Cuba TODAY And YESTERDAY

The Revolution vs. Batista
{Saturday, May 13th, 2017}

       The photo above was taken this second week in May of 2017 in the Children's Hospital in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. I'll explain its meaning but first I'll explain why this photo resonates with me and should resonate with everyone, even Americans who are not supposed to understand it.

       In 2004 President George W. Bush's administration gave me permission to visit Cuba despite the Bush dynasty's decades-old counter-revolutionary assaults on the island and despite the U. S. embargo against Cuba that, since 1962, has rendered everyday Americans, then and now, the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. My request was denied several times as I minutely explained my reason for needing to go to Cuba -- to research my biography of Revolutionary heroine Celia Sanchez. One legal permission to visit Cuba concerns research by approved authors. I was finally approved when a copy of my "Sacajawea: Her True Story" book was sent with a last-ditch request to the U. S. Treasury department along with a long and very positive review of the book by the Denver Post. So, Sacajawea, the Indian girl who was the heroine of America's exploratory Lewis & Clark Expedition, was a catalyst in getting me to Cuba.

          After checking into Havana's Victoria Hotel, I asked about a car and driver that would take me around Havana and across the island to further my Celia Sanchez research. On our first day out from Havana my driver Jose and I were having lunch at an outdoor table in Varadero, the famed beach town about an hour southeast of Havana right down the scenic coastal highway. I capped my meal with ice cream as Jose went to make a phone call and I was also waiting for the photo shop across the street to develop some film for me. When Jose returned he said, "I am sorry to waste your money today. My wife this morning took our 4-year-old son to a clinic and his condition is worse than we thought. He is now in the hospital and my wife wants me there. I'll take you back to the Victoria Hotel." On the way back, with Jose now my friend, I talked him into letting me go to the hospital too. That experience resonates with me to this day. The care, attention and love bestowed on Jose's son, and the other children in that hospital, affected me profoundly. 

          Now back to the photo above. It was taken this week -- May 10th -- at the Pepe Portilla Children's Hospital in Pinar del Rio. The little girl in the crib is the patient of Dr. Nadia Arteche. This photo replicates what I saw with Jose's sick child -- profound care, attention, and love. Surely, other sick children in other nations receive well-deserved Love, Attention, and Care but in that regard Cuba...Revolutionary Cuba...stands out and that fact has been duly noted by child-loving international monitors such as the World Health Organization; the UN's children's branch, UNESCO; and the Pan-American Health Organization...and even the World Bank, which has praised Cuba for the high percentage of its very limited wealth that it spends on free health, education, and shelter for its people. Also, profoundly, the Love, Attention and Care devoted to children in Revolutionary Cuba -- from 1959 till today -- is in stark contrast to how non-elite children were treated in the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship from 1952 till 1959.

     Extreme poverty like this in Batista's Cuba among the majority poor was the norm, not the exception. There are many photos like this plus many other historic documents to confirm that well-known fact.

      In Batista's Cuba, while the majority poor were mired in hopeless poverty, America's very top Mafia kingpins, such as Meyer Lansky above, were allowed to nightly make off with satchels full of money.

        But robbing the island blind in Batista's Cuba from 1952 till 1959 was not what sparked the Cuban Revolution. Anti-Batista marches totally formed and led by outraged Cuban mothers, as shown above, created the Revolution, not the extreme poverty among the peasants. After all, never before had a U.S.-backed dictatorship been threatened by a popular revolt. But mothers like these changed history by defying those odds for the reason stated in the billboard above -- the murders, asesinatos, of their children, their hijos, apparently in the belief that such dire warnings would quell any dissent on the island. The powerful New York Times, and its main correspondent in Cuba, Herbert L. Matthews, amply reported on these marches but American citizens were not concerned. But these marches inspired a young lawyer named Fidel Castro and later he famously explained why he believed a revolution could prevail: "Previous failed revolutions had never utilized the half of its population that was female. I believed Cuba could correct that." Indeed, his belief was prescient. In the Revolutionary War against the U.S.-and-Mafia-backed Batista, Fidel Castro is famed for injecting women like Celia Sanchez and Haydee Santamaria at the forefront of the Revolution and, in fact, Fidel Castro created and named a famed and furious all-female guerrilla force -- the Mariana Grajales Brigade -- that produced do-or-die fighters like teenager Tete Puebla who today is a General in the Cuban army. {You may Google any of those names and/or topics for more particulars}.

       Black-and-white photos deftly help tell the story of Batista's Cuba BUT the black-and-white photo above, taken in 2013, also helps spotlight modern Revolutionary Cuba's poverty and hard times. This photo is courtesy of The Life Nomadik website, which fairly chronicles real-life existence in interesting places. This photo depicted Tita, age 82, and her husband Roberto, age 83, in their Havana apartment. Their health care, shelter and food are free but otherwise they live on meager pensions. The Nomadik website that featured them also added this sentence to sanely and correctly blame the U. S. embargo of Cuba, in place since 1962, for much of the hardship innocent Cubans like this couple suffer: "The embargo is cruel, unjust, hypocritic, and simply ridiculous." No one can argue...I repeat, NO ONE CAN ARGUE...with that exact Nomadik sentence but, yet, Americans have allowed it to persist for well over half-a-century merely to appease a handful of counter-revolutionaries in Miami, Florida, and in the United States Congress.

       In Cuba today there are billboards that call the U. S. embargo...Cuba calls it a blockade..."the longest genocidal blockade in history." Well, you say, Cuba is biased and such billboards are hyperbolic exaggerations. But...the rest of the world -- including America's best friends -- agrees with it. 

       The graphic above chronicles the sheer stupidity, cowardice and lack of patriotism on the part of Americans to allow the embargo-blockade to persist decade after endless decade, hurting America's international reputation to the delight of its enemies and to the embarrassment of its best friends. This graphic depicts the current vote in the United Nations that reveals that 191 nations oppose the embargo and no nations support it. It is a glaring testament to U. S. stupidity, cowardice and lack of patriotism. 

            And that brings me back around to another color photo taken this week -- May 10th, 2017 -- at the Pepe Portilla Children's Hospital in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. The Care, Attention and Love this little sick Cuban girl is receiving reminds me of the Care, Attention and Love my friend Jose's 4-year-old child received in Revolutionary Cuba when I was very legally visiting the island. This updated photo was not staged by the government; it is typical. And, significantly, it is in stark contrast to Batista's pre-Revolutionary Cuba.

      I believe a country or a society can best be judged by how it cares for the female half of its population because they are the mothers most charged with caring for that nation's and that society's children. I speak of sick babies like the one shown above, a sick baby in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. That baby's doctor, Nadia Arteche, is well-trained, highly skilled, and lowly paid. But after her medical treatment of this baby, Dr. Arteche also believes that additional Care, Love and Attention is warranted. This baby's glowing smile, as her right hand caresses her mother's arm and her left hand reaches happily for the doctor's flower, proves that Dr. Arteche is right and those who oppose her from the holier-than-thou sanctity of a much stronger foreign nation are wrong...just as the U.S. embargo that punishes Dr. Arteche and her sick babies is wrong.

And by the way:

       The man on the left in this photo is Herbert L. Matthews, the very influential New York Times reporter I referenced for having tried so hard to tell Americans about what their tax-dollars were supporting in Batista's Cuba. Before, during and after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Mr. Matthews was a fervent supporter of Fidel Castro and the Revolution because Mr. Matthews was an expert on Batista's Cuba.

    I also referenced my book -- SACAJAWEA: Her True Story -- as the only reason the George W. Bush administration finally...finally...allowed me to travel to Cuba to research my biography of Celia Sanchez.

      This magnificent statue is in Sacajawea Park in Livingston, Montana. It shows Sacajawea on horseback holding her baby. She was a teenage Shoshone Indian girl who had just given birth before she, while caring for her baby, expertly guided and repeatedly saved the perilous and arduous Lewis and Clark Expedition from May 14, 1804 to its successful and historic conclusion on September 23, 1806. It helped shape and expand the America that we know today. Sacajawea is America's all-time most-honored female, commemorated by more statues, buildings, schools, ponds, parks, etc., named for her than any other USA female. I equate America's Sacajawea with Cuba's Celia Sanchez as heroines in their respective countries.

Celia Sanchez: an incomparable heroine.

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