28.4.17

Cuba's Fascinating UNIQUENESS!!

It's like NO OTHER!
         This is an absolutely gorgeous, precious, beautiful and absolutely amazing Cuban baby girl. She illustrates why the Cuban saga is totally unique and like no other nation's history or topicality in the entire world. Her father, sentenced by a controversial Miami court, was imprisoned...supposedly for life...in a top-security California federal prison. His wife -- far, FAR away on the island of Cuba -- was not allowed to visit him. YET, she was impregnated with her husband's sperm and their reward was this little angelic girl.
       By the time this little girl was born in Cuba, her father -- his name is Gerardo Hernandez -- was miraculously out of that California prison and BACK IN CUBA IN TIME TO WITNESS THE BIRTH OF HIS UNIQUE CHILD. And now, perhaps, you know what I mean by the title and sub-title of this update. This saga's propitious turnaround relates to a United States President and a United States Senator intervening in what they considered an egregious United States Cuban policy that also currently gets a LOUD 191-to-0 international condemnation in the United Nations, a policy largely dictated since 1959 by a handful of two generations of revengeful Cuban exiles from the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba.
     Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont and President Barack Obama are the two great and brave Americans who made it possible for that gorgeous little girl to be born on the much-maligned island of Cuba. Mr. Leahy and Mr. Obama are/were rare birds in American political circles, meaning they care about totally innocent Cubans on the island and they care about the worldwide image of America's democracy.
         Prior to Donald Trump, Mr. Obama served two terms...8 years...as the U. S. President and, thankfully, he listened to the wisdom and decency of Senator Leahy when it came to Cuba, as shown above as Air Force One neared its historic approach to Cuba. Senator Leahy often visited Cuba and in 2016 Mr. Obama became the first sitting U. S. President to visit the island since Herbert Hoover arrived on a warship in 1928. Obama, encouraged by Leahy, arrived peacefully in Cuba and without any hint of belligerence...and both men in their positive political careers have had the rare guts to display dire respect for the safety and the sanctity of totally innocent Cubans on the island. And that's why Obama and Leahy played significant roles in the birth of the little Cuban girl who is now healthy and beloved on the appreciative island.
      The story of the Cuban Five is a microcosm, but a HUGE one, in the contentious and historic saga of U.S.-Cuban relations. As I suggest often in this forum and in this Google era, judge things for yourself after using your search engine and, for details about the aforementioned little Cuban girl, merely type in "Cuban Five" to access literally thousands of pages of information. The five Cubans depicted above were in the Miami area in 1998 when they were arrested and charged with being Cuban spies. But as Wikipedia correctly explained: "They were in the United States to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, The F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation and Brothers to the Rescue." The five Cubans, with ample reason, believed that those four unchecked groups were involved with or supportive of extreme and repeated acts of terrorism against innocent Cubans -- such as the terrorist bombing of the child-laden civilian Cubana Flight 455. Indeed, when a decent Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, also complained about such things, he was car-bombed. But after their arrest, the Cuban Five were tried in a Miami courtroom, almost assuring their fate. Thus began a major chapter in U.S.-Cuban history.
        With their convictions and sentences in a Miami courtroom a foregone conclusion, the Cuban Five were sent to five different federal U. S. prisons with sentences up to life. Cuba immediately launched what became a worldwide clamor to "Free the Cuban Five." That plea quickly attained worldwide resonance.
Amnesty International and others joined the fight.
      When President Obama became the first American president with the guts to seriously attempt to normalize relations with Cuba, Josefina Vidal, Cuba's Minister of U. S. Affairs, was responsive but she drew a line in the sand -- "Free the Cuban Five and we will talk." The President was informed, "She means it."
Josefina Vidal stuck to her stringent DEMAND.
      President Obama, acutely concerned with Human Rights and how America's Cuban policy so acutely harmed America's image, bravely and decently defied Miami and Congress as he embraced the enormous task of freeing the Cuban five. And that was the embrace that eventually led to the reopening of embassies in the two capital cities for the first time since 1961, along with other major Obama-orchestrated steps that sliced deeply into the Miami-Batistiano-Congress axis that for over half-a-century had solely dictated America's Cuban policy, a policy that to this day receives a 191-to-0 condemnation in the UN.
       But as President Obama, aided by American patriots such as Senator Patrick Leahy, began working on freeing The Cuban Five, they had all served 14 years in separate U. S. prisons. It was widely reported that Gerardo Hernandez, shown in the middle in the above photo, was receiving the worst treatment in his California prison. In Havana his beloved wife Adriana had given up hope of ever seeing him in person again and, with all her heart, she wanted to have his baby as an everlasting remembrance of their love for each other. Unaware of the headway President Obama and Josefina Vidal were making on freeing The Cuban Five, Adriana's wish concerning a baby was conveyed to Senator Leahy. Incredibly, Mr. Leahy used his considerable power in the U. S. Senate and with the White House to have Gerardo's semen flown from his California prison to Havana and the rest is history; Adriana was impregnated with Gerardo's baby!!
        Also incredibly, thanks to President Obama and Senator Leahy, Gerardo Hernandez was a totally free man AND back in Havana in time to feel his baby moving inside his wife Adriana's very pregnant stomach!!
After watching his baby being born, Gerardo held it.
Gerardo named his baby girl Gema.
 Adriana, Gerardo, and their little girl Gema.
Gerardo and his baby girl.
Gema Hernandez Perez.
A beautiful part of U.S.-Cuban history.
And by the way:
An excellent map courtesy of Cubacasas.net.
*&***********************&*



No comments:

cubaninsider: "The Country That Raped Me" (A True Story)

cubaninsider: "The Country That Raped Me" (A True Story) : Note : This particular essay on  Ana Margarita Martinez  was first ...