Danny Valdez has confirmed his 2023 Cuba delegation trip and his advisory role to Mayor Zohran Mamdani after a since-deleted travel diary surfaced online.
Valdez, who hosted a fundraiser for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in 2025, traveled to Cuba with a delegation from the DSA International Committee from Oct. 22 to Oct. 26, 2023, according to the Nov. 9, 2023 blog post entitled “The Cuba Diaries.” The group met with President Miguel Diaz-Canel on the third day of their visit with the stated purpose of partnering to end the US embargo, in place since 1962.
“It was genuinely a big accomplishment for our delegation that this meeting took place. It was a sign that the Cuban government took our organization seriously and saw us as potential partners in the work of ending the US blockade,” Valdez wrote in the blog post.
Valdez confirmed the trip to The Post and acknowledged he advised Mamdani on Cuba policy during his mayoral campaign, ahead of a September 2025 appearance on “The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos” podcast. He said he and the DSA traveled to Cuba to “challenge the blockade” and “affirm our position that we do not support the general policies the US has toward Cuba.”
During the meeting with Diaz-Canel, the Cuban president complained about US sanctions. “No other country has to operate under such conditions. Vietnam and China are not under blockade, and are able to develop their approach to socialism,” Diaz-Canel said, according to Valdez’s account.
Valdez can be seen grinning in a group photo with Diaz-Canel, who became the first non-Castro to lead the island in over 60 years after Raul Castro stepped down in 2021. DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique is also seen next to Diaz-Canel in the photo posted on Valdez’s blog. Siddique did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The delegation’s accommodations stood in sharp contrast to conditions described in recent reports on Cuban poverty. Valdez, Siddique and other DSA members lodged at the Grand Aston Havana, a privately owned five-star, 600-room hotel equipped with a rooftop pool, spa, bars and restaurants.
“We undoubtedly had an abnormally luxurious experience of Cuba. We were driven around in a large air-conditioned bus. We had ample access to food and water. Our hotel was sleek and modern, with a rooftop pool, a gym, and a full bar at our disposal,” Valdez wrote. He claimed the hotel would “hoard food” and contrasted the “splendor” he enjoyed with scenes of starving people and buildings he described as looking “bombed out.”
He also noted the “welcome cocktail” provided by the hotel, which he described as a “sweet, blue concoction with rum in it.” The group dined at top restaurants throughout their stay and concluded their trip at La Torre, an elegant restaurant on the 33rd floor of Cuba’s iconic Focsa building.
Valdez’s family background adds complexity to his Cuba advocacy. His family fled Cuba following the communist overthrow of the island, yet he has defended aspects of the regime’s governance. “Of course I wish that the Cuban government did not resort to the type of political repression that led to my grandfather being jailed for six years,” he wrote, adding, “But wishes do not make political reality.”
He credited Cuba’s Committee for the Defense of Revolution (CDR), a neighborhood surveillance organization, with building a “thriving community” enriching children’s lives, despite admitting the CDR was responsible for his grandfather’s arrest. He argued that US policy forced the communist regime to govern as if in a “constant state of war.”
“When one understands where the aggression in this conflict originates, and appreciates the scale at which a war is indeed being waged against Cuba, it is difficult not to side with Cuba,” he added.
The delegation met with numerous high-profile Cuban political figures during their four-day visit, including Fidel Castro’s niece, Mariela Castro, at the island’s National Center for Sex Education. There she described establishing a “National Day Against Homophobia,” combining it with the existing “Farmers Day” as “Farmers Against Homophobia Day” when her initial date selection of May 17 encountered scheduling conflicts.
In April 2026, Valdez founded “Cuban Americans for Cuba,” a nonprofit advocating for an end to the US embargo. “We are Cuban Americans united by a common goal: to end the US embargo on Cuba,” its website stated. Valdez, who staged a short-lived bid for New York City Council in District 3 encompassing the West Village and Chelsea, works as an information technology lead for science education nonprofit BioBus, according to his LinkedIn. Valdez did not respond to The Post’s request for comment regarding the diary’s contents.
The DSA’s Cuba engagement extends beyond this delegation. In August, the organization released a tribute to “100 Years of Fidel [Castro].” “Fidel was an organizer, a fighter, and endures as a stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination for the Global South,” the statement said, without mentioning Cuban political prisoners. Valdez and the delegation have not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with the visit.
Valdez gushed about his friendship with Mamdani in a November 2025 X post. “Almost a year ago, we hosted a small fundraiser in our living room for a friend, organizer, and socialist in office running what felt like a long-shot campaign for mayor,” he wrote.