A Cuban History Lesson

And One Americans Need!
{Updated: Friday, June 23, 2017}

         For Americans in June of 2017 concerned about their beloved United States and their precious Democracy, I believe they need to comprehend and understand this photo of an extended Cuban family.

     With that preface, and with the true understanding that I am passionately pro-American and pro-Democracy, permit me to explain the four-generation photo depicted above, one Americans should understand.

       The gentleman in the middle is 79-year-old Elio Delgado-Legon. He lived the first part of his adult life in Batista's Cuba from 1952 till 1959. And he has lived the rest of his adult life in Revolutionary Cuba from 1959 till today. Elio is a smart man, and a very decent one. He is also a great writer. For his writing skill and his obvious knowledge of Cuba from both historic and topical standpoints, Elio is widely quoted and, in this digital age, his blog is well-read and much appreciated. BUT NOT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

         This is the 79-year-old Elio Delgado-Legon today in his Cuban home. He is still a great writer and a first-hand expert on both Batista's Cuba and Revolutionary Cuba, which also makes him an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. The caption at the top of his blog fully explains why the Batistiano-directed Cuban narrative in the U. S. shuns historians and writers like Elio, effectively forcing Americans to accept only one-sided propaganda on a vastly important two-sided topic. It is "vastly important" to Americans because the island of Cuba on a daily basis for decades has done and is doing more than ANY OTHER THING to demean America and Democracy worldwide, just as evidenced by the current 191-to-0 vote in the UN. SO, here is the exact caption at the top of Elio's blog whereby he cogently defines both himself and Cuba:
                 "I am a Cuban who has lived for 79 years. Therefore I know full well how life was before the revolution, having experienced it directly and indirectly. As a result, it hurts me to read so many aspersions cast upon a revolutionary government that fights tooth and nail to provide a better life. If it hasn't fully been able to do so, this is because of the many obstacles that have been put in its way."
          Although Elio has an impeccable reputation for his 79 years in Cuba, and although he is an expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, the U.S. mainstream media wouldn't dare provide Americans with his points of view.

     Of course, Elio Delagado-Legon closely followed U. S. President Donald Trump's speech before a counter-revolutionary choir in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood on June 16th, 2017. Elio's column about that speech was entitled "Back to the Cold War" in case you would like to Google it online. He wrote:

               "Trump was surrounded by the most reactionary and backward of the Right, the so-called Cuban-Americans, by murderers and terrorists who are responsible for thousands of deaths and maimed people in Cuba, and the U. S. children of torturers from the Batista dictatorship who rekindle sad memories for the Cuban people. Trump spoke about Cuba without knowing Cuba, just to please the select audience and, analysts say, with a well-defined objective in mind -- to get votes in Congress from the reactionary congressmen with Cuban roots, who don't know Cuba either." 

      When Elio mentions the "murderers and terrorists" who have targeted innocent Cubans, he is referencing such things as the terrorist bomb that downed the child-laden Cubana Flight 455 civilian airplane on October 6, 1976. To this day memorials like the one above are in Cuba, the Caribbean and Latin America honoring those victims. Such memorials also are reminders that to this very day the well-known alleged bomb-master is a heralded and free man in Miami. When Cuban-American newsman Emilio Milian complained about such things in Miami, he was car-bombed. When the top columnist at the Miami Herald, Jim DeFede, wrote a scathing column excoriating the Miami members in the U. S. Congress -- including the Diaz-Balarts and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- for protecting such terrorists, he was soon fired. Of course, the second most famed Cuban-American terrorist, after Posada Carriles, was Orlando Bosch and he was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush at the request of Jeb Bush who was busy making political and financial hay in Miami. Meanwhile, the Cuban families of such terror victims still mourn.

      Two generations of Cubans, like this sister and mother, have suffered mightily since the downing of Cubana Flight 455 on Oct. 6-1976. In the photo above, they had just learned about their brother and son.

           Declassified U. S. government documents -- like the one above dated "November 5, 1976" -- prove that the U. S. government knew about both the plot and the terrorists that downed Cubana Flight 455. 

       And when Elio writes about innocent Cubans being "maimed" by Miami terrorists, he is referencing Cubans like Nancy Pavon. Americans are not supposed to know her story, but they should.

       On October 12, 1971 Nancy Pavon at age 15 was in bed alongside her 13-year-old sister Angela in a fishing cabin in the coastal village of Boca de Sama near the city of Holguin. Two huge speed-boats with cannon mounted on tripods attacked the cabin, killing Ramon Siam and Lidia Rivaflecha and seriously wounding Nancy and slightly wounding Angela. Nancy's right foot was shot off just above the ankle "as if it was sliced by a machete." In the photo-montage above you see Nancy in the hospital later that day and in a wheelchair following her return home. Since 1971 she says she has been "wonderfully cared for by Cuba and laughed at by the Miami people and media." THAT NIGHT, because such speed-boat attacks on coastal civilians were well-known in Cuba and well-celebrated on the docks and in the media in Miami, the oldest Pavon sister, Xiomara, was further up the coast with her rifle standing guard but unable to help her family.

  This is Nancy Pavon speaking about the attack.  

       This Getty Images photo shows President Trump on June 16-2017 prior to his pro-Batistiano Little Havana speech as he entered to rousing applause from what Elio Delgado-Legon called "the children of torturers from the Batista dictatorship who rekindle sad memories for the Cuban people." If there is a counter to that depiction...and there surely is...it does not discredit the fact that there are millions of Cubans on the island who totally agree with Elio and that is one reason for Revolutionary Cuba's amazing longevity.

      For example, Elio and millions of Cubans on the island comprehend the meaning of the historic photo above while Americans are not supposed to because they have been programmed to sanitize Batista's Cuba and vilify Revolutionary Cuba. This photo was taken in 1958 in the Sierra Maestra town of Chivirico, Cuba. The three upfront men were leading a pro-Batista rally. In the middle with the holstered pistol is Rafael Diaz-Balart and he is flanked by the Masferrer Brothers, famed for being the leaders of the Masferrer Tigers, a ruthless army that murderously put down even hints of CHILDHOOD anti-Batista dissent. Of course, Americans are not supposed to know such things and the mainstream media wouldn't dare mention it, but any online search would have enlightened the curious or the patriotic. As Elio referenced, after the Jan.1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution, Batista leaders -- including the three above -- found instant sanctuaries in South Florida as well as continued support from the powerful right-wing thugs in Washington who had, in 1952, sicced Batista and the Mafia on Cuba.

      The photo above shows the rich and powerful Rolando Masferrer, the leader of Batista's Masferrer Tigers, in South Florida in 1961. That year right-wing, pro-Batista thugs in Washington introduced Masferrer to an unwitting President Kennedy. Later an aide explained to Kennedy who Masferrer was and how his bloody Cuban rampages had been backed in Cuba and in Florida by the U. S. government, especially the CIA. President Kennedy, who had in 1960 inherited the U.S.-infested pro-Batistiano right-wing extremists, soon VERY FAMOUSLY BELLOWED IN THE OVAL OFFICE, "If I could I would blow the CIA to smithereens!!" Of course, JFK couldn't do that...not before his own Oct. 22-1963 assassination or before such calamities as the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the incredible Batistiano-related influx of drugs, murders, and uncontrolled mayhem within Miami starting in 1959 and then filtering far outside of Miami all the way into the 1980s, causing President Reagan at one point to send his pro-Cuban exile Vice President, George H. W. Bush, to Miami with orders to "quiet the Cubans." {You can Google all that but also this very week in June of 2017 a two-hour documentary is running on the History Channel that explains the Cuban infestation of rampant drugs and murders in Miami following the Batista-Mafia defeat in Cuba}. And so, you ask, what happened to Rolando Masferrer on U. S. soil from where he tried to destroy Revolutionary Cuba? Well...in Miami at the time there were fierce internecine battles to determine who the U. S. would put back in charge of Cuba. It is that rivalry that, most historians say, resulted in the brutal car-bombing death of Rolando Masferrer in Miami on October 31, 1975.

          Beginning in 1959 Rafael Diaz-Balart, the man with the holstered pistol shown with the Masferrer brothers at that pro-Batista rally in Cuba in 1958, became one of the richest, most powerful and most visceral anti-Castro counter-revolutionary individuals in South Florida. His sister Mirta, by the way, was married to Fidel Castro from 1948 to 1955 and today at age 88 Mirta -- like most Cubans AND MOST CUBAN-AMERICANS -- supports Revolutionary Cuba far more than they support Miami's Little Havana Cubans. Rafael Diaz-Balart in South Florida created The White Rose, the very first highly funded paramilitary unit designed to recapture Cuba, but like all other efforts it failed. While still a counter-revolutionary exile...albeit a very rich and powerful one...Rafael Diaz-Balart died in Key Biscayne, Florida on May 6, 2005. And while he and his cohorts, despite intense backing from the U. S. government and the U. S. Treasury, never regained control of Cuba, Rafael Diaz-Balart had four sons who inherited both powerful wherewithal and unending revengeful motives against Cuba.

      This Miami Herald photo shows Rafael Diaz-Balart flanked by his four very rich and powerful sons -- one a banker, one a ubiquitous news anchor on all the NBC channels, one a former U. S. Congressman from Miami who remains a fierce counter-revolutionary who bragged about leaving Congress to revive The White Rose, and one a current U. S. Congressman from Miami who fiercely goaded...some say blackmailed...President Trump into rolling back President Obama's sane and peaceful overtures to Cuba.

     Indeed, when President Trump on June 16th was in Miami's Little Havana touting his pro-Batistiano Cuban stance, Mario Diaz-Balart was, FOR SURE, right behind him as if to...well, you know. In the above photo that is Mario's right hand closest to Trump's right hand. This photo is a metaphor for Cubans like Elio Delgado-Legon who, as Elio said, are "saddened by the reminders" that the Batista-Mafia rule of Cuba was supported by the superpower U. S. and today the Batistiano dominance of America's Cuban policy is condoned by the U. S. government, especially all Republican administrations like Donald Trump's.

       Also, as Cubans on the island like Elio have mentioned time-and-time-again, the mainstream U. S. media is nothing more and nothing less than "a giant counter-revolutionary propaganda machine." The photo above backs up that salient fact. On the left is Jose Diaz-Balart of the fiercely counter-revolutionary and omnipotent Diaz-Balart family, now a second generation that is about to turn into a third rich and powerful generation. Jose, as a counter-revolutinary/regime change news anchor on all of the top NBC news outlets, can say anything about Batista's Cuba or Revolutionary Cuba and the rest of the mainstream U. S. media is verboten to question it. Cubans on the island like Elio and like Cuba's brilliant young news anchor Cristina Escobar believe that the biased or intimidated U. S. media is more America's problem than Cuba's.

      Meanwhile, let's return to the four generations of Elio Delgado-Legon's Cuban family. Like most 79-year-old decent men, Elio loves and protects his daughter, his grand-daughter and his great-grandchildren as well as he can. He grew into adulthood in Batista's Cuba and he has lived the rest of his adult years since 1959 in Revolutionary Cuba. He knows both those disparate regimes like the back of his hand. A prolific writer, Elio again this week has penned a major article describing Batista's Cuba as having been run by "murderous, thieving thugs" and he defines Revolutionary Cuba as "a government that fights tooth and nail to provide us a better life. If it hasn't been able to do so, this is because of the many obstacles that have been put in its way." Those "obstacles," Elio believes {as does the UN}, have been "put in its way" by unchecked right-wingers hiding behind the skirts of the superpower in Miami and Washington. Although the U. S. media is totally dominated by such opinionnators as Jose Diaz-Balart, there is another side to the U.S.-Cuban conundrum, the side represented by Elio Delgado-Legon. As a fierce believer in America and in Democracy, I am ashamed of an American Cuban policy that gets a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations...and a Cuban policy that does not acknowledge the viewpoints of most Cubans on the island like Elio OR EVEN MOST CUBAN-AMERICANS IN MIAMI. And further...I believe such a situation has been allowed to fester and exist for over half-a-century purely because the last two generations of Americans have been and remain unpatriotic cowards. And that belief, I firmly believe, is not taking up for Elio but is taking up for the America that used to be and the America that can be again...if a strong, patriotic generation emerges.

And by the way:

       This truly superb photo is courtesy of Ernesto Gonzalez Diaz and the Havana Times.org. It shows Cubans on a very hot day enjoying the ocean-spray as it cascades over the famed Malecon seawall.

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