U. S. Recognizes Cuba

Obama's Legacy at Work?

       This photo is courtesy of Sara Krulwich/The New York Times and it reflects another tribute to President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, which includes the apparently begrudging admission that it is a sovereign nation even as forces opposed to Obama and Cuba continue numerous, unheralded, tax-funded regime-change programs targeting the island. The photo above shows Genaro Mauricio at the American Museum of Natural History working on a coral reef exhibition entitled "iCuba." It's just one part of the Cuban displays and it's the very first time the museum has ever recognized the island of Cuba.

A model of the Cuban solenodon at the Museum.

       Both the VOA, Voice of America, and ACN, the Cuban News Agency, used the above REUTERS photo to report this week that Cuba will greatly expand Internet access by the end of this year. The Cubans shown above are using a Wi-Fi hook-up to access the Internet. There are already just over 200 such hook-ups across the island, but the hourly fees are rather prohibitive for many Cubans. The VOA estimates that there are only about 5% of Cuban homes currently with Internet access but the ACN says Cuba is working to increase that availability now and that Cuba will offer Internet service on mobile phones in 2017. At the same time, Cuba has clearly indicated to the U. S. that it will back-track on such efforts if "we detect, as we have in the past, concerted efforts by foreign regime-change factions to grossly misuse Internet advances."

     This photo is courtesy of Havana Times.org. This little Cuban girl's proudest possession is her squeezable doll. This beautiful little girl is no one's enemy. But the U. S. embargo is her enemy.

   The photo of the little girl in today's Revolutionary Cuba holding her beloved squeezable doll reminds me of this historic photo from the 1950s during the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba. This photo of a little Cuban girl clutching a block of wood and pretending it was her doll was taken by the great Alberto Korda. As poignant and as famed as it is, it is not the photo that made Korda an historic legend; that was his still ubiquitous photo of Che Guevara. But this is the one that he was most proud of, the one he said, "touched my heart and taught me the difference between right and wrong, the difference between the innocent and the guilty." Korda realized this little girl was no one's enemy but the Batista-Mafia dictatorship was her enemy.

Poverty in Batista's Cuba that impacted Alberto Korda.

      Alberto Korda was born in 1928 in Havana. He died of a heart attack in Paris in 2001 while showing an exhibition of his renowned photos. He is buried along with other notable Cubans at the Colon Cemetery in Havana. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, Korda became Fidel Castro's and Che Guevara's favorite photographer as he, too, became a legend. In addition to the famed Che photo that still adorns millions of coffee mugs, T-shirts, and dorm rooms, Korda took other famous photos such as the one depicting Fidel at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in April of 1959 and Fidel with Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union in 1963. But the photo that he said most "touched his heart" was the one of the little Cuban girl pretending that the block of wood was her doll. If the other photos made Korda rich and famous, it was the one he took of that little girl that proved he, indeed, was a good man and one with a heart.

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