Congressional Democrats Follow Hasan Piker to Cuba, Lending Support to the Communist Regime
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) revealed on Monday that they had briefly visited Cuba over the Easter holiday and met with figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel, saying they support greater engagement with the repressive Communist Party.
The lawmakers’ visit follows a flashy tour of Havana by a contingent of celebrities and international Marxist agitators known as the “Nuestra America” convoy which brought personalities such as British Labor parliament member Jeremy Corbyn, leftist video game streamer Hasan Piker, and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)’s daughter Isra Hirsi to Cuba. The convoy members produced online propaganda defending the Castro regime, blaming the longstanding poverty and suffering on the island on President Donald Trump. In reality, Cuba has endured torturous communist repression for 67 years as a result of the Castro family hoarding the nation’s wealth, leaving millions in the country to struggle.
International leftists have increased their advocacy for the Castro regime this year following the American arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on January 3. Maduro, one of the regime’s closest allies, had for years helped sustain the Communist Party’s tourism and profit apparatus with lavish oil subsidies which disappeared following his arrest and extradition to New York. The lack of free Venezuelan oil prompted the Cuban regime to warn the world it has no jet fuel — substantially cutting off tourism profit for the Castro family — and has exacerbated blackouts in the country, as the wealthy no longer have gasoline to run their personal generators when the power grid routinely fails.
Díaz-Canel, who is subordinate to nonagenarian dictator Raúl Castro, revealed on Monday that he met with Reps. Jackson and Jayapal in Havana and used their visit to condemn the United States for refusing to trade with Havana. American companies have been prohibited from doing business with the regime for decades in response to Fidel Castro’s multi-billion-dollar mass theft of American property following the 1959 coup d’état that brought him to power. Americans are officially allowed to travel to the country and send humanitarian aid, therefore the “embargo” does not in any way block American shipments of food or medicine to regular Cubans.
Díaz-Canel nonetheless claimed, according to communist state newspaper Granma, that he “denounced the criminal damage caused by the blockade” in his remarks to the Congresspersons and “reiterated the will of our government to sustain a serious and responsible bilateral dialogue.”
The two lawmakers separately published a joint statement using the Communist Party’s language to condemn the White House’s anti-communist policies.
“The illegal U.S. blockade of fuel to Cuba… adds to the longest embargo in world history and is causing untold suffering to the Cuban people,” Reps. Jayapal and Jackson wrote, accusing Trump of “cruel collective punishment — effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country — that has produced permanent damage.”
The statement does not mention the decades of human rights atrocities committed against the Cuban people, including the thousands of firing squad executions, the mass imprisonment of anti-communist dissidents, and the routine abuse of children. Among the most recent Communist Party victims, still languishing in political prison despite being a child, is 16-year-old Jonathan David Muir Burgos, arrested on March 13 and accused of protesting.
Rather than advocate for Muir and similar imprisoned children, the Democrats falsely spread regime propaganda that the Communist Party is softening its hand against dissidents.
“While we were there, President Díaz-Canel released over 2,000 prisoners. The Cuban government has begun to liberalize its economy with significant reforms, including allowing Cuban American entrepreneurs to invest in private business in Cuba,” they claimed, condemning America’s allegedly “outdated, Cold War-era policy of coercive economic measures.”
The Cuban government did indeed announce it would free 2,010 prisoners last week, but did not specify whether any of these were political prisoners or not, nor is there any confirmation at press time that 2,010 inmates were released. Speaking to Breitbart News on Friday, Javier Larrondo, the president of the human rights group Prisoners Defenders, revealed that not one of the individuals released from prison was in prison for disagreeing with the regime and accused Cuba of “prison drainage,” a cost-cutting measure in which it frees common criminals during times of economic hardship to save money.
“The reduction of costs of the prison system has been constant for decades,” Larrondo explained. “Prison drainages in Cuba happen every four years, approximately for much time now. This is not new.”
Similarly, the alleged economic reform that the Democrats touted has been denounced as a brazen money-grab at the expense of the exiles the regime abused for decades. The regime trotted out one of Raúl Castro’s many grandchildren in March to announce a plan to “facilitate the participation of Cubans abroad in the national economy” — in other words, to tempt Cuban exiles into funding the Communist Party.
“They are inviting their victims to invest in their failed economy and throw them a lifeline to stay in power,” radio host and political commentator Ninoska Pérez Castellón explained. “It’s as if the mafia families were bankrupt and would call upon their victims to invest in their organized crime schemes.”
White House officials have been clear in stating that the current state of affairs in Cuba is the product of Communist Party incompetence and exploitation.
“Cuba’s been having blackouts all of last year, all of the year before,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained in March. “The reason why Cuba doesn’t have oil and fuel is because they want it for free and people don’t give away oil and fuel for free on a regular basis unless it was the Soviet Union subsidizing them or Maduro subsidizing them.”
“The reason why they’re having blackouts is because they have equipment from the 1950s and ’60s that they never maintained or kept up,” he added, “but ultimately the reason why Cuba is a disaster because their economic system doesn’t work.”
Reps. Jayapal and Jackson arrived in Cuba shortly after the “Nuestra America” convoy concluded their propaganda programming there. Among the participants were members of the radical leftist group Code Pink, Spanish Marxist and former Iranian state television host Pablo Iglesias, and other online personalities. Local Cubans complained that the group treated their country like a “theme park;” one local recorded a video that appeared to show a foreign leftist forcing hungry Cuban children to dance for cookies.
Convoy participant Hasan Piker falsely claimed during a livestream from Cuba that Cubans were happy with the current status of their lives, undermining the reality of years of regular anti-communist protests.
“People are partying in the f*cking streets. I don’t know if it’s like an island mindset… I’m sure that has something to do with it but like they’re just chillin’,” he claimed. “Cubans just they vibe, they chill, they just literally vibe, it don’t matter, like, it’s just incredible… there’s like festivals everywhere.”