Breaking point

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next, pressuring Havana.

Cuba’s economy has been sliding for months: More blackouts, more shortages, more strain.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Now, the U.S. is turning up the pressure: moving an aircraft carrier strike group into the Caribbean, and bringing new charges against Raul Castro, the 94-year-old former President.

WORLD’s Lindsay Mast has more.

LINDSAY MAST: I reached out to Charles Shapiro. He is a former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela. During his more than 3 decades at the State Department he also served as the Coordinator for Cuban Affairs.

I noted the similarities between the Cuba indictment and military build-up, and the days preceding the extraction of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. One key difference is that Raoul Castro is not the current leader of Cuba—at least not officially. 

I asked Ambassador Shapiro what other differences he sees.

CHARLES SHAPIRO: I mean, both of them have had bad governments, but Cuba has had terrible governments since 1959. The Communist Party of Cuba and the Cuban government, outlawed the entire private sector. 

The only independent institution in Cuba is the Catholic Church. There's a growing number of Protestant mainly fundamentalist churches, but they are not organized, and they're not recognized by the government. They're not building churches and opening schools and doing the sorts of things that you, you see churches, Protestant churches, do around the world.

You've heard the president, when he's running, you know, that we don't want to do nation building. And Cuba, if there's a change, will need nation building. They've got to reconstitute the court system. They've got to reconstitute the education system. They've got to, you know, find a way for churches to build church buildings. They've got to change the law. They've got to recreate the entire structure for having elections.

They need all the sorts of stuff which the Trump administration says it doesn't want to do anywhere. They need help building democratic institutions in a country where there are none.

MAST: Ambassador, let’s talk about the incident detailed in the indictment. It describes the work of Brothers to the Rescue, a humanitarian organization which flew over the waters between Cuba and the U.S. on missions to rescue Cuban migrants. They also spread pro-democracy flyers. And then two planes were shot down over international waters, killing four Americans. 

Now, you took over as Director for Cuban Affairs two years later and you told me it was still being talked about at that time. 

SHAPIRO: Oh absolutely. Look, I mean your description of Brothers Rescue is pretty accurate. 

There was huge migration by sea from Cuba to the United States in the late 80s and early 90s. Mostly in boats that were homemade, boats that were not seaworthy, that people, you know, lashing together inner tubes and and and putting a, you know, something on top of the inner tubes and trying to cross ninety miles. And it is not easy, and lots of them lost their lives. 

So this group called Brothers to the Rescue, Hermanos al Rescate, had Cessnas, they would fly out, identify, you know, "there's people in the water, there's a boat here, there's people in the water there," and pass the information to the United States Coast Guard, so the Coast Guard could rescue them. 

And we were issuing fifty thousand visas a year to Cubans to come to the United States. The idea was to prevent people from trying to take that unsafe passage. 

So then there were fewer and fewer boats, and so they then moved to a more political mission and would drop pamphlets in international airspace so that the wind would blow the pamphlets into Havana. 

And I have to tell you, that irritated the Cubans unbelievably. I mean, we, the United States, the FAA, actually warned them that, you know, this is really dangerous. And they said, "you know, that's our freedom as Americans to do this." And so two of the three planes were shot down over international waters.

MAST: What do you hear from people you know in Cuba, people you know in Miami? What is their mentality at this point towards these incremental moves, it seems, towards potentially some sort of change in Cuba?

SHAPIRO: Okay, listen. First of all, Cuban Americans want to see a change in Cuba. Right? I mean for them, the country's a disaster, they've left. You go to Miami, there's people who just arrived two years ago, you know, who are driving Ubers in Miami. I mean, people aren't happy. 

I mean they're going hungry, two hours a day of electricity in Havana, two hours a day with planned blackouts. So it means if your electricity in your apartment comes on at one in the morning, you've got to get up at one in the morning to charge your phone, charge your computer, and cook rice and beans for the day. Right? Because you gotta do it while the electricity is on. 

You know, government officials, they're living okay, but it's ordinary people who are really paying the price.

MAST: Ambassador Shapiro, as always, thank you for your time.

SHAPIRO: It's always a pleasure. Thank you so much. 

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