International Artists, Scholars Slam Trump's Anti-Cuba Pivot

A writers and artists union statement from Cuba denouncing the renewed U.S. anti-Cuba stance has found a sympathetic ear among public figures, cultural workers and intellectuals in the United States, showing that President Donald Trump's new policy is hardly proving itself an asset in Washington's efforts to stir up hostility against the country's socialist government but is instead provoking a new wave of solidarity with the people of Cuba.

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In the letter from the Cuban Secretariat of the Union of Writers and Artists dated June 18, the Cubans denounced Trump's “outdated, obsolete speech, loaded with falsehoods and stereotypes” redolent of the long-gone Cold War, echoing the types of extremist calls for right-wing terrorism that have done so much damage to the people of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Trump's missive was lauded by an aged and diminished community of counter-revolutionary Cubans, including veterans of the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, and aligned with what Cuban President Raul Castro has called an aggression by “imperialist political and economic interests (trying) to prevent the exercise of self-determination by its people.”

Figures like President of the National Council of Churches Reverend Jim Winkler, anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan and retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, professor and essayist James Cockcroft, and filmmaker Catherine Murphy endorsed the letter.

Popular singers Lila Downs of Mexico, Susana Baca of Peru and Australian rock band The Dead Daisies also signed the letter, along with Japanese sculptor Setsuko Ono, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, French professor and essayist Paul Estrade and the Yucatecan journalist and critic Ariel Aviles.

Noted academic and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky, who is celebrated for his contributions to linguistic theory, gave an interview to Russian television where he noted that while the ideology of neoliberalism claims to advance freedom, its presence and its dictates actually entail less freedom and more tyranny.

“If you’re critical of policy — you’re anti-American,” Chomsky added, comparing the United States with past dictatorships.