Editor’s note: This commentary was written by Ambassador (ret.) Charles Shapiro and Amanda Mattingly, who co-founded Art of Diplomacy Tours and will take their next group to Cuba in January 2025. Learn more here
We arrived in Havana a couple days after the Russian nuclear submarine left the harbor. No, this was not decades ago during the Cold War. This was June 2024.
Our delegation of (mostly) Atlanta-based professionals and Cuba-curious individuals spent five days in Havana trying to understand the complicated U.S.-Cuba relationship and why Cuba seems so stuck in time. Cuba occupies a place in our imagination and politics that doesn’t square with its size (11 million people) or its international importance.
Cuba faces a critical moment where the political and economic system seems to be on the brink of collapse. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting crash in tourism, plus tightened U.S. sanctions imposed during the Trump administration and maintained by President Biden, hit Cuba hard. More than 600,000 Cubans – 5 percent of the total population – seeing no future for themselves or their children, have left the island in the last two years alone.
Despite the odds, many young and resilient Cubans prefer to stay in their own country. We met with Cuban academics, economists, entrepreneurs, doctors, dancers, musicians, and artists, most of them in the growing private sector that provides 35 percent of all employment in Cuba today.
Even as the Cuban Communist Party grossly mismanages the economy and citizens have no voice in the governance of their country, these entrepreneurs are making decisions about their own businesses and futures. They are as independent as small business executives anywhere. By supporting themselves and creating jobs for their employees, they have broken the control of the omnipresent Communist Party over their lives.
These Cuban entrepreneurs are energetic and optimistic, and more than happy to share their stories about making something out of nothing. They told us about building a software company and a fashion line, the challenges of procuring basic goods to run a restaurant and frames for their eyeglass business, and their efforts to attract international attention and followers on Instagram.
A former economist, now owner of a small dried-fruit business, described Cuba this way: “Today, if you really want to be a revolutionary, you need to have economic independence so you’re not dependent on the state.” A Cuban artist said, “How can you build something if everyone leaves? You have to stay here or you can’t build anything.”
Sela Missirian of Atlanta, who traveled with us in June, noted, ”From our drivers holding their classic cars together in a rainstorm to the chefs who are making magic with the same few ingredients, it seems that the Cubans are doing the most with the least.”
We started Art of Diplomacy Tours to bring policy-minded, curious Americans to Cuba to learn about Cuba, the obstinately stagnant U.S. policy toward Cuba, and to support the Cuban people. We believe citizen diplomacy is the best way for Americans and Cubans to understand one another and hope that over time, this will help improve U.S.-Cuba relations.
Cuba will be an issue in our presidential election year, as it has been in every election since the Castros took power in 1959. Our partisan politics turn Cuba into soundbites from the right and the left that bear little relation to the Cuban reality. Economic sanctions hurt ordinary Cubans but have little impact on the Cuban government except by providing an excuse for their own failures.
A better way forward for U.S.-Cuba relations would be to increase communications between our two peoples, to facilitate travel, educational exchanges like ours, and financial flows to help the Cuban private sector, and to lift those economic sanctions that hurt the Cuban people but do nothing to change the Cuban regime.
Cuba does not need to be stuck in time. Nor does our policy. We can chart a new course in U.S.-Cuba relations.
In the meantime, we hope more people will travel to Cuba with us, walk through the historic streets of Old Havana, listen to Afro-Cuban jazz, talk to entrepreneurs who deal with obstacles their U.S. counterparts can’t even imagine, and learn a thing or two from the creative and resilient Cuban people.
Ambassador (ret.) Charles Shapiro and Amanda Mattingly co-founded Art of Diplomacy Tours in 2023. Their next trip to Cuba will be January 23-27, 2025. If you are interested, check out artofdiplomacytours.com.
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