Cuba Pt. 5: Under Siege w/ Manolo De Los Santos & Liz Oliva Fernández

Upstream

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2026

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, part 5 of our ongoing series on Cuba, we're joined by Manolo De Los Santos & Liz Oliva Fernández for a conversation exploring the current state of the island and how Cubans are responding to Trump's oil blockade. Manolo De Los Santos is a founder of the People's Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the co-editor Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War, Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez. Liz Oliva Fernández is a Havana-based journalist with Belly of the Beast (a U.S.-based independent media outlet) and the presenter of The War on Cuba.

The first half of the episode is our conversation with Manolo De Los Santos and begins with him recounting what he witnessed and experienced during his recent trips to Cuba. Manolo brings us up to date on the Trump regime's efforts to impose blockades and sanctions on Cuba and then describes what the impact of these assaults look like on the ground on the island. He then tells about the Cuban people's efforts at not just surviving these assaults but continuing to resist and build decentralized networks of support while also working on a centralized scale to continue to organize and build socialism. Finally we look at the global implications of the United States' efforts to subjugate Cuba and tie things together by understanding the war on Cuba as part of the opening salvos of a new Cold War with China.

In the second half of our conversation Liz Oliva Fernández joins us from Cuba to go further into depth regarding what life is like on the island. We discuss the dynamics of energy and solar while being realistic about its short term limitations. We explore the violence that is imposed on Cuba by the United States and bring into relief the toll it has taken on the Cuban psyche. Liz tells us about the various efforts of the Cuban people to resist the United States and gives us a sense of both the exhaustion and the drive towards resistance that is present on the island today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Just a quick announcement before we get started on today's episode. So for those of you who live in
0:05.9	the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Upstream is co-hosting a benefit concert for Cuba on May
0:13.5	9th, that's Saturday, May 9th at the Ocean Alehouse. And all donations for this event will go to the
0:20.8	Atwe Project, which is bringing
0:23.0	much-needed medical supplies to Cuba, and Al-Guahiro, whose music has been featured in our
0:29.0	Cuba series, will be playing live at the event, and we'll also have special guest speakers,
0:34.4	including Nikki Franco, aka Venus Fruits, and Gloria de LaRiva, who is the leader of the Atoy project.
0:41.3	So please check the show notes to learn more about the event and to register. When you're faced with such brutal onslaught from the U.S. and essentially your economy is told, you know, you have no access to fuel, absolutely no fuel, I think most societies would collapse.
1:22.6	Most societies just don't have the level of organization or,
1:28.3	let's say even political principles or unity to be able to survive or
1:34.3	compensate or resist such heavy onslaught.
1:38.3	Very few countries have in modern times.
1:41.3	I mean, this is like siege warfare, it's maximum.
1:45.0	So I'm always marveled by, I wouldn't say I don't like to use that word resilience
1:52.0	because it's like, it's like the Cubans are, it gives a sense that the Cubans are like
1:56.0	adapting to the situation.
1:58.0	No, I would say the Cubans are demonstrating an incredible level of resistance
2:02.7	in trying to overcome this horrible scenario. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.
2:10.8	Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything
2:16.8	you thought you knew about the world
2:18.9	around you. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. The brutality of U.S. Empire is difficult
2:26.1	to fully comprehend when you're not on the receiving end of it. There's only so much that news clips
	...

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