Cuba has not failed to demonstrate global solidarity in light of COVID-19 and despite the US’ harmful blockade. Here is a list of resources on the Brigades, Cuba’s healthcare system’s readiness to act, and the measures being taken despite a comparative lack of medical supplies:

[Click on the subject for the link]

• Medical Brigades
• ELAM Students describing Cuba’s human-centered, preventative, internationalist and systemic approach to fighting Covid-19 {VIDEO}
• Cuba’s Active Screening Approach 
• Cuba’s Isolation Centers {VIDEO}
• We should be learning from Cuba’s Healthcare System
• Cuba’s resilience through economic crisis prepared it for COVID Health Crisis 
• Interferon Alfa 2b 

[Image provided by CRLN intern Daisy Hernandez from her visit to Cuba through a Delegation, December 2019]

“From Havana To Harvard: Producer Pablo D. Herrera Veitia On Connecting Cuba To The U.S. Through Hip-Hop”

Herrera Veitia is a known pioneer of Afro-Cuban hip-hop, who has brought noteworthy artists to the island for collaboration. Veitia has dedicated much work to production and major-international hip-hop festivals while connecting the work to academia. He is working on a doctorate in social anthropology. His dissertation brings to light how Havana’s distinct sounds, music and loudness are a form of citizenship.

Because Americans are not as concerned with Afro-Cuban hip-hop as Cubans are with American hip-hop, his lyrics confront race and race relations in Cuba and celebrates the genre’s overall contribution to hip-hop culture. “Veitia’s life and work as an artist speaks to the resistance and resilience of U.S. and Cuban musical and social connections both in the past and present, despite political and economic restrictions. “The connections that we have as people [through music] is above and beyond politics,” he says.”

Read about how political and social consciousness and movements drove American and Afro-Cuban artists alike. The rappers in both countries voice parallel social issues. Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. provided Cuban rap artists with access to hip-hop played on Miami radio stations, through word of mouth, and through efforts of community hip-hop fanatics at house and street parties.

Some prospects for change in U.S.-Cuba relations arise in spite of the current “chill” represented by the recurring travel restrictions. Read about what José Ramón Cabañas, Cuba’s ambassador to the United States, has put forth to increase ties between the countries.

Collaboration includes joint efforts to save coral reefs throughout the Caribbean and inviting U.S. mayors to the island to celebrate Havana’s 500th Anniversary. Follow the link below:

https://www.tampabay.com/news/cuba/us-cuba-relations-strain-again-but-ambassador-hopes-for-stronger-tampa-ties-20190625/