cubaninsider: U.S.-Cuban Reality

5.9.16

U.S.-Cuban Reality

Batistianos Still Rule!!

The first weekend of September in the year 2016 is now history, and so is the first commercial flight from the U. S. to Cuba in 55 years. As with many other historic overtures to Cuba orchestrated since December of 2014 by U. S. President Barack Obama, last Wednesday's Fort Lauderdale-to-Santa Clara commercial air venture was heralded by the vast majority of democracy-loving people around the world. But when it comes to Cuba, majority opinion has never been truly factored into the bowels of the sainted U. S. democracy -- at least from 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War, till today, when a second generation of Batistiano-remnants eagerly await the imminent end of Obama's two-term presidency. The above photo taken by Ramon Espinosa on a street in Havana is a reminder of those facts. The photo was used yesterday to highlight an Associated Press summary of last week's history-making airplane flight to Cuba from Florida. The old man above is a street vendor named Antonio Bauza. He is shown heading out at the crack of dawn to sell his bananas and trinkets to tourists, whom he hopes will show up. Mr. Bauza is 90-years-old, which happens to be Fidel Castro's age, and he is a prime example of how Cubans like him...everyday Cubans...have been severely hurt every day since January of 1959 by a U. S. Cuban policy dictated by the remnants of the ousted Batista-Mafia dictatorship, which unfortunately quickly resettled on nearby U. S. soil. When the combined might of the Batistianos, the Mafia and their allies in the U. S. government was unable to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro from 1959 till 1962, the exiles and right-wingers in Washington devised the embargo that was, according to declassified 1962 U. S. documents, designed to starve & deprive Cubans on the island for the purpose of inducing them to rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro. As with the record number of assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs attack, etc., the embargo also has not done the trick...or the dirty deed...even though from 1962 till today it is history's all-time longest & cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a strong nation against a weak one. While the Batistiano-directed U. S. Cuban policy has actually enhanced the stature, influence and legacy of the still-living Fidel Castro, it has shamed the U. S. and democracy {the UN vote against it is 191-to-2} in the eyes of the world. That's because, in the guise of hurting the now 90-year-old Fidel Castro, it has mostly hurt the now 90-year-old Antonio Bauza and millions of other Cubans on the island just as innocent as he is.

The aforementioned AP article told us about the still hard-working, 90-year-old Antonio Bauza and also updated the ramifications of the historic jetBlue 387 flight from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Clara, Cuba. The AP said that "by December...some 300 direct flights a week scheduled from the U. S. to 10 Cuban cities...will suddenly mean hundreds of millions of dollars...of new business related to Cuba." And that's only factoring in the partial success of President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, and it may well forever remain partial. Cuba will never accept normal relations with the U. S. as long as the embargo is in place and, as has been the case since 1962, a handful of Cuban-American hard-liners aligned with a mere handful of right-wingers in the 535-member U. S. Congress can easily maintain the basic tenets of the embargo forever or, to use the official word that marked the 1903 U. S. theft of Guantanamo Bay, "in perpetuity."

The Cuban-American embrace depicted above celebrated Flight 387's historic arrival in Santa Clara from Fort Lauderdale last Wednesday. But as fortuitous as it was, it also confirmed a U.S.-Cuban fact-of-life: U. S. laws related to Cuba have only precise dual purposes: {1} To hurt Cubans on the island; and {2} to enrich, empower and sate the revenge motives of Cuban-Americans. For example, for decades everyday Americans have been the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba; and all the while...each year...about 400,000 Cuban-Americans, via totally legal charter flights, have...yes...been permitted to freely fly back-and-forth from the U. S. to Cuba. And...all the while...fully propagandized Americans -- intimidated, scared or unpatriotic -- are supposed to not object, even in the Age of Obama.

The historic flight of jetBlue 387 from Florida to Cuba last week also underscored the sordid, discriminatory imbalance of the U. S. Cuban policy that so flagrantly favors Cuban-Americans as opposed to Americans and Cubans. With the exception of just four people, such as U. S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, all the passengers aboard Flight 387 were privileged Cuban-Americans. And both pilots, of course, were also Cuban-Americans. Meanwhile, as has been the case since 1959, Americans are supposed to be too stupid or too afraid to even weigh-in on an unending Cuban policy that makes our democracy resemble a 1950s-era Banana Republic, as illustrated by the following Wikipedia graphic:

Vultures began flying in right behind Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick.

This 1898 U.S. image of the Caribbean persists to this day.

And...so does this one!!

And...this one!!

And...well, you get the unsavory picture.

Oh! By the way:

I respect Americans who respect the U. S. flag. On this long 2016 Labor Day weekend, I believe an NFL quarterback and a pro soccer star have been accorded too much media space for disrespecting it.