In 2017, Finally?
Meet Leonardo Padura. The photo is courtesy of Wikipedia. He was born in Havana in 1955 during the Batista dictatorship and he still lives in Havana. He is the type Cuban that Americans are simply not supposed to know, else they might question the Cuban narrative in the United States that the transplanted Batistianos have dictated since 1959, along with a U. S. Cuban policy also primarily dictated by the ousted but reconstituted Batistianos, especially after forming an indelible and mutually rewarding alliance with the Bush dynasty as early as 1959 but especially since the 1980s when Jorge Mas Canosa was anointed the leader of the Cubans-in-exile. From Batista-to-Canosa-to-Castro-to-today, Leonardo Padura stands tallest as the type Cuban we Americans are not supposed to know. For two generations now Americans have meekly allowed a small cabal of miscreants to dictate a Cuban policy that currently gets a 191-to-0 denunciation in the United Nations, which correctly and primarily blames everyday Americans because they pusillanimously permit it to exist.
From his home in Havana, Leonardo Padura has evolved into Cuba's greatest journalist and author. His articles are carried worldwide by such venues as the New York Times and his books are available in Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Greek, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, etc., etc.
One of the best Leonardo Padura books.
On this first day of February-2017, Leonardo Padura has penned the most insightful article about U.S.-Cuban relations and it comes at a crucial juncture -- the giddy, uncharted days at the start of the Donald J. Trump presidency. Trump's comments and tweets have convinced the Batistianos that, at long last, they will, in short order, regain control of Cuba. The aforementioned Padura article appeared this week -- Jan. 31-2017 -- in the New York Times with this intriguing title: "TRUMP, A CHEVY AND CUBA'S UNCERTAINTY."
This is the Chevy that Leonardo Padura referenced in this week's New York Times article. The photo is courtesy of Desmond Boylan/Reuters. The car, shown driving along Havana's famed seafront Malecon boulevard, is a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air built in the U. S. and shipped brand-new to the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship almost two years before the Cuban Revolution chased Batista, the Mafia and greedy U. S. businessmen off the island. The Batistianos and Mafiosi, after the fall of Santa Clara in the closing hours of Dec.-1958, chose not to hang around Havana and fight the charging rebels because they already had shipped tons of loot to banks in Switzerland as well as to Mafia-aligned banks in Miami and Newark. And, of course, historians have documented that the last of the loot from Batista's Cuba, including gold bullion, had been stashed on getaway planes, yachts and ships that began to flee Havana by 3:00 A. M. Jan. 1-1959 for safer havens...such as nearby Miami as well as Dictator Trujillo's Dominican Republic, which was actually Batista's first stop. Left behind in Cuba, of course, were buildings, businesses, and other iconic items -- such as a plethora of 1950s American cars like the still-humming 1957 Chevy shown above.
With that backdrop, I'll return to Leonardo Paduro's insightful New York Time's article entitled "TRUMP, A CHEVY AND CUBA'S UNCERTAINTY." The uncertainty concerns whether the nascent Trump White House -- aligned with a Republican-controlled Congress -- can or will gift the Batistianos will their long-craved regime change in Cuba. The Chevy in the article is owned by a 40-year-old Cuban entrepreneur that Paduro identifies as "R. P." R. P. inherited the car from his father and six years ago Cuba opened up private enterprises for budding entrepreneurs like him. R. P. revitalized the old Chevy and began making a living by driving tourists around Havana. It was a hardtop, not a convertible that the tourists much preferred. So R. P. spent his savings...$3,000...on what Padura called "reconstructive surgery" to make it a convertible. And now, thanks to the new entrepreneurial opportunities in Cuba buttressed by President Obama's efforts to circumvent the Batistiano-controlled Congress, the newly configured convertible is making money as tourism on the island exceeded four million for the first time in 2016...with more to come in 2017 unless a Trump-and-Batistiano-orchestrated regime change effort results in the expected guerrilla-style resistance. Padura points out that "American President Donald J. Trump threatens to role back Obama's newly restored relations. Now R. P. has no idea whether his business will continue to prosper or if he made the worst investment of his life." Padura writes, "President Trump is threatening this freedom, saying that either Cuba changes its political system or he will reverse Obama's stance." In his article, Padura makes it plain that, to him and other freedom-loving Cubans, the new threats from Trump and the Batistianos means that Cuba must either submit to a return of the Batista/Mafia-type rule in Cuba or...fight. He points out that Cuba has always been a massive underdog but won its revolution in 1959 and since then has sustained its sovereignty by withstanding, from the nearby world superpower, a record number of assassination attempts, a military attack in 1961, terrorist attacks including coastal cannon-fire shellings of fishing villages as well as hotel and civilian airplane bombings, and since 1962 history's longest and cruelest economic embargo ever imposed on a weak country by a powerful country. In referencing those facts, Leonardo Padura in this week's New York Times wrote: "The Cuban government withstood those assaults, but it was the Cuban people who bore the brunt of the sacrifices and suffering."
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Cuba's most honored and renowned journalist and author, Leonardo Padura, is not just blowing smoke in this week's New York Times article. A lifelong but well-traveled resident of Havana since 1955, Padura wonders if the Trump presidency and the rejuvenated Batistianos in Miami and Congress will in 2017 fulfill their threats of a regime-change in Cuba. The Batistiano narrative in the U. S. since 1959 has justified all of its unmerciful counter-revolutionary assaults on Cuba as being strictly against the government while claiming to support everyday Cubans on the island in their quest to return democracy to the island. To Padura in Cuba and to at least brave and insightful Americans in the United States, that is a joke...and all the nations of the world, with that 191-to-0 vote in the UN, agrees it is a joke. Re-read Padura's sentence: "The Cuban government withstood those assaults, but it was the Cuban people who bore the brunt of the sacrifices and suffering." The American people are supposed to believe that the Batistianos and Mafiosi chased out of Cuba in January of 1959 were Mother Teresa-type angels by the time they regrouped, richer and stronger than ever, on U. S. soil. Padura believes that's a lie that has been perpetrated in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave since 1959...and so do brave democracy-lovers around the world.
This bucolic Havana Times.org photo correlates to this week's searing article penned by Leonardo Padura. It reminds us that three generations of innocent Cubans "have borne the brunt of the sacrifices and suffering" heaped on them by a U. S. policy designed since the 1950s to appease the offshoots of the long-ago ousted U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. The topical photo shows a young Cuban mother feeding pigeons while her gorgeous little girl sits behind her posing gorgeously for the photographer. That mother, that mother's mother and that mother's little girl comprise three generations of totally innocent Cubans on the island who have been punished by a rich and powerful minority hiding behind the skirts of the nearby world superpower, while the majority of Americans seem not to have the guts, the intelligence or the patriotism to even acknowledge what Padura wrote about and wants to stop. The entire world in unanimity also wants it to stop. Yet...as Leonardo Padura hinted in this week's New York Times...the U. S. democracy, severely weakened by the transplanted Batistianos, seems incapable of correcting that abomination. The little Cuban girl in the orange outfit above is not America's enemy and neither is her mother or her grand-parents, and they should not be treated, all their lives, as if they are.
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