Duration - 8:39
[a video about Cuba from the news collective Belly Of The Beast]

Vic Mensa came to Cuba — but not as a performer. The Chicago rapper arrived as part of the Nuestra América Convoy, an international solidarity mission bringing humanitarian aid to an island under one of the longest economic blockade in modern history.

“From a U.S. perspective, the pain of the world is often out of sight, out of mind,” he said in an interview with Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández. Vic came to Cuba to see the impact of U.S. policy firsthand.

Cuba didn't just move him politically. It moved him personally, as a Black man, as a father, as someone who carries both America and Africa inside him.

Walking deeper into Old Havana, he kept seeing faces that looked like home. Like Chicago. Like Ghana. Like family.

“What I like the most about this experience is seeing that there are Black people on this planet who can't be broken,” he said.