Cuba Libre & The July 11th Uprising

You may have heard about Cuban American protests in the streets of Miami, but what’s happening in Cuba itself, where protest often carries stiff punishment from the communist dictatorship? It’s hard to find accurate coverage given the information embargo imposed by the Castro regime. Ian Vasquez returned to the show to explain what the events of the July 11th uprising symbolize in a country whose people have lived in fear of persecution and torture for decades.Ian is Vice President for international studies at the Cato Institute and director of its Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He is a foreign policy correspondent for CNBC, NBC, C-SPAN, CNN, Telemundo, Canadian Television, NPR, and Voice of America. He is also the co-author of the Human Freedom Index – a subtopic for this Sunday’s show – the editor of Global Fortune: The Stumble and Rise of World Capitalism, and the coeditor of Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World.Vasquez finds that technology and the arts are creating new possibilities for exposing the miserable results of the Cuban “experiment” with socialism, which could only be sustained for so long by repression and intimidation. The rallying cries for freedom have grown louder and louder since Cubans got a taste of freedom from the outside world.