Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Since the beginning of this year, President Trump has turned sharply from his promised focus on domestic issues, America first, to a series of foreign military adventures that have shocked many of his own supporters and much of the world.
In January, there was the invasion of Venezuela and the seizure of its president, Nicolas Maduro. Then came the threatened invasion of Greenland. And now there's a war with Iran that has engulfed the Middle East, killed many hundreds of people, and threatens the entire global economy. And yet no sooner was the bombing of Iran underway that Trump and some of his allies began teasing a new move.
Taking Cuba. That's a big honor. Taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. In some form, yeah.
Chapter 2: What recent actions has Trump taken regarding Cuba?
Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth? They're very weakened now.
The U.S. has effectively shut off Cuba's oil supply and the electrical grid had a near total blackout last week. New Yorker staff writer John Lee Anderson has been to Cuba countless times in his career and his most recent trip followed the invasion of Venezuela. I spoke with John Lee Anderson this past week.
John Lee, the Trump administration has recently said that the president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has to step down. So let's start there. Who is Diaz-Canel? What's his role in the regime? And what would ousting him even accomplish?
Diaz-Canel is the hand-picked successor to Raul Castro. He's a party apparatchik. He was a provincial party chief. And he has served... how shall I put this, creditably as the face of the ongoing regime. And he's not had an easy time of it. There's been, you know, as we know, a huge economic downturn in Cuba, etc. The falling apart of relations in Trump 1 and now Trump 2.
Biden did nothing during his four years to alter the things in Cuba, for better or worse. So, DSK now is a kind of Yeah, he's a working stiff, really, and doesn't have a huge amount of respect from the population, but nor is he seen as particularly evil. He's seen as the front man for the regime, which continues to be controlled from behind the curtains by the elderly Raul Castro and his family.
So... Raul Diaz-Canel, you know, he won his reelection three years ago. So he has two to go. He has to leave office in April 2028. He won his reelection to give you an idea of the kind of politics on the island under the slogan of continuidad, continuity, which, you know, doesn't appeal to people under 30 years old. And, you know, he's uninspiring.
But uninspiring. The description you've given me when we've talked on the phone and in your coming piece about Cuba is of a Cuba in desperate straits. People are leaving and leaving and leaving. The streets are filled with garbage. That's right. There's blackouts all the time. The economy is in desperate straits. events in Venezuela and elsewhere could not have been all that encouraging.
So continuity seems a kind of a grim way to put it.
Yeah, exactly. But you have to put into context that this is a regime that presents itself as the revolutionary continuation, which includes notions of sacrifice. In a way, there's analogies here to Iran, right? This idea of sacrifice, a common enemy, the Yankee imperialist regime. empire just there over the sea as ever oppressing us.
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Chapter 3: Who is Miguel Diaz-Canel and what is his role in Cuba?
You wrote a terrific biography of Che Guevara. And you've made two especially recent trips to Cuba, one in May and one in the wake of the invasion of Venezuela much more recently. Just give me a sense of what it's like to walk around and be in Havana and other cities and towns in Cuba compared to previous trips. What's it like?
Oh, gosh. I mean, look, since 2021, there's been an exodus. You know, nobody knows exactly, but anywhere up to 20% of the population have left.
That's incredible.
It is incredible. And of course, it's an island. People have to pay to leave. And therefore, you can imagine if it had land borders, how many more would have left? Maybe similar to Venezuela, where about a third of the population has left over 10 years, right? Because of economic collapse. But primarily young people and anybody with skills.
So you might be a doctor with a heart cardiac specialist in Havana, and you end up pushing some ancient person around Miami in a care home. And that's the kind of – or driving an Uber somewhere. And that's kind of what's happened to a lot of Cubans. So when I first went back, I hadn't been in a while. I was struck by the emptiness of Cuba.
And I went to Havana and three other towns in the interior. And everything was just empty. There was no people. I really felt the exodus. And, you know, I visited old friends. You know, the friends I have are mostly quite old people now. Some have died, some have left, their kids have left.
Many of them are being sustained by the remittances their kids can send for wherever they're living, Spain, the United States. And the houses around them are empty and also inhabited in some cases by also elderly people because their kids and grandkids have left as well.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a period that Cuba really struggled because they had been subsidized and propped up by the Soviet government. And then the Venezuelans stepped into the breach and there was a relationship there that helped Cuba get from day to day. That's right. How is Cuba getting by at all? What's the economy?
Yeah, I mean, I lived there during that period, David, in the early 90s when the Soviet rug was pulled out from them and people went from driving cars to riding bicycles. And in the countryside, they went from tractors literally to oxen. And the average Cuban lost, I don't know how much of their body weight. And there was a lot of suicide. And it was bad.
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Chapter 4: How is the economic situation in Cuba affecting its people?
And I think that they may be, as we've seen with Iran, the Iran intervention, you know, this arrogance, a hubris, a kind of denialism about history and human nature and a lack of knowledge about other countries and their pasts. And so quite apart from whether or not the Cuban Communist Party goes down the ditch, I don't think there'll be too many lamentations about it in Cuba. Right.
there will still be residual nationalism that's going to rear its head. And at some level, it may well cause these negotiations to be difficult, more than difficult, and strung out over time. And On the one hand, the Cubans who are having to do these negotiations are looking at Iran and they're thinking, the Americans are in this quagmire. This benefits us.
On the other hand, they're thinking, we've got to get some energy supplies somewhere here. So they're going to go into this like maybe a canny poker player. And they're handicapped because of the fuel thing. But on the other hand, they may have some resources that the Americans can't see right now.
And one of those resources, it may sound paradoxical, is the fact that, you know, there's already been some protests and some unrest on the island. That could spread further. Yes, that threatens the regime, of course, but they have the ability to suppress most of it. However, it's also a threat to the United States because if chaos begins in Cuba and the people they want to stabilize it, i.e.
the remnants of the Communist Party and the military... you know, are incapable of controlling that chaos, you have chaos not, you know, not 700 or 800 miles away, as is Haiti, you know, but 90 miles away. And you could be seeing, you know, a re-immigration flood to the United States if there's real chaos on the island.
John Lee Anderson, thanks so much.
Thank you, David. Thank you.
You can read John Lee Anderson on Cuba at newyorker.com. And you can subscribe to The New Yorker there as well, newyorker.com. In a moment, I'll be joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of Cuba, Ada Ferrer. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.
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