head because I never
Speaker 3: thought about it from that angle, And is that the
Speaker 3: generations of Cubans that had any fire left inside they're dead?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're gone.
Speaker 5: I mean you have to understand by the time that
Speaker 5: I was born, that Cuba that was before nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 5: or that Cuba of that first generation that is still
Speaker 5: fought when they realized what Caustle was really trying to
Speaker 5: impose is gone.
Speaker 2: That Cuba was already gone by the time that I
Speaker 2: was born. So here we have another.
Speaker 3: You know, political science and equal one on one lesson,
Speaker 3: and what happens when now you're dealing with three or
Speaker 3: four generations of Cubans born, raised and brainwashed under this
Speaker 3: system that tells you that firearms are bad, that that
Speaker 3: is stas the one that is going to take care
Speaker 3: of you, that everybody's equal again until you realize that
Speaker 3: some people are more equal than others. So I think
Speaker 3: it's going to take a longer process. It's going to
Speaker 3: take a longer awaken it. That being said, there is
Speaker 3: a lot of courageous people in Cuba literally inside the monster,
Speaker 3: speaking out, reporting the things in jail, protesting.
Speaker 2: Being made up, you name it.
Speaker 3: But I think that the fact that it's now an
Speaker 3: entire society with several generations that don't know how it
Speaker 3: was before, is gonna make that process harder. Like you
Speaker 3: mentioned the fact that the first thing that Castro did
Speaker 3: when he took over was, you know, taking away all
Speaker 3: the firearms the island per se geographically speaking, as a present,
Speaker 3: you don't have borders, you don't have a way to
Speaker 3: get help from anyone else unless someone consciously, you know,
Speaker 3: it's really invested.
Speaker 2: In helping the people inside.
Speaker 3: Clearly the change is gonna come from within, but I
Speaker 3: think it's gonna take time, probably onto all this cloud
Speaker 3: elite of the old you know, revolutionaries from those years.
Speaker 2: We feel that castro dye and seeing what happens with
Speaker 2: the new one.
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be a sweet irony if it
Speaker 3: would be blackouts on the darkness what definitely, finally, once
Speaker 3: and for all, brings that tyranny down.
Speaker 1: I love Cuban culture, I love Cuban food, I love
Speaker 1: Cuban music, I love Cuban people. I want that island
Speaker 1: to be free because I'd like to be able to
Speaker 1: go visit it in good conscience before I die. So
Speaker 1: here's here's my little prayer that Cuba gets it gets
Speaker 1: it together. Maelan Salabaria, thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: time today and the great article of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that everybody should share with their.
Speaker 1: Young people who think that socialism is a viable system.
Speaker 4: Maylan, thank you so much. We'll talk again in the future,
Speaker 4: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you, all right, thank you.
Speaker 4: That is Maelan Salabaria