Cocaine With The Castros

“You know what we call a gram of coke here in Cuba?”

In the humid outskirts of Havana, I felt like I’d drifted into a sepia-tinted parallel timeline.

“A ‘Fidel’.”

My laughter wasn’t forthcoming. Not that it wasn’t funny. I was paralyzed by the surrealism. It was the last week of six decades of Castro rule and the final week of Raúl Castro’s presidency, yet here I was with his granddaughter Gabriella. And her boyfriend was selling me drugs.

Hadn’t her grandparents put people to death for selling drugs? Yes. Four high-ranking officials were executed by firing squad in 1989 for drug-smuggling. Despite this, her presence gave me an odd sense of safety. Some farm animals are more equal than others. And these, surely, were the most equal of all.

“And half a gram?”

He eyed me.

“…a ‘Raul’.”

Try as they might, Marxists can’t escape hierarchies. I wondered if they’d caught the irony. At least this one had a sense of humor. I turned to see if Gabriella was amused. The Castro name is quite a burden to carry. New World nobility. Her face remained stoic as a Castilian queen. She was more interested in the music.

If this was their way of welcoming me to their country, they went overboard with the midnight Lada racing through the capital. Cuba’s cocaine communists really put North London’s champagne socialists to shame.

Speaking of which, in the latest season of Radical Chic, eight years on from the Castros, a flotilla of useful halfwits has arrived.

From England comes cardigan-commie Jeremy Corbyn, Labour backbencher Richard Burgon, and YouTuber Owen Jones. Influencer Hasan Piker swapped Hollywood for Havana, wearing glasses worth $1,380 and a $690 T-shirt. “We have just been living la vida loca … Just peppering people with wads of cash,” he humbly divulged to the press — oblivious to what this revealed about which society better delivers material prosperity.

He was joined by fellow Americans Christian Smalls, the former Amazon unionist, the women-led anti-war group CODEPINK, and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi. Isra proudly following in her mother’s footsteps by siding with the enemies of the nation that so warmly welcomed her family from Somalia.

They are all part of the Nuestra América Convoy, which arrived in Havana this week. The delegation brought together over 650 people from 33 countries and 120 organizations, delivering roughly 20 tons of humanitarian aid. What a hoot. I only hope their phones have enough battery to capture selfies when they hear ordinary Cubans chanting “Down with communism!” through the blackouts.

And that is exactly what Cubans have been chanting in Morón, outside the local headquarters of the Communist Party of Cuba. But the Nuestra América Convoy is not there to protest decades of brutal dictatorship, but rather the US “blockade,” recently reinforced by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

On 29 January, the United States issued Executive Order 14380, titled “Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba.” In it, President Trump declared that the situation with respect to Cuba “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat” and announced a national emergency.

The real question is how long it will take Corbyn & Co to realise they are on the side of Cuba’s dictatorial regime. After all, none of them have uttered a word about the lack of democracy in a country where only Communist Party members may hold office.

Not a peep about the breadlines — which I have witnessed on every one of my trips to Cuba over the last twenty years, both during and since the Castro era. Breadlines in Santiago de Cuba. Breadlines in Trinidad. Breadlines in Havana.

While there have been interesting reports about how the Radical Chic Flotilla was funded by the US-born self-described Marxist billionaire Neville Roy Singham, the root of this idiocy was perhaps best articulated by the Irish rap band Kneecap.

If the Black Panthers had Leonard Bernstein, what does it say about the Nuestra América Convoy that their house band are Kneecap? The Belfast hip-hop trio is most famous for its vocal support of Hamas and Hezbollah — and the resulting terrorism charges against one member. On a Havana boulevard, they dish out their Radical Chic insights to the press.

Móglaí Bap, Kneecap’s rapper, has things to get off his chest: “I can’t remember the last time Cuba invaded a country.” Bless his cotton socks. They have. Panama and the Dominican Republic (1959), Algeria (1963–64), Congo (1965–67), Guinea-Bissau (1966–74), Angola (1975–91), Ethiopia (1977–89), Syria (1973–83), Mozambique (1975–80s), South Yemen (1970s–80s), Nicaragua (1979–90s), and Grenada (1979–83).

But it’s not just stupidity that motivates Kneecap. “They wanna isolate all these countries and make them feel like they have no support … and then when that happens, that’s when imperialism takes over.” Here Bap gets to the heart of it.

Anti-imperialism. It is the same blind ideology that has these rappers supporting the forces of evil wherever they emerge: Gaza, Tehran, Caracas. But it could not be more fitting than here in communist Cuba, for it is the central pillar of Castroism.

“I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution.”

So said Fidel Castro in a telegram to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on 26 October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to Fedor Burlatsky — a member of Khrushchev’s inner circle — this was the real turning point. So shocked was Khrushchev by Castro’s brazen desire for national suicide that the Soviet leader immediately changed tack and sought a resolution with President Kennedy. Imagine an ideological derangement so potent it makes Soviets blush.

Today, despite the cries for “libertad!” from Cubans downtrodden by six decades of this anti-imperialist experiment, the ideology is thriving — not in Cuba, but in the coffee shops of Islington, the vegan restaurants of Beverly Hills, and the congressional district offices of Minnesota. Anti-imperialism is the ultimate luxury belief.

My last interaction with Gabriella Castro came as we stepped out of the car after racing around Havana. She’d made it clear she was staunchly anti-American, but I thought I’d poke a bit further.

“How does one say ‘friends’ in Spanish?” I asked, knowing the answer but pretending otherwise.

“Amigos.”

“But what if it’s male and female?”

“Amigos.”

“It’s still masculine?”

“Sí.”

“Isn’t that a little…”

“Sexist. Yes…”

She paused, looking seriously into the distance.

“…we should change it.”

***

This is republished with the author’s permission from Substack: www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/p/cocaine-with-the-castros.

Winston Marshall is a writer, musician, and host of “The Winston Marshall Show” podcast. His writing is available on his Substack, Winston Marshall:  https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/.