The humanitarian crisis in Cuba may not resonate with Americans who feel whiplashed by conflicts and crises around the globe and at home.
But one Harpswell woman who first crossed the 90 miles between Cuba and Florida years ago recently returned to help people whose basic necessities are disappearing under the U.S. oil embargo imposed in January.
Kathy Hirst, of Great Island, arrived home from her latest humanitarian trip to Havana in March, still wondering what it will take to make a difference. Hirst began traveling the globe for relief projects in 2014, two years before retiring from her work as a research professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has made 10-12 trips to Cuba.
In January, the U.S. implemented a fuel blockade targeting Cuba and threatened to impose tariffs on any nation delivering oil to the country, which is dependent on foreign oil. Since then, the island nation has had rolling blackouts and at least three all-encompassing blackouts in March.
The Trump administration says it imposed the embargo because the Cuban government poses a threat to the U.S. through its support for hostile regimes such as Iran and Russia, as well as its oppression of the Cuban people.
Hirst said the Cubans she met on her recent trip “are happy to see Americans and have no argument with the American people — only with the government that has implemented the embargo.”
“The embargo has done a lot of harm, especially since there is no country now supporting Cuba, like the Soviet Union did or like Venezuela did,” she said. “There is no one taking up the slack.”
The largest island in the Caribbean has a “weak and dysfunctional” government and no industry, Hirst said.
“It is a poor nation,” she added. “But the people make do. They are resilient. And they use what they have. They go about their business, even with the embargo. Their culture still thrives and their commitment to free education and free health care continues to thrive.”
The embargo, however, is jeopardizing those commitments.
“The hospitals have nothing,” Hirst said. “They don’t have the medicines they need, so what lesson are we trying to get across here?”
Churches are the de facto social service agencies in Cuba, Hirst said. This year, she and her friends conducted their work through the Cuban Council of Churches, founded in 1941 and based in Havana.
“We can bring toilet paper or whatever they want,” Hirst said, “but we give it to the Council of Churches and they pass it on.”
Hirst said this year’s expedition had fewer administrative barriers and a stronger personal connection with work and people.
Most recently, she delivered cash to a pastor to buy a battery pack for his church. The device can provide energy for nearly 20 hours during the frequent power outages.
Another project involved improvements to a church property to accommodate a variety of community services, including a music school, dining areas that can feed 250-300 people at a time, and gardens.
In her global travels spanning more than a decade, Hirst has volunteered to help impoverished communities in Vietnam, India, Portugal and Tanzania, as well as Native American reservations in Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico and Texas. Back in Harpswell, she is active in the community as treasurer of the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department.
Hirst wants Americans to understand the impacts of the embargo: most Cubans have gone from poverty to desperation; tourism, one of the few remaining industries in the country, has virtually disappeared; and, while there is one political party — the Communist Party — Cuba is actually run by an autocratic oligarchy.
“The bottom line is to appreciate — and I’m not sure this is possible for everybody — that it is not communism in Cuba. It is not a threat to us,” Hirst said. “Stop the embargo.”
