When the lights went out in Cuba last month leaving in the dark 10 million people, American media coverage reflexively reached for its tired old frame: a failed communist state, a dying regime, an opportunity. What that coverage cannot see, because it has not been looking at Cuba the way Cuba has been looking at itself, is what we stand to lose when the logic of possession replaces the logic of solidarity.Last week, the Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin, a sanctioned Russian vessel, arrived at the Cuban port of Matanzas. It made the first delivery of oil to the country in three months, unloading 730,000 barrels of crude – enough to satisfy Cuban energy needs for just 10 days. Another Russian tanker headed to Cuba, the Sea Horse, diverted to Venezuela.The US blockade on Cuba continues, with a US destroyer and other military vessels enforcing it in the Caribbean.Donald Trump, the president of the United States — who a federal jury found liable for sexual abuse — has announced that he expects to have “the honour” of “taking” Cuba. “Whether I free it, take it — I think I can do anything I want with it,” he said. Characteristically crass and perhaps politically unhinged as this language may seem, Trump merely said the quiet part out loud.This is the logic of the plantation — and not incidentally, the logic of the rapist. Specifically and historically, this is the logic that the US has applied to Cuba fo …
