In Episode 6 of “The War on Cuba,” Liz Oliva Fernández exposes the striking disconnect between U.S. policy and Cuba’s reality. Liz reveals the absurdity of Biden’s offers to “help” the Cuban people with donations of vaccines, Internet access and remittances that bypass local financial institutions. She shows how Biden, pandering to Cuban-American hardliners in Miami, has abandoned his promise to reinitiate the Obama-era policy of engagement with Cuba. Liz also reports on the crackdown against protesters and contextualizes both repression in Cuba and the U.S. government’s supposed concern for human rights abuses in the region.
***
“The War on Cuba” is a documentary series focused on the crippling effects of the U.S. embargo against Cuba and the interests driving U.S. policy toward its third closest neighbor. The series won a One World Media Award in the Popular Feature category, beating selections by the BBC World Service and Al Jazeera English. It is executive-produced by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover.
I believe the US economic embargo is counterproductive and its removal is long overdue on practical grounds but I’m also waiting for Liz Oliva Fernández to comment, even in passing, on the repressive measures imposed internally by the fascist Castro regime in both the economic and political spheres, including the arrests of hundreds of anti government activists, the forced home detention of hundreds of others and the beatings of dozens more at the hands of police and plainclothes goon squads last July 11, when tens of thousands of Cubans spontaneously took to the streets all over theit country demanding basic legal freedoms and civil rights, and last November 15, when the Cuban govt. militarized the entire country to prevent a repetition of the July 11 events, ahead of a coordinated social media campaign calling for mass protests on Nov. 15. I’m dying (no pun intended) to hear Ms. Fernández’s take on the reasonable demands of the Cuban opposition and the hardline response of the Cuban govt. but I’m not holding my breath waiting for her reaction…