Innocent Cubans Suffer from Miami's Hypocrisy and Crime

{Updated for Sunday, August 11th, 2013}

     The above AP/Ramon Espinosa photo was taken Friday, August 9th, 2013. It shows 43-year-old New Yorker Conner Gorry, a U. S. citizen, in Havana enjoying a cigar as she promotes Cuba Libro, an English-language bookstore-cafe that she co-owns. Ms. Gorry is a journalist who has lived in Cuba since 2002 and, uh, she sorta likes the island and its people. This photo, I believe, reveals an image of Cuba that Americans are not supposed to see, partly illustrating why a few Cuban-exile extremists continually mandate that Cuba is the one place in the world that Americans cannot freely visit. That makes it easier for them to self-servingly dictate Cuba's image to Americans. This has been going on since 1959 for sordid economic, political, and revengeful reasons. 

      Thursday night {August 8-2013} CNN {photo: image.com} had an in-depth report on two Miami families mourning the police-induced deaths of two young men. A tazed, subdued skate-boarding teenager was killed as police officers reportedly indulged in celebratory dancing. Another young man died in his car after Miami police fired more than 100 shots at it as it was apparently stopped harmlessly in a busy Miami street.

       If anything remotely resembling what CNN said happened in Miami ever happened in Havana, the anti-Castro Cuban-American zealots in the U. S. Congress probably would have flown Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez back to Washington so she could enlighten Americans about what a terrible place CUBA is! Meanwhile, don't expect them to comment on problems in places like Miami (Florida) or Union City (NJ)!

        Of course, Senator Rubio from Miami and Senator Menendez from Union City appear to be a lot more concerned with fomenting Cuban-exile problems in Cuba than in trying to solve the myriad of problems in their American cities or in America as a whole. That's just one tangible aftermath of the Cuban Revolution.

       The Cuban Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista/Mafia dictatorship in Cuba in January of 1959 changed Cuba forever. It changed America even more. In particular it reshaped the U. S. democracy.

Yet, since January of 1959 Havana has steadfastly remained the capital of Cuba.

      But in the 1950s incredible amounts of ill-gotten money left the Batista-Mafia dictatorship. No less than three Latin American magazines in the mid-1950s reported that the top 21 people in Batista's Cuba had EACH stashed in excess of $1 million in Swiss banks. The leading Mafia thugs in Cuba maintained residences and business connections in Miami, Tampa, and Union City, NJ. Thus, it is presumed more loot was sent from Cuba to banks in those cities than to banks in Switzerland. Life Magazine in 1958 said in the above photo Mafia kingpin Meyer Lansky was leaving one of his giddy gambling casino/hotels in Havana with a satchel containing one night's take from one casino -- approximately $200,000 in 1950s dollars!

For decades such loot has overwhelmed Miami and Washington!

 So...since 1959...welcome to the capital of Miami:

It's officially known as Little Havana, USA, in Miami.

       In addition to the two police-induced killings highlighted this week by CNN, the FBI this week arrested two Miami area mayors; Major League Baseball was forced to suspend 14 players this week because all 14 were tied to illegal drugs obtained from an infamous clinic in Miami; the University of Miami is reeling from a scandal involving alleged payments to athletes; USA Today has used countless pages explaining how Miami is at the "epi-center" for the illegal distribution of prescription drugs; USA Today has used many other pages to detail how Miami leads the world in Medicare fraud; the Miami Herald and other newspapers in Miami had to fire some of its journalists when it was revealed that the George W. Bush administration was paying them tax-dollars to write anti-Castro articles; the most respected man on the Miami-Dade County School Board voted to ban a little children's book about Cuba and just before he died revealed he had shamefully done so only because he feared he or his family would have been bombed if he had not done so; one of the Miami area's most respected business-women had her business recently bombed out of existence apparently because she very legally booked flights to Cuba and she is still waiting for someone to seriously investigate the crime; today the most infamous anti-Castro zealot who admitted bombing hotels in Havana and is allegedly the catalyst in the bombing of a Cuban civilian plane killing 73 on board is a heralded citizen of Little Havana; the Cuban-American who was the top newsman in Miami criticized terrorist acts against innocent Cubans and then he was car-bombed; the Cuban-American who was a threat to lead the exiles in Miami died in a car-bomb blast at his home; etc., etc., etc. And this has been going on since 1959 almost unabated with amazingly little criticism in a democracy. Once Vice President George H. W. Bush -- closely tied throughout the years to Miami's most infamous anti-Castro extremists -- was dispatched to Miami by President Reagan to try to lessen the outrageous impact of Miami's rampant cocaine wars, a gruesome episode depicted in the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys."

President Reagan reportedly told VP Bush, "My wife keeps me awake at night raging about Miami!"

      Carl Hiassen was born in Florida in 1953. He attended the University of Florida. He became a journalist for the Miami Herald at age 23. Today he is a very popular columnist at the Herald and one of America's top authors with myriad best-sellers under his belt. Renowned for his humor, Hiassen has also made a nice living -- via his columns and books -- writing about Miami's uniqueness when it comes to corruption.

        Edna Buchanan is in her 70s now and still perhaps America's best crime novelist. Her book "Miami, It's Murder" won the Edgar Award in 1995 and back in 1986 she won the Puliltzer Prize because of her continuous coverage of Miami's crime and corruption. Ms. Buchanan initially gained national acclaim with her Miami Herald and Associated Press articles about Miami's seemingly endless string of murders and terrorist activities, many featuring bomb attacks by Cuban exiles trained in such tactics at the infamous School of the Americas located at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the U. S. for decades had secretly trained and then armed selected militants who then returned to their native countries, like Batista's Cuba, to support U.-S.-backed dictatorships. Ms. Buchanan in the "Cocaine Cowboys" documentary pointed back at the Miami skyline and explained that much of it resulted from drug money. The documentary "DECLASSIFIED: The Godfathers of Havana" showed black-and-white video of (1) huge ships docked in Havana and loaded with drugs in Batista's Cuba destined for Miami; and (2) leaders of the Batista dictatorship heading to their getaway airplanes and ships in the wee hours of January 1, 1959, to escape the victorious Cuban Revolution. As Carl Hiassen and Edna Buchanan, along with many others, have documented, the leaders and loot from 1950s Cuba found a home in Miami first and Washington later, changing and overwhelming the nearby island, Florida, and the United States forever and ever. Amen.

************************