The arrival of April Fools Day in the tumultuous year of 2022 actually affirms one historic and topical fact: The Cuban Revolution for the 62nd Consecutive Year still ruled Cuba.
While much of the world, especially the Imperial World that controlled Cuba from 1492 till 1959, remains its enemy, Cuba still has some international support from the portions of the world that champions the victories of Davids against Goliaths.
On this first weekend of April-2022, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel was in the central province of Camaguey. To his live audience and before radio microphones & television cameras his exact words may have surprised many observers: "We have to work with spirituality, with feelings, because otherwise we may have a future flourishing with Yankee dollars and tourism and companies but one that would spawn valueless individuals who are mere pawns of greedy, criminal United States businesses just as the Batista-Mafia thugs that spawned our revolution in 1952. Back then from 1952 till 1959 we had an island of supposed puppies that the imperialists starved, brutalized, killed, and exploited whenever such whims intervened with their massive larcenies that robbed every aspect of the island's existence, including its dignity. Since 1959, from Miami and Washington, the remnants of those forces spend every minute of every day trying mightily to regain that dastardly dominance of our Cuba. The Bay of Pigs attack in 1961, the multiple terrorism attacks, the assassinations, and such crimes as the economic blockade since 1962 has not combined to recapture Cuba, to the total surprise of the world. But in recent months Miami and Washington sources believe the pandemic, the tightening of the blockade by both Trump and Biden, the Russia-Ukraine War that still rages, and the melding of all of the well-funded Miami and Washington projects will finally destroy our historic revolution this spring or at least by this summer. We must not allow that to happen, and if we do allow it to happen it will be a dire insult to the rebels who decided in 1952 that Batista, the Mafia, and the United States had no right to plunder this sovereign island to suit their greedy whims."
When he became President of Cuba in 2018, Diaz-Canel was well known to Cubans from his days as the island's Education Minister. He believes he still has the popular support of most of Cuba's 13 million people and, as shown above, he loves to stroll with them on even remote regions of the island to hear them voice {and point out to him} what is "most on your minds." He was born after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1 of 1959 but Diaz-Canel is a fierce revolutionary. In Camaguey this week he stressed, "We must continue to do what we have done for the past six decades, which is to resist the extreme power, wealth, and greed of the Miami and Washington forces. But we must admit and address our own economic mistakes and permit the people to have the liberty and means to create our own products, especially our food as well as other things we have always purchased from abroad...eggs and pork from Brazil, powered milk from New Zealand, fruits from Virginia, and so forth. As the leader of Cuba, if I do not make it so that the talented young people of Cuba can stay here and do productive things, then replace me with someone who will allow the people to be such entrepreneurs. Buying a bulk of our food from abroad is something that must be replaced by producing it on this lush and fertile land...even as the U. S. blockade tries so powerfully to starve us. The U. S. blockade tried to take advantage of the pandemic to kill us off with the deadly virus but our great doctors and scientists have defeated it even as we keep our guards up. We must replicate such ingenuity in the food and manufacturing sectors. Demand that we do it."
For sure, the tightening of the ageless and cruel U. S. embargo/blockade of the island by both the Trump & Biden presidencies in Washington attempted to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to further destroy Cuba's economy.
But at the start of April in 2022, as shown above, Cuba has used its own successful vaccines to stem the deadly virus. In recent days, after registering over 8,500 deaths from COVID-19, now it is common for Cuba to report "no deaths" each day from COVID-19 -- truly an astounding achievement considering the extreme power and cruelty of the ongoing and expanded U. S. embargo.
The U. S. media gloats whenever it headlines such revolutionary problems as Cuba failing to provide enough "milk" for all of the island's children, as promised by the Revolution starting in January of 1959. Of course, the U. S. media never blames the U.S.-Miami Embargo/blockade for harming generations of Cuban children on the island, and such Counter Revolutionary propaganda is ubiquitously and conveniently shoved now the throats of Americans everyday of every week.
But of course, prior to the Revolution neither Batista, the Mafia, nor the United States worried about Cuban children like the ones shown above not having things such as...milk, education, healthcare, etc.!! A vast array of historic black-and-white photos like the one shown above FROM Batista's Cuba are supposed to be ignored by U. S. voters and taxpayers who are supposed to support and lavishly fund such things as...the Embargo.
Through it all, Cuba's President Diaz-Canel begins the month of April-2022 by encouraging and even funding enterprises designed to help Cuban entrepreneurs produce more food and other products, trying to correct mistakes the revolution itself has made. As indicated by the photos and articles above, he said, "We must incentivize Cuban entrepreneurs to make profits by producing food and other products that help everyday Cubans. That is what we must do to survive in the face of history's longest and cruelest blockade. We start April of 2022 still buying powered milk from faraway New Zealand to satisfy the dictates of the Miami-U. S. blockade. But we need to produce the milk and such things on the island, and we are beginning to do that."
For sure -- on, above, and below all the surfaces -- Little Havana in Miami is vastly richer and many times more powerful than Havana in Cuba. Yet, the mystery and intrigue lingers as to when...or if...the USA-Cuba conundrum will permit two neighboring Cities -- Havana-Cuba and Miami-USA -- to coexist in peace, even as the important trading partners that they could and should surely be. A Prediction: It won't happen...not in the next six decades or so...simply because a few rich and politically powerful folks in Miami don't want it to happen.
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