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- [Voiceover] What comes to your mind when you hear Cuba

on the news, in conversation, stuff like that?

Negative, positive, what?

- Negative. Cigars.

- [Voiceover] Why?

- It's like a place that you don't wanna go to travel to.

- Not a resolved issue, but a non-issue right, like

right now, that our country's not even focusing on it.

- Fidel Castro. - [Voiceover] What about him?

- We don't like him. - [Voiceover] Why?

- 'Cause he's, a dictator?

He's probably cruel?

- People there aren't happy,

or see better opportunities elsewhere.

- I don't really think about things

that I don't know a lot about.

I feel like I need to educate myself first,

before I decide how I feel.

- They're communist, and...

That's pretty much all I know about Cuba, basically.

- I'm thinking about Fidel Castro.

What about Fidel, he's been in power for a long time.

- I know I passed it on a cruise to Jamaica!

And (laughing) we pointed at it but couldn't get too close.

- [Voiceover] OK.

- I heard they don't have no freedom in Cuba.

- Cuba is a very revolutionary country to my knowledge.

- I think communism is a good thing!

- 90some percent of the population can read.

Medical school is free.

- Everything we got, they probably don't have.

- It's the only place that's safe for the Black man.

One of my veterans, Sister Assata Shakur,

who's on exile, is in Cuba right now.

- I think they need to lift all their embargoes,

just open it up!

It's about time, it's been going on for too long.

- Che Guevara was the one that was pro people

living and appreciating the beauty of Cuba.

- The greatest resource to any nation is its people.

It's the people that make 125th Street flourish.

If you wanna read further,

you can read this paper here, The Final Call,

it speaks about Cuba: The Good Samaritan.

- When I think of Cuba I think of

a place that kicked out imperialists

and made a country for the people, by the people.

Even though it's not perfect,

that country embodies what all nations

should be trying to strive for,

some type of equality,

you know, education, medical coverage,

you know, equality in housing, and so on and so forth.

And of course I think of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara,

and all of the other great men and women

that contributed to that struggle.

("Balicky Bon" by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)

- Graduate students at Yale.

- Came together as a Black Resistance reading group.

They struggled to create the ultimate field trip:

- They ventured to Black Cuba

in search of their revolutionary selves.

("Balicky Bon" by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)

This documentary is a mix-tape

of a community's historical memory,

the travelers' intimate recollections,

- It's very moving being here on this spot.

- and the salvaged footage they found

from their journey from the Ivy League to a rebel state.

- [All] We are the narrators of this film.

- [Voiceover] What does it mean to you

to be a Black student at Yale University?

- Um, I find that question very difficult to answer.

- [Voiceover] Are you mad, I mean you know --

- I'm very, I'm very angry.

I'm very angry and lonely.

(piano music)

- I did feel like an outcast at Yale.

On the one hand,

I have the community of color that I was raised in,

which is very working class.

As I would walk around campus,

I never at all identified as being part of Yale,

even though I was in Yale's power and privilege.

- I had a certain anxiety, I guess I would say,

you know, being a person of color too,

being Black, well mixed race, and going to Yale,

and also the class issues,

of not having been trained

in elitist kind of Ivy institutions.

- I found Yale to be a place

that was really exciting intellectually,

but I felt sometimes that the institution is not for me,

as a person of color and a person from,

a middle-class background, single-parent background,

I mean, it's a place that's for the production of the elite,

it's for the future CEOs and the future senators

and presidents and Supreme Court justices.

(soulful music)

- You end up building up a lot of cash.

- And I saw where your Board has amply rewarded you

for that success.

(laughter)

- I never saw myself in that vein,

so in some senses I've felt alienated

at times from the institution.

(piano music)

- Yale University was founded in 1701,

however, the first African American

wasn't admitted until 1850.

African Americans weren't admitted

in groups until the 1960s.

In spite of this long history of racial exclusion,

Yale is consistently ranked

as one of the top three universities in the nation.

Along with two of the other wealthiest schools

in the country, Harvard and Princeton.

- A lot of the people of color

were coming from middle-class households,

where they may have been

third- or fourth-generation college students.

And even for the people

that were first-generation college students,

there's really this idea of, like, economics

as being the purpose of an education.

I have an entire family or community

to support when I get out of here.

- I grew up in just sort of, I don't know,

maybe ten-block radius that included my school,

my church, my family.

My mom and my godmother worked very hard

paying next month's tuition bill.

And I just, sort of constantly feel that disconnect here.

- I was one of two or three

Black grad students in residence in the History department.

I was at a reception towards the end of the year,

and I looked around the room...

And I looked at the portraits on the walls,

and I thought, I've gotta get out of here.

And it was just sort of this,

and I still don't have the words for it,

but at that moment it was so oppressive,

the extent that there was nobody here,

or there, then, for me to talk to.

And it wasn't that

there wasn't anybody Black for me to talk to,

there was nobody there

who was interested in what I was doing.

- It's difficult to know, I think in this day and age,

how to be political and feel like you're on the one hand,

in solidarity with movements of resistance,

but on the other hand so clearly in a position

that makes you at least tangentially complicit

in a lot of stuff that's going on in the world.

- [Voiceover] Why are you staying?

- Um.

I'm staying because, you know...

It's almost, I feel a need,

you know, to stay here and get that degree,

'cause I think that's very important.

I'm also staying here, you know,

'cause I like school.

I like my work.

- [Voiceover] There's some people who would say

that Yale simply doesn't prepare you

to cope with Black reality.

- Um, and?

- [Voiceover] And that you are actually becoming,

not educated, but miseducated or whitewashed.

- I think that's...

I see that as rhetoric almost, you know.

That...

You can educate yourself on campus

without going to class.

I mean, you cook up tutorials,

do what you want to do.

I mean, people here are not feeding you stuff.

They're not feeding you knowledge.

I think that's a general misconception that people hold to.

You know, you do what you wanna do.

The place affords you that freedom.

- My experience at Yale has been that if I hadn't been

in the African American Studies department,

perhaps I would have felt like an outcast.

But I didn't,

because the department very much became a home.

- African American Studies is also known as Black Studies,

Africana Studies, and African Diaspora studies.

It's an academic discipline

that focuses on the history, culture, and politics

of communities of African descent.

Beginning with the Third World Strike,

at San Francisco State College in 1968,

coalitions of students, teachers, and community members

demanded the hiring of African American professors,

and classes that reflected

the experiences of people of color.

- [Voiceover] The education that Third World people need

is one that sees the dignity and the worth and the pride

of the people from which the come.

To enable us to in turn go back to our communities,

increase and develop the level of consciousness

of our people and why they live in poverty

and why racism is continuing as a mainstay,

of keeping Third World people poor.

(police yelling on bullhorn)

(protestors chanting)

- Now African American studies,

no matter what it's called or where it's taught,

is politically informed at its roots.

As far as a research-driven,

quote, traditional liberal arts, kind of program,

that's what Yale has in African American studies.

That trajectory's very different from, say,

those programs that were started

with students with shotguns in their hands,

literally armed struggle.

They have a legacy of a different kind of practice,

other than African American Studies.

Now, which is better?

This is up to you to decide.

- I got to a point where I felt like

I couldn't spend the rest of my life as an activist,

because it's just really grueling, emotionally, physically.

I was working as an activist with this organization

called Pastors for Peace.

Its motto is a people's foreign policy.

We would organize humanitarian aid caravans

to Chiapas and Nicaragua and El Salvador and Cuba,

and I loved that work,

but I wanted to make a contribution in some other way.

My interest in, sort of, protest politics,

and the interest that I shared with other graduate students,

led me to found this Black Resistance reading group.

As a way to get us motivated,

to sort of exploring works that were about anti-colonialism,

or anti-racist politics.

- I think this was an opportunity for us, you know,

people who were like-minded,

to exercise some agency over our education, you know?

And we had a diversity of people,

and classes, and colors, and politics, within our group.

But at the same time I felt like we were all,

in some kind of odd way,

feeling alienated for similar reasons.

- In Black communities around the world,

reading groups have continued

the knowledge-sharing tradition that began with slavery.

- Revolutionary Africans would meet secretly

to learn each other's languages,

teach each other to read,

and develop resistance strategies.

It can be sort of formal,

like the legendary Dark Tower of Harlem,

hosted by hair-care heiress A'lelia Walker.

- Reading groups can also be grassroots,

like the Black Panther Party's political education classes.

- When you look at struggle,

this depends on the education thing, you dig?

You understand what I'm saying?

With no education you have neo-colonialism

instead of colonialism,

like you've got in Africa now

and like you've got in Haiti.

So what we're talking about

is there has to be an educational program.

That's very important.

As a matter of fact, reading is so important for us

that a person has to go through six weeks

of our political education

before he can consider himself a member of the party

able to even run down ideology for the party.

Why?

Because if they don4t have an education,

then they4re nowhere, you dig what I4m saying?

- The reading group initially started off fairly diffuse.

There wasn't a particular theme beyond resistance,

and that we wanted it to be global,

that we weren't just talking about the United States,

that we were talking about the diaspora.

- A diaspora is a community of people who remain connected,

although they have been dispersed from their homeland

due to forces outside of their control.

The African Diaspora names a world-wide community

of millions who claim African heritage,

and deal with the every-day reality of anti-black racism.

- I got interested in diasporic issues

when I went to Oxford.

- Fuck fees, fuck fees, education should be free!

- And met a lot of Black people from around the world,

Caribbean, West Africa, most predominantly,

and I realized that African American issues

weren't the only game in town, basically.

- It was through our discussions

that I really began thinking about Cuba again.

It's like, you know, Cuba is a revolutionary country,

and it's a socialist country, and it's a Black country.

- The rest of us had, probably more latent interest,

and less experience with Cuba, but were intrigued by it.

- [Dalton] I think one of my earliest recollections of Cuba

was reading some of the speeches of Malcolm X,

I think By Any Means Necessary, in one of those collections,

there's talk about Castro's visit to Harlem, 1960.

(cheering)

- [Translator] Remember that

in those days when I came here first,

those were the days of the Cold War.

(speaks Spanish)

The revolution was practically a newborn.

That was in the year 1960.

(speaks Spanish)

Injustice was obvious,

discrimination was obvious to me,

I knew that here I would have the heart

of the neighbors of Harlem.

(applause)

We have shed our blood.

We have shed our blood to fight against colonialism!

And to defend independence!

(cheering and whistling)

- Yes let us pray,

for the salvation of all of those

who live in that totalitarian darkness.

They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

- [Josh] My early understandings of communism,

growing up in the 1980s,

when the Cold War and kind of anti-communism

was so pervasive in popular culture.

- You tell your guys in Miami, your friend.

It'd be a pleasure.

I kill a communist for fun.

- [Josh] And understanding communism

as being something evil.

- Not gonna stop this fight, no matter what.

(explosion)

- [Josh] We went from that to reading

about the relationship between Malcolm and Castro,

and also Patrice Lumumba,

all that kinda wrapped up together,

starting to offer kinda an alternative

to these other understandings

of what communism might be about,

or what a socialist society might be about.

("After The Rain" by Little Dragon)

- Socialism is an alternative to capitalism,

and aims to develop relatively equal power relations

in a society.

Communism is a form of socialism.

It simply endorses the public collective ownership

of things like factories, technologies,

and natural resources.

- Its also part of our struggle,

to see that the amenities

of life in the 20th century reach our people.

You know Mr. President that we are very very far

from achieving the goal of raising those standards of living

without which the struggle for independence is not enough.

- Our Friend Angela.

(cheery music)

(applause)

- I can envision no more profound honor

for a communist,

than to be considered a part of an educational system

which puts knowledge, science, and reason

at the service of humanity's material

and spiritual well-being.

That is not only to be able to understand the world,

but to apply that knowledge in changing it.

(applause)

- The idea came up as, we should take a field trip!

And sort of, the ridiculousness of equating Cuba,

thinking of Cuba as a field trip,

but we were completely serious.

Once we started to discuss it,

to me it kind of clicked as in,

of course I want to go to Cuba.

It just seemed like a logical next step

for this reading group,

to move from the sort of, theoretical,

into really seeing

how Black resistance is lived.

- [Besenia] Oh, I see what you mean.

- [Voiceover] Yeah. (laughter)

- [Dalton] Gotta get used to it.

I'm just playing with the camera.

- We understood ourselves

as going, almost as emissaries,

you know, from Yale, African American Studies,

and that we kind of represented a larger group of people

who may have wanted to go,

but were not able to go.

- The video would probably be most important

as an educational tool,

how does Cuba impact our thinking

about a variety of different things, you know.

- This is really lacking out there,

just dialog and people talking,

sort of, off the cuff about Cuba.

- Well I think it's important

to kinda talk a little bit about the process

of actually getting ready to go,

'cause there were a lot of obstacles.

- US government's economic embargo

bans Americans from freely traveling to Cuba.

- There are some exceptions for researchers,

students, journalists, artists, and Cuban Americans.

- The US remains the only country in the world

to have any restrictions on trade or travel to Cuba.

- We wanted initially to raise enough money

to have all of our expenses funded for the whole group.

And that began to seem

like something that would be impossible.

- Each of us going to the discretionary funds

of our separate departments,

outside of African American Studies,

and asking for moneys.

- The money thing was a huge obstacle,

and it was a constant reminder

of the kind of antagonistic space we were in at Yale.

- There are a lot of pots of money around the campus,

but they're more for, we discovered,

planning conferences, or bringing speakers to campus,

or things like that,

and not sending a group of students

off to a forbidden country. (laughter)

To explore socialism and radical Black politics, so.

- Even while I was participating,

I was kinda like, this ain't gonna work.

This isn't gonna work. (laughter)

They said, we don't have the money,

you know, and it's true.

They did not, people were not forthcoming

with money for this trip,

and there's some surprising people

that you would think would be supporting.

But Robin was very clear that we were going to do it

and it was going to happen.

- We were able to throw some fundraisers,

we had a film festival,

and we also just asked like every little

organization, fiefdom, whatever,

at Yale that we could for some money,

and we were able to cobble together enough funding.

- There was never a sense of,

these are the people that have funding and can go to Cuba,

and these are the people that can't.

It was very much a sort of community ethos,

of, well, what's the point of me being able to go,

if this other person can't go?

And how much of a conflict is that

if we proclaim to be

interested in a socialist society,

and visiting it and participating in that experiment?

- Who packed up the bag?

- [Robin] Everything's in there.

- We got all the Radioshack stuff?

- [Robin] Yeah, everything's in there.

- The topic was 1968 to 2002, Are We Still Radicals, right?

Every sngle one of these panelists

was basically saying yes I'm still a radical.

This one woman said that,

just her being one of the 1.5%

of Black tenured faculty at Oberlin, she is a radical.

- [Robin] Oh please.

- And I was like, OK,

let me see where she's going with this.

And she goes, just me being part of that 1.5% of the faculty

who goes into a board meeting,

or goes into a department meeting, I am being a radical.

And I was like, OK, so that means that Clarence Thomas

is being a radical by going to the Supreme Court,

and Colin Powell are being radi --

And Condoleezza Rice?!

I was like, that's some bullshit!

And everybody in the audience was head-nodding,

I was like OK,

these are all conservative Black folks right here.

- [Robin] So Theresa, you were going to tell us

something about your parents?

- My father, he's kinda like a quasi-intellectual,

he taught math for many years,

he's extremely well-read,

he watches like five different newscasts. (laughter)

One summer vacation,

we went to Myrtle Beach, North Carolina.

And while everybody else was out on the beach,

having a good time, like throwing the Frisbee,

my father made us sit

and watch the Iran-Contra hearings.

- [Voiceover] But it was designed

to be kept a secret from the American people.

- I think that growing up in that environment

makes me question things.

And I think that's a really important link,

in terms of how people become politicized

or think about politics.

- [Robin] OK, you were telling us about

how having Thayden radicalized you in a number of ways.

- Oh, yeah, being a parent has really radicalized me.

You know, being a parent has really radicalized me.

To me, at the heart of revolutionary struggle

is a concern for the conditions in which

we socially raise our children and our future generations.

I don't think that revolutionary struggle

is just something that one does for themselves.

- [Robin] And we're on our way to Cuba.

Are you excited?

- Do you believe it? Of course I'm excited.

(laughter)

Cuba means a lot to me.

It's very mythological.

I wanna show solidarity with the Cuban people,

I'm very proud of the Cuban people.

I feel like Cuba's a piece in the puzzle, a missing link.

I'm already inspired, I haven't left the airport.

("Mugambi" by The Souljazz Orchestra)

Day one, first impressions.

No corporate restaurant chains.

No strip malls.

No McDonalds or any of that,

completely changes just the physical landscape is stunning.

- I remember being very struck,

all the billboards that you would see,

and there weren't that many,

but they were talking about history,

and the nation's history,

and you could say they were propagandistic,

but they seemed to me to be much more valuable,

than advertisements for Bacardi Rum,

or (laughing) Absolut Vodka or something like that.

- Alright, so good morning.

(murmured responses)

And I'm sorry because of the rain,

and so we're going to have rain for you all day,

but we were praying to have rain,

because we are in the middle of our dry season,

and we were praying so much, probably that's why.

(group laughs)

Alright, so I'm going to be going through the program,

so that you can know what is going on.

- I know that this is important

for the Afro-American people,

and also for Cuba because

the link between Malcolm X

and Fidel Castro and our revolution.

We always maintained the hopes

that this relation could be possible.

This is the opportunity for you

to get it clarified about our revolution.

- Education of Caribbean history.

Cuba is a Caribbean country.

The Caribbean

is a very controversial region.

The definition of "Caribe"

is not only a geographical definition.

It's an ethnological definition,

an historical definition.

This is more important.

The similarities

are made by colonialism.

- Colonialism is a practice of domination,

which involves the subjugation of one people by another.

This domination increases economic gain,

and political power.

- Most of the indigenous people of Cuba

were Arawak or Guanajatabey.

They fought against Christopher Columbus,

Diego Velasquez, and other representatives of Spain's elite.

- [Voiceover] The Spanish colonizers

used advanced military weaponry and professional troops.

This regime also developed

an arbitrarily violent criminal justice system,

which disproportionately punished indigenous people.

- The vast majority of the indigenous people of Cuba died

or were marginalized within 100 years of Columbus' arrival.

- Spain's takeover of Cuba,

along with the subjugation of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico,

gave Spain the political and economic monopoly

in the Caribbean.

- The lack of environmental regulations

and trade restrictions

allow for the Cuban elite

to form two lucrative interdependent enterprises.

Industrial agriculture, and slave labor.

Slavery is the system where people are treated as property

and forced to work.

It exists for the purposes of lowering labor costs

and increasing profits.

- Between 1511 and 1865, nearly 1,000,000 Africans

were kidnapped, sold as if they were property,

and forced to work in Cuba as slaves.

- Cuba became the largest slave-importing colony

in the Caribbean.

Cuban plantation owners constructed homes and slave quarters

so that laborers were under surveillance at all times.

They were forced to live in barracones,

which are walled-in villages,

where men and women are separated with a courtyard.

Those who tried to escape were dismembered

or hunted down by slave-hunters called rancheadores.

(emotional jazz music)

- In spite of the risk,

Cuban slaves frequently disrupted the authority

of plantation owners.

- They organized armed revolts,

and lived in maroon communities of escaped slaves

that raided plantations, destroyed property,

and liberated other slaves.

- This is the monument for the maroons

that escaped from their slave masters

that used to live in this area.

All this area was covered by woods.

And this is like a symbol,

praying for their god to help them,

and so in that way they have this big casserole,

there was like smoke coming out of the casserole,

and that smoke was a sort of guidance,

for where to go and where not to go, you know.

To continue to freedom.

- [Dalton] Joshua?

- Si?

- [Dalton] Habla.

- This is intense, because there are so few monuments

in the world to the struggle,

to the horror of slavery,

but also the struggle against slavery.

And this, to have this monument here

that's a symbol of this resistance,

along side of every other part of this town

and this community that was built

out of the struggle of the revolution,

the Cuban Revolution,

to see these two things together

really united both in...

Historical memory but also living reality,

and to see those two things together is intense,

and also sort of spiritual

because we're here in the mountains, in this valley,

and you can feel the unity of nature

and it's intense, and it feels good.

(fast-paced drumming and singing)

- [Voiceover] Cuban slaves would also engage

in cultural resistance using song,

dance, folk tales, religion,

and that validated their humanity and community.

(fast-paced drumming and singing)

The plantation is a pivotal aspect in the Caribbean history.

The plantation not only organized the economics

of all of these countries,

but organized the society, too.

The society where the whites were at the top of the society

and the Black Africans,

slave or free

at the bottom of the society.

(trumpeting)

(patriotic orchestral music)

- 30 years.

The Cubans were fighting 30 years

in order to obtain their independence.

(fast-paced drumming and singing)

- Imperialism is a system of domination

by which a country exercises power over another,

through settlement, political rule,

military force, or indirect mechanisms of control.

The patriot that began the war,

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes,

he freed the slaves, in order

they fight in an equal situation, as a citizen

in order to obtain independence.

And the majority of the soldiers at the end of the war

were Black or mulatto.

For example, Antonio Maceo is the paradigm

because he's the biggest.

- The US declared war on Spain in 1898,

in order to gain imperial rule over Cuba.

In most American classrooms,

we learn to call this conflict the Spanish American War.

In Cuba, they call it the US intervention

on Cuba's War of Independence.

- As a result of the war,

the US was able to gain dominance over Cuba,

as well as Puerto Rico,

Guam, and the Philippines.

President of the Republic of Cuba, Tomás Estrada Palma.

I'm talking about 1902.

When he was selected as the president of Cuba,

he just decided to represent the American interests in our country

and not the Cubans anymore.

That's why we consider him as a traitor.

And because of him, we still have the military base,

Guantánamo military base.

He's the one who signed the amendment, called the Platt Amendment,

which allowed the American government to have military bases in our country.

(fast-paced singing and drumming)

- [Voiceover] Political corruption is the abuse of power

by public officials for private gain.

- In the early 20th century,

the US installed and supported Cuban government leaders.

(fast-paced drumming and singing)

- [Voiceover] The US used its influence

to increase the profits of private American companies,

which dominated the island's economy.

US companies owned about 40% of the Cuban sugar lands,

almost all the cattle ranches,

90% of the mines and a mineral concession,

80% of the utilities,

and practically all the oil industry.

- With US military support and economic aid,

these leaders suppressed social movements and rebellions

that would oppose their corruption.

(fast-paced drumming and singing)

While African Americans were rising up,

Cubans began their own revolution.

A coalition of students, workers, farmers, and armed forces

called the July 26th Movement

used non-violent civil disobedience

and guerilla warfare to combat the corrupt Batista regime.

- [Voiceover] The armed wing of the movement included:

Juan Almeida,

Raul and Fidel Castro,

Celia Sanchez,

Che Guevara.

- So 61 marchers.

And these are some of the tortures

that were applied to this group of men,

as well as some tools that were used for torturing.

And many persons that had nothing to do with this action

were tortured here as well.

("Taijite" by Hypnotic Brass Ensenble)

- [Voiceover] After years of organizing and bloodshed,

Batista and his supporters surrendered.

The leaders of this movement

took power over the Cuban government

on January 1st, 1959.

("Balicky Bon" by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)

- [Voiceover] Once they came into power,

they started to make changes US elites didn't like.

The new government ended private education,

nationalized private property,

and made racial discrimination illegal.

- [Joshua] Standing in front of Moncada,

what's it like, what are you thinkin'?

- I really feel like this is our revolution, you know?

I feel like this is more than just the revolution of Cuba,

I really feel like it's the revolution

of a lot of principles.

Just the fact that now it's a school, you know?

And seeing the children come up and down,

the way they've kept those principles alive,

I wanna go back to the States and help

bring some life to this idea of revolution,

and try to imbue it with some form that like,

revolution is possible,

that's something that I'm gettin' from this space.

I mean, that revolution is something that can be made,

and that it's something that can be sustained

on a daily basis.

That's something that I'm really feeling is lacking

from our communities.

And I'm just really feeling honored

to be on this spot right here.

And I feel like there's a real reason why this blockade

is trying to not just obstruct

political relations and economic relationships

between the United States and Cuba,

but it's also trying to stop our people

and our communities from coming

and seeing this spirit of resistance,

that people actually believed in something

so solid and so hard,

that they would put their lives on the line,

and they would dedicate themselves

to social justice and change.

- The spirit in which the embargo was created

was really an attempt to completely isolate Cuba

as much as possible.

During the 1950s and '60s,

when communism was growing,

when the Soviet Union was becoming a world superpower,

and Fidel Castro was gaining power,

Cuba started nationalizing a lot of US companies in Cuba.

This upset the Americans,

and so what this resulted in

was a complete economic, commercial,

and financial embargo against Cuba.

- Will consider lifting the embargo

only if the Cuban leader embraces democracy.

The president offered this list of demands:

Free political prisoners.

Allow opposition parties to organize and speak freely.

Hold competitive national assembly elections next year,

international monitors.

Allow a national referendum to gauge Cuban support

for free speech and other civil liberties.

- Then, and only then,

I will explore ways with the United States Congress

to ease economic sanctions.

(applause)

- Good afternoon.

Today the United States of America

is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.

These fifty years have shown

that isolation has not worked.

It's time for a new approach.

We are taking steps to increase travel,

commerce, and the flow of information

to and from Cuba.

This is fundamentally about freedom, and openness,

and also expresses my belief in the power

of people-to-people engagement.

(chanting)

- [Voiceover] Over 80 people were arrested over the weekend

at peaceful anti-Wall Street protests.

- They maced five women.

The captain stepped up, maced their faces,

and then tried to run away.

And avoid cameras that were around.

(chanting)

- It's not a practice of Amnesty International

to compare one country to another

and say, you know, country X's human rights record

is much worse than country Y.

Just because a violation is a violation,

an abuse is an abuse.

The embargo has been in place for over 50 years,

and there's been no evidence

that shows that the embargo has improved the human rights

of either Americans or Cubans

or anyone residing in both countries.

In fact, Amnesty International research

has shown quite the opposite,

it's been quite detrimental to the human rights

of individuals in the United States and in Cuba.

- Viva Cuba libre!

(cheering)

- [Joshua] So how does it feel to be standing here,

under Che?

- Feels good.

To be at the

Ministry of the Interior where Che worked,

this is where his vision

of Cuba appeared.

- [Voiceover] The Cuban government provided support

and solidarity to independence movements

in Algeria, Angola, the Congo, and South Africa.

- [Voiceover] Medical and military aid from Cuba

helped Algerian rebels, and their children.

- [Voiceover] Che Guevara and a small group

of Afro-Cuban rebels

helped the Congolese National Movement's attempt

to continue to struggle for self-determination.

The struggle had been thwarted

after the CIA endorsed the assassination of Patrice Lumumba

Cubans sent military instructors, special forces,

as well as millions-of-dollars-worth of advanced weaponry,

which enabled Angola to defend itself

against foreign occupations.

- [Voiceover] Cuba also played a major role

in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

- Africa for us

is part of our being.

Africans were brought here

and what we are is because they were brought here.

- In the United States,

we usually see Cubans who look like this:

(singing in Spanish)

? Come on shake your body baby do that conga ?

? Go white girl, go white girl ?

In fact, 60% of Cubans are Afro-Cubans,

who look like this:

(drumming and singing in Spanish)

- One difference about Cuba,

in terms of issues of race,

is that people not of obviously African descent

could talk about being of African descent,

because they're in a mixed-race country.

Even if you seem like a white person,

or you're read as a white person,

you have been impacted by the history of slavery,

and all of the other migrations throughout the Caribbean,

and throughout the world, into Cuba.

So I think there's a kind of openness,

to talk about race, to talk about Africa,

that there isn't in the United States.

I think there's a kind of complacency

that people have in this country of,

well you're white you just wouldn't understand,

or you're not of this experience

so you just wouldn't understand.

- One thing is very important,

is the feeling the Cubans have

that we are closer to African Americans

than to Americans in general.

That we have more understanding.

- Cuba supported and provided political asylum

to several committed African American activists,

including Robert F. Williams, and Assata Shakur.

A political prisoner is someone who is prosecuted

because of their political activism,

or because they committed politically-motivated crimes.

Robert F. Williams encouraged Southern African Americans

to legally defend themselves

against white supremacist terrorism.

- Negros must be prepared to repulse attacks,

and they must be willing to fight,

they must be willing to die and to kill if necessary,

that there was no law,

no 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution

of equal protection in the South,

and that therefore they didn4t have any deterrent,

so they would have to create the deterrent force themselves.

- Receiving political asylum from Cuba

between 1962 and 1965

allowed Williams to communicate to his grassroots base

through a program called Radio Free Dixie.

He founded the Crusader,

a progressive newspaper,

and became president of the Revolutionary Action Movement.

Assata Shakur, who describes her slave name

as Joann Chesimard, was a student activist

at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

She became a leader of the Harlem chapter

of the Black Panther Party.

Later, she was associated with the Black Liberation Army.

- Freedom, justice, equality.

Decent living, for people,

is, if there's a complete change,

a complete change,

everything has got to be turned around,

and that's the revolution, a complete change.

- Assata, along with fellow activist

Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli,

were pulled over while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike

on May 2nd, 1973.

One of the New Jersey State Troopers on the scene

later admitted that the police pulled over these activists

because they were Black while driving

a car with Vermont license plates.

- [Voiceover] There was a confrontation

in which Assata Shakur was shot,

in her arms, shoulder, and back.

State Trooper Warner Forrester

and Zayd Malik Shakur were killed.

- Although the medical experts at trial

supported Assata's version of events,

she was convicted by an all-white jury,

and sentenced to life, plus 33 years.

- The Hands Off Assata campaign

asserts that she was framed

for the murder of Zayd Shakur and Warner Forrester

because of her political activism.

After spending two years

in a maximum-security federal prison,

while in solitary confinement,

fearing she would be murdered,

Shakur escaped.

She lived underground for five years,

until Cuba granted her political asylum in 1984.

- When it was prison, prison was hell.

It was a new kind of plantation.

I feel like, I feel like a maroon woman.

I feel like an escaped slave,

because what I saw in the United States

in those prisons was slavery.

It was Black people with chains,

in cells.

It was just poor people, you know,

I mean just stepped on and smashed.

I'll never forget what I saw.

I'll never forget what I've lived through.

I'll never forget what my people have lived through.

- The FBI currently offers a reward

for assistance with her capture.

The activists who were convicted in the US

of helping Assata with her escape,

Marilyn Buck, Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga,

and Silvia Baraldini, incarcerated, or died in prison.

- One of the first things done by the revolution

was to give same opportunities for everyone.

Legally, it was stated that the color of the skin

or the gender, or whatever difference,

is not to be used for giving privilege to different people.

And for a long time we thought, that's it.

Every problem is solved.

But then with time,

we started to notice that it's not enough

to say that we are the same in front of the law.

Race issues are very touchy issues here for Cubans.

Unity is very important.

For Cubans, unity is our weapon

to defend our country.

So if I start to...

bring out differences,

I might be regarded as attempting against unity.

- Like, the other day I was walking

with these friends on the streets,

I was asked for my ID,

and then I asked why are you asking me for my ID,

I can't walk freely with a phone here in Cuba?

I'm Cuban.

And they said no no no, but you know why we asked.

I don't know why you're asking for my ID,

so I need to know.

They say, you know, come on,

you're a Cuban, he said, hey.

Well I gave him my ID and what are you do?

I'm a tour guide and I'm also writing

(mumbles)

from the Ministry of Foreign Trade.

Are you telling me that's what --

It's just because I'm Black, you know.

That's the problem.

And the police, we also need to educate the police as well.

We need to educate certain fields within the society.

I mean, I'm talking about my own experience.

Probably you ask some other people,

they will tell you different things.

But I'm telling you about my own experience, and I think

most of the Black people feel the same way, that way.

(solemn piano music)

- Some people let's say make a joke

in which a Black person looks stupid.

And I go and say, listen.

This is racism, what you're doing.

And this person says no,

I have many friends who are Black

and there's no problem with that.

It's just a joke.

And this person doesn't understand

that it's teaching this just a joke to children,

and it's conveying a way of understanding life.

Culturally we have been using certain kind of language

there are things that just go invisible.

- We have been given the same opportunity,

as any other citizen here in Cuba.

Some people have taken it,

some other don't.

Some other haven't, I mean.

But I think that it's not a matter of having opportunities

or having an important post within the society,

sometimes you find people that,

they say hey you speak English, you speak French,

you are not Black, you are white.

That's a little, small comment I wanted to make.

OK, ready to eat?

- Hola, amigo, hola!

- [Dalton] Hola hola hola!

- Video!

- [Dalton] Bueno!

- Every society is a society of contradictions.

United States, we have the same kinda thing.

You can go to an expensive restaurant

and it's down the block, around the corner,

from more humble places.

Cuba, for all of its struggle and everything, it's the same.

It has the same contradictions,

or similar, parallel contradictions,

and this is another manifestation.

- [Dalton] So sit down, enjoy the meal.

- Sit down and eat and, you know, reflect.

- Reflections on my whiteness, um.

You know, a lot of the tourism in Havana,

are European tourists and white tourists,

and being here,

I think it's really important

and something I am conscious of right now,

is that, and rightfully so,

people, probably their initial reaction to me

is gonna be one of skepticism

or maybe even deeper than that,

knowing what or how maybe the vast majority

of the European tourists handle themselves here,

their power relationship with people in Cuba,

but people of color really all over the world.

(upbeat dance music)

- We're at this wonderful beach resort

catering to the European tourist market.

Playing this wonderful, how shall we say?

European dance music.

I offered Tucker $20 if he could get them to play

a Black Star CD, Talib Kweli and Mos Def.

He tried it out, he returned unsuccessful,

so it looks like that wasn't really

the niche they were going for.

- They don't have a CD player,

so we're gonna try some tape.

(dance music)

(instructor speaking Spanish)

- [Voiceover] After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991,

Cuba made some capitalist reforms

that increased its dependence on tourism.

- I see if like the tourism, it's bringing resources

if money's coming back into Cuban civil society,

that towns are improving and hospitals and schools,

and people's homes, too, home life,

is improving through this,

people are paying whatever, $200, $250 a night,

whatever it is to stay here.

But if that's not being seen,

this is a potentially ticking time bomb.

Of a route to go.

And I mean, I'm trying not to critique it too hard,

I don't, I talk...

I believe in socialism,

but as Dead Prez says,

"Livin' and breathin' it, not just fuckin' believin' it."

We don't, on this trip.

None of us, as much as --

And I think there's a lot of people

who are contemplating that,

what it means to do that.

It's a pity that here in the tourist industry,

when you are working with clients,

you are not able to take them to your homes.

It's not possible.

If you come some other time,

you can visit my family, you'll see...

They live in what we call "cerrades."

It's like apartments one next to the other one.

I was raised up in there,

it's a poor part of Havana.

My mother's a nurse, and now she's retired.

Little by little, they started coming to the capital

looking for a better life.

in terms of supporting a family, helping a family,

it's a good time to do it now.

Sometimes people say, "Hey, Alejandro, you're going too fast!"

And I say I have to take advantage now when I'm young.

That's my life in a way.

Responsibilities that I have.

What you're saying is really

the same reality a lot of Americans or African Americans live.

That one person may go off to school

and become the professional of their family

and takes care of the younger cousins or siblings

because it's real difficult to transition

when your family is living in what we call "the projects,"

which seems similar to where your family lives.

- My dream when I was a little kid

was to get into university,

because I remember that I saw lawyers with their cars,

you know, very elegant, very respected,

you know, he's a lawyer.

You know, he's a doctor, he's a teacher,

but now, you know, opposite.

You got like people working in the tourist industry,

like they make more than any other, lawyer,

being a doctor, being a teacher, whatever.

You need to change it!

You need to prioritize good things.

I wasn't forced, but I said hey, I have to work.

No matter what but I loved my profession

as an English teacher, as a translator,

but I need to do this because it's the only way to help.

- To know that yeah, you know, I am in a socialist state,

but I'm still wondering, you know,

I love to acknowledge that this is here,

but I feel like really, you know,

there's still, there's distress.

Bellies hungry, you know, you need more.

And that means that there's some other level of change

that still needs to be dealt with.

(rapping in Spanish)

- There were this group of MCs, it was two MCs,

these two guys talked about,

if they were in the United States,

they could just wake up in the morning,

go downstairs to their studio,

lay down some tracks,

and be able to like put out a video the next day.

And we were like, I don't, that --

We live in the United States, you can't do that!

And one of the things that really struck me was,

their idea of the United States.

It really reminded me of kids that I,

my cousins, or my little brother,

kids from the neighborhood that I grew up in,

in the Bronx,

this ideas that there is a kind of a...

It's an alternative American dream, in a sense,

that's not the like, if you work hard

you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps,

it's the sense that comes

from the media,

about what life is like in the United States,

and the idea that life can be like that for you.

Even though food and people

can't necessarily travel easily between the US and Cuba,

these images in the media of popular culture

do travel really easily.

People do get cable over there,

and see MTV and BET,

and have these ideas promoted by

a lot of the really famous

hip hop artists in the United States

and they accept that as being a kind of news report

on what it's like in the US.

("Edem Chante" by Creole Choir of Cuba)

- In the United States,

many African American and Latino families are coping

with the severe economic realities of the Great Recession.

- [Voiceover] Yet, executives at the four larget

global media conglomerates continue to use images

of African Americans and Latinos spending frivolously.

- [Voiceover] The majority of these executives

aren't even African American or Latino.

- [Voiceover] The African American and Latino

home ownership rates are about 25% less

than they are for whites.

- No one's race determines their work ethic,

yet African American and Latinos were hit hardest

by the decline of construction and manufacturing industries.

African Americans and Latinos have significantly higher

unemployment rates than any other race.

("Edem Chante" by Creole Choir of Cuba)

- [Voiceover] Since the Revolution,

Cuba's government has provided subsidized housing,

universal public education,

and a comprehensive jobs program.

- In Cuba, more Blacks own their own houses

than anywhere in the world.

Their unemployment rate is consistently 2%.

- [Voiceover] In the United States, the racial segregation

of educational opportunities persists.

- [Leader] Fight fight for schools!

- [Crowd] Fight fight fight for schools!

- [Voiceover] Although race doesn't determine

a person's intellectual capabilities,

African American adults

have higher rates of illiteracy than whites.

- [Voiceover] African American children

are tracked three times more than white children

for special education programs.

- [Crowd] Fight fight fight for schools!

- [Leader] Fight for schools, fight fight for schools!

- [Crowd] Fight for schools, fight fight for schools!

- [Voiceover] The quality of public education in Cuba

improved radically after the revolutionary government

ended private education,

and launched a nationwide campaign for adult literacy.

Over 50 years later,

Cuba still has nearly a 100% literacy rate,

and they have equality of basic educational opportunities

across racial lines, and class divides.

("Balicky Bon" by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)

(children chattering)

(ball cracks)

- There's obvious poverty,

but in terms of misery,

I didn't see the kind of misery that I see right out here in New York City.

- [Doctor] The state doesn't want to spend money

on our kind of patients,

because they're Black, and brown.

- [Voiceover] Because they're Black,

or because they're poor?

- Both! Both.

If you look at whites, poor whites, and poor Blacks,

poor whites have worse healthcare than richer whites,

but even if you look at them,

compared people on the same income level,

non-whites have worse healthcare.

They have less access to the system.

- We African Americans have higher death rates

for stroke, cancer, diabetes, asthma,

and HIV/AIDS, than whites.

- Alcohol is probably the leading cause of disease

in patients who are admitted to this hospital.

And why, the question why a community,

and why a community's more prone to be into alcohol,

is purely social,

it's related to their inability to survive in the setting,

the economic and political setting

of this city at this time.

And it's more than this city,

it's related to this country also.

- [Voiceover] That seems to suggest

that something like half the adult community around here

is seeking oblivion one way or another.

- Yeah, I would have no trouble saying

that 50% of the patients

have some type of drug-related problem,

if you include alcohol.

- [Voiceover] In Cuba,

there's free public health care for everyone.

- [Voiceover] Afro-Cubans are the healthiest

Black population in the Americas.

(emotional choral music)

- In the US, there are relatively lax rules

about purchasing and owning guns.

Murder is the leading cause of death

for young African Americans since 1978.

1978!

While no one's race determines their desire to live,

in the US, I'm 10 times more likely than a white man,

to be a victim of homicide.

(gunshot) One time.

(10 gunshots) 10 times!

- I'm nearly 30 times more likely than a white woman

to be a victim of homicide.

(gunshot) One time.

(30 gunshots) 30 times.

In Cuba, there are more restrictive gun laws,

and less killing.

The homicide rate there

is less than a third of what it is for African Americans.

(chattered greetings)

(chanting)

(upbeat Cuban music)

- Neighborhood Association put on a performance for us,

and they had their children singing and dancing.

(rapping in Spanish)

- We were invited to the Block Party,

and it was just really awesome!

You had all these kids doing this great song and dance,

you know, performance piece,

in not a community of means, you know.

The performance is with like one lightbulb

that they like string from inside somebody's house,

but it's like they make it into a stage,

and it's amazing, you know!

In order to show us the best of who they were,

they showed us their children,

and what they teach their children about being Cuban,

and being a part of that community.

And it occurred to me that giving people

the resources they need to take care of each other,

to take care of their children,

is how we will overcome.

- Time has come to say goodbye,

but I think that it's not going to be forever.

I think that it's going to be for a short period of time,

because they're going to be back very soon.

I am humbled that you have learned about Cuba,

so that you can help us from now on,

knowing our reality and knowing the way we are,

it will be great if you can also

tell to the people in the States, how is the Cuban reality.

The things that you have here, seen,

by yourself, that hasn't been as tourists.

It's just something that you have checked by yourself,

because there is also a saying that says,

seeing is believing,

and I guess that now you're going to believe more

in our country.

- [Voiceover] So you don't think that Yale is sincere,

that Black students at Yale are sincere.

Think they're just there for a front?

- They just there for a front.

Until they realize why they got there,

how they got there.

- [Voiceover] Do you think they're being trained to be leaders?

- They're being trained to be leaders,

but I don't think they're being trained to be leaders

to come back in the Black community.

- [Voiceover] Well even where they go,

can they help Back people where they go,

as they're trained now?

- They could, they could, true they could.

But will they?

- This is a group that said,

we're gonna try something that's gonna be hard to do,

traveling from the US to Cuba is not easy,

and this is our intellectual project,

and boom.

You guys went.

And you actually made the transition

from being book smart,

to trying to figure this out on the ground.

So it actually reinforced to me,

as I thought about it,

the idea that when people say,

oh, well this won't happen,

or they're gonna say no,

or just, you know, they don't even try, basically.

That's the one way to guarantee you'll never get anything.

- There are many of our people who are thinking more deeply,

and more broadly,

and are beginning to see the importance

of lifting it out of the national context.

And the only way this can be done,

is by internationalizing the problem.

Instead of it being called civil rights in the future,

we're going to have to label it a human rights struggle,

or the struggle for human rights.

It becomes a world problem.

- Any form of discrimination,

including racial discrimination,

is a violation of human rights.

It's on all of us to really call on our policymakers.

A world in which everyone can freely enjoy human rights,

is certainly possible.

- African Americans are in the middle

of a struggle in their country.

And we Cubans are in the middle of a struggle too.

That brings us together.

- There's nowhere that you can go in the United States

and see a predominantly Black community

that doesn't have serious issues with poverty,

serious issues with drugs,

serious issues with violence.

It's hard to convince yourself that there can be anther way.

But there's another way.

("Vamo a Vencer" by Krudas Cubensi)