Fellow
traveler”
is a phrase dragged from the
rhetorical graveyard of the
1950s, when accusation
substituted for evidence and
dissent became
disloyalty. Its appearance in a
new State Department report
should
alarm anyone who values free
speech, political association
and the
right to challenge government
policy.
The
State
Department’s Cuba:
The
Capital of 21st Century
Communism
is not merely a critique of
Cuba. A section titled, “Front
Groups
and Fellow Travelers” revives
the language and logic of the
Red
Scare, while the report places
American organizations, elected
officials, journalists and
activists inside a sweeping
narrative of
foreign subversion. In this
political climate, that is no
laughing
matter.
The
report reads less like serious
foreign-policy analysis than a
document Secretary of State Marco Rubio has
waited his entire
political life to publish. For Rubio, Cuba
is more than a
foreign-policy challenge. It is a family
grievance, a Florida
political inheritance and, increasingly, a
personal crusade conducted
with the power of the State Department.
Rubio
grew up in Miami’s anti-Castro culture and
has recalled boasting
that he would lead an exile army against
Fidel Castro. Yet his
parents left Cuba in 1956, during the
Batista dictatorship, more than
two years before Castro took power. His
grandfather later fled
Castro’s Cuba.
Now
Rubio presents Cuba as the command center of
a worldwide communist
conspiracy - one that supposedly infiltrated
American government,
commandeered Western protest movements and
backed an “unprecedented
wave of left-wing terrorism” on American
soil.
Having
returned from Cuba less than three months
ago, I scarcely recognize
the country described in Rubio’s report.
I
visited in May with an all-Black delegation
organized by the
Institute of the Black World and led by Dr.
Ron Daniels. What I saw
was neither a socialist paradise nor a
sinister command center. I saw
shortages, uncertainty and exhaustion. A
31-year-old former teacher,
who traveled three hours partly by walking
and hitchhiking, told us
she could not afford children. A
ten-year-old said he attended school
only two days a week. At Cuba’s Latin
American School of Medicine,
a physician broke down when I asked about
mental health.
But
I also saw generosity, dignity and
achievement that Rubio’s
caricature cannot accommodate. People who
had little offered us
coffee or water. Cubans spoke candidly about
their frustrations. They
did not resemble puppets in either
Washington’s or Havana’s
propaganda.
Cuba’s
government bears responsibility for economic
mismanagement, political
repression and racial inequality. The
American blockade also bears
responsibility. Both truths fit inside the
same sentence. Economics
is not theory. People live inside both.
Cuba
has engaged in espionage. Ana Belén Montes,
who spied for Cuba while
working for the Defense Intelligence Agency,
is an undeniable
example. Cuba has also harbored American
fugitives and imprisoned
dissenters.
But
facts do not become more persuasive when
piled beside half-truths and
guilt by association.
The
report reaches back more than half a century
to Los Angeles Mayor
Karen Bass’s youthful participation in the
Venceremos Brigade. Her
old activism is recycled as evidence of
Cuba’s continuing
infiltration of American politics, although
she was never charged
with espionage, terrorism or any crime.
Representative Maxine Waters
appears through a 1998 letter urging Fidel
Castro not to extradite
Assata Shakur. One may disagree with Waters
or condemn Shakur’s
actions. A nearly 30-year-old letter,
however, does not prove that
Cuba commands American subversives.
The
report also ignores why Cuba has long
attracted some Black Americans.
That affinity was not implanted by Cuban
intelligence. It grew from
our experience of American racism and our
search for international
allies.
Cuba
aligned itself with African liberation
movements and sent troops to
Angola, helping weaken apartheid South
Africa’s regional power. It
welcomed Black American activists whom their
own government
persecuted, offered scholarships to students
from developing nations
and dispatched physicians throughout the
Black world. Fidel Castro
stayed at Harlem’s Hotel Theresa in 1960 and
met Malcolm X while
white America treated both men as dangerous.
Cuba’s
record on race is hardly spotless.
Afro-Cubans have experienced
discrimination, inequality and repression.
Still, many Black
Americans saw a small nation confronting the
same United States
government that tolerated segregation at
home while preaching freedom
abroad. Their interest reflected racial
solidarity, political
judgment and sometimes romanticism - but not
necessarily foreign
control.
The
report targets Chris Smalls, Amy Goodman,
Zohran Mamdani, CODEPINK
and the Democratic Socialists of America.
Some have visited Cuba or
opposed the embargo. None of that proves
Havana controls their
politics. Democratic socialists are not
communists. They participate
in elections and seek change through
democratic institutions.
One
can oppose Cuban repression without
supporting collective punishment.
One can condemn espionage without
criminalizing dissent. Influence is
not control, solidarity is not subversion,
and democratic socialism
is not communism.
The
State Department has retrieved “fellow
traveler” from the
rhetorical garbage can of the 1950s. We know
what happened the last
time our government spoke this language. We
should not wait to
relearn the lesson.
