CodePink’s Cuba Trip Is the Most Shameless Stunt the American Left Has Pulled in Years
My dad is Cuban. My mom is Nicaraguan. Both sides of my family fled socialism. I grew up hearing stories about what it means to have the government control your food, your power, your ability to say a single word out loud.
So when I tell you that what CodePink just did in Cuba made my blood boil — you should understand exactly where that’s coming from.
This week, CodePink organized what they’re calling a “humanitarian convoy” to Cuba. They chartered flights to Havana. They brought Ilhan Omar’s daughter. They brought Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer worth millions who is best known for telling his audience that America deserved 9/11. They showed up on the island — the same island where Cubans are living through a total blackout, no electricity, no food, standing in lines for hours — and they checked into a 5-star hotel.
The Gran Hotel Bristol Meliá Collection, to be specific. One of the nicest hotels in Havana.
And they posted the whole thing on social media like they were on vacation.
The Excuse Is Even Worse Than the Action
When people called them out — and the backlash was immediate — Hasan Piker went to his followers with a defense: “The American government makes it illegal for Americans to stay wherever they want when they’re in Cuba. They have to stay in what they’ve declared as 5-star hotels.”
That got a Community Note on X almost immediately. Because it’s not true. US law restricts Americans from staying at properties owned by the Cuban government or its officials. There is no rule that forces you into a 5-star resort while the people you claim to be helping don’t have electricity.
They didn’t stay in a luxury hotel because they were forced to. They stayed in a luxury hotel because that’s who they are. The “humanitarian” framing is the cover story. The 5-star hotel is who they actually are.
Let Me Tell You What Was Happening While They Were There
The same weekend CodePink landed in Havana and started posting pool photos, the Cuban Electric Union announced a total blackout across the entire island. Not rolling blackouts. Not 20 hours without power. Total. As in, the grid went down completely.
Cubans — the ordinary ones, the ones CodePink claims to care about — were sitting in 90-degree heat with no fans, no refrigeration, no way to cook food. Some hadn’t had reliable power in weeks. Protests have been breaking out every single day since March 6.
And CodePink was at the Meliá, which runs on private generators.
They were meeting with Mariela Castro — the daughter of Raúl Castro, one of the most powerful people in the Communist Party apparatus — as part of a trip organized by something called Progressive International.
Let that land for a second. They flew to Cuba to meet with the regime. Not with dissidents. Not with the people in the streets. With the people running the regime that is causing the suffering they claim to oppose.
This Is Not Humanitarian Work. This Is Propaganda Tourism.
I want to be fair here. CodePink says they delivered thousands of pounds of aid to Cuba. Maybe they did. I’ll give them that much. In my experience watching these kinds of solidarity trips over the years — and I’ve followed this pattern since I was a kid hearing about it from my family — the aid is always real enough to put in the press release and small enough to be irrelevant to the people who actually need it.
But you don’t get credit for dropping off supplies and then checking into a 5-star hotel to meet with the daughter of the man who spent decades putting people in prison for disagreeing with the government. That’s not humanitarianism. That’s a photo op.
Real humanitarian work in Cuba looks like the people at Prisoners Defenders — the human rights organization that has been documenting over 1,000 political prisoners by name, at personal risk, from inside the island. It looks like the journalists from 14ymedio and CiberCuba who file dispatches from Havana knowing the regime is watching. It looks like the families of the July 11 protesters who are still serving sentences of 5 to 25 years for walking into the street and saying “Libertad.”
None of those people were at the Meliá. They can’t afford the Meliá. In many cases, they can’t leave the country.
The Real Purpose of This Trip
CodePink is not confused about what Cuba is. They know. They just don’t care — or more precisely, they agree with the political project of the Cuban regime more than they care about the Cuban people.
The purpose of this trip was not to help Cubans. The purpose was to generate content that advances the narrative that US sanctions are the cause of Cuban suffering — and that if America would just leave the regime alone, everything would be fine.
This is a lie I grew up hearing. I’ve visited family in Cuba. I’ve seen the buildings that haven’t been painted since before I was born. I’ve seen what it looks like when a government owns everything and the people own nothing. The blackouts aren’t caused by American sanctions. The blackouts are caused by 65 years of a Communist government investing in political control instead of power plants.
CodePink knows this. They’re not ignorant. They’re dishonest.
The Audacity Has a Point
Here’s what genuinely bothers me most: this kind of trip works. Not on Cuban Americans, not on anyone who grew up with this history in their bones. But on the American college student who sees a Twitch streamer posting from Havana about “the beauty of the Cuban people” and “US imperialism” — it works on them.
It’s designed to. Hasan Piker has millions of followers. Isra Hirsi has hundreds of thousands. They showed up in Cuba, they posted pretty pictures of old buildings and classic cars, and they left before anything they said could be tested against reality.
Meanwhile, Cubans are in the streets every day. Protesters are being arrested. The grid is down. And the Left is at the pool at the Meliá posting solidarity content.
My dad left Cuba because people like CodePink helped keep regimes like this in power — by lending them international credibility, by deflecting accountability, by making the conversation about American sanctions instead of Communist governance. Sixty-five years later, nothing has changed.
Patria y Vida.
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