Countering the Clichés

From the beginning, the film plays with our pre-established notions (or at least, the hegemonic ones). It initially presents the main characters in a way which makes them appear as real opponents of socialism who have fled Cuba for their own selfish reasons — a perspective which soon begins to unravel.

As the plot unfolds, we see the inhuman acts perpetrated by the Miami opposition, the actual arguments among the pro-capitalist side, and the just cause for which the protagonists are really fighting.

The format is more or less what we would expect of any Hollywood movie, and is tailored for the general public. It isn’t especially demanding of the viewer — it doesn’t require any prior historical knowledge, though some at least will be surprised to find themselves watching a rare film which shows the real face of Cuban exile politics in Miami.

It doesn’t show US authorities’ full responsibility in financing, shielding, and supporting the terrorist activity against Cuba (for instance, the movie does feature Luis Posada Carriles, who in 1976 murdered seventy-three people by planting a bomb on a Cuban plane, but it is not made clear that he was a CIA agent).

Yet, Wasp Network does have the great merit of highlighting the destabilization and terrorism which the Cuban revolution has faced since the outset. This is a vision of history diametrically opposed to the one presented in hegemonic media for decades, where the exiles are all just victims persecuted by a “bloody dictatorship.”

From the outset, it is clear that Wasp Network is no defense of Cuban communism. The text opening the film refers to the “brutal” US embargo but also to the “Communist regime,” Cubans “fleeing an authoritarian state” and the fight to “free Cuba” — a choice of words hardly suggesting communist sympathies.

But the movie does open up an unusual perspective on the country, for it portrays the Cuban agents as sometimes heroic figures, convinced of the truth and honorability of their cause and ready to sacrifice their own personal lives in defense of a collective project.

Even to show that much — that things outside of the ordinary do, indeed, exist — is subversive under a capitalist system that celebrates individualism and denies that the citizens of socialist countries could in any way identify with “the regime.” Though it is by no means Marxist, the film rather troubles the story we are usually told about the Cuban people’s lack of support for the revolution.

Cultural products like cinema often communicate the notion that, even if some things go wrong under capitalism, fundamentally it’s the best system so long as people “act like they should.” Wasp Network turns this argument on its head.

Here, we see that in socialist Cuba there are conflicts and unresolved problems, just like in other countries. Hence it helps banish the clichés and stigma often used to demonize Cuba (much like Venezuela) en bloc, instead presenting the country as both “peculiar” and in many ways rather normal. Here, people both express contradictory feelings over the revolutionary process and are happy to live in Cuba.

This provides the general public a much more realistic picture of the Cuban revolution than they would usually be able to see in Western media, portraying a country characterized by much greater plurality — and even democracy — than the outside world is usually told.

And frankly, the fact that it’s a movie on Netflix saying this, not some activist group, makes it all the more effective in dismantling the prejudices of viewers who are normally subject to all kinds of disinformation.

Real People

To show the agents of the Cuban intelligence services not as cartoonish baddies, but as figures ready to risk their lives for their cause, certainly troubles the usual hierarchy of heroes and villains. Not least given that the opposition militants they are fighting are presented — almost for the first time on the big screen — as right-wing terrorists with ties to narco-trafficking, rather than as saintly victims of oppression battling for democracy.

At some points in the film, we also see the revolutionary leaders themselves being relatively “normalized.” Hence, the appearance of the foreign minister and Fidel Castro himself, with an extract from an interview where he insists on Cuba’s right to defend itself from attacks.

Similarly, army officers appear as human beings interacting with other human beings, rather than as treating people as mere pawns. For instance, they end up confessing to Olga Salanueva, wife of agent René González, the real reasons why he fled the country — contravening the compartmentalization necessary for this type of operation — and allowing the couple to go back to living together in Miami.

In fact, after the five agents were ultimately arrested in the United States, the Cuban leadership was dogged in its commitment to trying to liberate the so-called “Cuban Five” (known in Cuba as the “Five Heroes”). During their years in prison in Miami, there was a mass of mobilization efforts and public declarations to secure their release — pressure coming from not just Castro, but a broad-based popular movement and international solidarity efforts.

And it is on this last point — a collective, David-against-Goliath victory against US imperialism — that the most important part of this film is rooted. It portrays the real lives of five Cuban heroes who sacrificed their own freedom for the cause of saving the lives of others.

Released between 2011 and 2014, the five are now finally free, after over a decade of unjust imprisonment. Their example of generosity and commitment are an inspiration for those who dream of living in a socialist society — for only in such a society do we know that a sacrifice made in the name of collective well-being will have its reward.

The “Five Heroes” are living proof of the kind of “new man” of which Che Guevara once spoke — not only a windy theory, but a seed that took root in the Cuban Revolution, which is still bearing fruit.