Cuba's +- Week

One Plus, One Minus!!
{Updated: Saturday, February 25th, 2016}

       In this next-to-last week in February of 2017, Cuba got some good press, even in the United States. The photo above shows a bipartisan delegation from the U. S. Congress meeting in Havana with Cuban President Raul Castro. Speaking to Castro is Democratic Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont with the white-haired Republican Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi right behind Leahy awaiting his turn. The Congressmen spent four days this week in Cuba and concluded that Cuba is trying to preserve its detente with the United States begun by former U. S. President Obama, but it remains a precarious process.

        In the hopes that President Donald Trump will not scuttle Obama's peaceful overtures to Cuba, the bipartisan group of United States Congressmen this week witnessed the above signing in which Senator Thad Cochran's state of Mississippi and two of its major ports agreed to future commerce with Cuba.

Meanwhile, as represented by this quartet of Miami counter-revolutionaries, any advances in trying to normalize relations with Cuba are always met with highly publicized heightened efforts to reverse them.

The next five photos are courtesy of Reuters.

       Cuba is being lambasted this week for not allowing Luis Almagro to fly to the island to participate in an anti-Cuba rally organized by Cuban dissidents on the island in conjunction with anti-Cuba elements off the island, namely the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy. In addition to Almagro, Cuba denied entry to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and to Mariana Aylwin, the daughter of former Chilean President Patricio Aylwin. But it's the Almagro denial that most rankles Cuba's enemies in the Western World. He is the head of the Organization of American States {OAS}. Cuba's Foreign Ministry released a formal statement explaining in detail its decision to deny Almagro, Calderon, and Aylwin to participate in Havana in what it considered a "a foreign-funded-and-organized regime-change spectacle." Cuba's official statement said: "The plan, plotted on several trips between Washington and other capitals of the region, was to mount in Havana an open and serious provocation against the Cuban government..." Cuba also detailed how it has tied Almagro, Calderon, and Aylwin to "several Bush-era regime-change schemes." Cuba has maintained since its 1959 revolution ousted the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship that the OAS has been a tool of U. S. regime-change right-wingers, and Cuba has vowed "never" to have anything to do with it.

       While getting bad press this week related to the OAS, Mexico and Chile, Cuba is also concerned with what's happening elsewhere in Latin American, such as with its friend President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The 53-year-old Correa has been elected President of Ecuador three times since 2007 and in those ten years he has been Cuba's ally and has been credited with helping the poorest Ecuadorians. His education includes a degree from the University of Illinois-Urbana. He is not eligible to run in the current presidential election in Ecuador and he believes the man he is supporting is being unfairly maligned "from abroad" by elements who do not like his "two toxic friendships -- with Cuba and with my own poorest people." Thus, Cuba and America both have much more than a passing interest in who succeeds President Correa.

      Sixty-one-year-old banker Guillermo Lasso is strongly backed by business interests and, presumably, by the United States in the tense presidential election in Ecuador. But he would not be Cuba's top choice.

       President Correa as well as Cuba would like to see Lenin Moreno elected as the next President of Ecuador. Moreno has been a paraplegic since he was shot in the back in 1998. Like Rafael Correa, Lenin Moreno believes his friendly views on Cuba and poor people have created "well-funded opponents." 

        Recent polls showed that 51-year-old lawyer Cynthia Viteri had made sharp gains in the race to become Ecuador's next President and she indeed amassed enough votes to cause a run-off election.

       Reuters announced last night that leftist Lenin Moreno, on the left, got 39.3 percent of the votes, barely missing the 40% threshold, and banker Guillermo Lasso, on the right, got 28.1 percent. Thus, the run-off election between these two men will be held on April 3rd to determine Ecuador's next President.

       Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa once thought the Obama administration was friendly turf. U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is shown here warmly embracing and even kissing President Correa.

A friendly Clinton and Correa news conference.

       BUT THEN, an unhappy President Correa got to see some of Secretary Clinton's secretive emails exposed by Wikileaks. From that point on President Correa reached the conclusion that any Cuba-friendly government in Latin America was being targeted by Washington -- his in Ecuador, Dilma Rousseff's in Brazil, Cristina Kirchner's in Argentina, Danny Ortega's in Nicaragua, Evo Morales' in Bolivia, etc. By the time the two-photo montage depicted above was made, President Correa and Secretary Clinton were, to put it mildly, not on kissing terms as he moped and she was busy blaming Wikileaks for leaking her emails. 

       Since being educated by the Hillary Clinton emails, President Rafael Correa in Ecuador has turned away from the U. S. and toward China, as indicated by the photo above. From Cuba to Ecuador and all the Cuba-friendly stops in between, China is displaying an eagerness to capitalize on either real or perceived Latin American distrust of the United States. China, according to Correa, exudes friendship to Latin America's "minority poor" while the U. S. is interested in "alliances with Latin America's minority elite, with America's perennial target, Cuba, always just caught in the middle." And that's why Cuba for sure and both the U. S. and China most likely will be keeping a close eye on April 3rd's presidential election in Ecuador.

The population of Ecuador is 15.7 million South Americans.
And by the way:

       This is the most painful and shameful photo that flashed across America Friday, February 24th, 2017. It was featured in USA Today and many other newspapers. It was taken by Mike McCleary of the Bismarck Tribune. It shows an elderly, handcuffed Indian woman being forcefully led away by four strong policeman. For a year this Indian woman and many like her have been protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline that will enrich rich Americans and Canadians but SHE sincerely believes it will harm the environment and illegally soil and desecrate her sacred fatherland. The photo is a reminder that the American government has never lived up to a treaty with Indians and seldom has the U. S. government even shown compassion for the most native of Native Americans. But I would like to say...I have compassion and respect for this old Indian woman. She, like many others of her race, is a genuine American heroine.

{NOTE: I am a democracy-loving conservative Republican.} 
 {Unfortunately, it's a democracy not immune to thugs.} 
{The thugs are the decision-makers, not the policemen.}

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