Andy Shallal, a delegate of the Nuestra América Convoy to Cuba, talks about the Trump regime’s blockade of oil to Cuba, the impact on the Cuban people and the Nuestra América Convoy to Cuba, which recently delivered a shipment of 6,300 pounds of critical humanitarian aid to the island nation by air and sea.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right now, I’m very happy to welcome to our program, Andy Shallal, owner of the Busboys and Poets restaurant, bar, bookstore, and community gathering place—progressive political cultural hubs (in the district of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia)—who was part of the Nuestra América Convoy to Cuba and has just returned. We’re very anxious to hear about this convoy to Cuba. So maybe I can ask you first to talk about what drew you to travel there during the midst of this crisis on the island nation of Cuba, where they’re facing the Donald Trump oil blockade.
ANDY SHALLAL: I mean, that’s the whole point—to break the blockade and to dispel the mythology that’s been placed around Cuba. I think Cuba is a peaceful nation and it’s a nation that’s very small, has very little resources, has never made any attempt to attack the United States and yet, we are the ones that are threatening it all the time. So we wanted to just go there, try to normalize relations and of course carry on with the beginnings of normalizations that happened under the Obama “regime” or the Obama presidency and unfortunately were overturned when Trump came in and Biden never did anything with it. And here we are today.
SCOTT HARRIS: So since January, Donald Trump imposed a oil blockade against Cuba—and this was tied in with his kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, which had previously been a nation that was supplying Cuba with oil. And this oil blockade going on since January is on top of a 64-year-old U.S. embargo generally against Cuba, the longest embargo in world history. And it’s certainly taken a toll on the Cuban economy. We see these quaint pictures of old American cars in Cuba, but that speaks to an economic crisis that’s been going on for decades on the island because of the restrictions on imports and penalties for nations who do deal with Cuba. But Andy, in your trip to Cuba, tell us a bit about what you saw in terms of the resulting crisis for everyday Cubans in trying to get through their day, whether it’s the blackouts that are occurring for the majority of the hours during the day and things that we may take for granted here, like refrigerating food and medicine like insulin.
ANDY SHALLAL: I mean, that’s the whole point—to break the blockade and to dispel the mythology that’s been placed around Cuba. I think Cuba is a peaceful nation and it’s a nation that’s very small, has very little resources, has never made any attempt to attack the United States and yet, we are the ones that are threatening it all the time. So we wanted to just go there, try to normalize relations and of course carry on with the beginnings of normalizations that happened under the Obama “regime” or the Obama presidency and unfortunately were overturned when Trump came in and Biden never did anything with it. And here we are today.
SCOTT HARRIS: So since January, Donald Trump imposed a oil blockade against Cuba—and this was tied in with his kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, which had previously been a nation that was supplying Cuba with oil. And this oil blockade going on since January is on top of a 64-year-old U.S. embargo generally against Cuba, the longest embargo in world history. And it’s certainly taken a toll on the Cuban economy. We see these quaint pictures of old American cars in Cuba, but that speaks to an economic crisis that’s been going on for decades on the island because of the restrictions on imports and penalties for nations who do deal with Cuba. But Andy, in your trip to Cuba, tell us a bit about what you saw in terms of the resulting crisis for everyday Cubans in trying to get through their day, whether it’s the blackouts that are occurring for the majority of the hours during the day and things that we may take for granted here, like refrigerating food and medicine like insulin.
ANDY SHALLAL: Yeah. I mean, it affects everyday people, of course, on a regular basis. It affects hospitals. It affects research centers. It affects schools, it affects after-school care. It affects art companies, dance companies, you name it. I mean, everything depends on lights and electricity and power. And when you cut that off, it’s a huge impact on everything that we do. We don’t realize how much dependent … We sort of take for granted that we just flip a switch and light goes on. But they cook also with gas and oil and electricity. And of course, if you’re living in an apartment, I was told first as someone that lives in an apartment—they said they wish they lived in a house, at least they could cook with wood that they can scavenge and cook with it. We’re talking about sending a whole population back decades and decades, if not a hundred years, in how we operate.
I mean, they have to gather wood in order to cook their meals. Imagine that. And of course, electricity also runs water purification systems. It runs sewage systems. It runs everything that we do. So that’s really become a huge problem. Cuba has gone through these periods before. You had a period that’s been referred to as the special period, which happened right after the collapse of the Soviet Union back in ’91. And that lasted for many, many, many years until the Bolivarian revolution that happened, of course, with Venezuela to bring in (Hugo) Chavez to power. And when Chavez came into power, of course, they started producing oil and giving it to Cuba. So it raised the standards back up again. But then you have this current situation that’s been completely out of control. Not only have they blocked oil from Venezuela, but they blocked any oil from anywhere.
And not only that, but they have a complete blockade around the island that no one can bring any products in. So things like basic food products become very, very expensive for ordinary Cubans that are living there. So it’s been very difficult. And I’ve seen the deterioration. We’ve been going there for almost 15 years and I’ve seen it year after year after year where things have started to become more problematic for ordinary Cubans.
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re speaking with Andy Shallalal, owner of the Bus Boys and Poets bookstore, restaurant and progressive political cultural hubs in Washington, D.C. Very famous and wonderful spot. And Andy was on the delegation of the Nuestra América convoy to Cuba, just got back this evening. Andy, tell us about the international activists. Those coming from the U.S. and Europe. I had heard that there were four members of the European Parliament, Jeremy Corbin, the former leader of the UK’s Labor Party; Pablo Iglesias, former leader of Spain’s Podemos party and others. But give us a general overview of this delegation and what they brought to Cuba in terms of humanitarian aid.
ANDY SHALLAL: Well, everyone that goes to Cuba almost has to bring something. We bring bags full of medicine and supplies for young people like coloring pencils and paper. Paper is a shortage. You can’t find paper. I remember even a couple of years ago, my wife was feeling ill when we were in Cuba. She had to go to the hospital and they didn’t have Band-Aids. I mean, the syringes, they have to reuse them. They have to autoclave them and reuse them—so they don’t have disposable syringes. These are really basic things that people need nowadays to be able to function as a normal society. All these things have been blocked. There were over 400 delegates from all over the world that were there, people that came to say “No to the blockade, let Cuba live.” And had a huge plenary with the president and other folks from the government to talk about this issue.
And really the solidarity was quite beautiful to see. People spoke from different countries. There’s lots of representation, different flags from different countries and all of them stating the same thing, that the United States has played an outsized role in blocking even some of those countries from doing what they want to do as far as humanitarian aid to Cuba.
So the United States right now is at war with almost every single country in the world. And it’s not always a hot war, it’s also an economic war. So using tariffs to blackmail countries from doing their thing, like being sovereign. And so it’s been a real problem. But it was wonderful to see so many people from so many different countries in solidarity to really speak up and let the Cuban people know that they’re not alone because a lot of times I think in these kinds of situations, having delegations there and having presence there really brings hope to the folks that are there to know that they’re not alone.
There are people that see them and hear them and are fighting on their behalf. So that’s really exciting to see.
SCOTT HARRIS: Andy, I’d heard that Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel actually greeted the delegation. What, if anything, did he say that you’d like to relate to our audience?
ANDY SHALLAL: Well, his speech was very emotional. I mean, it really spoke to the heart of what’s happening. He reiterated the fact that Cuba is a peaceful country. He related the fact that Cuba wants to make peace with its neighbors. The fact that we put Cuba on the state-sponsor terrorism (designation) has put Cuba in a really horrible situation. He talked about the shortages of oil and again, speaking to the resilience and perseverance of the Cuban people. We always say that Cuba has a dictatorship and they have an oligarchy and so on and so forth. Not cligarchy, but a communist country. And for 65 years, they’ve been under this pressure. We’ve made almost 600 assassination attempts on their leaders. We’ve attacked them at the Bay of Pigs. So all of that has happened and yet it has stayed intact as a country. And it really goes to show you that there is a lot of buy-in from ordinary people, ordinary Cubans, of the government.
These members of parliament and all that, they’re people from the people. They have 4,000 representatives out of all the different provinces and different small little blocks. Every block has a representative and people show up. And so there’s really representation in government. Again, it’s not to romanticize Cuba. They have their problems, no doubt, but it’s not our place to tell them how they should run the government. The Monroe Doctrine is an old doctrine that was written in the early 1800s, and it’s time for us to really rethink that and pull it out so that we’re not operating under conditions of the early 1800s today.
SCOTT HARRIS: President Trump has talked about Cuba and this blockade in a way that reveals that he would like to see regime change there. He also openly talks about replacing the leaders to somebody more “friendly.” And there’s been some very strange reports about how he’d like to have his hotels and Trump-branded golf courses in Cuba in the future. This is kind of a pattern repeated and Trump and his transactional policies that benefit him personally. Did you hear anything while you were in Cuba about negotiations to end this oil blockade with the government or other folks in Cuba that may be talking to the U.S.?
ANDY SHALLAL: Well, I think we heard it over and over again. Obviously, the Cubans do not want to be in a military conflict with the United States. That is obviously very clear. Cuba is a very small country. It doesn’t have a lot of resources. It’s not going to stand up to U.S. attack. But the people are preparing for such a situation, sadly enough. And that can only cause obviously a lot of death and destruction. So we really have to, I mean, as people who care about peace in the world, we really have to stand in the way of this kind of condition to happen and really fight to make sure that we don’t go down that road. We’re doing these adventures all over the world. And while Trump is playing golf, he’s just calling the shots from wherever he is from his little resort and just willy-nilly attacking countries.
It’s a very dangerous situation in the world. And I think eventually there’s going to be a lot of backlash. I think the U.S. has lost so much since Trump has been in, and even before that. But our soft power, which we used quite well all over the world, has just been squandered completely. And I think Cuba is a distillation of that behavior. You have Iran, of course, what’s happening today. And one of the reasons why I went is we worked with—I’m an artist, so we brought in several artists from the United States, muralists—to work with young people there and muralists in Cuba to create this beautiful mural in kind of the middle of Havana, right by the which is the waterfront. It’s just beautiful, but obviously a lot of the buildings are deteriorating.
For example, like trying to find paint was not easy. Trying to find paintbrushes is not easy. So all of these things required a lot of planning ahead of time, just for simple things as paint. Things that we take for granted. We can just go out in the store, order online and that’s at our doorstep in two hours. Those are the things that the Cubans are deprived of and it’s out of reach for most Cubans because it is so expensive. But we were able to purchase obviously a lot of paint and be able to paint this mural that’s about 100 feet long by about maybe 15 feet high. And we brought in young people. We’re talking about young teenagers, 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds that are just absolutely brilliant from the Art Institute in Cuba that are just exquisite artists. I’m talking, I was stunned by the quality of the art that they put on the wall. And it’s a beautiful gift that we offered to the Cuban people. Again, I think a lot of it, people are in a bad place and they need to have hope and they need to see color in their life and they need to see joy.
And I think that’s what our purpose was for being there as well, is to bring joy and color to people’s life who feel abandoned, who feel like they’re out there on a limb by themselves.
SCOTT HARRIS: Andy, do you have anything from your recent trip to Cuba—conversation you had with an average Cuban who may have engaged in a discussion with you about the current situation and the humanitarian aid that you’d like to share with our audience?
ANDY SHALLAL: I mean, clearly people are not happy. They’re not happy with the current situation. They blame everything from Trump, of course, is first and foremost. They also blame their own government, because people don’t know where to turn when their lights are out for half the day or sometimes for an entire day, or sometimes for even multiple days. It’s very, very difficult. In fact, the artists, the young artists who came to paint and the next day they didn’t know whether they were able to come because transportation may not be available. And so imagine having to live like that where you don’t know where you’re going to be the next day because of these limitations that we’ve taken for granted in the modern world.
So yes, but the average Cuban … I mean, I remember like years ago when we went there, Cuba had this sort of upbeat, joyful feel to it. And I’m not saying that’s not there now. It is obviously there at some level, but certainly you see a lot more people coming at you and putting their hands out. That never happened before. There were times we went there for a couple of years where you never saw … That was, I think, one of the distinguishing characteristics of Cuba. It’s a Caribbean island. If anybody has been to any Caribbean island, they know the first thing that happens, the minute you get off the plane, you have a bunch of people having their hands out and kind of just coming at you when you’re a tourist coming in. You never saw that in Cuba. That was really something, but now you’re seeing a little bit more of that, something that is kind of disturbing, frankly, to see such a proud people, such a proud country, to be in a state like that.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Andy, we’re out of time and I wanted to ask you, please leave our listeners information about how they can get involved in this humanitarian aid effort to assist the people of Cuba during this United States manufactured crisis in this blockade of oil to the island nation. How can they get involved? How can they get more information and get involved?
ANDY SHALLAL: Code Pink has been doing these trips on a regular basis. So going to their website and learning more about Cuba would be really, I think, a first step. Progressive International has been very, very active. There are many organizations that are doing work in Cuba, and I think that’s the thing that also you realize when you do these trips and you see how many people are working within their communities on issues that deal with Cuba. So it gives you a sense of hope that you’re not alone out there. Then hundreds of people, of course, showed up, but each one of these people represents maybe thousands. And so you effectively have millions of people who are saying no to this horrible situation that’s been put on Cuba. So I would suggest going to Code Pink. I think Code Pink has done a really remarkable job in being able to disseminate information and they host regular trips almost yearly to Cuba.
So you can join some of those trips because it really gives you a very good bird’s eye view of what’s happening in Cuba and you can learn yourself firsthand. Also, there are members of Congress that are going to be going next week. Primilla Jayapal, Jonathan Jackson, and Rashida Talib are going to be going to Cuba next week to also speak about the horrible situation that’s happening to Cuba because of the oil blockade, and really to kind of get some sense into our government to come back and report back to the members of Congress to tell them that it’s not okay for us to do this to an entire people, collective punishment.
Blockades are wars and they’re really a form of genocide, honestly. I mean, you’re basically targeting an entire population and slowly causing death. Blockades cause death when medication’s not available, people die. When simple things like penicillin aren’t available, people get sick and die. So I think it’s important for us to talk about it this way. It’s not just a blockade of oil. “Oh, well, they can live without oil.” No, they can’t because other things are also blocked. So it’s a serious problem that I think affects all of us, affects humanity. We are all human beings and we should learn how to take care of one another.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well said, in a good place to leave off on this conversation. Andy, thanks for spending time with us on a busy day for you of travel and just getting back from Cuba. And yeah, much appreciation for all you do in terms of the work you do at Busboys and Poets. It’s a place I’ve never been to, but I hear all these great things about the events and cultural mecca that it is in Washington, D.C. So thanks for that. Maybe we’ll have a conversation sometime about that part of your life and career. But much, thanks for being here tonight.
ANDY SHALLAL: Thank you for having me. Take care.
SCOTT HARRIS: Take care, Andy. Bye-bye. That’s Andy Shallal, owner of the Busboys and Poets resturants, bookstores, and bars progressive political cultural hubs out of Washington, D.C.
