cubaninsider: Does Cuba Have A Future?

If So, How Bright?

Cuba's past and its future have always been tightly tied to its giant northern neighbor, which in 1776 became the United States of America, which exited World War II in 1945 as the world's economic and military superpower. But the Cuba-U.S. nexus dates back to 1492, the year both nations were discovered by Columbus. From 1776 till 1898 U. S. leaders -- particularly Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson -- made no secret that America would not be "whole" until it had possession of the magnificent Caribbean island. That finally occurred in 1898 when a couple of ultra-powerful newspaper publishers -- William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer -- teamed with a handful of unscrupulous politicians that wanted Teddy Roosevelt to be the next U. S. president. That's when the USS Maine warship conveniently blew up in Havana Harbor, killing 263 young American sailors. That was the pretext to declare war on the fading and over-extended imperialist power Spain. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders then went to Cuba and predictably scored a sensational "Remember the Maine" victory, which indeed soon put Teddy in the White House. The prize that predicated the Spanish-American War was Cuba but it also resulted in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam being extracted from Spain, the initial thrust that put the U. S. on a path to become a British-type imperialist power. But many believed the U. S., in order to project itself as the world's greatest and most beloved democracy, would transform Cuba into a prosperous, world-class democracy. Instead, in the years and decades to come, successive handfuls of rich American businessmen and crooked politicians in Washington made Cuba a piggy-bank and a punching bag. The tip-off came quick, with the U. S. theft of Cuba's Guantanamo Bay in 1903, which to this day remains a plush U. S. military base, an infamous prison, and a plush and idyllic playground for 10,000 or so Americans. In 1952 right-wing thugs in the Eisenhower administration mocked the U. S. democracy by teaming it with the Mafia to support the vile, thieving and murderous Batista-Mafia dictatorship. That quickly spawned the Cuban Revolution that shocked the world on the first day of 1959 by becoming the first and only little nation to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictatorship. The Revolution shocked the world further by brilliantly defending itself in April of 1961 when the U. S. and the most zealous exiles from the Batista-Mafia dictatorship attacked the island with a massive bombing raid followed up by a sea and ground assault known as the Bay of Pigs. As revenge for the Bay of Pigs defeat and unable to kill Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro with a record number of assassination attempts, Cuba, after teaming with the world's other nuclear superpower, the Soviet Union, created what history calls the "closest the world has ever come to a nuclear holocaust" via the famed Cuban Missile Crisis in Oct.-1962. Then in Dec.-1962 the U. S. imposed an economic embargo on Cuba that, according to declassified U. S. documents, was intended to starve and deprive the Cuban people to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. It has never happened but six decades later the embargo is still in place, and still with that starve-and-deprive motive. The latest and greatest Cuban Revolutionary shock to the world has been the sheer fact that Cuba has remained a sovereign nation from January 1-1959 till this very day, even as the continuous assaults on the island have remained unabated from the U. S., the world's superpower, and the Batistianos, who quickly and permanently reconstructed their Banana Republic on U. S. soil, with Little Havana in Miami as their capital but soon, with the help of the Bush dynasty, the Banana Republic had a cancerous grip on the U. S. Congress and all Republican administrations. Therefore, since 1962 the U. S. has shamed itself by maintaining what history now records as the longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation. The U. S. democracy, greatly weakened by the cancerous Batistiano influence, has been unable to change a Cuban policy that now has unanimous worldwide condemnation, as evidenced by the current 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations. The foregoing capsule summary of the Past and Future of U.S.-Cuba Relations is indisputable, I think. Yet, it is not even necessary for a second generation of rich and powerful Batistianos on U. S. soil to dispute it. That's because...in what once was The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave...a mere handful of Batistianos easily dictate both the Cuban narrative in America and the despised Cuban policy in America.

And that gets us to January of 2017:

Whatever future Cuba has, it will be without Fidel Castro, its monumental revolutionary icon. He defied America and all logic for the last 7 decades of his 90 years on this earth, finally dying of old age on Nov. 25-2016 even though he fought from the frontlines during the revolution, at the Bay of Pigs and elsewhere, and survived what the Guinness Book of World Records documents as 638 assassination attempts, a fact made even more remarkable considering that the would-be assassins primarily comprised renowned elements of the Mafia, the Batistianos and the CIA. Sure, Cuba's future remains in the giant shadows left behind by Fidel Castro's legacy, but those powers who tried so hard to stamp out his life will now be engaged in trying to stamp out his legacy. One reason I believe they will succeed in that endeavor is because of an historic quotation, one uttered several times beginning in 1959 and written down at least once. The author of that quotation, which took me to Cuba in the first place and which caused me to start Cubaninsider five years ago, was a 99-pound doctor's daughter. Although Americans are not supposed to know it, she was #1 and Fidel Castro was #2 in the order and the pantheon of importance ascribed to the Cuban Revolution.

The declaration first uttered and first written down by Celia Sanchez in 1959 has now been proven to have survived a monumental and totally implausible test of time: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." Celia Sanchez died of cancer on January 11, 1980 at age 59. Fidel Castro died of old age at age 90 on November 25th, 2016. There will never be another Fidel Castro and, more significantly, there will never be another Celia Sanchez. I believe that those two facts, coupled with other nuances such as Donald Trump's ascendancy to Commander-in-Chief of the United States, will mean that a second generation of Batistianos in the United States will finally regain control of Cuba. That process, and how it evolves, will cost Cuba its hard-earned sovereignty but, even more significantly, it will continue to allow the nearby Caribbean island to be the catalyst that erodes the once insurmountable worldwide prestige and respect that so many great Americans ascribed to the United States and to their beloved democracy.

For anyone to understand today's U.S.-Cuban relations, it is necessary to comprehend this photo. It shows CIA Director-VP-President George H. W. Bush staring down at Jorge Mas Canosa.

Canosa was born in 1939 in Santiago de Cuba. He was one of the first exiles from the overthrown Batista dictatorship in January of 1959 to be sent to the then secretive U. S. Army of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, which was where the U. S., unknown to Americans, trained people from U.S.-friendly dictatorships -- Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, etc. -- so they could go back and protect those precious U.S.-friendly dictatorships. It was a right-wing ploy that worked to perfection, till the Cuban Revolution derailed it in 1959 to forever change the landscapes in Cuba, the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Jorge Mas Canosa graduated as a 2nd Lt. in Brigade 2506 at Fort Benning along with many other anti-Castro Cuban exiles such as Luis Posada Carriles, Felix Rodriguez, etc. Brigade 2506 was the CIA-backed unit that attacked Cuba in April of 1961 but suffered a humiliating defeat that only served to strengthen Fidel Castro's grip on the island for the next five decades but also indelibly embellished Little Havana, a section of Miami, as the center of the Batistiano resistance to Fidel Castro and as an increasingly powerful Cuban government-in-exile on rich democratic American soil.

On his way to shocking the world by becoming America's next President and Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump went to Miami and spoke in front of a Brigade 2506 banner and condescendingly promised the elderly remaining veterans of the Bay of Pigs that he will erase President Obama's friendly overtures to Cuba and be their very own Commander-in-Chief.

But after being anointed by the Bush dynasty as the leader of the Cuban exiles, Jorge Mas Canosa essentially created a monolithic Cuban government on U. S. soil, one capable of making its own laws. That evolved when he was early-on advised to study Israel's AIPAC powerhouse and then replicate a similar lobbying giant. He did, creating the ultra-powerful Cuban American National Foundation. That mammoth addition to the U. S. democracy is explained in Julia E. Sweig's great and indisputable book "What Everyone Needs to Know About Cuba." After Canosa's Bush anointment, photos like this became regular fare in Washington. The photo shows Canosa in the black suit awaiting his souvenir pen just as soon as President George H. W. Bush hands one to Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Havana-born Ros-Lehtinen remains in Congress from Miami till this day after being elected in 1989 when Jeb Bush -- GHW Bush's son -- was her Campaign Manager, the role that later propelled him to a two-term stint as Governor of Florida. This photo also reflects how incredibly easy it was...and is...for a few anti-Castro zealots to get laws passed by the U. S. Congress, laws that massively hurt Cuba but also massively enrich and empower selected Cuban-Americans. The two best authors to study these U.S.-altering developments centered around Canosa, Ros-Lehtinen, etc., are Julia E. Sweig and Ann Louise Bardach.

Even after the three presidential terms of George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the Jeb Bush continuation of the Bush dynasty was dominated by omnipotent Cuban-Americans as illustrated by this photo. It shows Jeb Bush listening obediently to the much more powerful Mel Martinez as the equally more powerful Diaz-Balart brothers -- Lincoln and Mario -- listen intently behind them. The Diaz-Balart brothers were elected...one after the other...to the U. S. Congress from Miami. Their father, Rafael, was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship and then the richest and most powerful Cuban-exile in the U. S., second only to...Canosa.

Since the Eisenhower administration in 1959, every Republican President -- Nixon, Ford, and the two Bushes -- have readily capitulated to and supported the Cuban-Americans in Miami and Congress when it comes to America's image-shattering Cuban policy. But this photo reveals a corollary fact of life, namely that even Democratic presidents like Carter and Clinton were very reluctantly forced to bend to whatever the richest and most powerful Cuban-Americans in Miami desired. This photo shows Jorge Mas Canosa looking up at and supposedly lecturing President Bill Clinton, the two-term Democratic President prior to Republican George W. Bush's two terms and Democrat Barack Obama's two terms. Significantly, President Clinton made a powerful effort to normalize relations with Cuba only to give berth to a Brothers to the Rescue reaction from Miami to Havana across the Florida Straits that reversed Clinton's plans 360 degrees. Again, the superb authors Sweig & Bardach along with informed and respected Americans like Peter Kornbluh and Wayne S. Smith best delineate how the Brothers provocation changed President Clinton's Cuban plans.

Totally thwarted in his fervent desire to normalize relations with Cuba, President Bill Clinton on March 12, 1996 went totally in the opposite direction by signing the infamous Helms-Burton Bill into law. It drastically strengthened such anti-Cuba laws as the embargo and also drastically enriched and empowered first and second generations of hardline Cuban-Americans, as illustrated by Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in the red outfit above as she looked over Clinton's shoulder, and Havana-born Lincoln Diaz-Balart, second from the right above. Third from the left upfront and eagerly watching Clinton's signature is New Jersey's Bob Menendez, an anti-Castro zealot and a fixture in the U. S. Senate to this day. The Cuban-American hardliners have never had any problem getting a requisite but small contingent in the 535-member U. S. Congress to craft anti-Cuba and pro-Cuban exile U. S. laws. Jesse Helms is an example of that fact. That's Jesse Helms on the far left in the above photo.

But in the annals of U.S.-Cuban relations, the most powerful individual since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 is, without doubt, Jorge Mas Canosa. By the time he died in Coral Gables, Florida in 1997, Mr. Canosa was a billionaire and the unchallenged force behind the most powerful laws and policies in the United States related to targeting and/or regaining control of his native Cuba. To this day America's Cuban policy reflects his trademarks, a basic fact that President-elect Trump will not challenge. In addition to his extreme wealth and power carved out as a Bush and Brigade 2506 disciple, Mr. Canosa's imprints remain indelible in Congress and in his adopted area of South Florida where schools and other significant edifices are named in his honor. When President-elect Donald Trump made those pre-election promises to the Brigade 2506 veterans in Little Havana, he in effect was pledging allegiance to Jorge Mas Canosa's legacy. In the above photo, Canosa was himself paying allegiance to Jose Marti, the famed poet-revolutionary who died in 1895 fighting valiantly but in vain on Cuban soil for Cuban independence against Spanish soldiers. Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the fighting to regain control of Cuba by Cuban exiles such as Mr. Canosa has been directed and financed from U. S. soil with, essentially, American voters and taxpayers not having a clue as to why the Washington-to-Miami spigots remain wide open...decade after decade.

Generally considered the best investigative reporter in South Florida, Tim Elfrink is the Managing Editor of the Miami New Times. He's won top journalistic honors, including the prestigious George Polk Award. Since 2008 he's written in-depth about police and political corruption all across South Florida. If you Google Miami New Times, "The Truth, at Last: Jorge Mas Canosa Sponsored Terrorism." Except for Jim DeFede at the Miami Herald and Cuban-American newsman Emilio Milian in MIami, few journalists in South Florida have dared to report on controversial Cuban-American activity, but Tim Elfrink is the current exception. As you can read in his aforementioned article, Mr. Elfrink wrote: "For years, the press quaked in fear of criticizing the most powerful exile in America...now courtesy of some vintage CIA reports declassified by the National Security Archive, it's clear that Canosa did a lot more than lobby against Fidel Castro. According to the papers, he gave $5,000 to famed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to blow up..."

Great and brave journalists such as Tim Elfrink are, I think, very high on the pantheon of democracy's greatest assets. To inexorably, non-obsequiously, un-deferentially and courageously defy the odds by writing or broadcasting about Cuban-American excesses in Miami is rare indeed but merely Googling "Jorge Mas Canosa and Luis Posada Carriles" would quickly reveal that documentations of disturbing things that the mainstream media would not dare report on is, nevertheless, readily available and should not be ignored in a democracy.

And by the way: