Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Ada Ferrer on Cuba's Crisis, U.S. Sanctions and Family Separation

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AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH : We turn now to Cuba, five months into the Trump administration’s energy blockade of the island, coming on top of the longest embargo in U.S. history. Expanded U.S. sanctions have exacerbated Cuba’s economic crisis, forcing 10 million Cubans to live with rolling blackouts, inflation and shortages of basic goods.

This is 64-year-old Felicia de la Caridad Álvarez, a resident of Old Havana.

FELICIA DE LA CARIDAD ÁLVAREZ: [translated] We’ve been without water for six months. Water is essential in a home. Without water, you’re nothing. Life doesn’t flow. That cistern is empty. Every 21 days, or a little longer, if I don’t push the mayor or the director of Aguas de la Habana, they don’t send the water truck. And what they do send is a small one. What we need here is a big one.

AMY GOODMAN : This year, President Trump repeatedly threatened to take over Cuba. But at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio evaded a question about whether the Trump administration plans to invade the island. The question came from Illinois Democratic Congressmember Jonathan Jackson, the son of Reverend Jesse Jackson. Congressman Jackson recently returned from a visit to Cuba.

REP . JONATHAN JACKSON : In closing, I would like to ask you: Will you invade Cuba? I yield back.

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO : Oh, I have one second to answer? What do I do? I mean, you guys tell me your rules here. I tried to write down all the stuff you said there.

REP . JONATHAN JACKSON : Will you invade Cuba?

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO : Well, that’s not the only thing you said.

NERMEEN SHAIKH : Just last week, Rubio described Cuba as a failed state threatening U.S. national security. He was speaking at a Cabinet meeting.

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO : Cuba is in a lot of trouble, because, unfortunately for them, it’s run by a bunch of incompetent communists. … It’s 90 miles from our shores. And having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.

NERMEEN SHAIKH : Wednesday, June 3rd, was the 95th birthday of former Cuban president and Fidel’s younger brother, Raúl Castro. He was a key figure in the Cuban Revolution and remains a powerful figure in Cuban politics, despite having stepped down in 2018.

AMY GOODMAN : Last month, on May 20th, Cuban Independence Day, the Trump administration unsealed an indictment against Raúl Castro for murder and other crimes over the 1996 shootdown of two planes flown by Cuban exiles from Miami who were part of the anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue, founded by the CIA operative José Basulto. Two days later, President Trump threatened Cuba once again, saying it was likely he would order military strikes.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP : Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something. And it looks like I’ll be the one that does it. So, I would be happy to do it.

AMY GOODMAN : For more, we’re joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Princeton University, Ada Ferrer, professor of history and the author of Cuba: An American History , which won a Pulitzer Prize. Her latest book is a memoir about growing up between Cuba and the United States. It’s called Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter .

Professor Ferrer, welcome to Democracy Now! Start off by responding to the latest, the indictment of now the 95-year-old former President Raúl Castro. Marco Rubio, is it pushing hard for — is it overthrow? Is it change of administration? But the fact is, he said that it’s a threat to the national security of the United States, being just 90 miles offshore.

ADA FERRER : Yeah. Well, thanks for having me, Amy. It’s good to be here.

May has been such a busy month in terms of the U.S. pressure campaign against the Cuban government there. You mentioned the indictment of Raúl Castro. There have been the hardening of secondary sanctions against Cuba. And that is all having an effect on the ground. Just a couple of days ago, Spanish and Canadian companies involved in tourism and hotels have announced that they’re pulling out, or partially pulling out.

So, the situation there is dire. It has been for quite some time, and it’s gotten worse and worse over the last five months. So, you know, it’s so — it’s so hard to predict what will happen, in part because Donald Trump is unpredictable. But there’s no question that it’s the Cuban people who are bearing the brunt of the policies of both governments.

NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Professor Ferrer, if you could also respond specifically to Rubio’s comments in this regard, Marco Rubio himself a Cuban American, at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday, evading a question about whether the Trump administration plans to invade Cuba, and then describing Cuba as a failed state threatening U.…