The Soul of Cuba

Is It Cuban or Cuban-American?

Photo credit: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters.

       This insightful photo shows a young Cuban sitting on the famed Malecon seawall and gazing northward to Florida, which is only 90 miles across the Florida Straits. So, what is he thinking? Well, his shirt indicates that he is thinking about U. S. President Barack Obama's upcoming two-day trip to the island on the 21st and 22nd of March. Mr. Obama is considered a hero in Cuba because, more than any American since the 1950s, Obama has displayed a genuine concern for Cubans on the island and courageously attempted to normalize relations between the two nations. Cubans like this young man believe the prime motive behind Mr. Obama's overtures is to help the Cubans on the island, reversing a belligerent U. S. policy that has existed ever since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

 President Obama is the all-time most popular American in Cuba.

        Since 1962, or right after the Bay of Pigs attack in 1961 failed to recapture Cuba, a few Cuban exiles in Miami aligned with a few right-wing members of Congress have maintained an ongoing embargo against Cuba, the longest and many believe the cruelest in history. De-classified U. S. documents reveal that the 1962 purpose of the embargo was to starve and deprive Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro. As Fidel approaches his 90th birthday in Havana, the embargo continues to deprive Cubans on the island but mostly it remains a revenge factor that has spawned a long-standing and lucrative Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S.

         Granma, Cuba's state newspaper, was a bit hesitant to lavishly endorse President Obama's upcoming trip to the island because its editorial writers feared he might mostly succumb to pressure and spend most of his time pacifying dissidents, which Cuba maintains are mostly funded by the United States. But with the post-Castro era looming on the horizon {Fidel is 89 and Raul is 84}, Cuba has already largely embraced a Chinese-Vietnamese capitalist system and embraced most of Obama's overtures although it insists on more before he leaves office -- such as, an end to the embargo, a return of Guantanamo Bay, and a cessation of the never-ending U.S.-funded regime-change programs. Thus, Granma, after pondering Obama's impending visit for a few days, decided the positives outweighed that one negative regarding dissidents. The headline in red in the upper-right of the front page above says: "In Cuba, President Obama will be treated with respect and consideration." Right below that article, the black headline says: "In a statement from the White House." And the headline directly opposite that article says: "Fidel's voice of three generations." Yes, all these decades after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, it's not so surprising that the three top headlines on the front-page of Granma on a given day in 2016 concern...Obama, the White House, and Fidel.

Also not surprsing:

         The vast and lucrative Castro Cottage Industry in the United States is, to put it mildly, irked about President Obama's upcoming visit to Cuba on the heels of the President's Herculean efforts to normalize relations with the island. Dr. Javier Corrales, the Cuban-American professor at Amherst College, for example, released this scathing attack: "Obama is so eager to normalize relations without negotiating any concessions that the United States is very close to creating a situation where we now have a U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba." That asinine and ridiculous statement, of course, was loudly heralded by a plethora of media outlets in the U. S. tightly aligned with the Castro Cottage Industry -- including the slick, well-funded Capital Hill Cubans blog and the once-prestigious Wall Street Journal, which is now owned by Rupert Murdoch who was born in Australia 84 years ago and also owns such entities as Fox News. It appears that Professor Corrales relishes a Batista-style "U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba," something Mr. Obama believes has hurt America's image enough, THANK YOU!

       In his tirades against the Cuban Revolution and as a prime promoter of the Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S., Professor Javier Corrales is often billed as "The Latin American Expert at Amherst College." No one is supposed to challenge his views because, after all, he is a Cuban-American with a visceral family-oriented hatred of Fidel Castro for booting the Batista-Mafia dictatorship off the island, all the way to Miami as it turned out. In his statement assaulting President Obama for creating a situation in which "we now have a U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba," Corrales assumes the American people have neither the intelligence nor the courage to dispute such nonsense. And, of course, he is implying that from 1952 till 1959 the U. S. supported the nice, kind, sweet Mother Teresa dictatorship in Cuba...surely not the brutal and thieving Mafia dictatorship led by Fulgencio Batsita, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante Jr., etc. OH, NO WAY, MUSES PROFESSOR CORRALES!! THE U. S. WOULD NEVER SUPPORT MAFIA DICTATORS IN CUBA!! WE ALL KNOW THAT, DON'T WE?? THE U. S. WOULD ONLY SUPPORT MOTHER TERESA-LIKE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADERS IN CUBA!! AND AS SOON AS WE OVERTHROW THE CUBAN REVOLUTION WE WILL MAKE SURE TO DEMOCRATICALLY ELECT ANOTHER MOTHER TERESA-LIKE LEADER OF CUBA, ONE THAT LUCKY LUCIANO WOULD BE PROUD OF!! EXCEPT FOR OBAMA, ALL AMERICANS UNDERSTAND THAT, DON'T THEY?

Uh, not really, Professor Corrales.

     These Cuban women objected to the murders {"asesinators"} of their children {"hijos} in Batista's Cuba in the 1950s. And...they surely didn't know Mother Teresa.

And...neither did this Cuban mother.

     It so happens that a 99-pound doctor's doctor led the revolutionary fight against Batista and then, in Revolutionary Cuba, laid down the parameters to make sure the retrenched Batistianos in the U. S. didn't recapture the island that she cherished.

       In Cuba today, cast in the mold of Celia Sanchez, Cristina Escobar is the leader of the twenty-something generation on the island that plans to shape Cuba's soon-to-be post-Castro future. Like Celia Sanchez, Cristina Escobar has a do-or-die belief that Cubans on the island, not Cuban-Americans "propped up by the United States," should decide Cuba's future. She also adamantly and famously says {Check YouTube}, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy." She's 28 and wasn't around in the 1950s but she knows its dark Batistiano-Mafiosi history. In particular, she knows that Batista, Luciano, and Lansky had no resemblance to Mother Teresa.

       On Dec. 27-1956 {above} Fidel Castro was smart enough to anoint Celia Sanchez as the prime decision-maker in the Revolutionary War and later in Revolutionary Cuba. He got some things wrong, but he got Celia Sanchez right.

        In 1973 Fidel Castro was prescient enough to predict that the United States "will come to talk to us when they have a black president and the world has a Latin American Pope."  Making good use of their usually unchallenged propaganda apparatuses, Professor Corrales and the rest of the Castro Cottage Industry in safe U. S. havens conveniently misrepresent basic facts in the U.S.-Cuban quagmire. But they can't deny that America now has a black President who is indeed talking to Cuba and the world now has its first Latin American pope, Pope Francis form Argentina, who has recently talked with Fidel Castro in his Havana home. In other words, uncontested propaganda machines are powerful tools, as least until they are challenged. So, I challenge the exalted and normally unchallenged Professor Corrales who claims that President Obama's sane and decent approach to Cuba means that he "is creating a situation where we now have a U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba." That's a lie, Professor Corrales, and I think you know it. The President is trying to create a situation in which the United States is viewed as trying to help the Cubans on the island, not starve them or deprive them or bully them. In your propaganda tirades, you might want to mention the "U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba" that spawned the Cuban Revolution instead of twisting history by ridiculously using such self-serving vitriol to discredit the unique decency and courage of President Obama.

       This was the situation in Cuba from 1952 till 1959. A handful of Batistianos, Mafiosi, and American businessmen made out like the bandits they indeed were. It is understandable that remnants of that situation, powerfully retrenched in the U. S. since 1959, would love to regain control of the plush, maligned island...again, of course, backed by the United States. DO THESE THREE GUYS LOOK LIKE MOTHER TERESA, PROFESSOR CORRALES?

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