Two Democratic members of Congress spent five days in Cuba over the Easter holiday, sat down with the island's communist head of state, and returned to issue a joint statement condemning American sanctions as "cruel collective punishment", all while a left-wing propaganda convoy featuring a video game streamer was touring Havana and telling viewers that Cubans "just vibe."
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) met with Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, and members of Cuba's parliament during their official trip, AP News reported. The visit ended Sunday. By Monday, Díaz-Canel had disclosed the meeting through Granma, the Communist Party's official newspaper, and the lawmakers had published their own statement framing the longest embargo in world history as an act of American cruelty.
The timing was not subtle. The trip came as the so-called "Nuestra America" convoy, a caravan of left-wing activists, politicians, and internet personalities, was making its own pilgrimage to Havana. And it arrived against a backdrop of deepening Cuban economic collapse that the regime desperately wants to blame on Washington rather than on its own six-decade record of communist mismanagement.
The joint statement from Jayapal and Jackson adopted the Cuban government's preferred language almost wholesale. They called U.S. fuel restrictions an "illegal U.S. blockade" and described the embargo as causing "untold suffering to the Cuban people."
"This is cruel collective punishment, effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country, that has produced permanent damage. It must stop immediately."
They went further. The lawmakers praised Díaz-Canel for releasing "over 2,000 prisoners" during their visit and claimed the Cuban government "has begun to liberalize its economy with significant reforms, including allowing Cuban American entrepreneurs to invest in private business in Cuba." They called current U.S. policy an "outdated, Cold War-era policy of coercive economic measures."
Both lawmakers said they would prepare a report and continue working on House initiatives to lift U.S. sanctions on Cuba, the Washington Times reported. Jayapal said she wants "a longer, permanent solution for the Cuban people and the American people."
Jayapal had also introduced legislation with Rep. Gregory Meeks to block federal funds for any military action against Cuba without congressional approval, Fox News reported.
What the statement did not mention: Cuba has been a one-party communist dictatorship since 1959. Díaz-Canel serves beneath nonagenarian Raúl Castro. The regime has imprisoned dissidents, crushed protests, and maintained a political system that tolerates no opposition. The lawmakers' statement read less like a congressional fact-finding report and more like a press release drafted in Havana.
The claim that Díaz-Canel "released over 2,000 prisoners" deserves scrutiny the lawmakers did not provide. The Cuban government did announce it would free 2,010 prisoners. But as Breitbart News reported, there was no confirmation at press time that the releases had actually occurred.
Javier Larrondo, president of the human rights group Prisoners Defenders, told Breitbart News on Friday that this kind of announcement is routine, and cynical.
"Prison drainages in Cuba happen every four years, approximately for much time now. This is not new."
Larrondo described the pattern as a "prison drainage", a periodic reduction in prison costs that the regime repackages as a humanitarian gesture whenever it needs international goodwill. "The reduction of costs of the prison system has been constant for decades," he said.
Meanwhile, the regime was still locking people up. On March 13, Cuban authorities arrested 16-year-old Jonathan David Muir Burgos, accusing him of protesting. Rep. Jayapal, no stranger to provocative policy positions, made no mention of political prisoners in the joint statement.
The lawmakers' claim that Cuba "has begun to liberalize its economy" refers to a plan the regime announced in March to "facilitate the participation of Cubans abroad in the national economy." In plain terms: the communist government wants Cuban Americans to send their money back into an economy the regime controls.
Radio host and political commentator Ninoska Pérez Castellón offered a blunt assessment of the scheme when it was announced.
"They are inviting their victims to invest in their failed economy and throw them a lifeline to stay in power. It's as if the mafia families were bankrupt and would call upon their victims to invest in their organized crime schemes."
American companies have been prohibited from doing business with the Cuban regime for decades. Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba and send humanitarian aid. The embargo exists because the Castro regime carried out a multi-billion-dollar seizure of American property after the 1959 coup d'état, theft that has never been compensated.
Jayapal and Jackson treated the embargo as though it were an arbitrary punishment rather than a consequence of confiscation and repression stretching back 67 years.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the Cuban government's preferred talking points directly in March. His explanation was far less sympathetic than the one offered by the two Democratic lawmakers.
"Cuba's been having blackouts all of last year, all of the year before. The reason why Cuba doesn't have oil and fuel is because they want it for free and people don't give away oil and fuel for free on a regular basis unless it was the Soviet Union subsidizing them or Maduro subsidizing them."
Rubio pointed to the age of Cuba's infrastructure, equipment dating to the 1950s and 1960s that the regime never maintained. "But ultimately the reason why Cuba is a disaster," he said, is "because their economic system doesn't work."
That explanation gained additional weight on January 3, when Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was arrested and extradited to New York. Maduro had for years helped sustain the Cuban Communist Party's operations with oil subsidies. With that lifeline severed, Cuba's energy crisis has only deepened, a fact the regime would prefer to blame on Washington.
The broader pattern of Democratic lawmakers positioning themselves against the current administration's foreign policy is not new. But flying to Havana to echo a communist government's propaganda takes the effort to a different level.
The lawmakers' trip overlapped with the "Nuestra America" convoy, a left-wing caravan that brought an assortment of activists and media personalities to Havana. Participants included British Labour parliament member Jeremy Corbyn, Spanish Marxist and former Iranian state television host Pablo Iglesias, members of the activist group Code Pink, Rep. Ilhan Omar's daughter Isra Hirsi, and leftist video game streamer Hasan Piker.
Piker livestreamed from Cuba and offered viewers his assessment of conditions on the island. "People are partying in the f***ing streets," he said. "Cubans just they vibe, they chill, they just literally vibe, it don't matter, like, it's just incredible... there's like festivals everywhere."
This from a country where the government rations electricity, arrests teenagers for protesting, and has presided over an economic system so broken that its own citizens risk their lives on rafts to reach Florida.
The contrast between Piker's breezy travelogue and the daily reality of ordinary Cubans tells you everything about the quality of information these trips produce. And it raises an uncomfortable question: when sitting members of Congress travel to the same destination, at the same time, and return with the same talking points as a propaganda convoy, what exactly is the difference?
Voters have shown limited patience for this brand of far-left posturing. Squad-backed candidates went 0 for 6 in recent Illinois primaries, a sign that the progressive wing's influence may be shrinking even within its own party.
The Cuban regime is in crisis. Its Venezuelan patron is gone. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Its people are suffering under a system that has failed for nearly seven decades. And its strategy for survival is simple: get American sanctions lifted, get American dollars flowing in, and keep the Communist Party in power.
Jayapal and Jackson walked into that strategy willingly. They adopted the regime's language, praised its gestures, and returned home to lobby for exactly what Havana wants. Díaz-Canel, for his part, used the meeting to "denounce the criminal damage caused by the blockade" and "reiterate the will of our government to sustain a serious and responsible bilateral dialogue," Granma reported.
Jayapal has drawn scrutiny before for her conduct in Congress. But lending her office and her voice to a communist dictatorship's public-relations campaign is a different category of poor judgment.
There are open questions the lawmakers have not answered. Which prisoners, if any, were actually released? Were political prisoners among them? Did the lawmakers raise the arrest of 16-year-old Jonathan David Muir Burgos? Did they ask Díaz-Canel about the regime's record on free speech, free assembly, or free elections?
Their statement suggests they did not. It reads like a document designed to serve Havana's interests, not America's.
When elected members of Congress fly to a communist country, sit with its dictator, and come home repeating his government's talking points, the Cuban regime doesn't need a propaganda department. It has volunteers.
