But ultimately, a rogue member is a rogue member and even a much better group is going to get an event like this now and then. I’m sure that the other members and official channels in America were deeply apologetic to Cuba and to Diaz-Canel personally

But was it really just one rogue member though? As I remember it, it was a faction of a number of members from the group that went to Cuba who chose to follow the lead of that one “rogue member” who held a leadership position within the organization in attending a meeting with an opposition group instead of the planned meeting with Diaz-Canel.

https://redstarcaucus.org/cuban-links/

Throughout the trip, members of the delegation from the Reform & Revolution Caucus (R&R) and the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) criticized the Cuban government both to our Cuban hosts and other DSA members, and skipped out on multiple delegation events. Most shamefully, both Maria (representing R&R) and Renée (representing SMC, and a member of the current NPC) skipped out on meeting with President Díaz-Canel, who spent more than 2 hours in a frank discussion specifically addressing the critiques these very same DSA members brought up to their Cuban hosts earlier on the trip

This behavior from the R&R and SMC delegates is anti-democratic, disorganizing, and chauvinistic. For a resident of the imperial core to go to a socialist state that has survived a U.S. blockade for multiple generations and critique its achievements as incomplete is the height of chauvinism. To reject the democratically-decided purpose of the delegation – which was to support Cuba against the U.S. blockade – and instead insert their individual political goals of making connections with opposition groups and advocate for Cuban government reform is anti-democratic. If the delegates from R&R and SMC wanted to make connections with government opposition groups and advocate for liberalization they should have applied to other delegations instead of the socialist one. Or they could have stayed at home; many other applicants who were aligned with the delegation’s goals were not able to attend due to limited seats on the delegation.

And as for other channels since then being deeply apologetic, I would hope so, but not an insignificant number of other DSA members at the time were defending the actions of the snubbers, going so far as citing Cuba’s “authoritarianism.” Hell, even here on hexbear there was a long-standing regular poster got permabanned (or perhaps temp-banned but chose never to return?) for insisting these actions were either not a big deal or were the correct thing to do. This gross betrayal goes a lot further and deeper than a single rogue member.