Nor are they supposed to!!
This photo is from Santiago de Cuba. On the southeastern tip of the island, it is Cuba's former capital and its second largest and most important city, behind only the present-day capital of Havana, which is situated on the northwestern tip of the alligator-shaped Caribbean island. If you glance at a Cuban map, you'll see why Havana is sometimes called "the tail" and Santiago "the head" or "the mouth" of the alligator, or island. In the photo above, those old cannon still stare out at the sea entrance to Santiago. Those symbolic old rusty cannon signify that, from its discovery by Columbus in 1492, Cuba has always had to try to defend itself against the massive imperialist designs of foreign nations -- particularly Spain and America. But the history of Santiago is not why I feature it on April 19, 2017. Rather, it's the great old city's topicality.
The new Mayor of Santiago de Cuba is Beatriz Johnson Urrutia. There is nothing at all unusual about a female being the new Mayor of Cuba's second largest and most important city. The Cuban Revolution in 1952 was started and finished by great female guerrilla fighters and recruiters, especially Celia Sanchez, Haydee Santamaria, Vilma Espin, Tete Puebla, etc. It was a war that the Castro brothers, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and the other macho male characters later joined. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, women like Celia Sanchez, Haydee Santamaria and Vilma Espin made almost all of the key day-to-day decisions in Cuba except for military matters, which also deeply involved Cuban females such as Tete Puebla who today is a General in the Cuban army but as a teenager in the 1950s she was a fiercely feared female guerrilla fighter. Key guerrilla fighters and top decision-makers like Celia, Haydee and Vilma have died but the patterns they crafted on the island continue with day-to-day decisions mostly made by women such as Josefina Vidal, Marion Marbon Gonzalez, Elaine Diaz Rodriguez, Ana Teresa Igarza, Tania Vazquez Garcia, Anazansi Rodriguez, etc., and rising stars like Cristina Escobar and Jennifer Bello Martinez who are today the two most influential leaders of the all-important twenty-something generation of Cubans. SO, with Beatriz Johnson Urrutia becoming the Mayor of the hugely important city of Santiago de Cuba, its par-for-the-course on the island, at least since 1959, the year the extremely cruel, thieving, and misogynistic Batistiano and Mafiosi leaders were chased off the island by the female-fueled Revolution, mostly to become counter-revolutionaries from nearby Little Havana in Miami, Florida.
The mainstream U. S. media is neither gutsy enough or competent enough to tell you the truth about Cuba, but sources such as Sarah Stephens WILL tell you the truth about both the island and its hugely significant relations with its contentious neighbor, the United States. Ms. Stephens for the past ten years has expertly and lovingly led the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. She writes the insightful "Cuba Central" portion of the CDA website that is posted each Friday. She has greatly influenced any positives related to Cuba, including those so bravely made by former President Barack Obama. She has also had the guts and the decency to excoriate the vast Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S. and to challenge the handful of extremist Cuban-Americans who, since 1959, have mostly dictated the Cuban narrative in the United States as well as dictated the harshest anti-Cuban laws in the United States Congress, laws that, not coincidentally, are geared to enrich and empower them while also mounting cruel and continuous counter-revolutionary tactics against Cuba. Ms. Stephens is also not adverse to pointing out that the majority of Americans and Cuban-Americans who allow this, in their cowardice and stupidity, are extremely unpatriotic, as evidenced by their lack of concern regarding such things as the current 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations of America's Batistiano-fueled Cuban policy. And of course, Ms. Stephens regularly condemns the gutless and biased mainstream U. S. media for lying to the American people about Cuba. For example, Ms. Stephens correctly posted this sentence on her website: "It's not often that the U. S. media commits a gaffe and inadvertently tells the truth about Cuba." INDEED!! Sarah Stephens is your best source for the truth when it comes to Cuba, U.S.-Cuba relations, and the U. S. media.
And that brings me back around to Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, the new Mayor of Santiago de Cuba. The U. S. media and the U. S. Castro Cottage Industry want Americans to believe that mean revolutionary rulers in Cuba regularly machine-gun or otherwise spend half-their-time punishing women on the island while, in fact, it is women like Beatriz who make most of the day-to-day decisions in Cuba. Of course, the Castro Cottage Industry that dictates America's Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy also dictated a legal U. S. law in Congress that to this day dictates that everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. Visitors to Cuba, you see, might make judgments for themselves instead of only being told, decade after decade, what the Castro Cottage Industry wants you to think about Cuba.
And, uh, did I mention that Beatriz Johnson Urrutia has just been ELECTED Mayor of Santiago de Cuba? The two ladies above are dropping their votes in the ballot box. I don't know how they voted but I do know that most of the votes were for the very popular and highly respected Beatriz Johnson Urrutia.
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