The entire article is very good and gives a solid reasoning (for baby leftists, not anyone here) of why we need to support Cuba. It also highlights the weakness of both the DSA and the DSA IC from within that allowed this to happen + the steps they need to take. Give it a read. (The more I read stuff like this plus the history of real movements I realize why things like DemCent and other hardline ML things are needed but that's not a discussion for here).
I'm highlighting just the parts relevant to the title.
Multiple delegates chose to skip out on parts of the programming, including declining to meet with the president of Cuba, who held a frank conversation with the delegates who did attend for more than two hours.
Throughout the trip, members of the delegation from the Reform & Revolution Caucus (R&R) and the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) criticized the Cuban government both to our Cuban hosts and other DSA members, and skipped out on multiple delegation events. Most shamefully, both Maria (representing R&R) and Renée (representing SMC, and a member of the current NPC) skipped out on meeting with President Díaz-Canel, who spent more than 2 hours in a frank discussion specifically addressing the critiques these very same DSA members brought up to their Cuban hosts earlier on the trip. This means that the Cuban hosts were listening thoughtfully to the critiques and relayed them back to the President. That our Cuban comrades would care this deeply and thoroughly about our critiques is a sign that they honor us as equals and truly want to make ties with U.S. socialists, as relatively powerless as we are.
Maria in particular met with anti-government opposition groups while on delegation, which when taken together with the fact of her skipping the meeting with the comrade President suggests a goal of undermining the Cuban socialist state, not defending it against U.S. imperialism. Furthermore, R&R declined to follow what few guidelines the International Committee offered around discussion of the trip after returning. Delegates were instructed to keep news of the conversation with President Díaz-Canel private until an official reportback; R&R decided instead to discuss this at their caucus panel, pre-empting the official reportback.
Admire Canel's patience to put up with the kind of freak that takes the opportunity of going to Cuba to backseat actual socialists. Same energy as the Weather Underground being petitioned by the Viet Minh to build a broad movement and focus on bringing along the masses, but our audacious white saviours know better than that: we must build a perfect party of 14 people instead.
Raúl Castro managed to find literally the gentlest person in the entirety of Cuba to succeed him.
Or, more likely, after decades of dealing with the US, they know what to expect, even from the “socialists”.
Canel was also incredibly popular in the country by virtue of his own actions too. He wasn't just handed power by Raúl, he had to work for it.
A recently stumbled upon some article (Wikipedia?) that listed some of the things WU did and I thought they sounded cool as hell.
I didn't look into it further and now I'm sad
Don't let that one misguided decision dissuade you, things aren't so black and white. They were mostly pretty cool, I'd recommend you watch this doc if you're interested in the history of that sort of group.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: