Episode 113 Rich and Mike Eizenberg-
Richard Helppie 0:00
Welcome to Richard Helppie’s Common Bridge, the fiercely nonpartisan discussion that seeks policy solutions to issues of the day. Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health, and finance space. He and his wife Leslie are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. And welcome to the Common Bridge. We have a really special guest for you today. And his name is Mike Eizenberg. And Mike’s an educational exchange specialist whose work is focused mostly in Cuba. And it all started in 1998, I think, when he asked his softball team just outside of Boston, if they’d like to go down to Cuba, and play a team down there, sort of a whim. And they all said, sure, so he was sort of on the hook to get them down there, which was very, very difficult to do at the time, but he did. Still can’t quite figure out how that all happened, he says, but he got down there. And since then, though, it’s grown into a cultural exchange program. And Mike has started an organization called the Educational Travel Alliance, and it’s widely recognized as the leader in cultural exchange programs in Cuba. And in full disclosure, I took a team down, your faithful producer, Brian Kruger, I took a team down in 2017, a team of 16-year-old boys to play baseball, and we had a wonderful time. And that was all made possible by Mike Eizenberg. So today’s conversation, and we’ll join it here in a moment, Rich and Mike are talking mostly about Cuban-American history, and Cuban-American policy. Now, Mike walks a fine line here, because he’s got a lot of friends down there. And also, the government down there has allowed his cultural exchange program to exist. So it’s a kind of an interesting conversation as they sometimes dance around the the big issues, but in a good way. And I think you’ll find that they both, Rich, and Mike end up in the very same spot by the end of this episode. So anyway, I think you’ll enjoy this and we engage this program in progress.
Brian, thank you for the introduction of Mike Eizenberg. Mike, welcome to the Common Bridge. I’m so happy you could join us today.
Mike Eizenberg 2:18
Rich, I’m very happy to be here, the pleasure’s genuinely mine.
Richard Helppie 2:21
Great. There’s a lot that’s just not known about Cuba. Now, part of that is that people don’t think about it until we have a crisis. Yet, you’ve been working for over 20 years in Cuba, and I know that takes some sensitive negotiation with our State Department and with the Cuban government, and if we get into an area that makes it a little uncomfortable, just raise your hand and say, we’re not going to do that today. But Mike, what do they need to know about Cuba’s history and maybe the intersection with the United States, which has happened several times during the course of that history?
Mike Eizenberg 2:57
Well, you know, the, Cuba’s history with the United States goes back really about 400 years, because they’re our neighbor, they’re right next door. But our history became really intertwined, between– at the time of the Spanish American War, when Teddy Roosevelt went charging up San Juan Hill, and the battle that Cubans had with the Spaniards had been going on for quite a while. And there were Cuban liberation fighters really active, trying to free themselves from Spanish domination for over 40 years. It took 40 years, and then just at the instant, when Cuba was going to be able to liberate itself, the U.S. stepped in. And since that time–that was really in 1902–since that time, our histories have been intertwined.
Richard Helppie 4:02
Indeed, 90 minutes off of our southern coast, 90 miles, our southern coast. (Mike Eizenberg: Most people in almost everyone in Cuba has a relative who lives here.) Well, Jimmy Buffett actually sings about that he’s got a song called “Everybody has a Cousin in Miami.”
Mike Eizenberg 4:17
You know, it’s true. And if you go there, American culture is really a shared culture between the U.S. and Cuba and many other places. But Cubans play baseball, Cubans love American music, they always find a way to see the latest American films. And really Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, go through the list– were as big of stars in Cuba as they were here. Our histories really were intimately connected through 1960. When I was 12, in I guess it was 1959, my friends and I used to play King of the Hill, where one team was Castro up in the hills and the other was Battista, attacking, trying to get the help. So our histories are really intertwined.
Richard Helppie 5:15
Indeed, and my great uncle John, who I met as a youth was a veteran of the campaign in Cuba. Just a little personal connection there. And the relationship with Cuba grew, and then Battista came in, how did he come to power and what did he do with it? And how did he leave power?
Mike Eizenberg 5:37
Cuba was in a state of complete unrest. Think of the 1930s. In the 1930s, Cuba was the leading vacation destination for people from the United States. There were Pan Am flights, there were TWA flights, they were ferries, they were boats. and Cuba was the place that Americans got away to. At the same time, there was political chaos. There would be one president and then another president, there would be the left and the right. And all of a sudden, this army sergeant, this strong man came in with the support of the military and took over. And when Battista took over there would be different figureheads of different things at different times, but Battista was the power behind the throne. Everybody knows about the mafia’s connection with Cuba, at least a little tiny bit. Many people well most everyone probably has seen Godfather II, Battista and the mafia were intimately connected and Battista enriched his own pockets with his association with various mafia figures. In 1946 there was a big meeting of the mafia at the Hotel Nacional in Cuba, where there was sort of dividing up the spoils and who was going to get how much of it.
Richard Helppie 7:06
And that was, so the U.S. based mafia, Chicago, New York, they were running the casinos there in Cuba for the U.S. trade.
Mike Eizenberg 7:15
The U.S. was invested all over the place. U.S. architectural firms, U.S. construction companies were building beautiful, monumental places. There were hotels springing up all over the place. It was a playground, and what was created was the haves and the have-nots, the haves lived in a bubble. There was so much corruption that even people who were well off were just tired of Battista’s ruthlessness and just became tired. Fidel Castro actually came from an upper middle class family and much of the support of the movement against Battista came from university people from different people who just didn’t like being controlled by a mafia-controlled government.
Richard Helppie 8:09
So here’s Battista as the ruthless power behind the government, intertwined with the mafia, massive wage disparities, would it be that the have-nots were very impoverished, and that the haves had everything and were indifferent?
Mike Eizenberg 8:27
There were many people who were very impoverished. And then there was also a middle that wasn’t so impoverished, but still felt the oppression of an authoritarian government. Sugar prices go up, the economy’s better sugar prices go down… there were all sorts of different forces driving the Cuban economy. People in the middle all of a sudden would find themselves on the bottom. Once you got to the bottom, getting back up, again, was not easy.
Richard Helppie 8:57
I see, so this is the social and political structure that Castro stepped into, and I think that triggered a couple of very important parts of the U.S.-Cuban history. And so kind of take us through the Castro’s revolution, Bay of Pigs, particularly as it pertained to the United States, and it kind of like leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mike Eizenberg 9:22
Eighty-seven people arrived with Fidel on a tiny yacht called the Granma in eastern Cuba, and they were supposed to meet up with a force waiting for them here. Well, it wasn’t so easy to take the yacht from Mexico to Cuba, so they were delayed and the forces never really met up and actually they were Battista forces waiting for Fidel, but Fidel and a number of his people managed to flee into the Highlands. And over time, little by little, they gained a following and were making more and more noise. So little by little Fidel’s power was growing but you know, it was an agrarian army, it wasn’t you know, they got some guns that were shipped in from New York and they had this and that, but but most of the time it was–it was a ragtag outfit. There’s a story I love that a LIFE reporter went down and was able to get an interview with Fidel up in the mountains. And Fidel wanted to show how strong he was. So he had the same soldiers marching around in circles, to emphasize, to make the pitch, that he was really strong. In any case, he eventually gained enough power, Battista decided he had enough of it, sent all of his forces to get rid of Fidel once and for all. Battista was told by an American Secretary of State, we can’t support you anymore. It’s over. Battista took $350 million from the Cuban Treasury, (Rich: Oh my) absconded. You may, if you remember, if you go back and look at Godfather II, you’ll see this actually happened. It was actually New Year’s Eve, there was a big party, and all of a sudden, Battista left. Fidel triumphantly went across Cuba marched into Havana was a hero of heroes, and you know, he was a 33-year-old guy who, you know, had been a student and a revolutionary, but he hadn’t really governed before. To shorten the story, Castro came to the U.S. looking for support, but wasn’t given any, went to different places was not given a lot of support, his country was in ruins. United Fruit S.O., I guess it was at that time, but the oil companies own the refineries, the sugar manufacturers, Coca Cola, there’s a town Hershey in Cuba, because it was owned by the Hershey family. Coca Cola was importing all the sugar it needed…all the molasses it needed to make coke. So the Cuban economy was dominated by U.S. interests. And what Fidel started to do was nationalize those companies. In order to strike back, little by little, we created a blockade. And our feeling was that with that blockade, Castro is gonna fall. So then the CIA and a whole bunch of people who had fled Cuba decided that it was time to take Fidel out. Bay of Pigs, unsuccessful. 1500 guerrillas captured by Fidel. Fidel is a hero once again, because the Soviet Union enters the arena. And there’s sort of an agreement. And then all of a sudden, Kennedy saw that the Russians, the Soviet Union was putting missile silos into Cuba,
Richard Helppie 13:15
Yeah, leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States foreign policy failures resulted in great loss of life, strengthening Fidel, and then
Mike Eizenberg 13:25
I think great loss of life might be an overstatement. But there was, you know, there were the guerrillas, never had a chance.
Richard Helppie 13:32
Mike, are you familiar with a very famous book called “One Hell of a Gamble?” It’s a really good description of the Cuban Missile Crisis and what led up to it and how we got out of it. One of the things how close we came to nuclear annihilation that the garrison commander, the Soviet garrison commander, they had tactical nukes that had a range of about three miles that would take out everything within a mile. They had the authority to fire that in the event of an invasion, and that there were people in the Congress advocating that the U.S. military and I think it was our elite troops, the 82nd airborne, the 101st,, were getting ready to invade and Kennedy turn that down, because it could have easily gone to a shooting war, in that time. We were that close to nuclear annihilation. But since that time, we’ve had an economic embargo on Cuba, life’s been very difficult and different times we’ve tried to think about repairing relationships, and I think our strategy was eventually Castro would lose power. I don’t think anybody thought it was going to take 50 years, though. So when you kind of think about Cuba today, what’s life like for the average Cuban and why is it today now there’s protests in the street. After all this time of repression that Castro practiced and lacks of basic freedoms of speech and movement and economics, we all saw the Mariel boatlifts and all those things that have gone on forever. What about today and the impact on the average Cuban results in this uprising that we’re seeing or saw, I’m not sure what the status of it is today.
Mike Eizenberg 15:16
Cuba became integrated with the Soviet law. And 1991 was a critical time when the Soviet Bloc shattered. And that was a shattering time for Cuba. Something like 60% or 70%, of Cuba’s trade was with the Soviet Bloc, and all of a sudden it wasn’t there anymore. And all of the support Cuba was getting from the Soviets disappeared. So the 80’s as part of the Soviet Bloc, many people say that life was bearable. You have to remember where Cuba came from. Cuba came from chaos, 60% of the people couldn’t read, 60% of the people had no medical care. The view that was projected, was that we have to be vigilant, because if we’re not vigilant, the U.S. is going to try to invade us once again. And we, we don’t have a good history of when we’re in control of Cuba to make life better for all of the Cubans.
Richard Helppie 16:23
Let me ask you this in a different way, what group or groups today support the current government? Where are they getting their support, and where’s this opposition coming from?
Mike Eizenberg 16:32
So in Cuba society, there are layers, there are people at the top, and then there are many layers going down. Even at the lowest layer, people have some kind of medical care. It’s not very good right now, because there’s no medicine, but there are a lot of doctors. Everyone has a right to an education. University is free. Everyone was getting a certain amount. So even at the lowest layer, it could be said that people were getting some benefits. At the same time, there were tremendous expressions in the arts, some of the greatest dancers in the world are always from Cuba, some of the greatest musicians, some of the greatest athletes, some of the people making the most money in the major leagues today are people who grew up in Cuba. So it isn’t like there weren’t some people who were benefiting from Soviet society. But there was also this really strong authoritarian set of rules, keeping things in place. And what has happened now is that the economy has gone down. When President Obama was relaxing all of the restrictions in Cuba, there was a feeling that things might be coming up. For the first time there was a quite a lot of private enterprises. All restaurants in Cuba when I first went there in 2000, except for very few were government restaurants, all of them served the same food. Now, there are private restaurants. It used to be all of the dance companies were government dance companies in your head. Now there are private dance companies. It used to be that any accommodation was provided by the government. Now there are Casa particulars, bed and breakfasts, like there are here. And there are many areas. There are very interesting designers who design clothing and furniture, so there was some free enterprise.
Richard Helppie 18:41
First I want to come back on healthcare, Michael Moore wrote one of his mockumentaries called “Sicko” and tried to… it’s a sham. It tried to portray that there was a functioning healthcare system in Cuba, but that wasn’t for Cubans.
Mike Eizenberg 18:57
Cuba provided very good preventive medical care, lots of inoculations and shots and actually has a good biomedical system. But his his film was not real.
Richard Helppie 19:09
It was, it was– none of his are– but that but people are on to that. Mike, I could go down chapter and verse what the Cubans did to their people through the healthcare system, and some of it’s pretty terrible, but what I’m hearing you say is that Okay, so now there’s some freedoms and I know there was a point in Cuba where if you tried to open a little restaurant in your home, that you would get shut down and now they’re loosening that.
Mike Eizenberg 19:34
In Cuba, you know, things get loosened, things get stricter. It’s not, it’s really hard to generalize, Rich. Under the Trump years the embargo became much stronger, fewer people could go. Cuba was- is very intertwined with Venezuela. Cuba was getting a lot of oil from Venezuela, but then the U.S. put pressure on Venezuela. And we block oil coming from Venezuela to Cuba. So, the economy in Cuba for the last four or five years has just contracted and contracted and contracted. Cuba was still getting some support from other countries, from other blocs, but under Trump, very strict banking regulations were put into play. And for that reason, it was very hard for Cuba to participate in international trade. And when COVID hit…
Richard Helppie 20:31
Isn’t that almost like going back to the Battista days that people might be afraid, look, if I invest in a hotel, for example, that it’s just going to ultimately fund the established government, which is repressing its citizen? (Mike Eizenbergy: Yes.) What I can’t understand, given that we’ve had decades of the repression and decades of a very strong totalitarian type of a government, why now in 2021, you know, after we’ve had the differences from Obama to Trump, and now Biden, I don’t know if that has anything to do what’s going on in Cuba, but why is today, the time that Cubans are going to the streets to protest their government?
Mike Eizenberg 21:18
There are a number of reasons. There are a number of triggers. One trigger is that Cuba had a new constitution, and people had great hopes for the new constitution. But the new constitution actually ended up restricting artistic freedom. Artists always previously had a lot of freedom of expression. And for a long time, you had kids, you didn’t want them to go to law school or to medical school or become investment bankers. You wanted them to be artists, because artists could travel and freely sell what they created. And they were, if you saw somebody driving an Audi, you could be sure they were either a musician or an artist in Cuba. And other than that it was beat up old Russian cars or beat up American cars. It’s it’s complicated, but that was one of the triggers. And oh, some of the musicians who began a counter-movement and the artists began a counter-movement, saying we need our artistic freedom back. November 27th there was a big demonstration. That’s one facet. Another facet is that all of a sudden, Cuba’s out of foreign exchange. Cuba imports 70% of its food, it can’t import food anymore. And you know, really, there’s always been that resentment. Everyone resents authoritarian control; we resent it here, look at Portland. Look at the things that have happened in certain places.
Richard Helppie 22:57
Connect me with Portland I’ve, what’s the linkage to the artist?
Mike Eizenberg 23:01
Portland, Oregon is a place where in the United States, there’s been fierce demonstrations against the police and against the wealthy people. And it’s really the demonstrations here have at times really gotten out of control–Portland, Oregon being the place that comes to mind, George Floyd, how many people have really exploded over all of the police shootings that we’ve seen in our country?
Richard Helppie 23:29
And I know not everybody was happy with it. But our justice system convicted Derek Chauvin, our government institutions responded, there are lots of opinions. Is it the right amount? Too much, too little, so forth. But you know, the matters do get addressed. How are the matters of the Cubans who are protesting their government getting addressed?
Mike Eizenberg 23:48
There has been a very strong reaction by the government, to the people protesting. And there have been a lot of people put in jail, a lot of people. Apparently you can see from the films you’ve seen, there have been there’s been violence in the streets. There have been all sorts of all sorts of things. And you know, Cuba, it has some people who support the regime. And they remember that they are loyal to Castro’s revolution. I don’t know how to quantify it, but some people are. There are people who had enough. We don’t want it anymore. We want there to be a new day. And there has to be a new day because 11 million people live in Cuba and 3 million Cubans live, Cuban-Americans and Cuban-Europeans and Cuban other things live other places. There is a lot of support from the people who left that we don’t want that anymore. 62 years is more than enough. There are also people– I know people who are loyal to the government, I know people who can’t stand it anymore. And I know people who have children, who have kids who might be 18, who they’re hiding at home, because they don’t want them to be taking them to the military. And they have three year old kids, and what they say is, we’re afraid, because nothing different has been offered. All we’ve been offered is this demand for change. But there isn’t a leader, there isn’t a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King or anyone who represents the moral authority to promise a new way. And for that reason, what you have in Cuba, is it to me, it’s tragic.
Richard Helppie 25:52
So let me make sure I understand why. So there’s a portion of the population says, look, we’ve, we can remember the Battista days, we’re loyal to the Castro revolution. It’s not perfect, but we’re good with it. We’ve dealt with not having some of the rights that we take for granted in the United States. But we’re good with that with Cubans, as Cubans. And then there’s other groups of Cubans, if I’m understanding what you’re saying, they’re saying, No, no, we need to move to someplace better. We’re going to the streets to protest, although technically, we may not have the rights to do that. We’re willing to be arrested for that, we’re willing to be jailed for that, and we’re doing that because we want a better thing. But if I’m understanding the nuance of what you’re saying, there’s not a center of gravity, or a central person. So when we think about today, 2021, what would be some of the worst policies the United States could come up with? If you were if you were advising the Biden administration, and you said, Look, I’ve got two lists for you for Cuba. Here’s a bad policies Don’t do this. And here’s a couple of good things. How would you advise President Biden?
Mike Eizenberg 27:03
Rich, my field is international education and exchange. And what I care about is people. But my observation is that if I were President Biden, I would try very gradually loosening up some policies, without asking for anything in return immediately, but then giving the Cubans a chance to reciprocate. My observation is that U.S. policy has always gone from one extreme to the other. It went from Bush to Obama– tighten up as much as you can– loosen up immediately– become a cruise harbor. Trump, clamped down harder than we’ve ever clamped down before. Biden: I got so much going on. Remember, we have a Senate. So the previous head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a hawkish Cuban American, Marco Rubio, the current head, the democratic head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, a hawkish Cuban American. Biden needs every vote, there’s no center, they have just been thousands of Cuban Americans showing up at the White House, saying end the blockade. There are thousands and thousands Cuban Americans in Cuba, saying, Let me send privately some food to my family, but squeeze that government as hard as you can. There isn’t a center. So to me, and what I saw work in my work in Cuba, is I was able to progress things little by little. And you know, when I first went there, no Cuban had a cell phone, I could have a cell phone, I’d leave it in Cuba, and let my friend use it under my name. Now everyone has a cell phone. There used to be no internet access. Now there’s surprising amounts of internet access. I care about people, my concern is that there’s food and medicine for people everywhere.
Richard Helppie 29:15
Indeed. And I think it’s it’s tragic that every one of my listeners would agree or most of them would say, Yes. I’m not a politician. I care about people. You know, it’s not supposed to be that way. The politicians are supposed to care deeply about people. They’re supposed to do work to help all of us. Instead, they spend time fighting each other. And, Mike, I know you’re doing some amazing work there. And I’m picking up the nuance of what you’re doing, incremental change. And you know, even with hawks, like senators Rubio and Menendez, that at least can we agree that we can get food and medicine, right, and maybe modern technologies into Cuba? When you think about the implications, Cuba’s going to thrive one way or the other. And we should make them continually look to the United States or encourage them not force them, when I say make them, but encourage them versus, you know, make the mistakes that were made 60 years ago, where we pushed them into the Soviet Bloc through some missteps, and that the Cuban Americans or the Cubans who become Cuban Americans are, you know, very proud Americans, the Cubans that are there, I know, look to them, and they’re not hostile to the United States. But we do need to forge ways. Well, Mike, on that note, I am honored that you took some time from your calendar to come and talk to us about this very difficult topic. But we’re a better people, were more generous and compassionate people than where we’re being depicted by our reporting industry, how we’re being treated by our political system. If our political parties and our political system and those elected to serve and those employed to support that, behaved better and listened, we’d be doing much better. And if we could get the Fourth Estate, the press, the reporters, to actually do reporting, again, we would be moving forward. Because the problems that we have today in our nation, including our international policies, these are solvable issues, just as you’ve described, in increments, people to people, and also to seize the opportunities of the moment. This great technology that we’re talking with today, not in the same locale. There’s not a reason at all that that can’t go to Cuba to South America and around the world to unite us more as a people. So we’ve been talking today with Mike Eizenberg on the Common Bridge. The Common Bridge, of course, is available at most podcasts outlet, and on YouTube TV, look up Richard Helppie’s Common Bridge and of course, always at RichardHelppie.com. I will have Mike’s full bio up there and some links to some of the organizations that he’s engaged with. (Mike: Great opportunity, Rich, thank you.) So now for today this is Rich Helppie with my guest, Mike Eizenberg signing off on the Common Bridge.
Brian Kruger 32:26
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