Dawning of a New Cuba

But Havana vs. Miami Forever!!
{Saturday,, March 17th, 2018}

     Next month -- April, 2018 -- the Cuban parliament, its 605-member National Assembly -- will inaugurate the process of beginning the first non-Castro led government since 1959. Yet, the retiring 86-year-old President Raul and the iconic Fidel, who died on Nov. 25-2016 at age 90, will continue to cast vast shadows over the island's future, almost reminiscent to the heights of their on-hand leadership. The new Cuba -- after the promotion of current First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel -- will try to drift further-&-further from its geographical Superpower neighbor to more closely engage more friendly nations, such as the dozens of Italian entrepreneurs now showing acute interest in investing in business operations at Cuba's vital Mariel Port Economic Zone, which is ultra-modern and 28 miles southwest of Havana.

     Finishing up his 3-day visit to Cuba, the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, has met with Cuban President Raul Castro but his large contingent has included experts in health, tourism, sports, and other areas of mutual concern. The official Kenyan spokesperson Monica Juma issued this statement: "We are in Havana for the first State visit by President Kenyatta after his inauguration for the second term. This is very deliberate. Our inspiration in the early 1960s for independence and against apartheid was inspired by the 1959 victory of the Cuban Revolution. We are here to strengthen what are historic ties between Cuba and Kenya but also between Cuba and Africa." Kenya is particularly interested in Cuba's advanced vaccines and treatments for diseases such as cancer and malaria. In answer to a question, Monica Juma said, "When the big U. S. city of Chicago went past the famous embargo and summoned Cuban doctors to help lower Chicago's high infant mortality rate, we were impressed. If Cuba can do that in Chicago, they can do it in Nairobi, all of Kenya...and maybe all of Africa. But this trip was arranged before we read the Chicago story."

Chief Kenyan spokesperson, Monica Juma.

    One of America's top business experts, Roberta Matuson spent two recent weeks in Cuba. On March 14th, 2018 she penned a major article for Forbes entitled: "Business Lessons learned From Cuba." She noted the small incomes for everyday Cubans and then wrote: "You would think with those low wages, the services and quality of goods would be abysmal. Actually, I found the opposite to be true. Cuba is a beautiful country filled with warm people who have hopes and dreams like we do." Almost without fail, every single unbiased American who visits Cuba seems to return with the opinions expressed by Roberta Matuson, and I am one of those returnees. One reason, since the U. S. embargo of Cuba was first imposed in 1962, a handful of Counter Revolutionary Cuban exiles have insisted that Americans should be the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba is because those revengeful remnants from the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship want to dictate the Cuban narrative in the U. S. and, sadly, for the most part they have. Thus, when Americans like Roberta Matuson visit Cuba, the false narratives spewed by a mere handful of vicious Counter Revolutionaries for six decades are exposed for the lies they are. Indeed, "Cuba is a beautiful country filled with warm people who have hopes and dreams like we do." {"...a beautiful country...warm people...hopes and dreams."}

Photo courtesy: Adalberta Roque/AFP/Getty Images.

  The photo above illustrated the aforementioned Forbes article written by Roberta Matuson. It shows a Cuban named Sady Guardiola. She makes her living as a Street Sweeper. Sady is one of Cuba's "warm people who have hopes and dreams like we do." Disputing the lies that have prevailed in the U. S. for six decades, the U. S. embargo and other assaults on Cuba have hurt everyday Cubans like Sady although to this day Counter Revolutionary Cuban-Americans like Senator Marco Rubio insist their only aim is to "hurt the Castros." That's a blatant lie. De-classified U. S. documents prove that the embargo against Cuba...from 1960 till today...was AND IS designed to starve, deprive and make miserable the lives of Cubans to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. Rubio & his ilk know all that, I believe, but they have neither the guts nor the integrity to admit it. Yet, for six decades in the name of America and Democracy they have been allowed to starve, deprive and make miserable the lives of totally innocent Cubans like Sady Guardiola to sate their revenge and greed. And, as the decent former President Obama pointed out, the purpose of such cruelty has failed to induce the Cubans to rise up against their government because...PERHAPS...they remember the extreme brutality of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship THAT PRECEDED IT, and don't want its return.

******************

      On Sunday, March 11th, 2018, Cuba held ostensibly its all-time most important election encompassing 24,000 polling places all across the island. It chose the 605 members of the National Assembly that will, by April 19th, choose Cuba's next President, First Vice President, and five other Vice Presidents. The process will result next month in Cuba having its first non-Castro and first non-revolutionary leader since 1959. This week -- Tuesday, March 13, 2018 -- the Counter Revolutionary Miami Herald, in an article written by Nora Gamez Torres, continued to analyze Cuba's exhaustive election from America's enemy soil. The article is entitled: "Cuba Gets Lowest Voter Turnout in Socialist History as Raul Castro Prepares to Retire." Well, by late in the day Sunday some 7,399,891 Cubans had voted out of an overall population, including children, of 11.2 million. Also, the Nora Gamez Torres article highlighted the three best-known anti-revolutionary dissidents -- Jose Daniel Ferrer, Yoani Sanchez, and Rosa Maria Paya -- with their anti-Cuban takes on the election. Cuba allows Ferrer, Sanchez, and Paya to fly to Miami and to the U. S. Congress to gain anti-revolutionary sustenance and then fly back to Cuba to use it. All that being said, even Nora Gamez Torres and the Miami Herald will have trouble convincing unbiased, non-Miami, and non-propagandized Americans that Sunday's national election was unimportant.

A new Cuban leader IS important.

***************

Photo courtesy: Alejandro Ernesto/AFP/Getty Images.

    The photo above shows Miguel Diaz-Canel and his wife Lis preparing to vote Sunday in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara. Miguel is Cuba's Current First Vice President and on April 19th-2018 he will become the island's first non-Castro and first non-revolutionary leader since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. The 57-year-old Miguel and his wife Lis are both educators and both are popular on the island. The aforementioned Miami Herald article this wek reported that Miguel spoke to the media for ten minutes after he voted. He said: "We are building a government-people relationship. The government we're electing will be a government that will come from the people. The people are going to participate in the decisions taken by the government, and the people also can revoke anyone who does not carry out their responsibilities. We are defending a revolution that is still under attack, amid a complicated world and regional situation, and the updating of our economic model is paramount. This election should be seen as a commitment to the historic generation that forged the revolution, and it is a tribute to Fidel. I believe it's an endorsement of Raul, our President, who's the one leading the updating."

     The photo above shows Raul Castro preparing to vote in Segundo Frente, a mountainous municipality near the eastern city of Santiago that includes the mausoleum where his wife, the legendary revolutionary heroine Vilma Espin, is buried and where Raul one day will be buried beside her. As he prepares to retire as Cuba's President next month, the 86-year-old Raul will no longer live in the capital city of Havana on the island's northwestern tip. Both Raul and his late brother Fidel -- who died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016 -- always felt more at home around Santiago, the former capital on the southeastern tip of the island. In addition to Raul, only three other top revolutionary legends remain alive and they are Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, Ramiro Valdes, and Guillermo Garcia. Raul's retirement home is being completed in Santiago, not Havana, and his ongoing influence is unknown.

     This Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images photo shows an elderly Cuban woman voting Sunday in Santa Clara, Cuba. The majority of women on the island have always supported the revolution even if the Cuban narrative in the United States, dictated by revengeful exils since 1959, says otherwise. Of course, if the majority of women in Cuba since 1959 had NOT supported the revolution, the Batistiano-Mafiosi exiles from U. S. soil would have regained control of the island long ago!

      But the post-Castro key to Cuba's future rests in the hands of its young-adult generation -- like the 9 healthy, well-educated, and fiercely pro-revolutionary young women depicted above. Fourth from the right, in the white blouse and black skirt, is Rosy Amaro Perez. She is a popular and influential news anchor on the island.

     This photo shows Rosy Amaro Perez and her 4-year-old daughter Mariana casting their vote in Sunday's important election. As a news anchor and as a citizen, Rosy is not shy about criticizing the government but she fiercely supports the revolution that finally made Cuba a sovereign nation in 1959 after 500 years of foreign Spanish and American imperial domination. On April 16, 2017, Rosy watched on television as President Donald Trump made a speech in Miami's Little Havana section denouncing the Herculean efforts of his predecessor Barack Obama who had tried so hard to normalize relations with Cuba. Within a few minutes after President Trump's speech ended, Rosy wrote this salient sentence on her Facebook page: "The Cuba that President Trump just described is not the Cuba I know, and I've lived here all my life."

        The photo above shows Miguel Diaz-Canel and his wife Lis Cuesta Peraza waiting in line as they prepared to vote Sunday in Santa Clara, Cuba. Next month, Miguel will be the new leader of Cuba. As he stated Sunday in the quote used by the Miami Herald, he fully realizes that his leadership role can be "revoked" if he loses the support of the majority of Cubans, which he knows he now has. But he is determined that "foreign aspects" will not revoke him. Several weeks ago in Havana, while hosting a delegation of African leaders, Miguel made this equally significant statement: "My two main priorities will be to protect Cuba's sovereignty from U. S. forces and to modernize Cuba's economy by working more closely with all nations not under America's yoke and not at the mercy of the blockade." He admires the Vietnamese economy and he is very aware of China's economic and military might.

*&***********************&*