Since 1962, the US has maintained a crushing blockade of Cuba that has severely impacted the lives of its people. For the past 32 years, the UN General Assembly has passed annual resolutions calling for an end to the embargo. In collaboration with Belly of the Beast, The Real News reports from the UN, where a recent 187-2 vote to lift the blockade passed once again—only opposed by the US and Israel.

Production: Liz Oliva Fernández, Alyssa Oursler
Videography: Alyssa Oursler
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Liz Oliva Fernández: We are in the UN General Assembly where Cuba presented for the 32nd time a resolution calling for an end to US sanctions.

Speaker: Those who are in favor please signify… those who are against and abstentions…

The results of the vote is 187 votes in favor, 2 against, and 1 abstention.

Liz Oliva Fernández: The United States and Israel voted against the resolution presented by Cuba, with Moldova abstaining.

For over 30 years, the vast majority of the General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned US sanctions on Cuba.

Mauro Vieira, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil: Hoy como tantas veces antes, Brasil reitera su firme y categórica y constante oposición al embargo económico y comercial impuesto a Cuba…

Umej Bhatia, Representative of Singapore: Asean adds its voice to the chorus of this assembly…

Kereeta Whyte, Representative of Barbados: Barbados reaffirms its strong opposition to the use of unilateral coercive measures, especially those with extraterritorial reach that violate international norms.

Sophia Tesfamariam Yohannes, Representative of Eritrea: Every day the blockade continues to exist represents a shame on the moral authority of this organization, a shame on the purposes and principles of the UN charter, and this shame on multilateralism itself.

Liz Oliva Fernández: The United States and Israel have always voted against the resolution. Except in 2016, when the U.S. abstained.

Samantha Power, US Ambassador, 2016: After 50-plus years of pursuing the path of  isolation, we have chosen to take the path of engagement, because as President Obama said in Havana the future of Cuba relies on the hands of the Cuban people…

Liz Oliva Fernández: A path that the Biden Administration seems uninterested in following.

Reporter: Were you aware the UN General Assembly votes on Cuba tomorrow?

Matthew Miller, US Department of State Spokesperson: I was not tracking this on my bingo card.

Reporter: How is the U.S. going to vote?

Matthew Miller: I doubt we’ll be voting to condemn ourselves. [laughs]

In recent weeks, Cuba has grappled with a dual crisis of blackouts and the aftermath of Hurricane Oscar, which killed at least six people on the island. Though the blackouts have become the target of another round of media demonization of Cuba, the current crisis is really the result of the US blockade, which has starved the Cuban people of fuel and other basic necessities for decades. Liz Oliva Fernandez of Belly of the Beast reports from New York City, where protesters took to the streets to denounce the US blockade of Cuba.

Production: Alyssa Oursler, Liz Oliva Fernández
Videography: Alyssa Oursler
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Liz Oliva Fernández: We are here in the middle of Manhattan, in a rally of solidarity with the Cuban people, just a few days before the UN votes yet again on the resolution presented by Cuba to end the US sanctions on my country.

Gail Walker, Executive Director, IFCO/Pastors for Peace: We are here in Grand Central in New York City to support our Cuban family, to protest the ongoing injustice that our government, the US government, has been perpetrating for far too many years. And as we get ready to welcome world leaders to the United Nations to once again vote against the blockade of Cuba, we’re here to say let Cuba live!

Justine Medina, Cuban-American: Every year the United Nations votes overwhelmingly to condemn the US blockade on Cuba and every year it’s basically just the US and Israel who vote against that and I do think that’s going to happen again this year but it really shows that the majority of the world is against this blockade… The majority of Cuban-Americans are also against this blockade.

Danny Valdes, Cuban-American: It’s hard to imagine it being any more isolating for the United States than it currently is. I went last year to the vote for the first time and it was incredible just seeing country after country after country, whether they’re in Europe, whether they’re in Africa, whether in the Caribbean, or they’re in Asia, all of them presenting arguments against the embargo, some of them because of the immoral and humanitarian reasons, and others are like this is a unilateral imposition on our ability to trade with Cuba by the United States…

Jessenia Jazmin, Rally Attendee: The United States and Israel are partners in destruction and the only thing they know how to do is wage war against people who only want to live their lives and the fact that the United States and Israel are voting against Cuba being able to thrive, and remove the sanctions they unlawfully placed on them, it’s a crime against humanity and it’s something that needs to be addressed and corrected.

Danny Valdes: I see what’s happening in Gaza and what’s happening in Cuba as two tentacles of the same monster…. In Gaza, it’s bombs, but before the bombs there were sanctions, before the bombs there was a blockade, and the same is happening in Cuba and it’s causing a humanitarian crisis that is unfathomable and getting worse all the time.

Gail Walker: We stand in solidarity with Palestine because we know the forces that are creating all the pressure in their country are very much similar to what’s happening in Cuba. I think there’s a direct link between the occupation of the Palestinian territory  and the ongoing genocidal activity of the US government’s blockade for over 60 years. It’s important for us to connect the dots and this is a perfect way to do that.

Danny Valdes: They love to talk about the international order and the rules-based international order but I think things like what’s happening in Gaza and what’s happening in Cuba illustrate that we don’t really have an international order that is rules-based. We have one that is based on geopolitical power.

Sen. Jabari Brisport, State Senator, New York: What the United States is doing in Cuba is frankly criminal. It’s crippling an entire country because of an ideological difference and it’s disgusting what we’re doing to the everyday people of Cuba.

Rev. Dorlimar Lebron, IFCO/Pastors for Peace: A lot of people don’t understand why that impacts us but Cuba is our neighbor. They are literally just 90 miles away from us. The way that we treat our neighbor reflects how we treat each other. And so, for me, as somebody who was born in Puerto Rico but has the ability to vote in the United States, I have a unique duty, unique responsibility to fight for my neighbors when they’re being oppressed, when they’re being exploited, when they’re experiencing all this hardship.

Liz Oliva Fernández: Do you know the United States put Cuba on the “state sponsors of terrorism list”? What do you think about that?

Justine Medina: I think that is criminal that the US government put Cuba on the state sponsor of terrorism list. The US government is currently sending bombs to Israel to bomb civilians of Gaza right now. The Cuban government sends doctors around the world. So I think that it is incredibly, incredibly egregious for the US government to say that the Cuban government are the terrorists.

Liz Oliva Fernández: Do you think Cuba supports terrorism?

Sen. Jabari Brisport: Cuba does not support terrorism. Cuba supports healthcare and justice.

Rev. Dorlimar Lebron: Right now, what we’ve already seen is that, what Cuba offers is life, is hope, is doctors, it’s health, it’s opportunity, in contrast to what the U.S. empire has been offering the world.

Danny Valdes: I’m Cuban American so I grew up in Miami, Florida, with Cuban-American parents and grandparents… 

But when I went to Cuba on my own, and then later with DSA as part of a delegation, I discovered a country that was very different than the country I was told about my entire life…. 

And I just saw a country that was under the boot of an economic policy that the country I was brought to….

Liz Oliva Fernández: Why are politicians in the US not talking more about what is happening in Cuba?

Sen. Jabari Brisport: I think there are just too few politicians treating this like a priority. It’s not on the top of the mind of a lot of politicians or some of them frankly are scared to get involved in it, they want to keep living in the propaganda of the US.

Danny Valdes: I have never experienced a culture where solidarity is a value that’s expressed very consistently.

A socialist culture where those values are put front and center and that was kind of breathtaking and I remember coming back to the US after being in Cuba and being so depressed because it was totally different from everything I had grown up knowing.

Liz Oliva Fernández: Do you have a message for young people in the United States who don’t know nothing about Cuba?

Jessenia Jazmin: Go to Cuba, learn from Cuba first hand, living in the United States we’re fed a lot of lies, we’re fed a lot of misinformation, and the best thing to do sometimes is just to go to the place itself and learn from the people.

Gail Walker: Nothing will change your perspective on this tiny beautiful island like being there. Walking down the street, talking to people, eating the food, getting somebody to treat you to a little cafecita, there’s nothing like seeing Cuba for yourself.

Danny Valdes: I think it’s up to us as Americans to say we’ve had enough of this. It’s morally wrong, it’s a humanitarian issue, it’s an international rights issue, and we’re not going to stand for it anymore.

Immigration has emerged as one of the leading political issues driving voter decision-making in this election. As Trump and the GOP double down on racist anti-immigrant rhetoric, many migrant voters are heading to the polls with a plan to vote defensively. TRNN and Belly of the Beast join forces to speak with migrant justice activists in Baltimore on the mood of the local immigrant community ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Liz Oliva Fernández, Cameron Granadino, Alyssa Oursler
Videography/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  So, we’re here in downtown Baltimore. The Real News Network is teaming up with Belly of the Beast, and we are just days away from the US presidential elections. And right now the polls are showing that the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is incredibly close.

And Liz, at the center of Donald Trump’s campaign, everything has been driven by fear and lies about an immigrant invasion into the US, and promises to mass deport undocumented people if Trump’s elected.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  Who ends up becoming the next president of the United States is not only going to affect the life of the immigrant community here in Baltimore, in the US, but also can affect the life of people like mine, in Cuba. The US media [loves to] talk a lot about migration, a migration crisis and wave in the United States, but they never mention how US policy caused it.

Maximillian Alvarez:  When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed here in Baltimore back in March, six immigrant construction workers who were working on the bridge at the time lost their lives. And you know Liz, it was like, for a brief moment, the invisible lives and struggles, and frankly, the humanity of our immigrant community here became temporarily visible to the rest of the country.

But then that all quickly went away. And since then, it’s just been nonstop xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Donald Trump, his campaign, and from right-wing media. It’s endless.

Donald Trump [clip]:  They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done… They’re pouring into our country. Nobody’s even looking at ‘em. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous.

…What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country — And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — Not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it, because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating… They’re eating the pets.

Ricardo Ortiz:  I think for my community, we are receiving so many attacks from one candidate and his people. So that makes me very anxious about what will be next. And also, I know there are so many possibilities that this person can win.

When you have somebody who is saying things like, all the immigrants are bad people — But let’s be clear, it’s not all the immigrants. It’s only immigrants of color, or immigrants from Central America. People who Trump says, they are very bad hombres, or very bad people. But that is not true…

So I can definitely feel in some parts of the country, people who look at me weird. Or sometimes people say bad things like, oh, these people are eating animals. And that’s something that you feel bad about, because they don’t know you, but for some reason they believe you are a bad person.

Lucia Islas:  Everybody says, why does the United States have to keep these people here. Why? Because from the beginning of this country, we’ve been told that this country is free, and that’s why we come here. We’re looking for freedom. We’re looking for a better life. We are looking for… Also to make this country better. We pay taxes. We do a lot of things. We work very hard.

And as you can see right now, the Key Bridge here in Baltimore, it was a huge impact. Nobody knows that immigrants were working there. That’s a shame. Latino or immigrants work for the worst jobs here in this country. So, we deserve a better thing. We deserve a better life.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  I know when you make the news, when something happened, terrible happened to the people you actually love. That’s the thing that happens with Cuba. What do you know about Cuba? What do you see in the news about Cuba? It’s always something negative, when something terrible is happening in my country, or it’s a new trend coming.

But that’s the main reason why I’m here today, because I know how US policy impacts the people in Cuba, my country. But I also want to understand and know how these elections are going to impact the life of people in Baltimore.

Susana Barrios:  We all work together, as immigrants. So we can work together with the Haitian community and with the Nepali community, and we have more in common than difference.

…Baltimore, especially Baltimore City, doesn’t have anti-immigrant policies per se. Not as scary as the ones in Florida. In Florida, you can get stopped just because you look like me, and that’s just suspicion enough. So, Florida and other states have a lot of anti-immigrant policies, and there’s a danger that might grow.

So then people want to come over here. But it’s very difficult because housing is very limited, jobs are very limited. So for example, during the pandemic, everybody got to stay home. A lot of them didn’t qualify for food stamps or unemployment insurance, and they kept on working. You would still see people working in construction — They got up every day, they went to work. We were the ones that were getting the most sick, because we were exposed to a lot of… To work, while we were out. And then we would come home and we would get our families sick.

But we kept on going. We kept on going because it was the only way that we could make a living. We just want an opportunity to make a living and be safe. Because some people come here because they’re afraid, they’re running away from their country because it’s a dangerous place. And we just want an opportunity to make a decent living and be safe.

Ricardo Ortiz:  I work for a nonprofit, and every day we receive calls from people to say, hey, I work with this employee and they don’t want to pay me. And they say, if I [tell] somebody or if I call the Department of Labor, they call ICE or they deport me.

Lucia Islas:  All the things that he’s been saying, my community is so afraid, saying that if Donald Trump wins, they’re going to leave the country. They are afraid, they don’t want to be here. Even professional people, they say, if he wins, I’m leaving.

Even in the school, the other kids like American or other kids, they were making fun of the kids like, oh, the immigration is going to come for your family. So, that was not okay.

Maximillian Alvarez:  The thing is that on the Democratic side, Kamala Harris and the Democrats, at least rhetorically, are taking a more humane approach. They’re saying more of the right things. But at the policy level, they have fully doubled down on the Republicans’, and frankly, the far-right’s framing of the immigration issue, and the border security issue. And so that’s leaving a lot of people in this country feeling like they have nowhere to turn.

And I got to tell you, Liz, a lot of immigrant and mixed status families in this country are extremely anxious right now.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  Yeah, it’s the same anxiety we share. Because for us, it’s not a difference between the US policy on Cuba in a Democratic government and in a Republican, because both parties are the same against hard line and Cuba policy.

How are you feeling ahead of the election?

Susana Barrios:  I’m feeling very anxious because everything is up in the air.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  Why?

Susana Barrios:  Well, because people are very confused, and I think some people are not liking the choices that they have. And in the immigrant community, remember, a lot of them cannot vote, but they pay taxes. So for example, somebody with a green card, they’re here legally, they pay taxes, they can work, they can go in and out of the country, but they cannot vote. So a lot of decisions are going to be made without them being able to give their input.

And my brother always says, this is taxation without representation. Because we pay taxes, and we are not represented.

Lucia Islas:  I’m kind of anxious, but at the same time, I am very hopeful. The candidate that I’m looking for has to look for the benefits that everyone can have. Not just the American, not just the African American, not just the immigrant, everyone. I’m looking for equity and I’m looking to be transparent. We are not looking for someone that lies and takes advantage of the immigrant.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  Do you have that candidate now?

Lucia Islas:  Yes, I do.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  Who is?

Lucia Islas:  Kamala.

And I just want to say to my community: please don’t be afraid. I know, I know if we come out to vote, Kamala is going to win. So please don’t be afraid of that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And Liz, you and I have been talking about, and as we’ve been hearing from folks around Baltimore, this is not just an election issue. This is not just a political debate. These are human beings with lives, families, communities that we’re talking about here.

And as the son of a Mexican immigrant, as the foster father of a Honduran immigrant, this is personal to me, as it is for so many people. And yet, when we’re talking about potentially mass deporting 10 million people, it’s like those are just numbers to so many people out there.

Liz Oliva Fernández:  Yeah. Sadly, it is. And for me, it’s also personal because when we talk about migration, we can’t forget the cost of the migrations. People are not leaving their own countries, their home country, their family, the culture, because they want to just go, and see, and live the American life. No, this, because most of the time they have been forced to do it.

So being here, being part of this process, is an honor, but also a privilege for me. Because it also makes me clear, more clear, that the journalism that we do, the way that we focus the stories that we choose to tell, and to visualize, is worth it.