Waterboarding for Dollars in Cuba

“What the United States is doing to Cubans is equivalent to waterboarding them into submission, and all CBS could seem to talk about is Castro.”

By Jeffrey McCrary, Nation of Change

The CBS Sunday Morning program, “Next: Cuba?” which aired on April 26, presented a discussion of the recent intensification of sanctions on and threats against Cuba. I am disappointed that this program, and several other shorter recent segments on CBS News, did not cover some essential points that must be stated about what is happening in Cuba now. My own experience in Cuba, including the recent delivery of humanitarian aid directly to Cubans, contradicts some perspectives presented by CBS.

Fidel is dead. And, he has been dead for a while. He was a fascinating character who still inspires polemic discussions. Stories of Fidel are legendary on the scale of Paul Bunyan. But we think the choice of focus of these eight minutes on Fidel’s legacy is unjust to the Cuban people. The news of the moment is that Cuba is underwater. The CBS Sunday Morning program, instead of engaging in a discussion of a crisis on the island, entertained us with old, mostly obsolete stories about Castro.

Cubans are suffering currently. The U.S. sanctions on Cuba are enormous, by any measure. We find it remarkable that Cuba has withstood for decades sanctions that would bring down any other country of its size and reach within weeks. The recent fossil fuel blockade on the island, however, has placed the people of the island in a chokehold. Cuba’s economy, like those around the world, is dependent on petroleum products for most of its electricity generation, vehicle use, and cooking. Food is rotting in the fields because of a lack of fuel to connect products to markets, and it is rotting in homes because the refrigerators are disconnected.

The recent military blockade prohibiting oil shipments disrupted Cuba’s economy on a level that frightened people, in a way that we would compare to drowning; if something is not done quickly, disaster will occur. The blockade was challenged successfully by a Russian oil tanker, but the sabers from the U.S. State Department continue to rattle loudly.