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- [Rob] Coming up next.

(crowd chanting) Anti-government protests in Cuba spread to the U.S. this week including in Tampa and Miami, as Cubans on the Island, demand more food medicine and freedom.

The assassination of the Haitian President by a hit squad, raises questions about who ordered the killing.

And the red tide problem kills millions of fish in and around Pinellas County, leaving a stinking mess behind.

We'll discuss these issues and more next on Florida this Week.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

Red tide is fouling the waters of Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and nobody knows when it's going to end.

Crews have picked up 800 tons of dead Marine life in the past week throughout Pinellas County.

Most of that came from around St. Petersburg.

The millions of dead fish have caused a stinking mess for residents and businesses.

Mayor Rick Kriseman says the city's resources are strained and he's asking for more help from the State, and from Governor Ron DeSantis.

And Mayor Rick Kriseman joins us now.

Mayor, welcome back to Florida this Week.

- Thanks Rob, thanks for having me on today.

- Please give us an update on how bad are things today.

- Yeah, we're still struggling.

First off, I can't say enough about my entire city team from the administrators really, but in particular down to the men and women who are working every day, trying to clean up our waterways for our residents and this is really grueling work that they're doing.

It's not work when they said they wanted to come work for the city of St. Petersburg that I think they ever expected to do, but they're doing it, they're not complaining.

They're just trying to make things better for our residents.

I did get some good news today, and it looks like we're gonna have some additional resources coming our way in the manner of boots on the ground to give our folks a break, but more important or equally important additional boats.

And in particular shrimp boats, who will be able to cast a wider net and catch more fish at one time and hopefully prevent them from getting into our waterways and into our fingers and canals.

- Is the state of Florida giving all the help that you need as a city to do the cleanup?

- Well, DEP and my staff has the meeting with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection along with the Pinellas County.

And the county has been, as they always are has been a great partner with us.

DEP is funneling resources to the county and the county through its contracts are the ones who are bringing in the additional resources that we're requesting.

We also are working on an inter-local agreement that will allow some of those dollars that we've already been spending, on our debris removal crews, and on overtime for our employees to get back into our city coffers.

That was all unbudgeted.

So this is gonna be a big help.

It's something we've been asking for, and we wanna thank the DEP and Pinellas County for providing this assistance to us at this point in time.

- So this outbreak is highly unusual.

We've had red tide in the past.

Usually it comes in the fall.

It doesn't usually affect the Tampa Bay, the interior part of Tampa Bay.

It usually affects the coastline, the Gulf coast line.

And this is the first time that we've really had a bad red tide outbreak.

First time in about 40 years, we've had a red tide outbreak like this.

Do you think that there's a connection between the Piney point phosphate spill and this outbreak?

- I'm not a scientist, but certainly, and I hate to use the term Perfect Storm , but I kind of feel like we've had a perfect storm happened here.

As you were mentioning red tide does happen, but we haven't seen red tide where the concentration levels are as high.

And so you have to wonder whether Piney point didn't supercharge, what we normally would have expected make it that much worse.

And then add on top of that, we have a Hurricane Elsa that passes through at the same time this is happening.

And I believe while we were fortunate enough not to suffer from flooding and wind damage caught the hurricanes oftentimes cause, I think that that pushed a lot of this, the red tide and the dead fish further into Tampa Bay, into our bays, into our canals, into our fingers.

and that's part of the reason I think we're seeing species of fish that we don't typically see with red tide.

So I think it's a combination of things that have kind of supercharged this and made it so much worse.

- So for the residents, I mean, they're smelling this stuff, but also the death of the Marine life is caused by a toxic algae.

So is there danger for residents who go outside, see this in the canal or see this in the coffee pot bayou, breathe it in?

And is there a danger for humans breathing this stuff in?

- Yeah, we certainly wanna warn our residents, and I think the best thing that they can do is if they're in an area where there's a high concentration of the dead fish, they're better off either not going outside or what's kind of going back to our days of COVID put a mask on to at least reduce what you're breathing in.

I know that just from my own time that I spent out assisting our workers on cleaning up, I was out there for a little over an hour working with them.

And I had a mask on the entire time, but yet even that night, I still could smell that smell in my nose, and I could feel it in my throat a little bit.

And so I think there are things that we certainly would encourage our residents to do, to try and make sure they remain healthy, and safe, and limit their exposure if they're in an area that has a high concentration.

And the other piece I wanna mention while I'm talking about high concentrations is, the quicker we can get these things removed, this dead fish removed, the quicker we can recover because the longer the fish is in the water, and it decomposes, it puts more nutrients out which further feeds the red tide bloom.

- So Mayor Kriseman, do you think if it turns out it was Piney point, do you envision any sort of lawsuit against the owners of the Piney point phosphate mount?

- I certainly, there's always the wants, it's human nature to wanna be able to point the finger and say, this is the cause, this is why we're having the problem.

I'm not sure we're gonna be able to do that, but certainly, if the evidence is scientific evidence reveals that what happened in Piney point exacerbated and made things significantly worse.

You very well likely could see some litigation that results.

- Well, Mayor Kriseman good luck.

It's a terrible problem.

But thank you for joining us on Florida this Week.

- Thank you for having me on.

(upbeat music) - On the Island of Cuba, Cuban citizens were protesting this week in a rare show of defiance against their government that's led to confrontations between security forces and protestors.

Here in Florida, in Miami and Tampa, Cuban Americans have taken to the streets, some asking for the U.S. government to intervene in Cuba.

- They're taking them away from their house, making them go against the people in the streets.

And we need help here over there.

We need support.

We need everybody to go over there and help us.

- All we have right here Martin Luther king Jr. is the dreams, the same dreams that Dr. King had.

For today we're Cubans regardless of the color of their skin or the color of their ideas can live in peace, in freedom with all full human rights guaranteed.

- Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the University of South Florida.

He's done extensive research on international law and the tension between security and human rights.

And Dr. Jimenez-Bacardi, welcome to Florida this Week.

- Thanks for having me.

Happy to be here.

- Why the protests now?

I mean, certainly there've been food shortages in Cuba in the past, why the big protest last Sunday?

- I think part of it is just a tsunami of different crises that have inflicted the Cuban economy and the Cuban political system.

And there's especially four main factors that have really squeezed the average Cuban to a point of, where there's a food insecurity and things like that.

So the first of course is the pandemic.

The Cuban economy is highly dependent on tourism, and over the last year and a half, tourism has all but dried up, which has caused incredible problems 'cause the Cuban government is highly dependent on those foreign currency that they get from the tourism industry in order to be able to buy imports.

And so those have dried up.

And so there's been hyperinflation with food, medicine in Cuba.

The second, in addition to the pandemic and the economic repercussions is that that has had, you've got the issue of Venezuela's economy is also in tatters.

And the Cuban government had been highly dependent on Venezuela over the past few years for especially oil.

And so this is one of the reasons why you have blackouts in some cities in Cuba, which heightened the foods scarcity situation inside Cuba, as people can't depend on refrigerators and things of that nature.

Number three, is you have the U.S. economic embargo and sanctions, which were increased during the Trump administration, that has also had devastating effects on the Cuban economy, including its inability to get new credit lines in order to buy some of the basic foods.

And then number four, of course, is the government's own lack of political and especially economic reforms, that have been too little too late.

The Cuban government announced a new round of economic reforms earlier in the year, but they were seen as not going far enough.

And then you add to that, the new access that a lot of Cubans have, which is the access to the internet.

And we've seen in other places such as in the Arab Spring and how YouTube videos or other kinds of things can inspire other individuals to take to the streets and defy their authoritarian rulers.

And of course, in Cuba given that it's an authoritarian government, you've got this economic crisis, this pandemic crisis COVID numbers are at the worst, the worst that they'd been in the Island, and there's no real political avenue for your average Cubans to be able to meet their grievances.

And so when you combine all of that, it's not that surprising that you've got these mass anti-government or proreform protests across Cuba.

- I wanna switch gears and ask you about Haiti now, because it turns out that after the assassination of the Haitian President about 10 days ago, it turns out that two U.S. citizens were part of the hit squad.

An American company has been named as part of the plot.

A Haitian-American pastor and doctor has been arrested in connection with the assassination.

Washington post reported this week that some former Colombian servicemen were arrested after last week's assassination of the President, because they had received previous U.S. military training.

I'm just wondering, does the involvement of these people associated with America?

Does that say anything about the assassination to you?

- Well, I think to some extent, although there isn't any evidence of direct U.S. involvement, it shows that there are some serious costs to things like private security firms or mercenary companies, depending on what you wanna call them, and the fact that they're highly unregulated.

And so we've seen an growing number of problems with these companies and adding to instability, not just in Haiti most recently, but in other areas as well.

And so that's an area of the global economy, if you will, that needs to be highly regulated.

And the United States has been quite hesitant to do so.

In addition, there's also a long tragic tradition of the United States training foreign military officers, and sometimes those individuals either when they're in power or when they retire and now joined these kind of companies, they engage in gross human rights violations that there's also there's a long history of that as well.

And so I think Senator Leahy, made some comments 'cause he has been one of the proponents to amending the U.S. military assistance program to make careful human rights provisions added to that, to make sure that these kinds of cases don't happen.

But as long as you're gonna be training over 100 police and military around the world, and there's no regulation, serious regulation of private security firms, these kinds of events are unfortunately gonna be more common in the future.

- Professor, thank you so much for your time.

It's great to see you.

- Thank you for having me.

(upbeat music) - Well, now we have some experts in the studio to discuss the week's events in Cuba.

Al Fox is a Democrat and a long-time activist on U S Cuban relations.

He's the Founder of the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to re-establish trade relations with Cuba.

And E.J.

Otero is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and a Republican.

He's been active in local Hispanic politics for the Republican party.

And thank you both for joining us.

- My pleasure.

- Thank you.

- Let's start by going back to last Sunday.

And after the Cuban people were demonstrating the streets, some demonstrators here in the U.S. were backing them.

And the Mayor of Miami have said that U.S. should intervene in Cuba.

Mayor Suarez in Miami said the U.S. should consider airstrikes.

Al Fox, let me start with you.

What should the U.S. policy be toward Cuba?

- Well, first and foremost, lift the blockade, embargo call it whatever you want, and comments like that are just irresponsible.

United States is never going to militarily intervene Cuba.

If they had they'd have done it in the last 62 years.

The American people would never tolerate that.

- E.J.

Otero, what should the U.S. policy be toward Cuba?

- Well, any kind of intervention, any kind of military use has to be on the table.

That is military dogma that is in the department of defense for every event in the world.

And the situation with Cuba is one of them.

The actual carrying out of it is not just unilateral, it's not the United States.

We're gonna go in there's some protests in Cuba.

There's a lot of protests in Cuba people are getting hurt, people are getting killed, people, all the things are happening.

It is up to the Cuban people to go ahead and demonstrated gumption and see how they wanna take this on.

There are plenty of organizations around the world that are willing to help them out with weapons and that sort of thing if needed.

But when we're talking about airstrikes, airstrikes is a very dangerous proposition.

Is not off the table and it should never be off the table, depending on what happens, but that's where we are.

- But the U.S. hasn't been attacked by the Cuban government.

So why would we use airstrikes or even consider our strikes against Cuba?

- Well, the United States have not been attacked militarily, but it certainly has been attacked in many other ways with spy networks, with espionage in every possible way that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama declared Cuba the fourth largest threat of counterespionage in the world next to Russia, China, and Iran then it was Cuba.

So yeah, they have done a tax.

If you wanna read that, if you want to see it like that.

People have died because of their espionage efforts, brothers to the rescue and so on four individuals who are in jail.

And then they were returned to Cuba because there were murderers that were found to be a responsible for the deaths of the Americans and brothers to the rescue.

But any time you have a country like Cuba that has a preponderance of importance of the United States.

We have a very large Cuban population.

We have had historical relationships with Cuba, for over 100 years.

It is in our backyard.

We want the best for the folks in Cuba.

Anything that has to do with a carrying on democracy, with a carrying on a freedom and the principles of freedom for the average Cuban for all the Cuban people, is what we want.

- Al, what would you say back to that?

- Well, he said so many things here, but let me just start with the so-called brothers to the rescue and Cuba being this intelligences boogeyman spy network.

There's no question Cuba has admitted, that spying in the United States, and on the United States are two totally different things.

And this spy network that he's talking about and the brothers to the rescue and the people, the entire international community told United States that they were in prison unlawfully.

They gathered information on who, on fascist Cuban Americans in Miami, who are gathering weapons trying to smuggle weapons into Cuba.

They gathered that data and they turned it over to our FBI.

And then we send them to (indistinct) - We're going back like 20 years or even longer brothers to the rescue.

- But I've only come in because he raised.

- Yeah, the contemporary problem in Cuba is that they were demanding freedom on Sunday, they don't have adequate food and medicine.

People went to the streets, and it's now includes many of the Afro-Cuban population.

Whereas before a lot of Afro-Cubans didn't take part in these kinds of demonstrations.

Venezuela has had problems, not able to supply oil to Cuba.

There is the blockade as you mentioned, but what would you say is the primary reason that the government isn't able to do for the people at least for the people who are demonstrating in the streets, what needs to be done?

And Al let me start with you.

- Well, there's this perception that there's 11.5 million people on the Island in Cuba.

And there's a perception that millions of them took to the street, okay.

Like 35,000 people took to the streets across the country of 11.5 million people.

Now they had some legitimate grievances against the government to do so.

What happened was their demonstration was not the Genesis, was not removal of the Cuban government, or transition to democracy, that's the way we're spinning it.

The reason for the demonstration in street was COVID, and the lack of food.

Because what happened is that the Cuban government, their economy is a wreck.

There's no question about that.

And so they're gathering some of the little food they get, they send it to tourist areas, and that would be a bone in my throat as well.

On top of that, they shut the country down and they need money so badly open it up, they let people in, and so they opened up Varadero, which is one of the best beach resorts.

And these Europeans flooded in there over a period of a couple of weeks.

Apparently they all had COVID, it then spread to the community, and they were very angry about that.

So then they shut it down again, okay.

That's the Genesis for this demonstration.

It was all over by Monday morning.

We're carrying on the demonstrations here all week.

Everything's back when I say back to normal in Cuba as well as it can be.

- All right, so E.J.

what would you say though?

I mean the causes of this demonstration on Sunday, is it mismanagement by the Cuban government?

Is it the blockade?

Is it the withdrawal of Venezuelan oil?

Is it the lack of tourism on the Island?

Is it tourist economy?

What would you say the major reason is for the demonstrations on Sunday?

- Well, talking about spinning Al is very good at that.

He's been doing that for a very long time here in Tampa getting some peoples to believe his flute of Hamlin call.

But the problem with Cuba has always been the government, the lack of freedom.

There's only so much that people can take.

You have a new generation today that are aware that there's something outside, that they're not getting access to.

That the government is precluding them from getting to.

There have been persecutions, year round, year after year, human rights watch, amnesty international, all this groups that are not particularly right-wing organizations, accuse Cuba of being one of the most oppressive governments in the world.

And people are sick and tired of that.

There is no way first of all, to count that there were 35,000 peoples in Cuba, unless you were there and you counted head by head, or unless you go by the count of the Cuban government.

If you have access to that, God bless you.

But I don't think the rest of the world agrees with that.

When you have the European union, when you have a human rights committee in the United Nations, when you have almost every international organization turning against the government of Cuba, and noticing that this protest, or a reaction to repression and reactions to abuses, their reactions to denying LGBT rights, pride parades just two years ago, were stopped with police and an arresting all the folks that were getting together on LGBT pride parade that was called.

These are the things that people are calling on.

Is not medications it's not humanitarian aid, and it's not COVID.

First of all, because when it comes to Cuba, it is not a blockade, it is an embargo.

They still deal, the government of Cuba deals with 90 countries in the world.

And embargo and a blockade means that nobody deals with Cuba.

And it's not true.

90 countries in the world do the whole European union and its economic prowess do.

When it comes to medicines, and when it comes to humanitarian aid, the third leading exporter of medicines and food to cure the United States.

The problem is that the government of Cuba utilizes all that medications, and all that food, and all that as currency.

And they send it to Venezuela and they send it to their satellites, ideological countries, to prop up those governments.

So that's where we are.

- All right, so Al, let me go back to you.

It's not a blockade, they trade with 97 other countries, and he says that they do repress people for instance, the GLBTQ community answers some of the stuff-- - That's factually incorrect, okay.

The LGBT community is more than welcome in Cuba.

This goes back to some 40 years ago, when the LBGT community was not welcome in Cuba.

Raul Castro's daughter is the leader of the LGBT community.

So that is just nonsense propaganda, they make great stories, and the time to stop staying up is down and down is up.

We need to stop it.

Less than a month ago, 180 countries in the world, bended together, all our allies and all our enemies banded together to denounce the United States blockade on Cuba.

- You talk about the vote in the U.N. - Absolutely, and so technically E.J.

is right when he says, it's really not a blockade it's an embargo because they can trade with other countries.

But what's missing from that explanation, is that we tell these other countries, if you send goods to Cuba, we will cut your foreign aid.

So therefore they don't send the goods to Cuba.

So that's really a blockade.

- We just have 20 seconds for each of you.

What do you think is the next step?

where do you think this is headed?

Al 20 seconds.

- To me, I still don't understand, if the people of Cuba are suffering, remove the embargo and let them take their chances.

Let's take us back to where Barack Obama took us.

Everybody loved what was going on.

Everybody was happy.

- E.J.

20 seconds where do you think this is headed?

- The beast has been fed.

The people are already aware of the power that they have.

They're getting hungry.

And today there were not many demonstrations going on, but it's not going away.

People have already felt what it takes, they're talking.

They're gonna start talking to their families in the United States.

They're gonna realize the impact that they had in the world.

So the movement for freedom in Cuba is just beginning.

- E.J.

Otero, Thank you very much.

Al Fox, Thank you very much.

Really good debate.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for joining us.

You can view this and pass shows online @wedu.org or the PBS app and Florida this Week is now available as a podcast.

You can subscribe to it on our website or wherever you get your podcasts, and please join us again next Friday night at 8:30 and Sunday afternoon to 12:30.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Florida this Week is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

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