Cuban Safari: 650 Leftists, a 5-Star Hotel, and a Country Without Power

At 6:32 PM on March 21st, 2026, Cuba's national electrical grid collapses for the third time in seventeen days. Eleven million people go dark. Hospitals lose power. Ventilators stop. In Old Havana, one building stays lit — the Gran Hotel Bristol, a five-star Meliá property, rooms running $130 to $520 a night. That is roughly a year's wages for a Cuban doctor. The hotel's generators are running because inside are 650 international delegates who flew in that morning on a chartered Boeing 787 to show solidarity with the Cuban people.

The Nuestra América Convoy is organized by Progressive International and CODEPINK, in coordination with Mariela Castro — Raúl Castro's daughter, who sits on Progressive International's advisory council. It arrives in three streams. A chartered Neos Boeing 787 from Rome carries over 200 passengers and five tonnes of medicine. A three-ship flotilla from Mexico brings fifty tonnes of rice, beans, and solar panels.

A CODEPINK delegation of 140 flies from Miami with $433,000 in medical supplies. The delegate list reads like a who's who of the international left: Jeremy Corbyn, Pablo Iglesias, Greta Thunberg, Hasan Piker, the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap, Colombian Senator Clara López. Thirty-three countries. A hundred and twenty organizations.

Here is what Cuba looks like when the delegates land. Seventy-eight percent of Cubans say this is the worst food crisis they have experienced, worse than the Special Period. Seven in ten skip daily meals. The healthcare system has lost 30,000 doctors in three years. Surgeons operate by phone light. The country has 25 functioning ambulances. Only thirty percent of essential medicines are available.

Sixteen thousand cancer patients cannot receive treatment. Over one million Cubans have left since 2021. The population has dropped from 11.3 million to an estimated 8.6 million, a decline Columbia Law School notes is typically observed only in contexts of armed conflict. This is the country the convoy has come to celebrate.

Pablo Iglesias records a video for his Canal Red program from a Bristol suite — Cuban activists identify the room by the Capitolio visible through his window. He tells viewers the situation is 'difficult, but not as grave as presented from outside.' Hasan Piker broadcasts from Havana with what the New York Post calls a 'somehow spotless internet connection.' He claims U.

S. law forced them into five-star hotels. A Community Note debunks this: OFAC regulations only prohibit properties owned by Cuban government officials, not all luxury hotels. Private accommodations and Airbnbs remain legal.

Delegates tour Havana in new orange electric minibuses with solar panels on their roofs, proceeding in a caravan while singing 'La Guantanamera.' Cuba's fuel crisis has paralyzed ordinary transportation. Bus stops overflow. Cubans cannot get to work or hospitals. One CiberCuba commenter: 'For those from the outside, they even lay out a magic carpet if necessary. But for those at home, it's just a matter of putting up with it.' Alberto de la Cruz calls it what it is: 'This is how the foreign communists visiting Cuba get around — like they're on a safari through a theme park.'

That same evening, Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap performs a short set of three songs at the Pabellón Cuba alongside American rapper Vic Mensa. The audience waves Cuban and Palestinian flags. Mo Chara tells the crowd: 'We as Irish people were Britain's first colony — it is important that we return the favour.' The concert runs on generator power.

Outside the Pabellón, nearly nine million Cubans have no electricity. Hospital staff are hand-pumping ventilators. The grid will not recover for days. No one on that stage mentions Cuba's political prisoners, or the 1,000 protesters from July 11th, 2021 who remain in jail, or the journalists under house arrest at that very moment.

Nine days before the convoy lands, Greta Thunberg posts an Instagram Reel. She calls the embargo 'a brutal act of collective punishment'. She also quotes a 1962 State Department memo about bringing 'hunger, desperation, and overthrow,' and praises Cuba's history of sending doctors abroad. Cuba sí, bloqueo no. A climate activist endorsing a petrostate's framing of its own crisis.

She does not mention Cuba's government. She does not mention the more than one million people who fled. She does not mention that Cuba's own policies — the monetary unification disaster of 2021, the failure to maintain power plants, the extraction of hard currency through tourism via GAESA while rationing food — are drivers of the crisis the embargo makes worse. Kiele Alessandra Cabrera, a Cuban-American student at the University of Florida, posts a viral response: educate yourself on the reality of Cuba.

None of this is accidental. The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples — ICAP — manages all foreign delegations. As Havana Times documents: 'When a delegation visits an agricultural camp, it's not just any camp but an international one destined for such a program. When a neighborhood is visited, it's a special one. When there are talks with autonomous civil society organizations, you speak with representatives previously chosen by the Communist Party.'

ICAP has extensive documented ties to Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence. And the organizations running the convoy are not neutral observers. A major Havana Times and El Toque investigation published the day before the convoy arrived found that Progressive International, CODEPINK, The People's Forum, and the International People's Assembly operate as a coordinated network that, quote, 'spreads Cuban disinformation.' On November 15th, 2021, actors from this same network helped the regime physically contain a planned peaceful civic protest in Havana.

Cuban musicologist Rosa Marquetti: 'Estoy harta de la folklorización de nuestra miseria' — 'I am fed up with the folklorization of our misery. No one asked us Cubans if we wanted to sacrifice ourselves to please nostalgic leftists, groupies of nonagenarian guerrillas, or dreamy academics. I'm fed up with Cuba being viewed as the theme park of resistance.' Comedian Ulises Toirac posts a challenge on Facebook: 'Take away their suitcases. Give them an abandoned house in Palo Cagao, 4,000 pesos a month, a ration book, a phone with an Etecsa line, and go pick them up in a month.' Opposition leader Manuel Cuesta Morúa identifies what he calls a 'double racism' — the racism of treating Cubans as noble savages who need help, and the racism of supporting a revolution that deliberately created the worst conditions of life.

Without question, this is a photo op for the Cuban regime. Patria y Vida.