Rebel News goes to Cuba, and it's a trip with serious risks. Here's a sneak peek of what's in store for our undercover reporters, Alex Alavoie and Efren Flores Monsanto, as they cover the trip.
00:09:36.160Because in a place where speaking the truth can cost you years in prison, someone has to give ordinary Cubans a voice.
00:09:46.660That's exactly why Ribbon News exists, to go where the mainstream media want and to shine a light on the realities dictators try to hide.
00:10:00.020This mission gave Cubans the chance to speak freely for the first time in decades.
00:10:03.300And if you believe in giving a voice to the voiceless, if you believe in real, fearless journalism, please help us cover the cost of this assignment and keep these stories coming.
00:10:18.920You can support us right now at thetruthaboutcuba.com.
00:10:23.700Join us as we walked the real streets of Havana, beyond the tourist facade, to reveal the truth of a life under communism.
00:10:34.180And a growing hope that freedom may finally be on the horizon.
00:15:18.140Even that would make me deeply uncomfortable.
00:15:22.500But I want to show you just a little bit, because there are still Canadians going down there, even though the weather lately has been terrible.
00:15:32.840And one of the things you see, because a lot of these are hotel packages, both Air Canada, WestJet, and I think Air Transat, and other charter airlines, have super cheap deals to Cuba.
00:16:18.500But if this is the finest and best food served to the foreign currency tourists, imagine what it is to be an actual Cuban person trying to survive.
00:16:27.520They really are like Venezuela, where the average citizen lost more than 20 pounds.
00:16:35.020There was such malnutrition from basically a famine.
00:16:38.840You know, one of the old communist mottos was bread and land.
00:17:20.540Anyways, I'm not the only one interested in Cuba.
00:17:23.080In fact, my interest is because of Donald Trump's interest.
00:17:27.020Taking out Nicolas Maduro was the first domino in a domino effect around the region.
00:17:32.220And Trump has been talking a lot about Cuba lately.
00:17:35.440You might know that, especially in the Miami area where there are so many Cuban exiles, they are very strong Republicans, very strong anti-communists.
00:17:44.200Some other Latinos vote Democrat, although these days a majority of all Latino background voters are for Trump because of what he's doing.
00:17:52.640But Cuban Americans are extremely pro-freedom and pro-Republican.
00:18:25.540I want the people that came here that were horribly treated by Cuba to be taken care of, to be able to go back and do what they have to do.
00:18:34.820You know, they have their family there.
00:18:36.360They haven't been able to see them in years.
00:19:15.460That doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see a change.
00:19:18.200There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.
00:19:25.260But you know what we mean by regime change?
00:19:27.040We don't mean, I wish someone else were in charge.
00:19:29.600When we talk about regime change, we're talking about using the power of the United States, usually kinetic power, but often other kinds of coercion.
00:19:38.260And I'm not even saying that that's always not in our interest.
00:19:42.380I'm just saying I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different kind of government.
00:19:48.300I'm asking whether you are trying to precipitate the fall of the current regime.
00:19:53.780The Helms-Burton Act, the U.S. embargo on Cuba is codified.
00:19:58.160It was codified in law, and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo.
00:20:01.920I think the most interesting development of the past week is that Trump says he is talking to the bosses of Cuba, which is not that surprising because Trump will talk to anyone, a good guy or a bad guy.
00:20:17.140With Trump, there's always an angle that he thinks there can be a deal to be made.
00:20:21.640I'll get back to Venezuela in a moment, but I think that Trump, he didn't say names, but one of Castro's successors first was his brother, Raul.
00:20:32.120And for the past five years or six years, it's been Miguel Diaz-Canel, not as famous, of course, doesn't have the famous last name.
00:20:43.140And today, this morning, actually at 10 a.m., he gave a very rare speech saying that Cuba is for peace, but they're going on a war footing and also acknowledging they are talking to America and noting that they're pretty much out of energy.
00:21:02.680They're pretty much out of fossil fuels and electricity and that Cuba has to go through a kind of austerity revolution.
00:21:14.300I mean, obviously, I don't speak Spanish, but I read a lot of the translations of the speech.
00:21:18.660And I think that he's in the stage of what they would say in a 12-step program is he's in denial.
00:21:24.760He doesn't yet realize that he will be tumbled.
00:21:27.720I think he, one of the problems about dictators is that they're surrounded by yes-men.
00:21:32.100There is no critical opposition, including in the media.
00:21:36.060And so you start to believe your own propaganda.
00:21:38.580And I think that this Diaz-Canel might be that kind of guy.
00:21:41.780I mean, I think that he would be surrounded by flatterers.
00:21:45.720And he surely and should be rocked by how Donald Trump extracted Nicolas Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, without losing a single man, dispatching more than 100 bodyguards, two hours on the ground, came in, grabbed him and his wife and left.
00:22:01.940Like, that was one of the most stunning raids in military history.
00:22:06.200Frankly, it reminded me of the kind of style of some Mossad or Israeli military operations.
00:22:12.960But this, I think, was over such a large geographical distance from America.
00:22:19.780Surely Diaz-Canel ought to know that he could be plucked out of there just as easily as Maduro was.
00:22:25.340By the way, the United States has dispatched a diplomat to Venezuela, too, and she has been welcomed.
00:22:32.320Here's a video of her arriving on the scene.
00:22:34.340Hola, Venezuela. Mi nombre es Laura Leú. Me siento muy honrada de ejercer el cargo de encargada de negocios de los Estados Unidos para Venezuela.
00:22:44.640Es un momento histórico para ambos paÃses.
00:22:48.260Como dijo el secretario Rubio, queremos una Venezuela amigable, estable, próspera y democrática.
00:22:55.920Para lograrlo, mi equipo y yo vamos a trabajar mano a mano con los venezolanos, representantes de una variedad de sectores y perspectivas.
00:23:06.400Vamos a ejecutar el plan de tres fases.
00:23:09.760Primero, la estabilización del paÃs y la restauración de la seguridad.
00:23:15.440Segundo, la recuperación de la economÃa para el beneficio de todos los venezolanos.
00:23:20.740Y tercero, la transición hacia una Venezuela amigable, estable, próspera y democrática.
00:23:28.640She's there to manage Nicolas Maduro's deputy, who Trump is dealing with and Marco Rubio are dealing with,
00:23:36.180and basically said to her, I mean, I wasn't on any phone call, but it's sort of evident,
00:23:39.840they said, you saw what we did to Maduro.
00:23:42.200You can run the country in the manner we tell you to, or we'll arrest you, or I don't know if they would have said that they'll kill you.
00:23:49.260But that deputy is doing what Trump tells her to do.
00:23:52.540And one of the things that they told her to do, which I think is astonishing, is they arrested one of Maduro's senior henchmen.
00:24:00.160So understand this, Maduro's deputy, who is now sort of the de facto dictator of Venezuela,
00:24:05.960but she's really a puppet of the United States now doing exactly what she's told.
00:24:09.680She had authorized a joint operation, American and Venezuelan, to arrest basically the point man for Hezbollah and Iran in Venezuela.
00:24:24.020Just absolutely stunning what's going on there.
00:24:26.060I really think Cuba is going to fall in a matter of days, or maybe weeks.
00:24:30.820It is so weak, it is so demoralized, and you can see that.
00:24:34.680I mean, the people there are physically hungry.
00:24:37.580Like, they must be distracted and in pain from, I would almost call it a famine.
00:25:43.340So when he meets someone who hates him, I think Trump sees that as an advantage because he said, oh, this guy has bad-mouthed me.
00:25:50.680Like there's a lot of people, politicians, even ambassadors, who in previous times, before Trump was reelected, said what they felt about Trump.
00:26:06.960And that goes for a lot of people in the UK Labor Party.
00:26:09.780And that certainly goes to Gustavo Petro.
00:26:12.160So all these people who have said vicious things about Trump, you and I would feel uncomfortable with that.
00:26:17.600But I actually think that Trump loves that because he knows someone is coming to meet him who has an obligation to him, an apology for him.
00:26:26.980There's a debt to pay, a moral debt to pay.
00:26:29.200I think there's no better thing for Trump than to meet someone who has bad-mouthed them.
00:26:34.840Because Trump, he'll take that as a leverage on the other side.
00:26:40.500It's why Trump got along so well with the new communist mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani.
00:26:46.980Anyway, my point is that Colombia is coming around.
00:26:50.300They've agreed to actually rein in some of the drug cartels.
00:26:57.280And Costa Rica just elected a new freedom-oriented leader.
00:27:02.100Panama, I don't know if you saw this news, their courts recently ruled that China does not have the right to run the Panama Canal, which it had been doing.
00:27:23.040You've got this wave of freedom-loving pro-American leaders sweeping Latin America and ousting Iran and Russia and China from all these places.
00:28:10.560And who cares that Donald Trump didn't get the actual Nobel Peace Prize?
00:28:13.860He is creating more peace and ending more dictatorships than anyone else other than, I suppose, you could say that FDR in the Second World War helped crush fascism on a larger scale.
00:28:28.280That was, I suppose, a joint effort with other allies.
00:28:31.040What I'm excited about is that Cuba, unlike Venezuela, unlike Nicaragua, Panama, has such a mass of exiles in Florida, some of whom have been there their entire lives.
00:28:46.300I mean, remember, it was 60 years ago, 60 plus years ago that Castro took over.
00:28:52.860So, so many Cuban Americans have become amazing successes in commerce and industry, in politics.
00:29:01.120Like, the Cuban American community is so successful, and they love Cuba so much, and they haven't been able to properly visit their families or contact them.
00:29:12.040Imagine if Cuba falls, which I really believe it will in, here's my prediction, within two weeks, maybe even sooner.
00:29:18.460And you will see this rush of heart-warm Cuban exiles going home, and they will want to revive and resuscitate and rebuild and renew their country.
00:29:34.940And I think it's going to happen so quickly and intensively.
00:29:39.860And I think that the U.S. government might give some aid money, but actually, why?
00:29:46.680Why not allow in all these Cuban American entrepreneurs?
00:29:50.600Like, if you were a banker, if you were an investor, and you knew that Cuba, which was once a star vacation getaway, like in the 50s, it was the place to go, from Florida, for example.
00:30:04.020If that gem, that jewel, was back and open for business again, you wouldn't need any government money.
00:30:12.740You wouldn't need any foreign money, but you wouldn't want it.
00:30:15.520You wouldn't want to give money to politicians.
00:30:17.460You would want to just clear the way for investors on everything from rebuilding the basic infrastructure, electrical power plants and water and sewage, but also housing, cars.
00:30:33.420You know, when you see those old-fashioned 1950s cars, it's not a style thing.
00:30:38.060It's because they had no cars come in, and they had to maintain those cars for 60 years.
00:41:46.340I don't think I would take a vacation to Somaliland, but I would be very happy for Somaliland to be the new norm for an African country that is anti-terrorist, friendly to democracy, multi-party democracy, some civil liberties, and not a failed state.
00:42:12.040How ironic that unlike in Free Canada where half the citizens who hate Trump get to travel for cheap to Cuba, most of the poor struggling citizens loved Trump.
00:42:21.280And you can see this in the video that we're just releasing, the full almost hour-long video that Efron and Alexa released.
00:42:26.680They see Trump as the only person willing and able and powerful enough, and some of them say crazy enough, to topple the Castro regime, and they couldn't be happier about it.
00:42:41.600Thank you, Rebel News, for showing the reality of my country.
00:42:44.600I'm a Cuban woman living in Toronto, Canada, and it's long past time to strip away the propaganda from the TV networks here that portray Cuba as a tourist destination, with Canadians traveling there for vacations without realizing that Cuba is a failed state.
00:42:57.400That Cuba is a country in ruins, and that what we need is freedom, not handouts or suitcases filled with items bought at Dollarama.
00:43:07.580And I know some vacationers there, the reference to the suitcase, people bring toothpaste and toothbrushes and aspirin and deodorant and all sort of the little things that make life better that would be hard to get in a place like Cuba.
00:43:20.840And that's sort of their penance for going for a prison vacation, but you're still going to the prison, and most of the people you encounter in the tourism industry are sort of friendly with the regime.
00:43:33.320It's sort of a perk they get to be exposed to Westerners, and I don't know, there's a temptation.
00:43:39.060I mean, even our team made some donations to the people they encounter, but that's just a drop in the bucket.