60 Years as of Jan. 1-2019!!
{Wednesday, January 2nd, 2018}
{Wednesday, January 2nd, 2018}
Tuesday was January 1st, 2019. Exactly 60 years ago on that day in 1959 Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution shocked the world by becoming the first and only nation to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictatorship, in this case the vile Batista-Mafia regime on the Caribbean's largest, most beautiful, most enigmatic, and certainly its most pugnacious island.
But when Fidel Castro and his victorious rebels waved good-bye to the fleeing Batista-Mafia goons, it turned out to be a bit premature.
The Batista-Mafia leaders that had plundered and brutalized Cuba from 1952-1959 -- including from left-to-right Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Fulgencio Batista -- regrouped in a safe haven on nearby American soil and were embraced anew by the U. S. government.
Once back on U. S. soil, the Batista-Mafia thugs had tons of money and stockpiles of weapons, and the continued support of the world's Superpower. That was more than enough to totally overwhelm Miami and Southern Florida economically and politically.
The Little Havana section of Miami in 1959 quickly became the new headquarters...the new capital...for the newly transplanted Batista-Mafia leaders. It was expected to be short-lived because expectations were that it would only take a few weeks to recapture Cuba. Indeed, the right-wing Republican thugs in the Eisenhower administrations that had sicced the Mafia on Cuba in 1952 were still around in 1959 to make sure the Superpower United States economy and military still supported the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders who were fanatically motivated to recapture the island.
What followed as early as January of 1959 were massive terrorist strikes on the vulnerable island...such as warplane bombings of sugar cane and tobacco plantations, deadly speedboat strafings of coastal fishing cabins by machine-guns mounted on tripods, the all-time world record of assassination attempts against Fidel Castro alone but also against those close to him, etc., etc., etc. Such terrorism or undeclared war against Cuba was meant to soften up the island for the military attack that had been designed in 1959 by the Eisenhower right-wingers and then passed on to the new John Kennedy administration on January 20th, 1960. That became known as the air-ground-and-sea Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba in mid-April of 1961. As shown on the above map, Cuba called it the Baia dos Porcos attack. Similar to what has defined U. S. policy regarding Cuba since the 1950s, the greedy right-wingers who have powered such vile things didn't know Cuba very well. For example, they assured Kennedy that once the bombs started falling on Camp Colombia on the edge of Havana that Fidel Castro would run to his getaway airplane, and once the Cuban people heard the bombing they would turn massively against Castro. Once the bombs started falling, of course, Castro ran to the front-lines where he guessed the ground attack would commence -- the Baia dos Porcos. By the time he reached the Bay of Pigs not a single Cuban had turned against Castro while 400,000 rebels were eager to support him, but he only needed a fraction of that number considering how ill-advised and led the expensive tax-depleting attack was. So the Baia dos Porcos victory for Fidel Castro, who never had a getaway airplane, solidified his revolutionary legend even more than the original revolutionary victory on January 1, 1959. AND SO, instead of killing Castro and recapturing Cuba, the Bay of Pigs attackers had used up all those tax dollars and most of America's Latin American goodwill while also cementing Castro's legend as an incomparable revolutionary icon. Such arrogant stupidity would continue for decades even amidst the abject failure to recapture the feisty island.
But that's not to say that the extreme terrorism against Cuba was curbed or even slowed by the resounding Cuban victory at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. Declassified U. S. documents confirm that Operation Mongoose was a well-funded scheme to kill Fidel Castro and Operation Northwoods was a murderous scheme concocted with a 7-and-0 unanimity by the Joint of Chiefs of Staff -- the USA's 7 most powerful military leaders -- to murder innocent Americans so it could be blamed on Cuba and used as a pretext...excuse...for an all-out military attack on Cuba. The thuggish military leaders {never held accountable, of course} begged President Kennedy to allow them to conduct Operation Northwoods. All the while, vicious terrorist acts against Cuba by CIA and U. S. Army-trained Cuban operatives -- of whom Luis Posada Carriles was the most famous -- continued unabated, including deadly hotel bombings in Havana, etc., as well as deadly car bombings in Miami. The most chilling such terrorist act against Cuba is depicted via the photo above. On Oct. 6, 1976, the civilian/child-laden {two dozen teenage athletes} Cubana Flight 455 was bombed into the ocean, killing all 73 on board. Posada, of course, died at age 90 of old age in Little Havana as a celebrated hero even though he once bragged in a famous New York Times interview that innocent terrorist deaths were necessary collateral damage.
After assassination attempts, terrorist attacks, and a military invasion failed to recapture Cuba, in 1962 the U. S. concocted what has become history's longest and cruelest economic Embargo ever imposed by a powerful nation against a much weaker nation. De-classified documents prove that the intent of the Embargo was to starve, deprive, and make miserable the lives of everyday Cubans to induce to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government. It didn't work but even those revelations didn't embarrass enough Americans to stand up and condemn it. It surely embarrassed two-term President Barack Obama who supported the unanimous 191-to-0 worldwide condemnation of the Embargo in 2016, his last year in office. But still, there are not enough brave, patriotic Americans in this generation to be embarrassed about the image of America and Democracy depicted above.
Although the majority of the 2 million+ Cuban-Americans in South Florida desire normal relations with Cuba, the economic and political power through two generations since 1959 remains in the hands of Counter Revolutionary extremists. Currently, as anointed by President Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, wearing the red tie above, has an uncontested green-light to use the incomparable might of the United States to execute a regime-change in Cuba, presumably paving the way for something akin to another Batistiano-like rule that, again, would allow rich U. S. businessmen and, of course, Counter Revolutionary supporters, to partake in the fleecing of the island. The two men flanking Rubio above are Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart whose father was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship and then one of the richest and most powerful all-time Counter Revolutionaries in South Florida. For the past two decades either Havana-born Lincoln or Mario or both at the same time have represented Little Havana in the U. S. Congress as extremists and mostly unchecked Counter Revolutionaries like their father. The extremist Cuban-Americans have benefited for six decades from massive support by Republican sycophants, particularly the Bush dynasty. The Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, on the right in the above photo, has just retired after three decades in the U. S. Congress as a vicious Counter Revolutionary backed by the self-serving Bush dynasty; the ambitious Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager in 1989 when Ros-Lehtinen was first elected to the U. S. Congress from Miami.
Beginning in January of 1959, the U. S. government began sending the most fanatic anti-Castro Cuban exiles to its secretive Army of the Americas training base at Fort Benning, Georgia. Unknown to the American people who paid for it, the Army of the Americas was where the U. S. trained soldiers and policemen from U.S.-friendly Latin American dictators and then sent them back to make sure those U.S.-friendly dictators stayed in power. And, yes, there were a lot -- Batista in Cuba, Samosa in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Videla in Argentina, etc., etc., and all the way up to the murderous 17-year reign of Pinochet in Chile, which lasted till the decade of the 1990s. Among the most famed anti-Castro Cuban zealots who graduated as a 2nd Lt. from the Army of the Americas at Fort Benning was Luis Posada Carriles. From both de-classified U. S. documents and Posada's own admissions and braggings, he holds the mantle as America's most famed terrorist. He was two years younger than Fidel Castro, the man Posada spent his entire adult life trying to kill and/or overthrow...while having the support of the vast U. S. economic and military resources but also enjoying the apathy or cowardice of the U. S. media and the U. S. citizenry. Like his nemesis Fidel Castro, Posada died of natural causes at age 90. Posada died on May 23rd, 2018, as a Little Havana hero safely protected on United States soil.
And so, while Posada stands as America's most famed Cuban revolutionary hero, Fidel Castro remains Cuba's greatest hero.
I tend to agree with The Woman Project.org that heroine Celia Sanchez had the best quotation to define the Cuban Revolution: "We rebels...get far too much credit for winning the revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots."
On Jan. 11-1980 at age 59, Celia Sanchez died of throat cancer. It was saddest day of Fidel Castro's life...by far. He considered Celia, a petite doctor's daughter, the most important revolutionary figure...and he was probably right considering that she was top recruiter of anti-Batista rebels and supplies, a do-or-die guerrilla fighter, and a prime decision-maker both during and after the revolutionary war. The photo above was taken shortly before Celia died. Some believe, even beyond her quote about "cowards and idiots," that Celia's greatest quotation was this one that she defiantly made several times: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." Almost as incredible as the Revolution itself, that Celia Sanchez quotation has survived the test of time, and then some.
January 1, 2019, marked the 60th anniversary of the triumph of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. That feat PLUS his victory at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, PLUS his incredible world-record for surviving assassination attempts, and PLUS the amazing longevity of his Revolution establishes Fidel Castro as history's greatest revolutionary figure, or at least history's most redoubtable revolutionary leader considering his entire life was spent on a small island nation and every day of his adult life his survival was threatened by the omnipotent might of the world's nearby Superpower. But Fidel Castro is no more. He died at age 90 in Havana on November 26, 2016. Yet, his legacy has prolonged his Revolution for over two years beyond his death. It remains to be seen how much longer Revolutionary Cuba will survive, but that too will depend largely on the continuing power of Fidel Castro's legacy.
This is 87-year-old Raul Castro -- who stepped down as Cuba's President on April 19th, 2018 -- making the prime speech on January 1st, 2019, in Santiago de Cuba celebrating 60 years of revolutionary rule on the island. He praised the support the Revolution has from the young-adult generation of Cuba and reminded his audience that such support remains vital to sustain "an independent nation coveted, as always, by foreign imperialist countries."
The prime celebrations in Cuba on January 1, 2019 toasting the 60th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution took place 500 miles from the capital city of Havana, in and around Santiago de Cuba on the island's southeastern tip. That's because it's the area where Fidel Castro is from, and where his major revolutionary battles were fought, and where his remains are now entombed. In the photo above, that's Miguel Diaz-Canel paying homage at Fidel's tomb. He's President Diaz-Canel now. He is a non-Castro and he was born shortly AFTER January 1, 1959. A non-rebel, he is the island's former Education Minister. Having inherited overwhelming odds, President Diaz-Canel vows to extend Fidel's revolution as long as possible. That, of course, will largely depend on the power of Fidel's legacy, because the odds against Revolutionary Cuba's survival remain overwhelming.
As of this 60th anniversary of the Cuban Rev0lution today, Fidel Castro's legacy has the strong support of most Cubans on the island at the start of 2019. That includes the restless, well-educated, healthy young-adult generation as personified by the Fidel supporter shown above. She happens to be a young mother; she wants the embargo to end; she wants friendly relations with the U. S. government; she wants Cubans on the island to have better economic opportunities and less harassment and punitive measures that are so successfully advocated by extremist Cuban Americans in the USA; and she wants Cubans on the island to decide Cuba's fate. In fact, she believes so firmly in that latter point that she would fight another do-or-die revolutionary guerrilla war to support that belief, and she firmly believes, to prevent a return of foreign domination, most Cubans on the island agree with her.
This is the young woman who was paying homage to Fidel Castro at his tomb. Her name is Rosy Amaro. She is a very popular, very influential, and very talented television news anchor in Cuba. The photo above was taken a few weeks ago -- on Dec. 6-2018 -- when she was on assignment in Nicaragua. She herself was being interviewed and, when the photo was taken, the Nicaraguan journalist had asked her, "How do you feel about U.S.-Cuba relations in the Age of Trump?" She prefaced her answer with that sad, worried look on her face. I am a democracy-loving American and I know Rosy. I know she is a far more decent and more beautiful human being than any of her enemies living in the United States.
This is Rosy Amaro, 500 miles from her Havana home, in Santiago de Cuba where the main celebrations are taking place to honor the 60th anniversary of the Jan. 1-1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution. As you can see above, top officials in the city of Santiago de Cuba are making sure Rosy gets a celebratory slice of that huge, decorative cake. She's kinda special, and so too is the still-viable Revolution.
This, I believe, is the face...and the smile...that represents Cuba in the New Year of 2019, six very volatile decades after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. This is Rosy Amaro: young, beautiful, well-educated, healthy, smart, a superbly talented broadcast journalist, and a patriot. She is shown 500 miles from her Havana home in Santiago de Cuba on January 1st, 2019, as a journalist and as a celebrant. If Rosy ceases to smile in 2019, I think it will reflect that her strong desire {that Cubans on the island, not in Miami or Washington, predicate Cuba's future} had been usurped by foreign elements not nearly as decent as she is. Therefore, I sincerely hope Rosy continues to smile throughout the New Year of 2019!!
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