But 2021 Will Be A Struggle!!
In this first week of January of 2021 both the Cuban government and most of the 11.2 million Cubans on the island are using banners like the one above to celebrate: "HAPPY 2021: The 62nd Anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. CUBA LIVES!!!" Of course, since January 1-1959 after the Cuban Revolution chased the leaders of the U.S.-backed/Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship to their new sanctuary in Little Havana in the heart of Miami the Cuban Counter Revolutionaries and the U. S. government then proclaimed that recapturing Cuba would take only a few weeks, or a few months at the most. But as pugnacious and shocking as the Revolutionary triumph over the powerful Batista dictators...who were supported by the strongest nation in the world and by the strongest criminal organization in the world...was...let it be known that that the 62-year-old longevity of the Cuban Revolution is even more pugnacious and shocking than was the original triumph 62 YEARS AGO!!!
The eTurbo News photo above this week shows two Cuban women walking in Havana. Unlike the overthrown Batista dictatorship, Revolutionary Cuba since 1959 has mandated free healthcare for life and free education through college for every Cuban on the island. So, while wearing COVID-19 masks, these two Cuban women are smart, well educated, and healthy. They also have opinions about their revolution and their lives...and about the lives of their children. Like most Cubans on the island, these two women support the Revolution and they resent the Little Havana and United States genocide aimed at them and their families. Moreover, they resent the fact that the superpower U. S. government and the superpower U. S. media formulate lies about them while refusing to permit their OPINIONS to be heard. But on the island, now that most Cubans have access to Smart Phones and the Internet and Social Media outlets, Cubans like these two women can voice their hopes, dreams, and desires openly and freely. Using that Online power, Cubans in Cuba have discovered that they can openly and strongly criticize their government...as long as the government believes they are not influenced by funds from Little Havana and from the United States government. For example, in this first week of 2021 Cubans in Cuba are adjusting to totally new currency and many have openly complained about it directly to the government as well as to the Cuban media and via their ubiquitous Social Media forums. They know they can strongly complain...except if their complaints are believed to be or discovered to be funded by dollars from Little Havana and the United States.
This Ramon Espinosa/AP photo above depicts how Cuba, starting this first week of January-2021, has ended its dual currency system and devalued the peso.
This Lisette Poole/Bloomberg photo was used to illustrate an article to help explain how the changed currency system will effect and alter the lives of the Cuban people {a lot}. Many think it will add to inflation and make products priced higher, but the government is willing to risk dealing with that eventuality.
This Ramon Espinosa/AP photo shows how a Cuban is trying to adjust to the new single-currency system on the island.
The two articles above from two major U. S. news sources, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News, accurately reveal the drastic effects for Cubans regarding the new currency changes.
The article above by David Urra reveals one way that Cuba is trying to indicate that it hopes to improve its dismal economy in 2021. Cuba is 9th in the world in the production of Nickel, an important mineral used in the manufacture of things such as Smart Phones, electric cars, etc. Cuba has plans for its Cuban/Canadian plants in Holguin Province to increase its production of Nickel in the New Year of 2021. The Cuban government admits that its already fragile economy lost 11% of its value in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And President Trump's Little Havana-directed genocide exacerbated the economic hardship when Trump permitted Counter Revolutionary zealots to tighten the EMBARGO, which was instituted way back in 1962 for the purpose of "starving, depriving, and making miserable" the Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their own Revolutionary government. For sure, the Embargo has severely hurt generations of innocent Cuba, but it hasn't induced them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government because most Cubans remember the extreme thievery and brutality of the U.S.-backed Batista rule. And neither have such things as the US-Little Havana Bay of Pigs military attack in April-1961, many drastic terrorist attacks {such as killing all 72 innocent people aboard Cubana Flight 455 in 1976}, etc., etc. Meanwhile, Cuba in the first days of 2021 hopes that...getting a handle on the Pandemic, and getting shed of the Trump administration, and hoping the new currency system will prove successful, and hoping it can revive its tourist industry, and increasing things such as Nickel production will improve things for the Cuban people on the island.
Also, facing the decades-long Embargo-Blockade from the superpower United States, Cuba has been forced to purchase about $2 billion dollars of imported food each year. But now it is strongly trying to grow more of its own food even in the midst of the continuing Embargo-Blockade. As reflected by the three photos above, Cuba is trying to persuade and fund Cuban farmers to begin to grow more food for the Cubans on the island and for tourists who are anticipated to continue to return despite COVID precautions and the U. S. Embargo/Blockade. Meanwhile, as the Year-2021 has dawned in the Caribbean, for seven decades Americans have been told that the nice Batista-Mafia leaders were chased out of Havana in 1959 by the bad Castro-led Rebels. Thus the programmed American citizens, at least till the Good Guys in Little Havana recapture Cuba, the American people should continue to pump money and material and political favors to Little Havana to the good Cubans. In the U. S., the history of the Cuban revolution and the ongoing efforts of the rich and powerful Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Little Havana has always been terribly slanted in favor of Little Havana, and grossly slanted against Havana. But a few facts creep out.
And through it all, the Caribbean island of Cuba has done some historic and incredible things: It defeated a brutal dictatorship supported by the world's strongest nation and by the world's strongest criminal organization; and it has somehow survived for 62 years the ultra-powerful forces that have combined to try to recapture its vulnerable island.
And through it all, the two photos directly above taken this first week of 2021 by Havana photographer Wendy Oliva Gonzalez, shows that Cuban mothers in January of 2021 are miraculously protecting their children in the Age of COVID, in the Age of Trump, and in an Age when the United States has expanded the cruel 6-decades-old Embargo into what appears to be intended as a Genocidal Blockade.
And way back in 1953 (above}, it should be remembered, another generation of Cuban Mothers began the brave street marches that spawned the Cuban Revolution, which in January of 1959 captured Havana and thus spawned Little Havana in Miami. And, considering that Cuba is an island nation and the United States is the world's strongest and richest nation, that is why I believe the Cuban Revolution has changed the United States even more than it has changed Cuba.
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