Club Anarcocapitalista de Cuba: Anarcho-Capitalist Club ... in Cuba

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h/t Lew Rockwell (h/t Travis Holte): http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/...pitalist-club/

Cuba's Anarcho-Capitalist Club Plants the Seed, Defies State Oppression
http://panampost.com/elisa-vasquez/2...te-oppression/
Elisa Vásquez (22 August 2014)
translated by Adam Dubove


Members of the Anarcho-Capitalist Club of Cuba, including founders Joisy García, on the far left, and Nelson Chartrand, third from the left. (CAC Facebook)

Nelson Chartrand and Joisy García run the Anarcho-Capitalist Club of Cuba. With eight other members, they are focused on promoting the radical ideas of the philosophy on the island — a place where, as they describe, “everything is illegal.”

This is no easy task. Capitalism could not be further from the Cuban reality — private property is expressly forbidden as an individual right — and the totalitarian nature of the Fidelista state means anarchism is even more distant.

The Cuban regime’s decades of economic confinement have been bad enough, but repression of thought is also ever present, and it is only getting worse. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has blacklisted Cuba for “the level of threats, harassment, and acts of repudiation against human rights defenders in Cuba … particularly those involved in the defense of the rights of persons who have been deprived of liberty for political reasons,” among many other crimes (PDF, section 138).

However, the anarcho-capitalists haven’t given up after facing threats and aggression.

Chartrand can only access the internet once per week, through a connection provided by an embassy in Havana, but he graciously shared some of his precious online time with the PanAm Post and our readers.

What was the genesis of the Anarcho-Capitalist Club in Cuba? How did you find libertarian thought on an island where knowledge is so restricted?

The birth of the Anarcho-Capitalist Club of Cuba came after Joisy García, a friend of mine, received a couple of videos from a friend who lives abroad. They were videos that contained lectures by Jesús Huerta de Soto, among others, and this made us think about and immerse ourselves in this political philosophy. As Huerta de Soto correctly points out, it is the system truly compatible with human nature.

[...]

Are you classified as the opposition in Cuba, or just advocates of ideas?

We are classified as the opposition, even though the goal of the club in this first stage is to introduce a new and alternative way of thinking.

How do you express and spread the ideas of liberty in Cuba?

The club has an institute with a digital library, which through the Indpendent Libraries network in the country, we use to spread libertarian ideas.

We are organizing conferences about the Austrian school of economics, polycentric law, and other topics related to free-market anarchy.

What obstacles do you face?

We clearly have some barriers to overcome. A member of the club has already been detained. He was threatened that he must desist with the idea, but we continue on.

[...]

Have you received any help from international organizations?

We have received help from the Mises Institute Hispano, which has provided a lot of digital content … other friends have helped us, for example, to launch Mises Cuba.

[see link for full article: http://panampost.com/elisa-vasquez/2...te-oppression/]

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