25 Mar 2026
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-to-slander-a-humanitarian-mission

Lede: The media's sleaziest propagandists are mad about the recent aid mission
to Cuba, smearing activists who brought supplies. They're trying to distract
from the real story: the inhuman denial of fuel by the U.S.

The two of us just returned this week to New Orleans from Havana, Cuba. We had
traveled there alongside hundreds of volunteers from around the world on the
Nuestra América aid mission, delivering tons of desperately-needed supplies to a
country suffering under a U.S. blockade of fuel (in addition to the preexisting
U.S. trade embargo). Current Affairs went along to report on the convoy and to
document firsthand the effects of the blockade on ordinary Cubans. A longer
report will be appearing in the next print edition of our magazine, but what we
saw was harrowing. The whole country plunged into a blackout while we were
there, because the fuel shortage brought down the national electrical grid. The
entire city of Havana was in almost total darkness, with only a handful of solar
or generator lamps shining out.

We have both seen things that will be permanently burned into our minds. People
moving around in the shadows like ghosts. Mounds of foul-smelling trash in the
street, with sanitation workers in the few running trucks overwhelmed by the
task of collecting it - and worse, old men picking through the heaps, looking
for anything they can use or sell. Live fish dying slowly in tanks filled with
stagnant green water. Shopkeepers losing all of their refrigerated and frozen
food. Taxi drivers calling out desperately for a fare, because tourism to the
island has shrunk to a trickle. Restaurants having to close in the middle of a
busy dinner service after losing power mid-meal. The look of worry on medical
workers' faces, as they contemplate rationing their remaining antibiotics or
painkillers.

Our government is systematically torturing the Cuban people. It is doing so
purposefully in order to extract concessions from the Cuban government. (Not
human rights concessions, mind you, but favorable investment terms.) For a rich
country to punish a poor country like this is morally grotesque. The issue is
not difficult to grasp.

The Nuestra América convoy, organized by multiple groups including the
Progressive International, CODEPINK, and Global Health Partners, is a noble
effort to both relieve some of Cubans' pain and draw attention to the basic
obscenity of the U.S. fuel blockade. The people we met on the convoy were
sincere, principled humanitarians who acted because they were angered by the
unnecessary suffering the U.S. government is inflicting on Cubans.

Some U.S. media coverage has been fair in representing the Nuestra América
mission. ABC News ran a straightforward story documenting that "solar panels,
food and medicine to treat cancer are among the products donated to the island,
which has been brought to a near standstill since Trump imposed an energy
embargo in January, exacerbating a five-year economic crisis." The Associated
Press, too, has done solid factual reporting on the part of the mission
traveling by sea: "A ship bringing humanitarian aid to Cuba arrived in Havana on
Tuesday loaded with solar panels, bicycles, food and medicine as the island's
economic and energy crises deepen."

But on social media and in the right-wing press (as well as supposedly
respectable liberal papers), the story of the convoy's work was totally
distorted. In the sporadic periods when we had internet access in Cuba, we
realized that conservative media had spun the aid mission into a vanity trip,
ignoring the issue of the fuel embargo and its effects. Much of this criticism
can be waved away as noise, since the mission's purpose of delivering medical
supplies and solar panels is difficult to criticize. (Besides, a hit piece in
the New York Post is basically a badge of honor.) But it is worth correcting
some of the more blatant lies, which distract from the horror the U.S. is
inflicting on Cuba. Examining the right-wing distortions also offers a useful
study in how propaganda works.

The detractors' narrative goes like this: "tone-deaf radicals" were "flocking
into Havana," staying in 5-star hotels while Cuba is in crisis. There, they
"spent more time broadcasting their exploits to millions of followers than doing
anything that might actually help the average Cuban," as James Kirchick of the
Free Press puts it. According to the editorial board of the Bezos-owned
Washington Post, the Nuestra América volunteers were "useful idiots" who don't
understand that "the best way to help the Cuban people, of course, would be to
free them from a dictatorship that has failed to meet their needs for more than
half a century." For the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, the group were "morons" and
"moral derelicts" engaged in "poverty tourism." Popular Twitch streamer Hasan
Piker has gotten the brunt of the attacks, criticized in the Daily Mail for
wearing an expensive designer shirt and Cartier glasses during the trip. (If
only he'd spend his disposable income on, say, traveling to a blockaded country
to deliver aid.) The Irish rap group Kneecap, too, has come under fire for
performing onstage in Havana, with one Florida representative even claiming the
band threw a special concert and used so much electricity they "caused a power
outage at a nearby hospital," thereby killing patients whose ventilators were
shut off. Overall, the New York Post declares, the trip was a "revolting Cuban
vacation" put on by "lefty hypocrites."

Cont'd ...