Cubans and Cuban-Americans

Still Deeply Loving Cuba!
{Updated: Thursday, March 16th, 2016}

       The historic photo above says a lot about Cuba's ageless struggles against imperialist occupation extrapolated amidst the island's centuries-old battles for independence and sovereignty. In 1898 the Spanish-American War marked the transition of imperialist rule of Cuba from Spain to the United States. The above photo was noticed by a visitor this week at the Bacardi Museum in Santiago de Cuba. If you study the captions, you'll note that the photo was taken on May 20th, 1902 -- less than three years after the Spanish-American War. More significantly, notice that the U. S. flag is flying above and very much higher than the Cuban flag, clearly signifying that the United States secured Cuba from Spain, which was what the Spanish-American War was all about. The U. S. quickly drew up imperialist papers cementing its total dominance -- such as the Platt Amendment legalizing military occupation and, in 1903, papers that legalized the theft of Cuba's plush Guantanamo Port "in perpetuity." When the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the Spanish-American War, no Cuban was in attendance -- rather fittingly. To this day in the U. S., there are right-wing references claiming the U. S. used the Spanish-American War to "bring democracy to Cuba." Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. On January 1, 1959, the Cuban Revolution stunned the world by overthrowing the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, which quickly reconstituted itself on U. S. soil with continuous designs on recapturing the island. That hasn't happened...but neither has democracy. In the meantime, the modern-day struggles in mid-March of 2017 involve such nuances as Cubans vs. Cuban-Americans and nearby South Florida resembling a Batista/Mafia-like Banana Republic ON U. S. SOIL, which now gets a 191-to-0 UN condemnation. 

        The Teller Amendment lied to the out-of-the-loop American people prior to the 1898 Spanish-American War so the U. S. citizens wouldn't object to the desire of right-wing thugs in Washington and New York to capture Cuba.

       Right-wing thugs being allowed to capture Cuba in 1898 shames America and democracy to this day, as depicted by cartoons like the one above.

     But in was in the year 1950 that right-wing thugs in the United States government quantified the most nefarious American designs on Cuba as they conspired with the Mafia to use the power of the United States economy and military to support the brutal Batista dictatorship in Cuba, a murderous and thieving regime that existed from 1952 till the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, but then the miscreants resettled quickly in their new power-base, South Florida. Now such historic and topical facts after all these centuries and decades have grown very tiresome, especially for some rich and powerful Cuban-American businessmen based in South Florida, most of whom now want Cuba finally treated in 2017 as a sovereign nation and not as a targeted imperial pawn.

     While the ruling elite in South Florida last week talked...and laughed...about an "invasion of Cuba" now that Republicans are in charge of both the White House and the U. S. Congress, most of the 1.3 million Cuban-Americans even in South Florida support former President Obama's herculean efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. That is particularly true of almost all of the most powerful Cuban-American businessmen in South Florida, such as Frank del Rio, the Cuban-born head of the Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line. He still loves Cuba.

        This is one of Frank del Rio's ships taking 1,250 passengers to Havana back on March 9th, 2017. Frank has scheduled nine more cruises to Cuba, including to the ports of Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. In June the cruise ship Carnival Paradise with a capacity for 2,052 passengers will sail from Tampa to Havana. In all, 12 cruise lines are currently traveling to Cuba thanks to President Obama's slicing into the long-standing ironclad, Congress-mandated embargo of Cuba, an embargo that still makes most Americans the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba. Yet, Obama-inspired U. S. tourism in 2016 helped Cuba set a record with 4 million visitors and by March 4-2017 the total had already passed a million this year, much earlier than the pivotal, record-setting year of 2016.

       But Frank del Rio's giant Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line remains a catalyst in formulating the historic first cruise ships from the U. S. to Cuba in over half-a-century. Powerful Cuban-American businessmen like Frank will be a mite angry if the Cuban hardliners persuade President Trump to reverse such commerce with Cuba. Frank was born in Cuba in 1954 during the Batista dictatorship and came to the U. S. at age 7 in 1960, soon after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Like most Cuban-Americans, Frank wants normal relations with Cuba and he agrees with the international 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations condemning America's Batistiano-driven Cuban policies such as the embargo, which has been in effect since 1962, as well as the easily mandated Congressional laws that strongly discriminate in favor of the Cuban elite and Cuban defectors while grossly discriminating against everyone else, including the taxpayers.

       From way back in the 1950s till this very day, most of the ultra-rich and powerful Cuban-American hardliners have risen with connections to the self-serving Bush dynasty. The photo above shows President George W. Bush with his Cuban-born Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. In that role Gutierrez embarrassed America and democracy by punishing and mocking innocent Cubans on the island, such as when horrific back-to-back hurricanes destroyed over 200,000 Cuban homes. While other nations helped out, Gutierrez held news conferences saying the U. S. would contribute X-amount of dollars, BUT not to the Cuban government. Cuba reacted by saying that the U. S. was already contributing "tons of counter-revolutionary dollars to dissidents and was only using the disaster on the island "to contribute more." 

      Meanwhile, Carlos Gutierrez was explaining that he was "not a crook" and that his extreme wealth resulted from his being CEO-Chairman of Kellogg after starting with the company as a low-level worker in Mexico. Still, his Bush connections and his mocking Cubans on the island after the devastating hurricanes questioned his claim as far as Cuba was concerned then and now.

      After serving as President Bush's Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez became an anti-Cuban lobbyist and an adviser or executive with Washington Think Tanks like the powerful Albright Stone Bridge Group.

BUT GUESS WHAT? By 2015 Carlos Gutierrez was back in his native Cuba {above} celebrating the Obama-orchestrated re-opening of the U. S. Embassy in Cuba for the first time since 1961. Moreover, Gutierrez now, like most Cuban-Americans, advocates ending the embargo and negotiating normal relations with Cuba. Recently, Gutierrez criticized the Trump administration for being over-loaded with anti-Cuban zealots such as Mauricio Claver-Carone. So, like Frank del Rio and most of the powerful Cuban-American businessmen in South Florida, Gutierrez -- in a remarkable about-face -- is using his lobbying power in Washington to now call for normalizing relations with Cuba. It seems that some rich and powerful Cuban-Americans like Gutierrez are disheartened by other nations taking advantage of the ongoing positive changes in Cuba.

       The Executive Vice President of Nestle, Laurent Freixe, believes in Cuba's economic potential. The Swiss giant will build a factory at Cuba's Mariel Economic Zone to produce coffee, cookies and other products. Mr. Freixe says that the factory will employ at least 300 Cubans by the second half of 2019.

         If Cuba can continue to attract major international firms like Nestle to its deep-water, refurbished Mariel Port 28 miles southwest of Havana, it'll be much less dependent on the vagaries of its contentious relationship with the neighboring United States. A Nestle factory producing its world-famed products in Cuba will be a huge boost for the long-embargoed island.

And by the way:

       A life-size bronze statue of Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been unveiled in Havana. The Colombia-born Nobel Laureate is often called the all-time greatest Latin American writer-author.

      With Eusebio Leal, the Havana City Historian, looking on, the Colombian Ambassador to Cuba, Gustavo Bell, dedicated the Garcia Marquez statue to the people of Cuba. Bell said, "We want to pay homage to Gabo...Gabriel Garcia Marquez's nickname...because he is so intimately linked to Havana and the Cuban people that he loved so deeply. This is also a tribute, a show of gratitude from the Colombian people to the Cuban people for accompanying us in the peace process." For four years Cuba hosted exhaustive talks between the government of Colombia and FARC rebels, a superb gesture that ended a bloody civil war that had roiled Colombia for half-a-century.

     During his long life, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a dear friend of the Cuban people, especially his best friend for a half-century, Fidel Castro. But Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, mortally hated U.S.-backed Latin American dictators, especially Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile and, of course, Batista in Cuba. 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most unforgettable books -- "100 Years of Solitude." 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his dearest friend Fidel Castro.

Latin America's most acclaimed author.

        The newly dedicated statue of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Havana was created by the great Cuban sculptor Jose Villa Soberon. His statues of John Lennon and others are tourist attractions around Havana.

A Soberon statue honoring American Earnest Hemingway.

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