Challenge Accepted: Pushing Back on False Narratives About Cuba

A recent exchange on social media with someone who is often cited as an authority on U.S.-Cuba relations in major publications prompted this important story

Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash

A video posted on social media by Mario J. Pentón, a Cuban-American journalist in Miami, shows Cubans on the island protesting the chargé d'affaires to Cuba, Mike Hammer, after he returned from the U.S. While in the U.S., he celebrated Trump’s recent executive order declaring that the White House would impose tariffs on any nation providing oil to Cuba. Many have scrutinized the order for harming the Cuban people directly, something anti-Cuba hardliners have admitted on social media, including Florida Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar.

“And yes, I understand: it’s devastating to think about a mother’s hunger, a child who needs immediate help,” Salazar posted on X. “No one is indifferent to that pain. But that is precisely the brutal dilemma we face as exiles: to alleviate short-term suffering or to free Cuba forever.”

Below is the video of the protest in question. In it, you can hear women calling Hammer an “asesino” (murderer), telling him to go away. If you notice in the video, despite Hammer being safe in the building, the door was left open as if to provoke the people against his presence. As anger over the Trump administration’s latest move grows and despite the protests against him, Hammer started a tour of the island. Again, as if to manufacture an incident.

The protests were being framed as being organized by the Cuban government, almost as if Cubans were robots with no autonomy to be genuinely angry about the harm the U.S. is causing. When I rebutted a post suggesting Hammer was “the victim of a repudiation act organized by the Cuban dictatorship upon his arrival in Camagüey,” many immediately thought of how the oppressor routinely paints itself as the victim after the oppressed push back, even the slightest.

“A mob mobilized by the regime was waiting for him after his transfer from Ciego de Ávila, in a clear act of political harassment as he tours the country,” read Pentón’s X post. “Hours earlier, a similar maneuver took place in Trinidad. The regime is once again resorting to its methods of intimidation and organized violence. The dictatorship is playing with fire.”

My response was concise. I highlighted the duplicity of most anti-Cuban propaganda by simply stating the obvious, that Cubans on the island aren’t interested in regime change or war with the U.S., and they’re certainly not interested in a civil war and further destabilizing the country. This is something I have reported on consistently over the years, and the direct quotes along with video footage speak for themselves.

“Protesters in Cuba told the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba to go away and called him a killer,” reads my X post. “Every time protests like this happen, they claim that it was organized by the Cuban government as if Cubans have no autonomy. Cubans on the island are well aware of who tried to starve them for six decades, and these propagandists expect them to be welcoming,” my post continued. “What these goons don’t want you to know is that most Cubans don’t want regime change, civil war, and further destabilization of the island. They want sanctions lifted, reforms, and to be left alone.”

It was this that prompted a response from Antonio C. Martinez, an immigration attorney who is often cited by major media outlets as an expert on U.S.-Cuba relations. He attempted to counter my post with a barrage of questions akin to a Gish Gallop, a technique used to overwhelm someone with many rapid, often weak or false, arguments, making it impossible to refute. The questions, which Martinez referred to as a “set of straightforward questions about power, agency, and consistency,” are listed below with a response to each.

“If Cubans have full autonomy, why are independent protests routinely criminalized while state-organized demonstrations are broadcast live?”

I’m going to disregard “full” in this because no one really has full autonomy anywhere, certainly not in the U.S. No one disputes that the Cuban government has strict guidelines for protests and that people have been wrongly jailed for being part of them. I wrote about a journalist who was arrested in 2021 and spoke to his wife in Cuba about it.

With that said, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Cubans would protest U.S. Ambassador to Cuba Mike Hammer after he came to the U.S. to help put the current blockade of oil shipments in place. Why is it so hard to grasp that people would protest against their oppressors?

If most Cubans oppose regime change, why not allow free elections or an independent referendum to prove it?

This question is dishonest in that democracy looks different in different places. You can make whatever claims you want about the government. But international agencies typically use participation in elections to gauge support for the current government, and turnout in Cuban elections has always been high.

Cuba has rights codified into law that we don’t have in the United States, such as trans rights, gay rights, and racial justice protections. Yes, Cuba has a one-party system based on the structure of its economy and society. But in that sense, you could argue that the U.S. has the same system in its capitalist economic and structural model. I wrote about this in 2022.

Despite Cuba being a one-party system, like the U.S. and anywhere else in the world, people have divergent views. For example, the legislation ensuring gay and trans rights in 2022 was decided by referendum due to those differences. It ultimately passed with the vast majority of the population participating.

As far as regime change goes, how many coups backed by the U.S. have been thwarted by the people? Even with the backing of the most powerful country on Earth, people pushback and tell the U.S. time and again that they are not interested. Eleven million people would have overthrown the government a long time ago if they had the numbers, especially with U.S. backing. The fact is, those numbers aren’t there.

If people simply want reforms, why are those who publicly demand reforms arrested, exiled, or silenced?

This is another dishonest and intentionally hyperbolic question. Many journalists, including myself, have video footage and have done many interviews over the years that have garnered a ton of attention online. Those interviewees all criticized the current government in Cuba without any repercussions. They expressed no fear when asked about this.

What the Cuban government pushes back hard on is anti-government rhetoric related to regime change or overthrowing the government. And yes, the Cuban government employs a heavy hand against those involved in any such protests. While some of the protesters in the July 11 protests did cause damage and some acts of violence, many didn’t and were jailed for simply being present or in proximity to the protests. No one is denying this, as previously mentioned.

If the protests were spontaneous and autonomous, why do they follow identical slogans, staging, and media coverage from state outlets?

First of all, the video in question was filmed by a protester, and the sloganeering is typical of any protest anywhere in the world, as is the media coverage. That’s not evidence of it being coordinated by the state.

Secondly, is it so hard to understand that the person involved in tightening the screws on the people, as even the anti-Cuba media suggests, wouldn’t be welcomed back to Cuba? No, of course not. Whether fans of the government or not, people are pissed because Trump’s actions are meant to make them, not the government, suffer. Even Cuban hardliners in Congress admit this when they say, “A little pain now,” blah, blah, blah.

If Cubans are aware of who “tried to starve them,” why have millions left the country, citing internal conditions rather than foreign policy?

Millions left Cuba, as Venezuelans left Venezuela, after Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions created harsher conditions than Cuba has seen since the 1990s. Countless studies highlight how those sanctions specifically forced mass migration out of various countries. More often than not, sanctions create mass migration events by starving governments of buying power, making importing goods, like food and medicine, nearly impossible. The data doesn’t lie.

If the government trusts popular support, why fear international observation, independent media, or open civic space?

Again, independent media operate in the country, as noted by the aforementioned articles and interviews within them. Those outlets include some you likely support, such as 14ymedio, El Toque, Cibercuba, El Estornudo, Periodismo de Barrio, and Havana Times. Also, Breakthrough News works there, as does Belly of the Beast Cuba, along with U.S. corporate media outlets like CNN. My favorite photojournalist, whom I often work with, does too.

If “hands off” is the principle, why not start by taking the state’s hands off citizens’ speech, movement, and political choice?

Cuba’s internal problems are for the Cubans who live there to figure out and decide how to address them. Regardless of our opinions of the government (I’m not a fan), it’s up to them. One thing is certain. We aren’t winning anyone over by making their lives that much harder. If Cuba is a failed state, let it fail on its own. The fact is, lifting the sanctions and letting Cuba operate as a normal nation would show the world that things like universal healthcare, which is common in all of Latin America, along with abolishing homelessness and likely poverty, can all be done. The greedy capitalists in the U.S. can’t have that a mere 90 miles away. They’d be forced to contribute more to society, likely through much higher taxes like those in the 1950s.

Conclusion

The conversation essentially ended there. What became obvious was that this was not an honest debate about the facts. Martinez attempted to rebut me with the same intentionally hyperbolic questions, never once addressing any of the source material I provided, much of it my own work over more than 15 years, nor did he address his own baseless narrative suggesting the Cuban people are in no way upset with Hammer and were “ordered” to protest him.

This outright dismissal of reality and the repetitious questions are designed to try and diminish not just common sense, but data-driven facts alongside the context heard in the voices of the mostly Afro-Cuban and Mulatto Cuban people on the island, not the descendants of the white flight out of Cuba after Fidel Castro desegregated the island. There’s a reason all the Cuban hardliners are white while pretending to represent a mostly non-white population. They look exactly like the wealthy who want to take control of Cuba.

What the video shows us is further evidence that regime change, civil war, and further destabilizing the country are not something the Cuban people are interested in. They are certainly not interested in making bargains with their oppressor. Anyone thinking that the Cuban people will accept the U.S. with open arms after it tried to starve them for 65 years has lost their minds. Anti-Cuban propagandists don’t want to discuss how Cubans on the island really feel because it undermines the entire premise of their arguments.

In the end, Cubans love their neighbors to the North. Our government, not so much.

---

I’m an independent journalist digging deeper into the stories you see or don’t see on the news. Find my work at Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, Latino Rebels, Orinoco Tribune, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a donation via Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App.