America's Banana Republic Congress

Intent On Overwhelming Democracy
Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

      The Internet giant Netflix announced this week that it has begun service in Cuba, a reflection of a change on the heels of President Obama's plans to normalize relations with the island. Netflix streams movies, television shows, etc., for a monthly fee. In Cuba the fee is $7.99 a month. Assuming that Americans are totally disconnected from reality in Cuba, one headline and sub-headlines screamed this myth: "Netflix Launches In Cuba; Charges $7.99 A Month To Cubans Whose Average Income Is 17 Dollars!" Interesting, but like most U. S. headlines related to Cuba it is misleading.

    This Cuban woman is in Havana, not Miami. As she walks along a street near her home she is engrossed with her Smart Phone, like many rich people in Miami. She is guaranteed a small stipend from the government, about $20. She is also guaranteed free health care without paying for anything. She is also guaranteed free education through college without having to worry about student loans. If she needs help with food or shelter, she gets it free. She can also walk the safe Cuban streets even at night without fear of being assaulted. She is eligible to get cash from relatives and friends in the U. S. She can freelance and make additional money, especially via tourism. And now with new economic reforms she is encouraged to become an entrepreneur with her own business. So, yes, America, there are more Cubans than you think in the year 2015 that can afford Netflix's $7.99 monthly fee. So when you see repetitious references to "$17 or $20 a month incomes," don't believe everything you read, most especially when it involves...poor little Cuba!!!

      America's Secretary of State John Kerry is a huge baseball fan and when he was in the U. S. Senate he bravely advocated normalizing relations with Cuba. Mr. Kerry loves the Boston Red Sox and is shown in this Politico photo throwing out the first pitch for a game at Fenway Park. This spring Mr. Kerry hopes to see his beloved Red Sox play the Baltimore Orioles in Havana. Both clubs have discussed the possibility with Major League Baseball executives. It might happen if logistics and other problems can be worked out in time. Of course, anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress will try to block Mr. Kerry's proposal or any other sane and positive idea related to Cuba, where baseball is the national pastime. That's just the way it is. 

  On December 17th, 2014 President Barack Obama announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba. That is precisely what most Americans, most Cuban-Americans, most Cubans on the island, most Cubans in Miami, most people in the Caribbean, most people in Latin America, and most people around the world desire. But it won't happen. It appears that the U. S. democracy is no longer strong enough to make it happen. This is the price democracy lovers are paying because the American people have allowed the U. S. Congress to become more of a Banana Republic sideshow than what the Founding Fathers envisioned way back in 1776. With approval ratings in single digits, most Americans disapprove of the current iteration of Congress but they are unable to change it. Cuba says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba, as President Obama is now discovering.

      In trying to normalize relations with Cuba, the President of the United States has American, Cuban, and worldwide support but a mere handful of self-serving Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress dictate America's Cuban policy and they are not about to relinquish it. They benefit from a Cuban policy that has been grossly out-dated for half a century, harming everyone but them. And they seem poised to keep it in place for another half century or so, defying logic, decency, and democracy.

      President Obama is anxious to open a U. S. Embassy in Havana prior to April-2015 when he will attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama. That's because, for the past six years, President Obama has been embarrassed when attending regional and international functions only to have America's unpopular Cuban policy being constantly thrown in his face, often thwarting his primary goals at such sessions. Caribbean and Latin American countries have warned him that the same thing will occur in Panama in April unless continued belligerence towards Cuba eases or ceases. He hopes at least to have concrete plans for a U. S. embassy in Havana to show the pro-Cuban factions that await him in Panama. Of course, he is also quite aware that Senator Marco Rubio and other Miami members of the U. S. Congress have fired off scathing letters to the President of Panama for inviting Cuban President Raul Castro to the Summit of the Americas that Panama, a sovereign country, is hosting. Those letters reminded democracy lovers of how Miami's anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress used their congressional power to free famed Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from his long prison sentence in Panama. Jim DeFede, the top columnist at the Miami Herald, sacrificed his job when he wrote about that Panamanian/Posada episode but the rest of the U. S. media pusillanimously cowered, as usual, in accepting that and all other Miami-engineered affronts to democracy. President Obama, as he looks forward to the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April, is very aware of the Panamanian/Posada congressional pressure and he is also aware that Posada, on December 18-2014 -- the day after Obama's announcement about normalizing Cuban relations -- led an anti-Obama rally in the streets of Miami. President Obama is also very aware of the letters on congressional stationery that have tried to intimidate Panama leading up to the Summit of the Americas in which President Obama would like to demonstrate that the U. S. Congress is, in fact, still a democratic body even if, in regards to Cuba, it resembles a Banana Republic dictatorship akin to Batista's Cuba or Trujillo's Dominican Republic back in the 1950s. {P.S.: I wonder if that may be because the U. S. teamed with the Mafia to support the vile Batista dictatorship in the 1950s and when it was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution the Batistianos and Mafiosi merely reassembled in nearby South Florida?}

       Beginning the first week of February, 2015 Senator Marco Rubio of Miami became the Chairman of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee, which includes Cuba. Not surprisingly, Rubio's very first session as Chairman became a Banana Republic-type harangue in which Rubio excoriated President Obama and everyone else for daring to express a desire to normalize relations with Cuba. Watching on C-Span as he grossly assailed helpless U. S. diplomat Roberta Jacobson, who had just returned from Havana, shamed many democracy lovers -- including Sarah Stephens, the founder and Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. I believe you would agree with that assessment if you go online and read the Feb. 6-2015 "Cuba Central" posting on the CDA website. Not only was Ms. Stephens outraged by Rubio's Banana Republic-like Chairmanship, she pointed out that he was brazenly rude to even anti-Castro Cuban dissidents he had flown in to appear before his first session as Chairman of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee. Yes, five of the most vehement anti-Castro dissidents were paraded before a packed Congress by Chairman Rubio and, as Ms. Stephens pointed out, he was even rude to them if they didn't immediately answer his torrid questions with appropriate denunciations of Cuba. Of course, in a Banana Republic U. S. Congress, don't ever expect to hear from America's best and most unbiased Cuban experts -- such as Sarah Stephens, Wayne S. Smith, Peter Kornbluh, Ann Louise Bardach, Julia E. Sweig, etc. That would be presenting both sides of a two-sided story, something Banana Republics are not accustomed to permitting. Rubio regularly greets Cuban dissidents from Havana in Washington. Just once, maybe, he should include a Cuban from the nearby island who is not a dissident, such as...Yulieski Gourriel, for example.

      Next to the 88-year-old Fidel Castro, 31-year-old Yulieski is the most famous Cuban on the island right now. Euphoria engulfed baseball-crazed Cuba on Sunday {February 8th} when Yulieski belted a homer to give Cuba a 3-to-2 victory over Mexico in the championship game of the Caribbean Baseball Classic in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Star-studded teams from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela had been favored over a Cuban team depleted by an unending parade of star players defecting from the island for multi-million-dollar U. S. contracts. Since he was 17 Yulieski has been the most coveted Cuban player but he doggedly has remained fiercely loyal to Cuba. He remains a superstar in Cuba's top league but also plays for the Yokohama Bay Stars in Japan, a country that is not hostile to Cuba and where he can play and not defect.

    So, what if Senator Marco Rubio, as Chairman of the Western Hemisphere Committee, invited someone like Yulieski Gourriel to the U. S. Congress to at least balance out all the anti-Castro zealots he welcomes like rock stars? Judging by Rubio's performance in his first session as Chairman, it would be a guatuitous farce, just as Sarah Stephens indicated his grilling of Diplomat Roberta Jacobson and even a moderate Cuban dissident were gratuitous farces. Therefore, assuming Rubio invited Yulieski to appear before the U. S. Senate, I think it might go like this:

           Rubio: Mr. Gourriel, welcome to America. Are you crazy? Are you absolutely out of your mind? For thirteen years, as a Cuban star in international tournaments, you have had opportunities to defect to the U. S. and you have not done so. Are you crazy, insane, out of your mind?"

            Yulieski: Well, sir, I...

        Rubio: Shut up! I'm the Chairman of this Senate Committee. I'll let you speak if and when I think you are ready to tell the Senate and America what a mean, despicable man Fidel Castro is. Meanwhile, I suggest, on your trip back to Cuba, you rent a car in Miami. You can drive all day in South Florida and see nothing but huge mansions owned by Cuban-Americans. Some have 5-car garages with cars that cost $300,000. Many have luscious yachts moored at nearby docks. Many have their own private jets with pilots standing by at the hangars. Many own their own islands in the Caribbean and even the South Pacific. And you, Mr. Gourriel, haven't followed those Cubans to South Florida. Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind?

             Yulieski: Well, sir, I would like to say...

            Rubio: Shut up! I invited you here to show the Senate and the Americans watching on C-Span what a horrible person you are for staying on that island that Fidel Castro took over in 1959, chasing the decent Cubans to South Florida. When we get control of it again, the likes of you will regret not having defected to South Florida or Union City where you too could have mansions and all those other things. Are you crazy? Out of your mind? Explain to this Committee why you are so stupid?

             Yulieski: Permit me, sir, to say...

              Rubio: Shut up....................................................!

   This is Sarah Stephens, the highly respected, democracy-loving founder and Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. If you think the hypothetical exchange above between Senator Rubio and Yulieski Gourriel is an exaggeration, go online and read the "Cuba Central" posting on CDA's website on February 6th, right after Senator Rubio's first chairmanship of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee in which he assailed President Obama's top Cuban diplomat Roberta Jacobson and even was rude to a Cuban dissident who apparently wasn't enough of a dissident for Mr. Rubio.

    Juan Carlos Varela is the President of Panama, a sovereign country and neither a U. S. territory nor a colony. He wasn't in office long before he got written rebukes on congressional stationery from Marco Rubio and other anti-Castro members of the U. S. Congress. They objected to President Varela's insistence on inviting Cuban President Raul Castro to the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which Panama will host in April. President Varela believed he had "the sovereign right and the moral duty to do so," especially considering that all the nations of the Americas urged him and some said that, if he didn't, they would also not attend. "Sovereign right" and "moral duty" are not anathema to democracy and the terms should not offend Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress, not even when it concerns the island of Cuba.

     If you watched on C-Span that first session of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee chaired by Senator Marco Rubio of Miami, you would have noticed that his tag-team partner in assaulting President Obama's plans to normalize relations with Cuba was Senator Bob Menendez of Union City. It was a reminder that the anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress seek Committees that are most influential in policies related to Cuba. On December 17th when President Obama announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba, Rubio flocked to network news cameras to brag about his upcoming Chairmanship of the Western Hemisphere Committee, not only implying but stating how that would enable him to block President Obama's grandiose plans. Menendez has just concluded his run as Chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Check the Congressional Record and you'll see anti-Castro zealots adorning congressional committees, in both the House and Senate, most responsible for Cuban issues. Unfortunately, Cuba is a foreign country in the Western Hemisphere and that fact is not lost on congressional politicians from Miami and Union City.

         This photo shows Senator Marco Rubio from Miami and Senator Bob Menendez from Union City hosting dissidents from Cuba, including the famed Yoani Sanchez. As long as the U. S. government remains a democracy and not a Banana Republic, larger and more diverse groups than this din of strategists should be allowed to weigh in on something as vital as America's Cuban policy. While Cuba is a mere island, it is significant in the region and on the international stage far out of proportion to its size, population or wealth simply due to U. S. belligerence that makes the whole world cringe, especially in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America. At the very least, unless Senators Rubio and Menendez consider the U. S. Congress their private Banana Republic fiefdom, they should allow a few others to inject a thought or two on a subject, Cuba, that so mightily affects America's image around a conflicted world.     

   This National Geographic montage says Love Is in the Air.
But not in Marco Rubio's U. S. Senate.
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