A Bittersweet Visit to Cuba

A Special Visitor Returns!!
{Friday, January 12th, 2018}

Photo courtesy: Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press.

     This week one of the all-time greatest supporters of the Cuban Revolution, Michelle Bachelet, paid a nostalgic visit to the island. She is finishing up her second term as President of Chile and will leave office in March. She was President from 2006 till 2010 but Chile does not allow for consecutive terms. So she was a civilian humanitarian for four years before she was once again elected President in 2014. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Cuban President Raul Castro are shown above this week in Havana viewing an honor guard in Revolutionary Square. Even prior to her two democratically elected terms as Chile's President, she was a huge supporter of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Her father and Fidel Castro were key supporters of Chile's wildly popular democratically elected President Salvador Allende until the day in 1973 when the U.S.-backed {Nixon-Kissinger} coup resulted in the death of Allende to install, for 17 extremely bloody years, the brutal U.S.-backed Pinochet dictatorship. Michelle Bachelet's own father was one of the many victims of Pinochet's murderous reign.

    And so, this week now marks the final visit Michelle Bachelet will make to Cuba as the President of Chile. With Raul Castro retiring as Cuba's President in April, her visit highlights the changes taking place in Cuba, which is also basking in the Obama-to-Trump transition in the American White House that greatly and adversely affects every Cuban on the island. Michelle Bachelet was born 66-years-ago in Santiago, Chile. With only a few weeks left in her second and last term as Chile's President, it also marks a major loss for Cuba as far as Latin American support is concerned.

     As of March 11, 2018, the new President of Chile will be 68-year-old Sebastian Pinera. Educated at USA's Harvard University, Pinera is a right-wing multi-billionaire. He already served one term at Chile's President from 2010 to 2014 when Michelle Bachelet couldn't run for consecutive terms. And now once again the Harvard-educated billionaire Pinera is about to replace Bachelet as Chile's President...and Pinera is and will be again the only right-wing or conservative President that Chile has had since the vile and violent Pinochet dictatorship ended in 1990. Like Trump replacing Obama in the U. S., Pinera replacing Bachelet in Chile is bad news for Cuba but good news for America's vast Anti-Castro Cottage Industry.

    The vast and lucrative Anti-Castro Cottage Industry headquartered in Miami reacted typically to Chile's Cuba-loving President Michelle Bachelet's visit to Cuba this week. Unwilling to merely wait for the right-wing Pinera presidency, thuggish right-wing Miami journalist Andres Oppenheimer cowardly assailed the great Chilean lady with a scathing article in yesterday's Miami Herald. The shameful article was entitled: "Bachelet's Trip to Cuba Was Shameful, And A Blow to Latin America's Democratic left." Of course, Oppenheimer -- born 66-years-ago in Buenos Aires -- seems to pine for right-wing thugs to take over in Cuba, Chile, and elsewhere. The more politically correct or the more intimidating the anti-Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S. becomes, the larger become the bank accounts of one-sided "journalists" such as Oppenheimer. His syndicated column, his books, and his "Oppenheimer Presenta" on CNN's En Espanol are all slanted, right-wing rants and jokes. To bellow that Michelle Bachelet's visit this week to Cuba was "shameful and a blow to Latin America's Democratic left" is purely an example of Oppenheimer and his ilk preaching to the choir but also assuming that others are either too stupid or too afraid to question their lucrative right-wing propaganda.

     The photo above shows President Michelle Bachelet of Chile as she arrived in Cuba this second week in January, 2018. The reason right-wing journalist Andres Oppenheimer used a huge headline in the Miami Herald calling her Cuban visit "Shameful" is because Oppenheimer apparently considers her the exact opposite of vile right-wing dictators of old such as Jorge Rafael Videla in his native Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, Batista in Cuba, etc. Meanwhile, as the Anti-Castro Cottage Industry thrives in Oppenheimer's Miami, a great lady, Michelle Bachelet, is closing out two 4-year terms as Chile's President, and as Cuba's dear friend, and as the absolute antithesis to Oppenheimer, Videla, Pinochet, Batista, etc., etc. etc.

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