The writer is a worker as well as a student at Southeastern Louisiana University and a member of the Southeastern Sociological Association. He is an activist in the Hammond, La, area and he recently returned from a visit to socialist Cuba.
What does a “developed” nation look like? Does a developed nation impose extreme blockades on another country based on conflicting ideologies and a failed foreign policy? Or is a developed nation one that provides the basic human rights such as housing, education, and healthcare, doing so with the aim of promoting the advancement of its citizens and humankind as a whole?
It was a great privilege for me to travel to Cuba and experience the Cuban culture. This visit allowed me to experience what the United States has done to the Cuban people, as well as how looking at Cuba from the U.S. perspective can be toxic to critical thinking and understanding the truth behind the history of U.S.-Cuba relations.
Many in the “me” generation in the United States are starting to understand that what we have been taught about “American Exceptionalism” and history is not the universal perspective, and for myself there has been no clearer understanding of this than traveling to a country like Cuba where I have seen first-hand that there are sustainable and reliable systems out there that can bring communities together outside of a market setting.
I was privileged to travel to a society where the people have survived through a half-century blockade by becoming a society built upon solidarity, with leaders whose interests are the promotion and development of the human being. Cuba is the premier example of what an alternative from capitalism could look like. I know from my own experiences as a young teenager that not having a guaranteed source of food, education, healthcare and housing can make for a unhealthy society based on constant fear and uncertainty. Economic hardship warrants more exploitation among individuals instead of allowing them to come together across social, racial, and gender barriers, such as what I have saw in Cuba.
Cuba has also shown me that changing the world has to start by changing things in your own community, and the lessons that I learned from people there proved to me that even though the work must start in each of our communities on a local basis, our ideas must transcend social, national, and economic boundaries if we are to help each other change the world into a place that values the environment, our differences, and most importantly, each other.
