Isolating Cuba

And Targeting Its Friends 

        
        As the presidential race heats up in the United States and the Olympics kick off tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the photo on the right might reflect this week's most topical and important event. It was taken by Luisa Dorr and this week's Time Magazine used it to illustrate a major Q & A session with Dilma Rousseff, the two-time democratically elected President of Brazil, by far Latin America's richest, most populated and most important nation. If Dilma looks subdued, she has a right to be. She is still Brazil's President but she is shown here confined, like a criminal, in her residence at the Alvorado Presidential Palace in Brasilia. She is being impeached. She is not a criminal. The politicians and rich Brazilians who are impeaching her are, in the opinion of many, the criminals. Moreover, many of Dilma's supporters believe that rich and powerful Cuban-Americans in Miami and Washington are key supporters of the impeachers. Dilma is a key Cuban ally and she idolizes Fidel Castro, and she has much in common with him: both were guerrilla fighters against U.S.-backed dictators and both spent many torturous months in military prisons. So, Dilma's ongoing impeachment has international implications, especially for Brazil, the United States and, yes, Cuba.

        Since December of 2014 President Barack Obama has been the first U. S. President with the sheer guts to seriously try to normalize relations with Cuba. Since the 1950s all Republican administrations -- Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush #1 and Bush #2 -- have been close conspirators with the most zealous remnants of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship that was overthrown in 1959 by the Cuban Revolution. And since the 1950s all pre-Obama Democratic administrations -- Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton -- tried but were easily defeated in their efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Despite such accomplishments as reopening embassies in both Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961, a second generation of rich and powerful anti-Castro zealots in Miami, New Jersey and Washington are mightily determined to turn back and forever erase all of Obama's positive overtures towards Cuba.

       In 1962 right-wingers aligned with anti-Castro zealots induced Congress to embargo Cuba after assassination attempts, terrorist strikes, and the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack had failed to overthrow Castro. De-classified U. S. documents prove that the purpose of the embargo was to deprive and starve Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and eliminate or oust Castro, who will turn 90-years-old in Havana next week. Although propagandized Americans are too timid, too ignorant or too unpatriotic to weigh in on the topic, the rest of the world votes 191-to-2 each year in loud opposition to the embargo. Arguably, America's long-standing and Batistiano-driven Cuban policy has done more than any other single topic to harm the U. S. image around the world.  Indeed, Obama has used his Executive Powers to remarkably slice into many of the starvation-deprivation features of the embargo but it remains in place because only Congress can repeal it and there are always enough bought-and-paid-for members of Congress to maintain it, irregardless of how detrimental it is to America's democracy. Money and revenge, when it comes to Cuba, have callously and cowardly been allowed to trump both democracy and America's image.

Now back to Dilma:

       This updated Luisa Dorr/Time Magazine photo shows an embattled and impeached Dilma Rousseff, who twice has been democratically elected President of Brazil. Her approval rating soared as high as 91% because she devoted much of Brazil's trillion-dollar economy to elevating her country's poverty-striven majority to the middle class. The angered rich elite in Brazil put a target on her back, multiple targets. Bolstered by the throes of an economic depression, low oil prices and scandals not related to Dilma, she has continued to this very day to fight honorably for Brazil's poorest citizens, who adore her. Her opponents now are reminiscent of the dictators back in the 70s that turned Dilma into a guerrilla fighter. In this week's Time Magazine Dilma said, "I am being judged for a non-crime. What is happening in Brazil is not a military coup, but it is a parliamentary coup. It is a coup of a process that is affecting the institutions, eroding them from the inside, contaminating them." Asked by Time if the impeachment is sexist, she said, "Misogynistic, in truth. The fact that a woman became President gives rise to an evaluation of women that is very common, very stereotypical." Asked if she will fight the impeachment, she replied, "I learned to fight early. I struggled and bore the pain of torture, but I fought and survived well. Then I fought against cancer. And I will fight this impeachment systematically." In 2014 as President, Dilma steered Brazil thought the World Cup and she told Time that "it was clear there was not a single problem." But there are multiple problems this week as Brazil opens the Olympics -- the Zika virus, polluted waters around Rio, drug crime in the city, threats of terrorism, the impeachment, etc. Time asked Dilma if she will participate in the Olympics and she said, "I was elected President with 54.5 million votes. They are inviting me to participate in the Olympic Games in a very secondary position. I will not play a role that does not correspond to my presidential status."   

        Dilma Rousseff, the impeached President of Brazil, told London's The Guardian: "I will never regret fighting for Brazil's poorest people. I fought for them as a guerrilla fighter in the 70s against a brutal dictatorship and I have fought for them in our democracy against the power of the rich elite. I think the obscenely rich have too much money and the obscenely poor have too little. That spawned the coup."  

         As The Guardian pointed out, the majority poor in Brazil love Dilma. She said, "But even in great democracies, the elitist rich can corrupt the processes. We have that problem. The U. S. has that problem."  

         President Rousseff says, "When I was a girl guerrilla fighter in the 70s I was fighting 50% against our military dictators and 50% against U. S. support of those dictators, sort of like Fidel did in Cuba in the 50s. Fidel turns 90 this August and his revolution is still afloat but still fighting the same thing. I am 68 and the impeached President of Brazil, but it seems I'm fighting what I fought in the 70s and Fidel fought in 50s. What goes around, comes around...especially in Miami and Washington. Most...not all, but most...of the world's problems result from the vast disparity between the few rich and the many poor. Fighting that battle is very, very tough."  

    Dilma Rousseff visits Fidel Castro in Havana.

       President Rousseff's fondness for Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution has resulted in her trying to counter the U. S. embargo by assisting Cuba. Brazilian money, for example, largely financed the billion-dollar upgrade to Cuba's Mariel Port Economic Zone. She says, "I am aware that the anti-Cuban forces in Miami and Washington have targeted me for being perceived as Cuba's friend. Many other democratically elected Latin American presidents tell me they are in the same boat with me. And, yes, the boat is teetering." 

       Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil have all been democratically elected and re-elected Presidents. Cristina, after serving her two terms, has been replaced by a pro-U.S. and anti-Cuban President, who edged out Cristina's hand-picked favorite. During her last years in office, Cristina railed against "the Miami Mafia that hates Cuba and the rich Hedge Fund New Yorkers who hate everyone, including Argentina." Michelle Bachelet is serving her second term as President of Chile. Her father was a part of the democratically elected Allende government until a U.S.-backed coup resulted in President Allende's death and the long, murderous U.S.-friendly Pinochet dictatorship. Michelle Bachelet's father died in one of Pinochet's notorious prisons. She remembers that and so do the Chileans who have voted for her two Presidencies. Today President Bachelet also feels pressure from forces outside of Chile, so she in essence is in that same "teetering" boat that Argentina's Cristina Fernandez and Brazil's Dilma Rousseff are in. And as Dilma said in that Time Magazine article, female Presidents also have "misogynistic" problems that exacerbate the even bigger threat to democracies -- the greedy rich.    

But on a gentler subject: 

      This photo is courtesy of Lee Prince/Shutterstock.com. It shows a Morning Dove sitting on her nest taking care of newly hatched babies. Birds & Blooms used this photo this week to remind us that doves hatch babies not only deep into summer but even into the fall. All birds are very beautiful and purposeful but doves in particular are the personification of peace, a commodity the world could use more of. Bird hunters use trained dogs to flush doves off their nest and then shoot them with shot-guns. If that happens to this mother dove, her babies die too. Somehow, that seems cruel to me because doves beautify the world and in no manner harm it. Nesting doves are no match for trained dogs nor for men with shotguns.

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