International Supper Club- Cuba
As I sit down to write this blog post about our September International Supper Club country, Cuba. I pull up some some recent news articles about Cuba, only to learn that the U.S. government has just imposed stricter sanctions on Cuba, a country that is already struggling with dwindling resources. I am by no means an expert on Cuba, or Cuba-U.S. relations; however, I do think it’s important to read about and try to understand the places our International Supper Club “travels” to.
The fraught relationship with U.S. and Cuba goes back almost seven decades when Fidel Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed Cuban government replacing it with a socialist state that allied with the Soviet Union. The U.S. government’s response to this has been massive blockades and sanctions making it extremely difficult to access basic necessities like food, medicine, electricity, etc. Despite these sanctions, Cuba was able to achieve multiple measures of success in numerous health outcomes because of innovative and creative socialist policies like universal health care, basic food rations, free school meals, and tuition free pre-K through college.These programs have pretty much eradicated hunger in Cuba. These are policies and programs that I and many Americans now support.
During Obama and Biden administrations, sanctions were loosened which allowed more goods to be brought into the country, making life a little easier. However, the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to the blockades and sanctions, tightening the amount of basic food, medicine, water, and supplies that are sent to Cuba. Due to the blockade and embargoes to Cuba, there are food shortages, citizens are unable to receive necessary and life-saving medications, electrical outages for days, and the list goes on. While I don’t fully understand the complex these international relations, I do know that the people who suffer the most are Cuban citizens. It is utterly cruel and immoral to allow this suffering to happen to innocent people because of the disagreement between two countries.
Despite the blockades, Cuban people have found vibrant, creative, and resourceful ways to nourish their families, preserve their food traditions, care for one another, and maintain their cultural identity through decades of hardship, restrictions, and uncertainty. This month, as we gather around Cuban food, we are honoring that ingenuity and resilience—the many ways Cuban people have preserved, resisted, adapted, and survived.