In the coming months, Horizonte Cubano News will be in Havana and other Cuban communities, not to observe the country from the comfort of a hotel or repeat the political narratives of either Washington or Havana, but to experience, observe and document the realities confronting ordinary Cubans.
We intend to listen.
We want to hear from workers whose salaries no longer cover basic necessities, pensioners struggling with rising costs, families confronting shortages, entrepreneurs attempting to build businesses, young people deciding whether their future remains on the island, and ordinary citizens whose voices rarely reach the political debate in the United States.
For too long, Cuba has been discussed in American politics primarily as an ideological issue.
But Cuba is not an abstraction.
Behind every sanction, restriction, diplomatic confrontation and political speech are human beings.
There are Cuban families worrying about food, electricity, transportation, medicine, housing and whether their children will remain in the country.
Some American politicians understand this suffering. Others appear unwilling to recognize how profoundly ordinary Cubans have carried the consequences of more than six decades of confrontation.
Horizonte Cubano News intends to look at that reality directly.
We will not travel to Havana to defend the Cuban government.
We will not travel there to defend Washington.
And we will not travel there to manufacture a predetermined political conclusion.
We will go to listen to Cubans.
If government policy is responsible for a problem, we should be willing to say so.
If American policy contributes to hardship without accomplishing its stated objective, we should be willing to examine that as well.
And if reality contradicts what politicians on either side tell their audiences, our responsibility is to report the reality.
Cuba cannot be understood exclusively from Washington.
It cannot be understood exclusively from Miami.
And it cannot be understood exclusively through official statements from Havana.
Sometimes, to understand what people are experiencing, you have to stand where they stand, travel where they travel, wait where they wait and listen to what they have to say.
That is what Horizonte Cubano News intends to do.
We are going to Cuba to listen.
And when we return, the Cuban people — not political slogans — will help tell the story.