cubaninsider: Getting To Know Cuba

By Knowing Cubans

Cristina Escobar, Cuba's young superstar news anchor, is racking up some frequent flyer miles from the island to the U. S. and back. That's because, fueled by President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, many U. S. entities that want to know more about what's happening on the island and what's likely to happen realize that the two best ways to find out is: {1} Go to Cuba and talk to Cubans; or {2} invite Cubans to come talk to you. Cristina is getting more invitations than she can handle to tell Americans about Cuba and about why she turns down lucrative offers to stay in the U. S. to live and work on the island she loves with a passion. Each of the last three years, Cristina has made insightful visits to the U. S., making indelible impressions each time. In the last few days she has accepted invitations from the United States Chamber of Commerce and the NPR network to come to America and tell them about Cuba, where it is and where she thinks it is going. Cristina's visits to America are important because, for sure, the mainstream U. S. media is incapable or unwilling to portray U.S.-Cuban relations except from the perspectives of viciously anti-Castro Cuban-Americans. That situation, since 1959, has been even more injurious to the image of the U. S. democracy than to Cuba, which actually has garnered worldwide sympathy and support because of America's undemocratic targeting of the nearby island. Cristina, a passionate supporter of Cubans on the island and an astute critic of an American policy dictated only by a handful of "anti-Cuban Cuban-Americans," is anathema to the mainstream U. S. media but increasingly more-and-more fair-minded Americans who want to know about Cuba are soliciting Cristina's views.

In December of 2014 Cristina Escobar spent a week in California. That's Cristina in the black dress listening attentively to a journalism professor at Cal State-Fullerton. She also toured Hollywood and Universal Studios. Being a fan of Hollywood movies, she says, "helped me learn English." Her passions for broadcast journalism, movies, and "to feel America's pulse" spawned her visit to California in 2014.

In 2015 Cristina was back on U. S. soil, this time as Cuba's superstar journalist covering the fourth and final Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session in Washington. The photo above shows Cristina making history, as documented by CNN. It shows her at a White House news conference asking six...yes, six...pertinent questions of President Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest. She was the star of the event and a CNN report that is still available online is aptly entitled: "Cuban Reporter Makes History at White House Briefing."

"When Cuba questioned in the White House."
Cristina's slice of White House history.

This image is taken from a video-taped interview American journalist Tracey Eaton got with Cristina Escobar in Cuba. The video is still available on many worldly venues, including YouTube. The interview produced a myriad of published quotes from Cristina, including "I do not want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." But probably the most ubiquitous quotation from this particular interview was: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans, not Americans." If you Google that sentence, it will readily be credited to her. The Spanish newspaper, El Pais, described it as "worthy of the great Cuban poet and independence fighter Jose Marti." High praise indeed!

In 2016...this last week of May, 2016...Cristina Escobar was back in America to, for one thing, tell the U. S. Chamber of Commerce her views on the current state of U.S.-Cuban relations. The above photo shows Cristina in the Washington studio of NPR, which is an excellent media source in the U. S. because it is the one broadcast outlet that will actually pursue both sides of two-sided stories, such as the Cuban conundrum. In this photo NPR reporter Eyder Peralta is shown conducting in English a very insightful 30-minute interview of Cristina. The entire interview is still on such outlets as NPR, YouTube, and the Center for Democracy in the Americas website. Peralta fired 20+ questions at Cristina, none of which fazed her.

To understand Cuba in 2016 as President Obama is trying to embrace it, Americans need to know Cristina Escobar, a 28-year-old Cuban on the island. Otherwise, because of an extremely weak U. S. media, Americans are force-fed views of Cuba only from the self-serving prism of a handful of revengeful Cuban-Americans who resent the 1959 demise of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship, which unfortunately was allowed to immediately and eternally reconstitute itself on U. S. soil. As an inquisitive broadcast journalist in Cuba, Cristina has taken it upon herself to become an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. She has family in Miami, and a brother in New York. But she is Cuban, and will remain so. From her perspective as a highly respected broadcast journalist and an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, Cristina believes that both America and Cuba are hurt..."perhaps fatally"...by the omnipotence of the U. S. broadcast media that she feels is a giant propaganda machine serving the economic and political desires of an elite, unsavory few. As her fame extends from Cuba and the region to America, the three most notable Cristina quotes are: "The lies the U. S. media tells about Cuba hurts everyday Cubans the most." "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." Self-proclaimed American patriots, of course, are programmed to dismiss the viewpoints of Cristina Escobar. But braver and more realistic American patriots, perhaps many of the millions choosing Trump and Sanders over "established" politicians, seem to agree with Cristina Escobar about how harmful a weak U. S. media can be even in a powerful democracy.

Since March 31st, CNN has repeatedly aired an excellent documentary about the decade of the 1980s entitled "The Eighties." It has been repeated several times in this last week of May, 2016. The inquisitive Cristina Escobar has watched it more than once because she's concerned about Cuba. Americans concerned about America should do the same. The must-see documentary explains how, in the 1980s, the U. S. media evolved into an extraordinarily powerful propaganda machine as opposed to the news outlet considered vital to the viability of a democracy. In the 1950s television news was becoming the dominant news source for millions of Americans. From then throughout the 1970s, the three over-the-air networks {CBS, NBC, and ABC} did yeoman work in providing Americans ubiquitous as well as fair-and-balanced news coverage. The broadcast media -- radio and TV -- was considered so omnipotent and so vital to the U. S. democracy that the airways were depicted as "publicly owner essentials." But in the 1980s the most greedy elements of capitalism took over as a few wealthy Americans, by buying up necessary politicians, also purchased the airways. Thus, as the aforementioned CNN documentary explained, individual and corporate billionaires began to buy the three over-the-air networks, soon making the news divisions self-serving propaganda machines instead of news outlets. A decent billionaire who respected news and was a visionary -- Ted Turner -- began the 1980s by inventing CNN as a 24-hour cable news outlet that actually covered news fairly. But then CNN too was bought by greedy capitalists who cared only about money and self-serving propaganda. The same is true for cable television's other CNN wannabees -- Fox, MSNBC, etc. Like the three over-the-air networks, all cable news outlets in the United States are owned today by greedy individual/corporate billionaires who care a lot about money and propaganda but very little, if anything, about the integrity of either the U. S. democracy or the broadcast industry. That evolution -- from actual broadcast news outlets to propaganda machines -- was solidified in the 1980s, as bravely and expertly explained by CNN's oft-repeated documentary "The Eighties." It is a basic fact that Cristina Escobar seems to comprehend, but one that eludes less concerned and easily propagandized Americans.

The CNN documentary points out, until the news divisions of America's broadcast industry were purchased by greedy billionaires, top broadcast journalist like Walter Cronkite were among America's most respected and influential people. Mr. Cronkite, for example, ended both the Lyndon Johnson presidency and the seemingly endless Vietnam War with his reporting and commentary on his CBS News program. There are no Walter Cronkites today; they have been replaced by broadcast propagandists spewing distortions that serve the purposes of their greedy billionaire owners. Thus, the first nail in democracy's U. S. coffin was pounded home by the purchase of the broadcast industry by unsavory billionaires back in the 1980s. Then the second and perhaps last nail was pounded home in 2010 when the U. S. Supreme Court legalized unlimited political donations by billionaires. A bought-and-paid-for media coupled with a bought-and-paid-for political system has produced a life-threatening cancer for the United States democracy.

As a broadcast journalist in Cuba, Cristina Escobar is no Walter Cronkite. At least not yet. But she is already respected and influential in Cuba and, it seems, becoming more so in the U. S. as Americans get to know her. Americans who do know her now better understand her as a talented broadcast journalist who cares deeply about U.S.-Cuban relations and, moreover, comprehends its significance. She is smart enough and insightful enough to say: "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." "The lies the U. S. media tell about Cuba hurts everyday Cubans the most." "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." Democracy-loving Americans do not have to faithfully believe everything Cristina Escobar says. I, for one, do not. But democracy-loving Americans should respect her sincerity and her expertise in assessing her Cuba and its relationship with the United States. For America's sake, and not just Cuba's, we need to wonder why she does not want the U. S. to bring her democracy; we need to wonder why she is so concerned about the lies the U. S. media tell about Cuba. And we need to wonder if...alas!!...Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba. Such democracy-loving concerns by Americans, I believe, will be good for America...and Cuba.

Meanwhile, now that neither Walter Cronkite nor anyone resembling him adorns the U. S. media, why has the island of Cuba produced what appears to be the best journalist reporting on the U.S.-Cuban conundrum? Or...is that a pertinent question?