In an awkward moment for the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked April 11 to explain if New York-born rapper Jay-Z received “White House clearance” to vacation in Cuba with wife and singer Beyonce. The question came after the rapper released a song entitled “Open Letter” boasting about his recent highly publicized trip to Cuba for the couple’s fifth-year wedding anniversary.
During the White House press briefing, one reporter rapped, with deadpan seriousness, some of the lyrics to the Jay-Z song, which had just been released that day: “I turned Havana into Atlanta/ boy from the hood, but I got White House clearance …/ Obama said ‘Chill you gunna get me impeached.’”
While the White House denies that the superstar couple had in fact been in contact with the president or received some sort of “clearance” from the White House, their trip is still drawing the ire of the ultra-rightwing Cuban-American members of Congress. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart from South Florida demanded an investigation by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces the travel ban. The government confirmed that Jay-Z and Beyonce traveled via a legal license. Yet Washington would have been hard-pressed to prosecute such famous and popular personalities, since such a prosecution would highlight the outrageous nature of the ban.
Some writers have reported rightly that it was unfair and possibly racist of these representatives to pick on Jay-Z and Beyonce when other white American celebrities had traveled to Cuba with not half the amount of scrutiny. However, it is clear that out of all these past celebrities Beyonce and Jay-Z are the ones with the most celebrity clout and have a considerable influence on U.S. (and especially urban) pop culture.
The Jay-Z/Beyonce controversy has served to place a spotlight on the unjust economic blockade against Cuba still enforced by the U.S. after 50 years.
The U.S travel ban to Cuba for its citizens and the economic blockade have virtually no support internationally. U.S. citizens remain the only people in the world who cannot freely travel to Cuba, and polls show very little support inside the U.S for this unjust policy as well. The U.S government is interested in keeping U.S citizens out of Cuba not just because doing so hurts the Cuban economy but also to prevent poor and working people of the United States from seeing for themselves what Cuban socialism is all about.
What if traveling to Cuba were easier?
For U.S. urban youth who are fans of Beyonce and Jay-Z, the experience of a visit to Cuba would stand in stark contrast to the conditions that are commonplace across urban cities in the U.S.—namely unemployment and lack of adequate health care, housing, and educational opportunities. In Cuba, a job, quality health care, housing and education are all rights that every Cuban enjoys. Universal health care means that Cuban women have full access to contraception and abortions, while in the United States 87 percent of counties nationwide have not one identifiable abortion provider.
While Latin American crime rates continue to soar, Cuban society is known for its safe streets and social peace. In a recent international study Cuba was ranked first among Latin American and Caribbean nations in student performance in math and science. In New York City, only 30 percent of eighth-grade students read at their grade level, while across the U.S over 1 million school-age children are homeless or live in a homeless shelter.
In Beyonce’s home city of Houston, the percentage of Black children in foster homes exceeds the proportion of Black children in the city as a whole, while homelessness in Cuba remains unheard of (especially in the case of children). On average, Black Cubans are expected to live five years longer than a Black American, and top positions in government and industry are held by Blacks in Cuba just as often as they are held by light-skinned Cubans.
According to the U.N., Cuba is the only country in the world to have sustained economic growth while at the same time maintaining environmentally sustainable food and industrial production. A trip to Cuba would allow ordinary Americans to pierce through the U.S propaganda machine and find out just how Cuban democracy works and why so many people in Cuba support their government.
Long before Jay-Z and Beyonce, U.S. citizens have been defying the unjust travel ban and traveling to Cuba anyway. Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens visit Cuba every year, and U.S. Cuban solidarity organizations like the Venceremos Brigade and Pastors for Peace have been taking U.S. citizens to Cuba in defiance of the Treasury Department for almost as long as the U.S. blockade has been in place against the island nation’s socialist government.
Hopefully the new media attention on the Cuban tourist industry and the pictures of Jay-Z puffing a Cuban cigar on the balcony of a Cuban hotel, or the YouTube video of Beyonce dancing salsa at a Cuban nightclub, will spur more people to want to travel to Cuba with or without permission from the U.S. Treasury Department.
Since the Obama administration made it possible to travel to Cuba for cultural, religious or academic reasons in 2011, there is a misconception by many in the United States that the half-century-long blockade has been eased and that the travel ban will soon be lifted altogether. In reality, the blockade has been intensified through increased enforcement of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 and continued attempts by the United States to undermine the Cuban government.
Washington continues to carry out and intensify its efforts to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. We urge everyone to make it their duty to resist this effort. It can be as easy as taking a vacation just 90 miles from the USA.
Lift the blockade!
