The "Forgotten" Fidel

And A little Car-Bomb!!

     By 1976, after forming everlasting alliances with powerful entities such as the Bush dynasty, the most extreme anti-Castro elements in Miami had attained such control of America's Cuban policy and Cuban narrative that they enjoyed a Banana Republic-like non-accountable existence on U. S. soil and within the bowels of the U. S. democracy. On Oct. 6-1976 the terrorist bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane...Cubana Flight 455...was openly heralded in the Miami media as "the biggest blow yet against Castro!" A brave and compassionate Cuban-American newsman in Miami...Emilio Milian...strongly denounced such acts of terrorism against innocent Cubans. For his bravery and decency, Emilio was car-bombed. That little bomb was meant to convey a LOUD message, and it has. As far as I know, from that day in 1976 till this day in 2016 no journalist in Miami...or in the U. S. for that matter...has dared display the compassion and courage that Emilio showed when it comes to reporting on Cuban issues in the United States, the world's superpower and the world's strongest democracy that, beginning in 1959, has allowed a handful of self-serving Cuban-Americans and their sycophants to dictate a Cuban policy that now gets a unanimous worldwide condemnation...191-to-0...in the United Nations. The mainstream media in the U. S. seems...for all the world to see...to employ only anti-Cuban Cuban-Americans to report on Cuban issues. Surely, the car-bombing message involving Emilio Milian remains a factor but an overly strict adherence to political and social correctness also contributes to the fact that the world's most renowned democracy is essentially only capable of extremely biased journalism when it comes to an important topic...Cuba. Of course, propagandized Americans are not supposed to think of little Cuba as important although America's cruel and imperialist Cuba relations have done more than anything else to diminish, in the eyes of the world, the images of the United States and democracy. Americans...propagandized idiots, you might say...who dismiss that fact are also left to try to explain why zero is a larger number than 191 while they Google their fingers raw trying to uncover another topic in which all the disparate nations of the world can actually agree.

     A case in point is Alan Gomez. He is a Miami Cuban-American with an extreme bias against Revolutionary Cuba. Without those qualifications, I don't believe Gomez would be the primary Cuban writer on America's largest newspaper, USA Today. Based in Miami, Gomez is allowed by Cuba to fly back-and-forth to the island as often as he wishes...which is often...even though Cuba well knows that the articles resulting from each visit will be extremely biased against Cuba. Cuba even provides passports for its most vehement dissidents to fly to Miami and Congress to refurbish their wherewithal to be far stronger anti-Cuban zealots upon their return to the island, a laxness that might yet cost Cuba its precious, hard-earned and fiercely maintained sovereignty. On his first trip back to Cuba after the death of Fidel Castro on November 25th, Gomez high-lighted the island's most vicious anti-Castro zealot to apparently convince the American people that every Cuban on the island, like those in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, were wildly celebrating the death at age 90 of Fidel Castro. Gomez and USA Today apparently believe that Americans are too stupid or too propagandized or too scared to question whatever lies and distortions they can concoct...even if the rest of the world is much freer to judge such things.

       On one of his more recent trips from Miami to Cuba since the death of Fidel Castro, Alan Gomez in USA Today blared this headline in another typical distortion: "FIDEL CASTRO IS ALREADY JUST A MEMORY." Again, Americans are supposed to accept such propaganda without a whimper, and many actually do. Less propagandized or intimidated people around the world, by a plurality of 191-to-0, don't so readily accept it.

       In contrast to the mainstream U. S. media using only Cuban-American distortionists to distort Cuban coverage, the photo above was used to illustrate a fair-minded Cuban article by Cuban journalist Abraham Jimenez, the director of the digital magazine El Este Mundo. His article is entitled: "A Journey Through Fidel Castro's Cuba" and, unlike Alan Gomez's distortions, Mr. Jimenez reported that Fidel Castro is "not forgotten" in Cuba. The photo above shows a small island on the outskirts of the large southeastern Cuban city of Santiago. The island is "Cayo Granma" and it is home to about 2,000 Cubans who live near the cemetery that now contains the remains...the ashes...of Fidel Castro. Mr. Jimenez went there to ascertain how those Cubans are dealing with Fidel's death. AND ALAS, he discovered they remember Fidel!!  

      This is 83-year-old Maria Caridad, one of the 2,000 Cuban citizens on Cayo Granma. She told Mr. Jimenez, "When my son called me to tell me Fidel had died, I could not eat during that day. I had a tremor all over my body and had to lie in bed." Her neighbor, 95-year-old Jose Perez, told Mr. Jimenez, "Fidel was the greatest thing that nature has ever given." Another one of Maria's neighbors, Alberto Rodriguez, told Mr. Jimenez, "Fidel is like Jesus Christ. He helped the children, the poor, the dispossessed. So I appreciate what he did for this country." Before Mr. Jimenez left the small island, Maria suggested, "Look all you want. You won't find anyone around here who didn't love Fidel, for always." Mr. Jimenez admitted she was right.

        This is not to suggest that everyone in Cuba thinks Fidel is grand. But it is to suggest that the distortions in the mainstream U. S. media regarding his life...and now his death...demean the United States and democracy a lot more than they demean either Cuba or Fidel Castro in the eyes of the entire world.

     In Cuba a few weeks after the death of Fidel Castro, Cuban children as well as adults want journalists to see their signs that say, "I am Fidel." Again, I am not suggesting that such displays are not encouraged or even rewarded. But I am suggesting that lies and distortions in the mainstream U. S. media...such as saying Fidel Castro is forgotten...are lies and distortions that hurt America and democracy far more than they hurt Cuba or the legacy of Fidel Castro. And my passion for Cuba strictly relates to my belief that Cuba, its Revolution, and its icon Fidel Castro all say a lot more about the United States than they say about Cuba.

        One thing journalists keep hearing Cubans on the island say is, "A box so small for a man so large." That oft-repeated reference alludes to the cremated ashes of the very big man that Cubans will always remember as their former Athlete of the Year and as their El Comandante who fought and won major battles against supposedly overwhelming odds. They have a right to those unforgettable memories, despite what the likes of Alan Gomez preach, just as some Cubans on the island and in the U. S. have a right to think of him harshly, even to revile him. But what the U. S. media does not have a right to do, in my opinion, is to continually lie about him, about Cuba and about whether or not a transplanted Batistiano-style Banana Republic booted off the island by Castro in 1959 merely landed first in Miami and then in Washington.

       In any case, this is the cemetery in Santiago de Cuba where the remains of Fidel Castro now rest peacefully. The cemetery is almost within sight of the U.S.-occupied fortress the non-imperialist world knows unkindly as Guantanamo Bay, site of an unwanted U. S. military base that features an infamous U. S. prison. Thus, this Cuban cemetery and America's nearby military base on Cuban soil add to the U.S.-Cuban conundrum that has mystified and bedeviled the world since 1492 when Christopher Columbus discovered both countries...and certainly since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 reconfigured Cuba and America.

        Fidel Castro lived to be 90-years-old and ended up dying of old age in his modest Havana home despite what the Guinness Book of World Records says were "638" assassinations attempts on his life, and that doesn't count all the times during his Revolution, the Bay of Pigs attack, etc., that he ran to the front-lines to fight. If you listen to Alan Gomez and USA Today, Fidel Castro has already been forgotten. I believe, Mr. Gomez, that is wishful thinking and one giant step beyond just being a distortion. It is an outright lie.

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