OPINION:
I saw Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” in high school when it opened in 1990. The film focuses on the paradoxical injustices the U.S. brought upon American Indians while fighting the South to end slavery and touches on the compassion and cruelty of all humankind. The Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It also inspired me to become a human rights activist in college.
The story centers around how Mr. Costner’s character, Lt. John Dunbar, is embraced by his Lakota Sioux Nation neighbors who rename him “Dances With Wolves” after he adopts a wild, white pawed wolf he calls “Two Socks” and chronicles his transformation while living among a peaceful people. The film’s most crushing moment comes when Lt. Dunbar’s fellow Union soldiers shackle him in chains for having “turned injun” and kill Two Socks for sport. Even though Two Socks and the Sioux embraced Lt. Dunbar, his former comrades treated them with animosity because of their misguided desire to dominate.
Twenty-seven years after I saw the film, I served as an adviser at Radio and Television Marti, the Voice of America sister network that broadcasts news to Cuba. In a strange way, I was thrust into a new world like Lt. Dunbar and learned the customs of a beautiful but exiled and oppressed people struggling for freedom.
Today, I still work with the Cuban democracy movement to combat the cruelty of the Castro military dictatorship. So you can imagine my shock when last month, Mr. Costner, whose film inspired me to support human rights, met with Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel in the Palace of the Revolution, where members of the communist aristocracy dine on champagne. In contrast, the Cuban population starves on slave wages.
Several reports say Mr. Costner met with the Castro dynasty while producing a series about underwater archaeology in the Caribbean and that Mr. Diaz-Canel said the Hollywood director’s visit brought the regime “enormous satisfaction.” As part of their public relations campaign, the regime even published photos of Mr. Costner warmly locking his hands in solidarity with the communist dictator.
I was further disappointed to learn that Mr. Costner is no stranger to the communist regime. He visited Cuba in 2001 while screening “Thirteen Days” and met Fidel Castro. According to the Cuban state press, he described the meeting as “an experience of a lifetime” and said, “In the world we live in, I’m always happy about news that shows us getting closer to each other.”
Contrary to Mr. Costner’s misguided sense of international diplomacy, there is no value in legitimizing oppressors. Mr. Costner should ask himself: Would Alan Ladd or Veronica Lake have embraced Adolf Hitler in the 1940s? Jane Fonda made this mistake by posing with North Vietnamese troops in 1972 but had the good sense to apologize, saying that her bad judgment “hurt” her to her “grave” and that she made a “huge, huge mistake.”
Mr. Costner can do more than apologize. He can make a difference by coming to Miami to meet with Cubans whose families were tortured and murdered by the communists he embraces. He can meet with dissidents of all ages who were forced into exile and tour the American Museum of Cuban Diaspora and Bay of Pigs Museum and Library to learn the truth about the Cuban Revolution and how it engaged in the persecution of homosexuals, promotes racism by targeting Afro-Cubans, tortures dissidents and murders opposition leaders who champion democracy.
To that end, I will extend this sincere invitation to the man who directed the film that once inspired me as a young person: Mr. Costner, the Cuban American community in Miami welcomes you with open arms so that we can tell you true stories of how Havana’s regime embraces the cruelty you condemn in your films. Come to Miami so we can show you how Hollywood has distorted the truth about the Cuban Revolution and glorifies a reign of terror that has brought suffering to a nation of people for 66 years.
Here, we will show you people who have spent decades fighting a regime’s desire to dominate but refuse to give up. Here, we will share how you can join the good fight as your heroic character, Lt. John Dunbar, did. Come to Miami, Mr. Costner, so you can make a difference for human rights and democracy instead of allowing totalitarian oppressors to exploit your celebrity status.
Come meet with the Cuban opposition — not in royal palaces littered with communist propaganda, but in museums that reveal the truth — so that you too can embrace the right side of history, where you belong.
• Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former Washington prosecutor and journalist who served as a senior adviser and director of the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting from 2017 to 2021.
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