'The US is Trying to Strangle Cuba': Filmmaker Matt Belen On His Meeting With Cuban President

When Matt Belen and Abby Martin set out to make a documentary about Cuba, they didn't expect to get an interview with the president.

"We submitted a formal request to interview Cuban government officials at various levels, even down to local community delegates," Belen tells me. "Even we were a bit surprised when we got a reply saying that we could interview Díaz-Canel himself, let alone in an extended format like this."

The interview lasted over four hours. There were no talking points, no preconditions on what could be discussed. The filmmakers were given access to the entirety of the Palacio de la Revolución.

"Not an office shrouded in secrecy," Belen says. "Which is certainly not the case when speaking to U.S. politicians."

The result is Cuba After Castro, the first and only extended American interview with Cuba's president Miguel Díaz-Canel. It's screening this July at the Dublin Cuban Film Festival, arriving at a moment when US-Cuba relations are more tense than they've been in decades.

Just last month, the US Treasury slapped new sanctions on Díaz-Canel himself — along with his wife, his stepson, and members of Raúl Castro's family. Trump has threatened military action against the island, following his interventions in Venezuela at the start of the year, claiming "Cuba is next."

"Anyone who was really paying attention to U.S.-Cuba relations prior to this 'Donroe Doctrine' approach could see clearly that some sort of escalation was coming down the pipeline," the BreakThrough News journalist said.

He points to Biden's four years in office, during which the president "did nothing to ameliorate relations with Cuba" despite having "every opportunity to go back to the Obama-era normalization."

"There was clearly something of a bipartisan consensus in Washington that at a minimum they were going to keep the draconian Trump 1 [his first term] sanctions in place and continue to try to strangle the life out of Cuba."

So when Trump returned to office with Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Belen expected "an escalation of pressure against Cuba, if not a full on military escalation."

What Belen didn't expect was the level of detail Díaz-Canel provided about the blockade which is completely absent from US narratives.

"I gained a new level of appreciation for the 'death by 1000 cuts' that is life under an all-encompassing sanctions regime by the world's greatest superpower," he says. "The difficulties presented by the lack of gas, food, clean water, medical technology — it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around even if you do have an understanding of these material constraints."

The filmmaker said the president spoke from first-hand experience of "this kind of deprivation, both in the present-day context and during the Special Period after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90s."

"What Cuba's facing today is not a separate phenomenon from the last 60 years of U.S. repression, but rather a culmination of a longstanding effort to undermine the country's sovereignty. He also made it abundantly clear that Cuba won't take any further aggression lying down."

Belen says most US coverage of these realities are superficial.

"Most U.S.-based coverage on these matters are boiled down to quick soundbites meant to stir up controversy around their actions and obfuscate the realities faced by a small island nation cut off from the global economy."

Echoing prior comments from collaborator Abby Martin, the filmmaker highlighted the double standard in how the US media covered the July 2021 protests in Cuba compared to protests elsewhere.

"There were massive anti-government demonstrations in Colombia that summer where the police used live ammunition and killed dozens of protesters," he says. "One might wonder why the Colombian diaspora in the U.S. was not having widely publicized protests against the violent, repressive government of their home country."

He contrasts that with the near-unanimous vitriol "levied against the Cuban government for their response to the July 11th protests, where nobody was shot at with live fire and nobody was killed."

"The decisive factor that makes U.S. press highly susceptible to these well-heeled interest groups that toe the line for U.S. global supremacy is that these are private enterprises with a profit motive. Their dedication is not to the truth, but to their bottom-line. And that also means playing nice with the powers that be, and providing the type of access journalism that keeps them in the good graces of those forces, whether private or governmental."

Díaz-Canel is likely known best internationally for his support of Palestine, long before the current siege on Gaza and throughout it.

"For decades Gaza and the West Bank have been under constant siege, where anything entering the territory — food, water, fuel, medicine, machinery, even the movement of its own people — is entirely mediated by a hostile colonial force seeking to strangle the population into submission, a colonial force armed and financed by the U.S."

Belen highlighted that at the 2023 UN vote condemning the US blockade on Cuba, the only two countries to vote against were the US and Israel. On the 7th of July, the US had successfully pressured a number of other nations to abstain and vote against, but an overwhelming number of states (136 to be exact) continue to vote in favour of the resolution calling for an end to the blockade.

"The ultimate aim in either case — whether by bomb, by sanction, or by both — is to open up more territory for resource extraction and military proliferation. This is why you don't see a humanitarian aid centre at Guantanamo Bay, you see a military base."

Cuba After Castro is screening Thursday 23 July at the Dublin Cuban Film Festival, New Theatre, Temple Bar. Followed by a drinks reception. All proceeds to mediCuba-Europe.

Tickets: takeyourseats.ie

PRESS KIT (imagery/trailer) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fzLk9AEkkl_MrGEjSFQ0gi6drfsBZ7aKmJCUKxkAfic/edit?usp=drive_link