Cuba Hardliners Fight Back

Bush-era Rewards Still Massive 
{Updated: Friday, Jan. 27th, 2017}

        This is the entrance to Port Everglades just north of Miami, Florida. Earlier this week a Crowley container ship entered the port to drop off a load of Cuban charcoal, the first such legal shipment from Cuba to the United States in half-a-century. Also this week, top trade officials from Cuba had Obama-orchestrated scheduled meetings with top port officials in Florida, including Port Everglades, in the hopes of signing additional mutually beneficial deals. But yesterday -- Thursday, Jan. 26th, 2017 -- the South Florida-Orlando Sun Sentinel wrote: "In light of the threatening tweets by Governor Rick Scott, ports in Broward and Palm Beach counties canceled plans to sign an agreement for cooperation with the National Port Administration of Cuba." 

         As long as self-serving political thugs like Florida Governor Rick Scott are allowed to dictate America's Cuban policy, the United States will deserve the humiliating 191-to-0 condemnation of its Cuban policy by all the nations of the world. {That unanimity vote was cast in the United Nations}. And as long as pusillanimous, unpatriotic Americans allow a handful of thugs like Rick Scott to endlessly perpetrate America's cruel, self-deprecating Cuban policy, the majority of Americans themselves will be most to blame for not having the courage or the intelligence to stand up to a thuggish minority like Scott.

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          In addition to promotional brochures like this, my last two issues of Time Magazine have included full-page color ads by Pearl Seas Cruises promoting its "exclusive 10-night voyages to fascinating Cuba."  

      The free brochures and the costly Time Magazine ad feature this map delineating the seven Cuban cities the luxurious cruise ship Pearl Mist will visit after it leaves the Port of Miami in nearby Florida.

This Pearl Seas map highlights Miami-to-Cuba commerce.

The Pearl Seas cruises to Cuba are not cheap.

      Of course, when companies like Pearl Seas Cruises, above, sign commercial contracts to do Obama-orchestrated business in Cuba for the first time in half-a-century, it is to make money and, as a capitalist offshoot, to create jobs in both countries. SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT TESTIMONY FOR SANITY, CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY, right? Wrong!! To the lucrative Castro Cottage Industry -- which originated in South Florida way back in 1959 when the overthrown U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship regrouped -- such mutually beneficial commerce with Revolutionary Cuba is to be blunted by whatever means is necessary. While regaining control of Cuba, despite superpower support from the U. S., has not materialized, the revenge, economic and political rewards for the Castro Cottage Industry have been incredibly valuable to a small but very select group of hardliners...and their primary sycophants such as the self-serving Bush dynasty.

         The Governor of Florida is Rick Scott and he obviously likes his job. This week Mr. Scott loudly announced that Florida ports who do business with Cuba will lose state money. Earlier this week, thanks to former President Obama's brave efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, a shipload of Cuban charcoal arrived in Fort Lauderdale. And this week a high-level Cuban trade delegation is meeting with port officials from Palm Beach County and Broward County. From Florida to Washington -- with the Trump White House now aligned with the long-established Batistiano dictation of America's Cuban policy in the U. S. Congress -- the Cuban hardliners in South Florida, although a distinct minority of Cuban-Americans -- easily control enough politicians to pull the Cuban strings now that their nemesis, Mr. Obama, is out of the White House.

       The majority of Cuban-Americans in South Florida, like outspoken Hugo Cancio, strongly supported President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Hugo is shown above during a Reuters interview {The intimidated United States media normally interviews only fiercely anti-Cuban hardliners}. But Hugo, a Miami businessman who often visits his native Cuba, wonders aloud why Cuban-Americans like him are "under-represented or not represented at all" when it comes to politics in Florida and Washington.

        The Executive Director of the Port of Palm Beach, Manny Almira, is one of many Cuban-American executives in South Florida anxious to do business with Cuba after former President Obama bravely opened doors that had been tightly closed for over half-a-century. The Cuban-born Manny Almira, in fact, hoped to sign a lucrative deal with high-level Cuban trade visitor Ana Teresa Igarza this week. But Manny, of course, was not surprised that Governor Rick Scott threatened to severely punish him if he did so.

     This seminal photo reflects how the Castro Cottage Industry headquartered in South Florida got a permanent nexus in the U. S. Congress. The photo shows Jeb Bush forming a halo over the head of a giddy Ileana Ros-Lehtinen after Jeb, as her Campaign Manager, guided her successful Congressional bid in 1989. Born in Havana and long connected to the most vicious anti-Castro zealots in Miami, Ros-Lehtinen has remained a top-flight anti-Cuban Congresswoman ever since...with lots of unending Bush-connected company from the likes of Rubio, the Diaz-Balart brothers, Curbelo, etc. When Jeb ventured to Florida in the 1980s to further his political career and his bank account, he knew how to become Florida's two-term Governor but -- like his Cuban-exile aligned brother George W. and father George H. W. -- Jeb had his eyes trained on the White House, a plan that included his unique nexus with counter-revolutionary Cubans.

       With the mighty Bush machine and the omnipotent Castro Cottage Industry supporting him, Jeb Bush was the early favorite in a 17-person field to win the Republican presidential nomination. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen and other Miami anti-Castro zealots, of course, strongly backed Jeb although his primary contender was Cuban-American Marco Rubio -- the U. S. Senator from Miami that the Havana-born Ros-Lehtinen had mentored. But first Bush and then Rubio got unceremoniously demolished by non-politician Donald Trump because American voters longed to get shed of bought-and-paid-for established Washington politicians. For the same reason...plus a few others...Trump shocked the world by winning the presidency after a heated battle with Democrat Hillary Clinton from the money-crazed Clinton establishment. With the Bush and Clinton dynasties blunted, at least temporarily, President Trump, the billionaire businessman and showman, seems to have tightly formed an alliance with the Bush dynasty regarding poor little Cuba.

       On television news programs in the United States, is seems that only counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans -- or their supporters -- are afforded airtime. Cuban-Americans like Hugo Cancio have noticed.

       Cuba's brilliant young news anchor, Cristina Escobar -- when she was in Washington to cover the last Vidal-Jacobson diplomatic session -- stated firmly, "Broadcast journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than broadcast journalists in the United States have to tell the truth about Cuba." 

        If you watch the above Tracey Eaton interview of Cristina Escobar on YouTube, you will hear her say such things as, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." A bilingual student of United States-Cuban history, which was her thesis at the University of Havana, Cristina is aware that in 1952 the U. S. teamed with the Mafia to back the brutal Batista dictatorship. 

        On a trip to Miami, Trump apparently tried to convince the elderly survivors of Brigade 2506 that, as President, he would fulfill their long-standing dreams of regaining control of Cuba. Brigade 2506 was the lushly funded, CIA-trained and U.S.-backed Cuban-exile unit that attacked Revolutionary Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. The smashing defensive victory for Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs, an attack initiated by a fierce bombing assault, solidified Revolutionary Cuba's stubborn sovereignty to this day, although the remnants of Brigade 2506 and their supporters have remained counter-revolutionary powers in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood ever since. For example, the first six anti-Cuban zealots Trump named to his nascent presidential Transition Team would probably have been the first six chosen by Brigade 2506:

Mauricio Claver-Carone

Jose Cardenas

Robert Blau

John Barsa

Yleen Sarmiento de Poblete

Mercedes Viana Schlapp

           If you take time to Google the above names, you will find backgrounds with recurring themes about products of the counter-revolutionary Bush dynasty and/or aides to Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balarts.

       The Bush dynasty's most vicious anti-Castro Point Man was Havana-born Otto Reich. Between Republican administrations, people like Reich generally form very lucrative consultancy firms, such as Otto Reich Associates. But with a Republican in the White House, they magically and majestically resurface as public figures -- often as primary appointees or advisers. And President Trump has already been advised.

         This photo shows Cuban President Raul Castro making the major speech at a session of Caribbean and Latin American nations held in the Dominican Republic this week. The speech was carried live on state television in Cuba and throughout much of the region. It also made print headlines because President Castro used it to send his first clear and direct message to President Donald Trump: "Cuba as a sovereign nation needs friendly relations with the United States and we will continue to work toward that end. But Cuba will never sacrifice or negotiate away one iota of its independence, its sovereignty." Raul Castro turns 86 later this year. He is very tired. His only two brothers -- Ramon and Fidel -- died in 2016 in their 90s. And 2017, by his own declaration, will be his final year as the leader of Cuba. He anticipates a non-Castro successor, probably non-revolutionary 56-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, a strong education and student advocate.

Already on the island of Cuba, young adults like Jennifer Bello Martinez have carved a niche to hopefully make sure that they, not Miami and Washington, predicate the future of their island. Jennifer is the leader of the high-profile Federation of University Students, a 94-year-old organization that has always been at the forefront of fighting for Cuban independence. Jennifer and the FEU worship Fidel Castro's legacy. She will tell you all about the martyred University of Havana students -- Jose Antonio Echeverria, Fructuoso Rodriguez, Joe Westbrook Rosales, Jose Machado Rodriguez, Juan Pedro Carbo Servia, etc. etc. -- who were gruesomely murdered by Batista assassins such as Colonel Esteban Ventura Nova because they were early supporters of the rebel lawyer named Fidel Castro. When such murders did not quell but instead fueled the pro-Fidel Castro FEU fervor, Batista closed the University of Havana...but still sent out death squads after the still-survivng student leaders. Jennifer, today's student leader, will also tell you that Fidel Castro "till he became too ill to leave his home, spent his favorite hours talking to FEU students." And today, as the leader of the FEU, Jennifer Bello Martinez says, "If U.S.-sanctioned Cubans in Miami and Washington want Cuba back, they will find us at both the forefront and at the rearguard of the Cuban resistance."

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