WTOP is celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, with stories spotlighting the contributions, culture, and accomplishments of Hispanic and Latino people and places across the D.C. region.
Some experts say the United States’ sanctions against Cuba have been the cause of the deteriorating living conditions. Others, and many Cubans, say the regime is to blame. What’s not up for debate is the humanitarian crisis sweeping across the island.
John Suarez, a Cuban-American and executive director of the D.C.-based nonprofit, Center for a Free Cuba, said that while the situation has gotten worse since January, it’s been bad for a long time, and that “the regime elites are awash in more money than they were before.”
Center for a Free Cuba works with lawmakers, Cubans in the United States, and those who come to visit to get uncensored information to the people on the island, and to provide aid, especially to political prisoners.
“The number of political prisoners has risen and the condition of food, monetary situation, inflation continues to rise,” Suarez said. “One of the visitors that came in last week was literally crying because he was talking to a mother, whose son she visited at the prison, and she didn’t recognize him and thought that it was due to some sort of illness or disease, and her son swore to her it wasn’t an illness. It was that they weren’t feeding them.”
Suarez added that the prisoners are being fed, but he said the amount of food they are getting for each meal is the size of a small coffee cup.
“We request Americans to reach out to their members of Congress and ask them to adopt a political prisoner and call on the Cuban government,” Suarez said.
There are frequent, widespread power outages on the island that can last anywhere from 12 to 30 hours at a time, according to a report from The Associated Press. Food rots in fridges, and there’s very limited access to clean water.
“They haven’t invested in working on the pipes, and the quality is very low, what there is, but there are areas that just aren’t receiving water. And on top of that, the way they were receiving it until recently was via trucks,” Suarez said.
He said that government trucks would bring jugs of water through towns across the country, and the blackouts are also affecting people’s ability to work and to go to school.
“The situation in school has been challenging, obviously, because the children are having problems sleeping because of the lack of air conditioning at night, especially during the summer months. And in Cuba, it gets quite hot, so there’s been more truancy,” Suarez said.
But the people in Cuba have had enough, Suarez said.
“They want to be freed from the current crop that have made their lives miserable, which is the existing dictatorship, by whatever means necessary. There’s desperation, is what we’re hearing from inside of the island,” Suarez said.
The center has been talking with Cubans about the best way to move forward, and Suarez said that is with nonviolent civic resistance and empowering Cubans on the island.
“What concerns me the most is that you have an intransigent regime that is benefiting from the current system that exists, and they’ve made billions upon billions of euros and dollars, and they have their families living in the United States, in Europe, and in Cuba at a very high level, and I don’t see them wanting to give up power easily,” Suarez said.
But the director does not believe the situation is a lost cause.
“What gives me hope is that the vast majority of Cubans, inside and outside of the island, do want change,” Suarez said.
Source
