A Different Latin America

A Difference Americans Should Appreciate
{Updated Thursday, April 10th, 2014}

       This Chilean girl is a big fan of Michelle Bachelet who has been overwhelmingly re-elected as President of Chile. This child and her peers are fortunate because, in the reconfigured Latin America, democracy has replaced U. S.-backed dictatorships that prevailed from the 1950s into the 1980s.

    In other words, it's no longer Henry Kissinger's Latin America. But Kissinger unwittingly helped usher in the waves of democracy when he master-minded the Nixon administration's CIA-directed coup that resulted in the death of Chile's beloved democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973 to install, for 17 brutal years, the murderous U.S.-friendly dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. That's Kissinger above congratulating his dear friend, Dictator Pinochet. However, such horrendous dictatorships finally emboldened Latin American nations to resist the imperialism of even the United States of America, the strongest nation in the world.

      Here are the five democratically elected Presidents of Chile since the demise of the U.S.-installed and U.S.-backed Pinochet dictatorship. To this very day, Americans have been proselytized not to apologize or regret such things as the death of the democratically elected Salvador Allende to make way for the murderous dictator Pinochet. However, to this very day, Latin Americans are apologizing and regretting the decades their forebears suffered under foreign-backed dictators. Thus today Latin Americans, more than Americans, appear to more deeply appreciate their democracies. For example, Henry Kissinger is despised in Latin America today but in America his love of dictators like Pinochet has never harmed either his reputation or his lucrative consultancy career. And that fact is both revealing and revolting.

   Instead of a U.S-backed dictatorship, Chileans have overwhelmingly and democratically re-elected a great lady -- President Michelle Bachelet. Americans, meanwhile, are not supposed to apologize for Pinochet. And Americans are not supposed to know that Michelle Bachelet's father -- and American's like Ronnie Moffitt -- were among the thousands of innocent people murdered by the Pinochet dictatorship that preceded Chile's five democratically elected governments.

      President Bachelet of Chile tolerates President Obama of the United States but, when they meet, she does most of the talking, as above. She let's him know that Chile is now a democracy and is no longer dominated by U.S.-friendly dictators such as Augusto Pinochet. President Obama, his hand on his chin, merely listens.

   President Bachelet of Chile is not bashful when it comes to expressing her love and admiration for Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro. She remembers very well that he was the dearest friend of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Chilean President who died in the U.S.-backed coup that installed the murderous dictator Pinochet, who killed her father. "I believe," she told an El Pais reporter, "it would behoove Americans to know Latin American history and how it has been influenced by Fidel Castro, Henry Kissinger, and Augusto Pinochet. A study of those three men would explain why I am today the President of Chile."

  President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and President Michelle Bachelet of Chile are the two most important Latin American leaders. Brazil is the Latin American superpower and Chile is Latin America's richest nation per capita. In her youth Dilma was tortured for three years in a U.S.-backed dictator's prison. In her youth, Michelle's father died at the hands of a U.S.-backed dictator. Thus, these two women are the embodiment of a reconfigured Latin America, one led by democracies and not foreign-backed dictators. Yes, these women personify Latin America today.

   President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil is, like President Bachelet of Chile, also a dear friend and unabashed admirer of Fidel Castro. The same week she last visited the 87-year-old Castro in his home, she cancelled a scheduled visit to the White House in Washington. She also is using some of Brazil's vast resources and prestige to support Cuba's economic and political survival. This recent photo shows her abiding concern for the elderly Fidel Castro. This is the same lady who, in her youth in Brazil, tried to emulate the Cuban Revolution by becoming a guerrilla fighter against a U.S.-backed military dictatorship. Fidel spent two years and Dilma spent three years in military prisons for their bold and audacious revolutionary efforts.

  President Rousseff of Brazil tolerates President Obama because, after all, the U. S. is the world's economic and military superpower. But beyond that she remembers when the U. S. supported dictators in places like Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, etc., long after America fully realized that Latin America and the Caribbean wanted sovereignty and democracy to replace foreign-backed dictators.

     President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina loves and admires Fidel Castro. She often, as above, visits him and his wife Dalia Soto del Valle in their Havana home.

   
   Cristina Fernandez, the President of Argentina, tolerates President Obama because, after all, he is the leader of the world's economic and military superpower. But like President Bachelet of Chile and President Rousseff of Brazil, President Fernandez of Argentina unabashedly loves and admires Fidel Castro a lot more than she loves and admires the United States of America.

   So there, ladies and gentlemen, you have a pattern. Latin America now has female Presidents of arguably its three most important nations -- left to right, Bachelet in Chile, Fernandez in Argentina and Rousseff in Brazil. They all three love and admire Fidel Castro but don't think too highly of the U. S., except for its unmatched economic and military prowess. They all three remember when brutal U.S.-friendly dictators ravaged their countries; and they remember that Fidel Castro in the 1950s showed them it didn't have to be that way forever. A revolution to replicate Cuba's? Well, they thought about it but only Cuba succeeded revolutionary-style. But they believed the Cuban Revolution spawned democracies, especially after the Nixon-Kissinger coup in Chile in 1973 killed the democratically elected President Allende, Castro's dear friend, to install for 17 brutal years the Pinochet dictatorship. After that even U. S. right-wingers who followed Nixon-Kissinger couldn't stem the tide and tsunami that ushered in democratic elections replacing U.S.-friendly dictators in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, etc. As a democracy loving American, I truly wish that Presidents like Rousseff, Fernandez, and Bachelet loved and admired the U. S. more than they love and admire Fidel Castro. At the same time, I understand their feelings because, unlike Americans who are a lot smarter than me, I have diligently studied their backgrounds. Why? Because I care about democracy and believe the ultra-powerful U. S. democracy should never again be ruled by the likes of.....................

            ........Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The AP photo above was taken in 1972. It was used by The Guardian, the great British newspaper, in an article that said this was during the time President Nixon and his top aide Kissinger were devising plans to instruct the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected President Salvador Allende of Chile. After the death of Allende, the brutal Augusto Pinochet was Chile's murderous dictator for 17 years...teaching Chile and Latin America why democracy, not U.S. installed dictators, was worth fighting for. Nixon eventually lost his presidency because of the evils of things like Watergate but he should have lost it because of evils like...Pinochet. Meanwhile, Kissinger to this day is a rich consultant who resigned from a President Obama-assigned committee because he would have had to divulge his clients had he served on that committee. {Foreign clients?}

 Many experts believe Henry Kissinger, for a very long time, had the most dire influence on Richard Nixon {photo on the left} and other American presidents when it came to championing brutal dictators like Pinochet rather than honest, decent and democratically elected leaders like Allende.

    
    If you want to hear the truth about Latin America, attend a speech by Peter Kornbluh, the brilliant investigative journalist who runs the Chilean and Cuban segments at the U. S. Security Archives and edits the Chilean-Cuban portions on its insightful Website.

    
    If you can't attend a lecture by Peter Kornbluh or check his U. S. Archives website, buy his book: "THE PINOCHET FILE: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability." As on his website, in this book Kornbluh documents his Latin American facts with page-after-page of de-classified documents and transcripts that had been classified {hidden} for decades -- supposedly to protect U. S. security although Kornbluh and many others believe it is primarily to protect individual malfeasance and criminality. Many of the documents and transcribed audio tapes unveiled by Kornbluh feature things like Nixon and Kissinger discussing the 1973 Chilean coup.

     
   
  The John Dinges book "The Condor Years" also minutely documents the 17 years of the murderous Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Pinochet's favorite international assassins were Cuban exiles trained at Fort Benning, Georgia {after the Cuban Revolution} and made available to him by the U. S. government. In Spanish, condor means buzzard, which aptly defines Pinochet's dictatorship.

   
    The 1975 movie "3 Days of the Condor" is still shown frequently on cable television. It starred Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. You can notice in the lower right that the promotion of the movie stressed the line "Be careful who you trust." No kidding! Redford's character trusted his bosses at the CIA, till he learned to fear what he knew about the murderous CIA/Condor schemes in cities around the world -- from Paris to Washington! Because of the cowardice or ineptness of the mainstream media, movies like "3 Days of the Condor" remain far more accurate in delineating Latin American history than other sources Americans should be able to depend on. {uh, "Be careful who you trust."}

     Aside from my lifelong passions for baseball and birds as well as my fascination with how Cuba impacts the U. S. democracy, I relish reading biographies of exceptional women -- with my four all-time eclectic favorites being Celia Sanchez, Sacajawea, Rachel Carson and Dilma Rousseff. And I have long admired the talent of Academy Award-winning actress Sissy Spacek who was born on Christmas day in 1949 in Quitman, Texas. As I was devouring Ms. Spacek's autobiography -- "My Extraordinary Ordinary Life" -- I was taken aback by what she said beginning on Page 204 {hardback version}. She mentioned how she learned from reading a movie script in 1982 about the U. S. government's horrendous involvement in the murders committed by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. That jumped out at me because Ms. Spacek was/is highly intelligent, well educated, an insatiable reader, and she is politically inclined {she grew up in Texas around a grandfather who was Lyndon Johnson's dear friend}. But she found out about the U. S. connection to the murderous Pinochet by reading a movie script! Wasn't there some honest element in the U. S. government that could have informed her and other democracy-loving Americans? Was the U. S. media too inept or too intimidated to tell the truth about America's murderous involvement with vile dictators? Are movies more accurate and reliable? 

    In 1982 Sissy Spacek starred with Jack Lemmon in the movie "Missing." It was based on a true story about one of many innocent Americans -- Charles Horman -- murdered by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The movie was so gripping and truthful that Pinochet, of course, would not allow it to be filmed on location in Chile so it was made in Mexico. And it was not shown in Chile until after Pinochet's brutal 17-year reign gave way to democracy. Sissy Spacek played Charles Horman's wife Beth and Jack Lemmon played his father Ed. When they learned that Charles had been murdered in Chile while on a business trip, his wife and father went to Chile to retrieve his body. They were stunned that the U. S. embassy in Santiago sided with the Pinochet dictatorship by refusing to release either details of the murder or the body itself. The scenes in which Beth and Ed pleaded with embassy officials were chilling. Six months later they finally got the body, after it could not be autopsied. In her book Sissy Spacek reveals that, prior to reading the script and researching the facts, she had no idea the U. S. government was so involved with the murderous Pinochet or with the bloody coup that had overthrown and killed the democratically elected Salvador Allende to put the U.S.-friendly killer Pinochet in power for 17 years. Beginning on Page 204 she told of the shock and sorrow she felt after learning of the U. S. complicity in the deaths of people like Salvador Allende, Charles Horman, etc. She wrote: "I have to admit I knew next to nothing about the political turmoil going on in South and Central American during the 1970s. But preparing for the film was a quick education. I was shocked and disillusioned when I learned of our government's complicity in so much brutality and suffering." After being tipped off about the U. S. support of Pinochet by the movie script, she researched and learned more. She wrote: "What really got to me was a short film I watched about the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara. He had been swept up by the military in the aftermath of the coup and was held prisoner with thousands of other Allende supporters at the National Stadium in Santiago. For days, Jara was tortured by his captors. They smashed his fingers then taunted him to play his guitar; instead he sang a song he had written for Allende. He kept on singing until they shot him dead. That was the the kind of cold savagery the Horman family was up against." {Exact quote; Sissy Spacek, Page 204; "My Extraordinary Ordinary Life"}. Jara's death was reminiscent of how Michelle Bachelet's father and so many others died at the hands of Pinochet who, with massive U. S. and Cuban-exile help, spent 17 years committing such horrendous acts, finally convincing Chileans and Latin Americans that they had to get shed of U.S.-backed dictators and embrace democracy. 

   Please note: I stumbled across Sissy Spacek's shock and disillusionment by reading her auto-biography. Sissy Spacek stumbled across the U. S. government's vile connection to the Pinochet dictatorship only when she read the script for the movie "Missing." Only then did she very sadly learn of her government's "complicity in so much brutality and suffering." The point I make is this: A smart, well educated, politically minded American like Sissy Spacek should have learned about America's role in the death of Salvador Allende, Charles Horman and so many others from some source in the U. S. government or some brave investigative journalist -- not from a movie script! Such a lack of transparency is what one can expect from vicious dictatorships or two-bit Banana Republics but decent people like Sissy Spacek did not expect such things from their democracy. However, as Sissy Spacek learned, the U. S. government's involvement with vicious dictators like Pinochet, Batista, Trujillo, etc., is about as anti-democracy as a government can get. And, of course, the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba stands alone in infamy because that is the only brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship that got overthrown and then reconstituted itself on U. S. soil for 55 years and counting...and to this day the Batistianos control the American narrative about Cuban issues the way Batista once controlled the Cuban, Mafia, and American narrative in Cuba! 

     Since January of 1959 when the ousted Luciano/Lansky/Batista dictatorship in Cuba fled the Cuban Revolution and regrouped in Miami, through two generations a handful of the most visceral remnants of that dictatorship have controlled both the Cuban narrative in the U. S. and America's Cuban policy. Thus, propagandized Americans are mostly left to believe that the Batistiano-Mafiosi dictators in Cuba treated the majority Cubans the way sweet, kind Mother Teresa would have treated them. And therefore it was those mean rebels who booted us nice guys off the island. It does not speak well for the U. S. democracy to have supported the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba from 1952 till 1959 and its most visceral remnants in the U. S. since 1959.

    
   
   
   And since January of 1959 Americans have been told that Fidel Castro and his triumphant Cuban Revolution consisted of a vicious band of macho men who were the biggest fiends in Caribbean and Latin America history!!

    Americans have been told those things since January of 1959 by key members of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba who fled the Cuban Revolution and regrouped in nearby Miami, where they and their immediate off-spring have become even more rich and powerful than they were in Batista's Cuba. Those two generations include Batista minister Rafael Diaz-Balart {right} and his two sons Lincoln and Mario, both of whom have been elected from Miami to become anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress. After 55 years, many feel it is perhaps time, for the sake of the U. S. democracy, for non-Cuban-exile zealots to have input in America's Cuban narrative and in crafting America's Cuban policy. Meanwhile, Americans are supposed to meekly accept and bow down to whatever the Diaz-Balarts and other Cuban-exile zealots say and do. But such meek capitulation affronts democracy decade after decade.

   
  
   Actually, the greatest guerrilla fighter who incredibly became the biggest threat to the Batista/Diaz-Balart/Luciano/Lansky dictatorship in Cuba was a 99-pound doctor's daughter named Celia Sanchez. She rather strongly objected to the treatment of Cuban peasant girls in Batista's Cuba and that was the prime objection that ended up chasing the Batistiano dictatorship to Miami.

     After Fidel Castro and other macho men joined her guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra, Celia Sanchez remained the revolution's primary decision-maker, with the full concurrence of Fidel Castro. Before and after he joined her, she was the revolution's main strategist, fund-raiser, and recruiter of rebels and supplies. But, hey! Don't research these facts and, even if you do, don't mention them because the Batistiano and Mafiosi she booted off the island to Miami and Union City much prefer that you continue to believe that vile, macho men like Fidel, not petite doctor's daughters like Celia, kicked them out of Cuba! And, yes! Also remember what the Batistianos and Mafiosi have told you since January of 1959 -- you know, how nice they treated the majority Cuban peasants when they ruled Cuba, just like Mother Teresa would have treated them!

  It is also a matter of historic fact that Celia Sanchez, with the full concurrence of Fidel Castro, was the prime decision-maker in Cuba from 1959 till she died of cancer on Jan. 11-1980. The highly respected photographer-author Roberto Salas, who worked closely with both Celia and Fidel, says in his book, "Celia made all the decisions for Cuba, the big ones and the small ones." The highly respected journalist/author Marta Rojas also worked closely with both Celia and Fidel. Marta says, "After Celia died of cancer in 1959, Fidel ruled Cuba only as he precisely believed Celia would want him to rule it." Roberto and Marta still live in Cuba and they have impeccable international reputations. They are easily accessible to Western journalists, most of whom don't bother to contact them because they don't want to know the truth. Taking the word of two generations of the most revengeful exiles is much easier, much safer, and much more politically correct...even if it's not very democratic.

       
      For example, Americans are not supposed to know the historical significance of the photo on the right or why it is important in the annals of Cuban and American history. That's Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro getting off a "Sierra Maestra" airliner in Cuba. This is the day Celia Sanchez first spoke and handed a torrid proclamation to waiting newsmen: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives!" Like the revolution she had successfully led, she meant it as a do-or-die proposition. She sternly backed up that declaration till the day she died from cancer on Jan. 11-1980 at age 59. And Fidel Castro is still alive today at age 87. Thus, so is the Cuban Revolution and Celia Sanchez's daunting proclamation.

    To understand Celia Sanchez and the Cuban Revolution, one must comprehend Celia's abiding love for Cuban peasant girls, like the one she is hugging here. As a rich doctor's daughter she began hearing that Cuban girls as young as 8 or 10 were being kidnapped from rural areas to be used in urban Mafia-run casinos to lure rich foreign pedophiles to the gambling palaces. One such 10-year-old that Celia loved, Maria Ochoa, met such a fate and was raped to death. That transformed the 99-pound doctor's daughter into history's all-time greatest guerrilla fighter and revolutionary leader. In the process, Celia stamped the fate of little Maria Ochoa as the biggest mistake the Batistianos, the Mafiosi and the United States ever made on the island of Cuba. In comprehending Celia's revolutionary motivations in 1953 and her proclamation in 1959, one can comprehend why she, and not Fidel Castro, was the most important dynamo in both the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba. Fidel Castro and notable Cuban insiders agree with that although, for the reasons stated earlier, Americans are not supposed to comprehend that. And that is one reason why Cuba today is the only place in the world that average Americans are not allowed to visit, a dictation to appease a few Cuban exiles.

     

     
    If Americans could visit Cuba, they could see many beautiful statues of Celia Sanchez, such as this one in her hometown of Media Luna. So, how many statues of Castro are on the island of Cuba today? Answer: None, zero. To this day, at age 87, Fidel Castro says that the two most important people in Cuba's Revolutionary War and in Revolutionary Cuba were Celia Sanchez, who died in 1980, and Vilma Espin, who died in 2007.

   

    

    This is Celia Sanchez -- the studious one, as always -- and Vilma Espin -- the carefree one, as always -- when they were still guerrilla fighters in the Sierra Maestra. Later, in the transition from Batista to Revolutionary Cuba, Celia -- whom Fidel Castro worshipped -- and Vilma -- whom Raul Castro married -- were the two most important decision-makers on the island of Cuba in all non-military matters.

    

    From the first day in December of 1956 when he joined her guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra {after he had spent two years in a Batista prison and one year in Mexico}, Fidel Castro has worshiped one person -- Celia Sanchez. And that's the way it will be till the day he dies, which many people expect will be in 2014. The photo on the right shows Celia holding a candle in a tent high up in the Sierra Maestra so she can read updated information about a Batista army and Fidel can read a book. That was appropriate because whatever action was taken about that Batista army the next day would bear Celia's stamp and whatever she decided he would support 100% whether or not he agreed with her.

     This photo in Revolutionary Cuba is also quite informative and appropriate. It shows the two famous night-owls, Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro, just after they had their breakfast and coffee at Celia's modest 11th Street apartment. As always, Celia is the studious one, which is appropriate because she is the decision-maker. And it was appropriate for Fidel to begin his day by just relaxing in his rocking chair with his slippers off. After all, the rest of the day he would have to strongly support whatever decisions Celia was concocting. Cuban insiders knew this was the way it was in Revolutionary Cuba. Americans are still not supposed to know that. Why? Machismo. It just sounds better to be kicked off the island by a mean-tempered 6-foot-4 macho man than by a petite, child-loving doctor's daughter! {Or something like that}.

     
    
     Pedro Alvarez Tabio {left} is Cuba's greatest historian. He is a world-renowned expert on Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro and he worked intimately with both of them on historic and journalistic topics. And no living person, except maybe Marta Rojas, knows more about Celia, Fidel, the Cuban Revolution, and Revolutionary Cuba than Mr. Tabio. And Mr. Tabio says: "If Batista had managed to kill Celia Sanchez anytime between 1953 and 1957, there would have been no viable Cuban Revolution, and no revolution for Fidel and Che to join." Please note: You are welcome to study that quotation and even memorize it but by all means don't mention it to a soul because, uh...you know...uh...Americans are supposed to only get their Cuban information from a handful of Cuban-exile zealots.

   
   And speaking of Marta Rojas: As a young reporter in Batista's Cuba, Marta {on the right} carried crucial notes in her bra back-and-forth between the imprisoned Fidel Castro and the guerrilla fighter Celia Sanchez! Those bra-notes began the famed Celia-Fidel nexus, thus Marta was a key anti-Batista Cuban revolutionary.

   Today Marta Rojas {Photo by Tracey Eaton} is an internationally respected journalist, author and historian. She worked intimately with Celia and Fidel both before and after the triumph of the Revolution. In 2005 Marta said: "Since Celia Sanchez died of cancer in 1980, Fidel has ruled Cuba only as he perceives she would want him to rule it." She said that because, as a true insider, she knew it to be true.

  
   Roberto Salas {left} is an internationally respected Cuban photographer. He worked intimately many years with both Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro. In his 1998 book "A Pictorial History of the Cuban Revolution" Mr. Salas stated: "Celia Sanchez made all the decisions for Cuba, the big ones and the small ones."

      This is a photo of Celia Sanchez that Roberto Salas used in his superb book. That's Celia on the right in the early days of Revolutionary Cuba getting a notepad update from one of her aides. If you enlarge this photo and look closely, you will see a cigarette in Celia's right hand. She became a chain-smoker as a guerrilla fighter in the Sierra Maestra. She died at age 59 of lung cancer on January 11, 1980.

  In an informed Democracy, I believe Americans have a right and perhaps a duty to study and research the photo on the left, because it says a lot about Cuban-U.S. relations today. The photo shows Fidel Castro, then a Cuban hero in both Cuba and the United States as well as the world. He is shaking hands with Vice President Richard Nixon in April of 1959 long before Nixon's right-wing criminality would end a Nixon presidency. Take note of the date. It was barely three months after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Despite all she had to do in Cuba, Celia Sanchez believed that nailing down a good relationship with her neighbor, the superpower United States, was vital to Revolutionary Cuba's future. Despite the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship, Celia was ready to bend over backwards, and so was Fidel, to have the U. S. as a peaceful trading partner. So, Celia arranged through leading journalists in the U. S. to get permission from the U. S. State Department for the rebel hero Fidel Castro to come to the U. S. and tell President Eisenhower face-to-face that Cuba by November of 1959 would hold democratic elections that the U. S. could closely monitor to assure their legality. There already had been CIA/exile assassination attempts against Fidel but Celia amazingly overlooked that, showing how obsessed she was for having peaceful U. S. - Cuban relations. So, to appease Eisenhower -- whom the State Department had assured her Fidel would meet -- Celia had instructed Fidel to inform the U. S. President that he, Fidel, would become a lawyer in Santiago de Cuba and not run for office himself although everyone knew that, in November, he would have received upwards of 90% of any legal vote in Cuba. Historians understand all that. They also understand that the Nixon wing of the White House persuaded the decent but malleable, old, golf-loving Ike to be out of Washington so Nixon would be the one to meet Fidel. When this iconic publicity photo was taken in a doorway, Nixon had already stunned Fidel by telling him, "We will overthrow your revolutionary government in three weeks, three months at the most. And there's nothing at all you can do to prevent it."

"Spanish Eyes"

     The photo on the right of Celia Sanchez was taken by Andrew St. George and it is copyrighted by Yale University. It is a photo that Americans, and not just Yale students, should research and study. It shows Celia in the lobby of her hotel during the 12 days she and Fidel spent in the United States in April of 1959, barely three months after they had made their victorious trek from the Sierra Maestra Mountains to Havana. Study Celia's expression. By this time she had heard from Fidel what Vice President Nixon had said. So, by this time she knew what she would do when she got back to Cuba. She would give up her hopes of having a non-Castro democracy in Cuba because she knew right-wingers like Nixon in the U. S. government believed they were powerful enough to back up his boast about recapturing Cuba in short order. With a sovereign democracy no longer in the cards, she began mentally crafting that do-or-die proclamation: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." It was the same do-or-die approach she had taken to defeat Batista. She would see to it that Cuba and Fidel did what had to be done to back up that proclamation. She knew, since World War II, there were only two nuclear superpowers in the world -- the U. S. and the Soviet Union. She knew they were involved in a bitter Cold War and each had enough nuclear missiles to destroy the world several times over. She knew, based on what Nixon said, the U. S., the Batistianos, and the Mafia were determined to re-capture Cuba. In short order, she got in touch with Moscow. In short order, the Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, Anatas Mikoyan, visited Havana on a trade mission. By the time he left, he had become enamored with Celia Sanchez. He nicknamed her "Spanish Eyes." He left her a card that contained his private phone number and cable address in Moscow. He soon got a cable from her. She asked for the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. The rest is history, including the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962 that, to this day, remains the closest the world has ever come to a total world-wide nuclear holocaust. Therefore, the photo above is exhilarating despite Celia Sanchez's restrained, stoic demeanor. She had come to the U. S. in April of 1959 believing President Eisenhower would finally support democracy on the island of Cuba. After the dire threat delivered by Nixon to Fidel, she left the U. S. in April of 1959 thinking about that proclamation...and about her admirer in Moscow -- Deputy Premier Mikoyan -- and nuclear weapons. The cable she sent to Mikoyan was signed "Spanish Eyes" and she did not inform Fidel until after she had sent it. He was furious at first but forgave her.

 To not understand Celia Sanchez is to not understand Cuba.

And two generations of Cuban-exile zealots do not want you to understand her.

For Cuba and for Latin America, her legacy is everlasting.

    Most Americans, including all five of my otherwise very intelligent and well informed siblings, have not the foggiest idea who Celia Sanchez was or why today the three female Presidents of Latin America's three most important countries all love and admire Fidel Castro while I, as a democracy loving American, would much prefer that such important leaders loved the United States at least as much. Ignorance, cowardice, and complacency are enemies of democracy and, I believe, the embodiment of the anti-democracy evils originated with the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba in 1952. Then that mistake has been greatly exacerbated by the reconstitution of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on U. S. soil beginning in January of 1959. And that's precisely why Americans do not know and are not supposed to know who Celia Sanchez was nor are they supposed to know why the three ladies above are (1) the democratically elected Presidents of Latin America's three most important nations, and (2) all three love and admire Fidel Castro more than they love and admire the United States. 

   Since 1776, I believe the biggest challenge to America's democracy has been a handful of the most vicious and revengeful Cuban exiles and their self-serving sycophants. The fact that two generations of Americans, since the 1950s, have allowed this to happen indicates that both democracy and the United States of America need a braver, more intelligent, and better informed generation of voters and tax-payers to meet this threat. However, as America more and more has a government decided by a handful of big-money usurpers purchasing elections, such cancers as the Cuban-exile minority will continue to challenge the pillars of democracy. Many great Cubans and Americans saw that festering in Miami in the 1960s and 1970s but, unfortunately, they were silenced by more powerful forces -- guns, bombs, revenge and money. And thus today, guns, bombs, revenge and money have replaced guts, fair-minded ideas, and decency within the bowels of America's democracy. That's not what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Of course, they also didn't envision an America that supported dictators like Batista and Pinochet...or exiles from such dictatorships regrouping on U. S. soil.

     

    Tom Brakaw famously and correctly coined a phrase to describe what he called the generation of Americans that saved the world from being dominated in the 1940s by evil dictatorships in Germany, Japan, and Italy. He said that was "The Greatest Generation." Those of us who have been fortunate enough to live long lives in democracies agree with Mr. Brokaw.

    But "The Greatest Generation" that so bravely stood up in the 1940s and said, "We Can Do It!" is now relegated to American history. The two generations that followed sat on their behinds and did nothing as their democracy began teaming with the Mafia to support dictators like Batista and overthrow democratically elected governments like Allende's in Chile to install a U.S.-preferred dictator like Pinochet. The remnants of ousted U.S.-backed dictatorships, including Batista's and Pinochet's, regrouped on U. S. soil and continue, with the support of self-serving sycophants, to use the omnipotent power of the U. S. government to propel their nefarious deeds. All the while, two not-so-great generations have allowed it to happen. The poster above -- "We Can Do It" -- is nothing more than a faded memory.

    This Havana Times/Ernest Gonzalez Diaz photo was taken from atop the 39-story Fosca building in Havana. It is located in the downtown Vedado District near the Malecon seawall and is the tallest building in Cuba. The popular La Torre Restaurant is on the 33rd floor offering excellent food as well as a scintillating view of a fascinating place. Havana, the old and the new, is a beautiful capital city.

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Democracy Challenged by Cuban-Exile Extremists

How The Volatile Mix Hurts Democracy
{Thursday, March 27th, 2014} 

       A good map will reveal that Havana, Cuba's current capital, is a mere 90 miles from Florida. And Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's former capital and second largest city, is just a few miles west of the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. American history confirms that since 1803 the U. S. has been fixated on gaining control of the nearby island, finally achieving that goal by concocting a bloody pretext {blowing up the USS Maine in Havana Harbor} to justify the Spanish-America War, which resulted in the U. S. dominance over Cuba beginning in 1898. In 1903 the U. S. used that dominance to steal Guantanamo Bay from Cuba, a theft that continues in perpetuity because of the vast military superiority of the U. S. Yet, the loss of Guantanamo Bay has created much international sympathy for Cuba and continuing hubris for America. The theft of Guantanamo was an early precursor that the U. S. would not adhere to democratic principles when it came to Cuba and eventually to the Caribbean and Latin America. A glaring example came in 1952 when the U. S. teamed with the Mafia to support the thieving/brutal Batista dictatorship in Cuba so rich American businessmen could partake in the rape and robbery of the helpless Island. That trifecta {Batista, the Mafia and the U.S.} created an unholy alliance comprising a vile dictatorship. The Batista dictatorship in Cuba should have, by all reckoning, lasted till the present day because, after all, Batista had a powerful police force plus the backing of the strongest nation in the world, the U. S., and the strongest criminal organization in the world, the Mafia. But it lasted only eight years. Why?

Reason #1:

     While literally robbing Cuba blind -- and using the island for lucrative drug, gambling, and prostitution enterprises -- the Batista-Mafia-U.S. dictatorship didn't even bother to toss bread crumbs to the majority poor on the island, such as this family. The lady above was responsible for seven children -- ages 3 to 8 -- and she had no help from the rich Batista government when it came to a job, shelter, food, medicine or education. By the time this photo was taken, Latin American newspapers and magazines had reported that the top 21 members of the Batista regime each had Swiss bank accounts exceeding $1 million {in 1950s money} and it was presumed much more loot than that was shipped by each of them to banks in the Mafia havens in South Florida and Union City {NJ}, from whence Batista and top Mafia kingpins had converged on Cuba. But soon, the thieves would have to flee and join all that money.

Reason #2:

     In the 1950s, photos like this were featured in Latin American newspapers and magazines as well as the New York Times explicitly delineating the extreme brutality of the Batista dictatorship against even hints of dissent. The brave street march depicted above was one of many in which courageous women protested the murders of their children, murders apparently for no other reason than to send warnings to quell dissent. More amazing than despots murdering innocent people, an all too frequent occurrence, was the fact that the U. S. citizens in the 1950s did not care about the despotism taking place in their name on the nearby island. "If they had wanted to," Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times wrote, "presumably the American citizens could have persuaded their government to stop what was happening in Cuba." As Mr. Matthews and others would learn, the American citizens chose not to lift a dissenting voice, not even a whimper. Not caring what was happening to innocent neighboring people was one thing. Not caring about the scars it was leaving on democracy was quite another thing altogether. Moreover, in 1959 after a female-powered revolution in Cuba overthrew the Batista-Mafia dictatorship, American citizens meekly permitted an immediate transition of those fleeing dictators to reconstitute themselves on U. S. soil -- namely Miami and Union City -- where a sudden avalanche of money and ruthlessness quickly and permanently overwhelmed the social and political  fabrics of,  first, those communities and, later, -- the hallowed halls of Congress in Washington. Democracy badly needed a denouement. 

Reasons #1 and #2 were engineered by:

A Cuban dictatorship led by {left to right} Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Fulgencio Batista.

The Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba was ended by:

Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1-1959.

   
    But after being booted off the island of Cuba, the Mafia and the Batistianos quickly returned to safer, friendlier environs -- Miami and Union City, U. S. soil, no less. And like the situation in Cuba, the retrenched marauders found little resistance from the U. S. government and precious few complaints from the U. S. citizens who, unfortunately, were the last vestiges of defense for the world's greatest and most admired democracy.

      The U. S. Congress consists of 535 members. Three of the 100 U. S. Senators are Cuban-Americans -- Bob Menendez, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. Four of the 435 Representatives are Cuban-Americans -- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, Joe Garcia, and Albio Sires. As a lifelong, democracy-loving Conservative Republican, I wouldn't mind if all 535 members of the U. S. Congress were Cuban-Americans -- as long as they didn't trample on democracy. But since 1959 a handful of Cuban-American extremists have dictated America's revengeful, repugnant, resentful, regrettable and anti-democratic Cuban policy that the vast majority of Caribbeans, Latin Americans, Cuban Americans, Americans, and citizens of the world oppose. The seven aforementioned members of the U. S. Congress -- along with ultra-powerful, self-appointed Cuban-American rulers and benefactors such  as Mauricio Claver-Carone, Otto Reich, Gus Machado, and Frank Calzon -- are today able to ignore public and world opinion regarding Cuba to merely suit their self-aggrandizements. In other words, a handful of the very minority that should be the first to recuse themselves from dictating America's Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy are the only ones controlling that narrative and making those laws. And that's precisely what America's Founding Fathers tried to avoid when they crafted history's greatest form of governance, a governance most severely challenged, since the 1950s, by a handful of extremist Cuban exiles who have had no trouble aligning themselves with economic and political power-brokers such as the ongoing Bush dynasty {Jeb, a huge Republican fund-raiser, is a serious presidential candidate in 2016 AND his son George P. Bush has just been elected to his first major political job in Texas. WOW!}. 

    And now, after you pause to check out the foregoing indisputable conclusions, let's return to this 2014 map that shows the close proximity of Havana to Florida and Santiago de Cuba to the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- not to mention a plethora of military bases in Florida. The Cuban Revolution astounded the world and still confounds historians by being the first popular revolution that ever dislodged a U.S.-backed dictatorship. However, even more remarkable is the fact that Revolutionary Cuba has survived for 55 years {and counting} although each day from Jan. 1-1959 till today two generations of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship, headquartered on nearby U. S. soil and supported by the strongest and richest nation in history, have tried desperately and with no holds barred to re-capture the island. Those two phenomenons -- the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba and then the reconstitution of the Batistiano-Mafiosi dictatorship on American soil -- have turned out to be two of the most cancerous events in the long and mostly glorious history of the United States of America. Because of that and because I have a visceral love of democracy, I have had a lifelong passion with Cuba. I believe the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba in the 1950s started the U. S. democracy on a precipitous decline that was markedly accelerated when the Batistianos and Mafiosi in Cuba were allowed to flee and reconstitute themselves almost seamlessly on U. S. soil. Oh, yes, I am aware that such a correct analysis of the U.S.-Cuban imbroglio is politically incorrect in the United States, not to mention a tad dangerous, but its fascination is both overwhelming and irresistible. So, with a small measure of trepidation, let's continue on with some modern, inalienable, and indisputable facts concerning repercussions of those two great American phenomenons -- the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba followed by its transfer to U. S. soil after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. 

     First off, remember that the U. S. democracy has faced many challenges since 1776 and managed to survive them all, albeit with some deep scars. The internal challenges have included the Manifest Destiny belief that it was a sacred right to destroy native Indians to clear their land for white settlement; slavery in the South but also the North; the Civil War; the Great Depression and the rise of the Mafia in the first half of the 20th Century; and the integration of lobbyists with their special interest money as the basic fabric of congressional and presidential elections. The greatest external challenge came in the 1930s and 1940s when vile dictatorships in Germany, Japan, Italy, and the Soviet Union threatened to conquer the world, at least till Hitler double-crossed Stalin to turn the mighty Soviet Union into America's ally as opposed to Germany's ally. That lucky break, and the victory in World War II in 1945, left the U. S. as the strongest and richest nation in world history...and it also left America's Democracy as the most beloved form of government the planet has known. But by the 1950s right-wingers in the U. S. government realized that, by telling the American people of dire and imminent threats from foreign despots, the unchecked powers of the U. S. military and contaminant agencies such as the newly created CIA, could do vile things overseas and get away with it -- such as overthrowing democratically elected governments in the Congo, Ecuador, Chile, and elsewhere to install U.S.-friendly dictators who would allow rich Americans to partake in the robberies of those nations...spawning such infamous U. S. companies as the United Fruit Company. And it was that mindset that led the U. S. government to team with the Mafia, and a vast assortment of U. S. businesses such as the United Fruit Company, to support the thievery and brutality of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba beginning in 1952. It was all done in the name of the American people who -- overcome with post-World War II cowardice, ignorance or complacency -- simply didn't care. The resurrection and maturation of that overthrown Cuban dictatorship on U. S. soil has also been allowed to evolve as perhaps the major challenge to the U. S. democracy in the year 2014 as evidenced by the fact that a handful of self-serving Cuba-exile extremists now dictate all of America's Cuban policy and much of its other policies to the detriment of democracy and against the best interests of everyone else, including the majority of Cuban-Americans as well as America's best democracy-loving friends all around the world.

  Yet, there are many democracy-loving organizations in the United States -- such as the Washington-based "Center for Democracy in the Americas" -- direly concerned with the challenges facing America's Democracy, particularly the threat from Cuban-exile extremists and their profiteering sycophants. Individually, many of America's greatest journalists and historians -- such as Sarah Stephens, Peter Kornbluh, Wayne S. Smith, Ann Louise Bardach, Julia Sweig, etc. -- regularly present truthful, unbiased assessments of how harmful to democracy Cuban-exile extremism has been and continues to be. And therein lies a problem because, for the most part, the Cuban narrative within the U. S. media and the U. S. government is controlled by these same Cuban-exile extremists. And that, unfortunately, has been the case since 1959. 

      Sarah Stephens is the Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. She personally writes the Cuba Central update that is posted on the CDA website each Friday. Ms. Stephens is a brilliant journalist, a democracy lover, and surely one of the greatest and fairest experts in the world when it comes to U. S. - Cuban relations. And those credentials, sadly, are precisely why you will seldom, if ever, see her on television news programs discussing Cuba. That's because those outlets cater only to anti-Cuban pundits and propagandists because {1} they are simply biased; {2} they are simply dishing out what they perceive propagandized Americans expect to hear about Cuba; or {3} they remember what happened to great journalists like the car-bombed Emilio Milian and the fired Jim DeFede when they bravely and fairly reported on Cuba-exile extremists in Miami. As far as the U. S. media covering Cuban issues is concerned, it might be said that Emilio, a Cuban-American broadcaster in Miami, and Jim DeFede, the former top columnist for the Miami Herald, were the last two main-stream journalists who told the truth about Cuban extremists. That's why going to a little trouble to read Sarah Stephens once a week on the Center for Democracy in the Americas website is essential, for Democracy's sake if not for Heaven's sake. 

         For example, in the latest {Friday, March 21, 2014} posting on the Center for Democracy in the Americas website, Sarah Stephens discusses "the historical error represented by the U. S. hanging onto Cuban land," namely the lush Guantanamo Bay that the U. S. stole from Cuba in 1903. {Currently the U. S. is going ballistic over Russia grabbing Crimea although, unlike the U. S. grab of Guanatanamo, the Crimeans speak Russian, border Russia, consider themselves Russian and want to be "grabbed" by Russia}. The U. S. grabbed the plush 45-square-acre Guantanamo Bay port in 1903 and to this day the territorial theft angers every Latin American nation and shames all of America's international friends...as well as democracy. It also, of course, is being used to mock democracy when the U. S. bellows about Crimea.

     
      Amnesty International calls the U. S. prison at Guantanamo Bay "the Gulag of our time"  and it is one of many international human rights organizations that have deplored the torture that has been documented there. In its last posting Friday the Center for Democracy in the Americas lambastes the United States for not "returning rightful ownership to Cuba of land that's been wrongfully under U. S. control for over a century." By ignoring such words, Americans are showing no respect for their democracy.

   
    Americans are not supposed to care about such things as Guantanamo Bay, according to Cuban-exile extremists.

  But the majority of the world that does care about democracy does care about such things.

    

    Democracy-loving Americans, for example, have a right -- and perhaps a duty -- to know why and by whom a beautiful American named Ronnie Moffitt was murdered within sound of the White House in Washington at 9:32 A. M. on September 21, 1976...and why the U. S. government didn't cooperate with the initial investigation, thus leaving the culprits, well known to history, unpunished. Both Ronnie Moffitt AND democracy deserved better than that. And they still do to this very day.

   And Americans have a right -- and perhaps a duty -- to know why and by whom a civilian airliner -- Cubana Flight 455 -- was blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb on October 6, 1976, three weeks after Ms. Moffitt's murder, killing all 73 passengers on board, including two dozen teenage athletes. Who was the CIA Director in the fall of 1976? How many well-known Cuban-exile extremists were tied to the Moffitt murder and the airplane bombing, and who helped them avoid punishment?

     Jim Defede was the top columnist at the Miami Herald, at least until he wrote a famous column in which he excoriated Miami's then 3 members of the U. S. Congress -- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers -- for their incredible support of Miami-based Cuban-American terrorists who targeted innocent Cubans. DeFede bravely made the point that terrorism against Cuba was no different than terrorism against the U. S., England, etc. Sadly, Jim's column was like a voice in the wilderness, barely a blimp in the Cuban exile-dominated media world in Miami.

   

   
   After losing his high-profile gig at the Miami Herald, Jim DeFede transitioned mostly to electronic {TV} journalism in Miami.

     
       If Alexis de Tocqueville were still around to write Volume 3 of his masterpiece -- "Democracy in America" -- he would sadly have to include such seminal events as the murder of Ronnie Moffitt and the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 to get a balanced, updated portrait of how extremist Cuban exiles have impacted democracy in America since 1959. And you know what? It might take a skilled democracy lover like Alexis de Tocqueville to navigate around the stultifying, uncategorizable obstacles that lie in the path of those expressing the truth -- obstacles such as.........................................................................................

    ................the car bomb that silenced the superb Cuban-American journalist Emilio Milian in Miami on April 30, 1976. The 45-year-old Cuban-born Emilio was News Director at WQBA Radio when he denounced the terrorist acts of Cuban-American extremists in Miami. 

    This photo taken by Jamie Francis shows Alberto Milian standing beside a portrait of his father, Emilio. Alberto was at football practice when he heard that his dad had been car-bombed after being warned not to denounce Cuban-American extremists. Alberto went on to fight in the U. S. Army during the 1989 Panama invasion and the 1991 Gulf War. He became a prosecutor in Broward County and then Director of Political Affairs and Staff Counsel for the Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association. He is a conservative Republican. In an interview with David Adams of the St. Petersburg Times Alberto said, "Some in the Cuban-American community...made anti-Castroism a cottage industry. They hide behind the Cuban flag." Alberto also told David Adams, "Americans should read Ann Louise Bardach's book 'Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana' to understand why Miami is the center of terrorism in the United States."

  I happen to agree with Alberto Milian that Ann Louise Bardach's "Cuba Confidential"  is a must read for anyone seeking the truth about terrorism related to Miami and how a handful of Cuban-American extremists in Miami came to dictate America's anti-democracy Cuban policy...via the horrendous Torricelli and Helms-Burton congressional acts as well as commandeering all other pro-Cuban exile vestiges within the bowels of America's once-sanctified economic and political apparatuses.

     

      And then -- after you have studied and taken written notes from Ann Louis Bardach's "Cuba Confidential" -- you should meticulously study the updated 2013 edition of Julia E. Sweig's seminal book "CUBA: What Everyone Needs to Know." Yes, in America everyone needs to know sources you can depend on for factual, unbiased, and important information regarding Cuba, the neighboring island that says so very much about America. Ann Louis Bardach and Julia E. Sweig are the two best sources in that regard in America.

And by the way...........

      Adolpho Suarez, shown in the center of this Eloy Alonso/Reuters photo, was a great democracy-lover. He died Sunday {March 23rd} at age 81 in Madrid. He was Spain's first elected Prime Minister in 1975 after the Franco dictatorship and he is revered to this day as the key figure in Spain's transition back to democracy. Thus, he was truly one of the world's greatest statesmen in the past century.

    Cuba has purchased an AN-158 airplane {right} to begin regular flights to and from the eastern Caribbean island of Martinique starting Thursday {March 27, 2014}. The Cuban News Agency says the French Embassy in Havana helped with the contract. Cuba's Cubana de Aviacion is the only airline in the Western Hemisphere that flies the AN-158 jets. Three of them already fly from Havana to Santiago, Guantanamo, and Holguin in Cuba and to Nassau, Santo Domingo, Cancun, and Caracas. Cuba has also ordered seven more of the 85-seat AN-158 jets because Cuban tourism increased to 2.85 million in 2013 and is projected to reach 3.15 million in 2014. The AN-158 jets are manufactured by a Ukrainian-Russian company with the final assemblage taking place in Kiev, Ukraine. The AN-158s are made from French, German, and American parts with the U. S. components comprising less than 10% to comply with the embargoed U. S. sanctions against Cuba.

       This Ramon Espinosa/AP photo depicts a major event going on in Havana now. It is the 8-day International Rodeo Festival. Top rodeo performers from Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama are participating at sold-out events. The Cuban girl entering the arena in this photo is a trick-roping star.

        The 8-day Rodeo Festival in Cuba celebrates 200 years of Spanish influence on the island. It features all the traditional rodeo favorites -- steer wrestling, bull riding, calf roping, barrel racing, tricks on horseback, lasso demonstrations and what the Associated Press called, "remarkable feats of daredevilry."

     While Major League baseball in the U. S. is just finishing Spring Training prior to the "regular season," the 53rd National Baseball Playoffs start in Cuba March 27th after this week's end of the regular season. Villa Clara is the defending champs in Cuban baseball and its 57-30 record was the best in the regular season. Villa Clara will open the best-of-seven semi-finals against Matanzas. The other semi-final will have Pinar del Rio against the Industriales of Havana. The finals will also be a 7-game championship series.

       Ramon More is the manager of Villa Clara, Cuba's defending baseball champs. "I expect the usual tough run in the playoffs," he said. "We had the most regular season wins with 57 but the three other playoff teams all won at least 50 games." Many of Cuba's best young players are now stars in the American Major Leagues but Ramon says, "This island is still a baseball mecca. Baseball is in our DNA. We can keep the American Major Leagues afloat. Sometimes our stands are filled with American scouts and agents, with good reason. Their Major Leagues would be Minor Leagues without us Cubans just like their military would be pathetic without Guantanamo Bay. HA! HA!"

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Is Revolutionary Cuba Doomed?

Or Is It Just In Transition?
{Monday, March 24th, 2014}

  
   ESPN the Magazine is just about the largest {in size} and most popular {in readership} of all the magazines in America. A recent issue {right} was devoted to the dominant role young Cuban stars are playing in Major League Baseball, such as the ESPN cover-boy Yasiel Puig, the superstar for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

     
     Chris Jones is probably America's best pure writer on topical subjects, such as the massive baseball tsunami that is currently crashing against America's shores. Jones is a writer-at-lodge for high-brow Esquire Magazine and he is also a Contributing Editor for sports-crazed ESPN the Magazine. Chris Jones was awarded the last full page in the aforementioned ESPN edition devoted to Cuban baseball. The essay that resulted is worth your attention even if you are not interested in his expertise concerning either Cuba or baseball. His journalistic style and his special gifts as a writer are among the primary attractions for this artistic gem.

      ESPN used this image to highlight the essay by Chris Jones that concluded its edition devoted to Cuban baseball's impact on America. Here are excerpts:

      "Havana might be my favorite city in the world. It is warm and crumbling and beautiful. It is safe and exotic and teeming with marvels. I fly down there with my boyhood friends, and we smoke black cigars by the boxful and swim in rooftop pools, and we walk along the seafront, and we hide away at night in tiny pocket bars, drinking goofy drinks that we wouldn't dream of drinking anywhere else. It is paradise for me, and it's made even more of a paradise because I know too well that Havana, this current and latest edition of Havana, is doomed.

        "You might think less of me in this instant for having gone there -- for having propped up the Castro regime, for indulging my gross northern appetites in a city marked in some ways by the suffering of its citizens, for ferrying whatever other random sins you might believe I stowed in my carry-on bags. I don't care. First, I'm Canadian, and we don't have the same psychic burdens about Cuba that Americans do. Cuba is just another escape pod from our godforsaken winters. But more important, because I know that today's Havana will vanish tomorrow, that soon it will be jammed with armies of tourists in their wide-brimmed hats, and the stray dogs and belching old Chevys will be taken out back and shot, I can't afford to let your judgment get in the way of my love.

         "One day, though, if you're lucky, and if you haven't already, you'll come back. You'll realize that perfection is a lot to demand, especially from a stranger. You'll get better about keeping the parts of someone you need and overlooking the parts you don't. You'll grow less certain, not more, and in your doubt you'll return to your old anchors. You'll walk shamelessly through the streets of your own particular Havana one last time, and you'll remember who brought you there in the first place, and when, and you'll be so grateful that they did."

Comment:

      Like Chris Jones, I've been to Cuba and I share his nostalgic views of the island, especially Havana. Because I admire his writing, I get to sample his journalistic skills on many topics and often disagree with what I consider his too-liberal opinions. I'm also a generation older than Mr. Jones. Plus, he is a democracy-loving Canadian and I'm a democracy-loving American. It's obvious he didn't grow up being banned from visiting Cuba and he didn't grow up being incessantly bombarded by depictions of Cuba from only two generations of the most vicious Cuban exiles who were booted off the island, with reason, by the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959. Thus, Mr. Jones has not been proselytized into thinking that all the good Cubans are in Miami, Union City, and Washington while all the bad Cubans are still stuck on the island. In other words, he is an unbiased, un-propagandized first-hand observer who can judge Cuba for what it is -- the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. Mostly, it's good and beautiful but not flawless. "I'm Canadian, and we don't have the same psychic burdens about Cuba that Americans do." That seminal, sensible, sensational sentence by a great writer familiar with Cuba says all that needs to be said about the deleterious effect America's Cuban policy since the 1950s has had on the U. S. democracy -- starting with the U. S. support of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba from 1952 till 1959 and then with the U. S. support of the Batistiano-Mafiosi dictation of America's Cuban policy from 1959 till the present day. Uh, no! Not all the good Cubans are in Miami, Union City and Washington. And not all the bad, mischievous Cubans are the ones still on the island.

  As to whether Chris Jones' beloved Revolutionary Cuba is "doomed" or merely in "transition," study this photo taken Wednesday. The young man on the left is Rafael Ramon Santiesteban. He hails from Holguin and was named Cuba's new President of the National Association of Small Farmers. Sitting at his left and chairing the ceremony is 83-year-old Juan Ramon Machado Ventura, Cuba's 2nd Vice President, which leaves him as the 3rd most powerful Cuban in 82-year-old Raul Castro's government. The news conference reminded Cubans that elderly revolutionary icons are still in charge but massive economic reforms are underway, reflected by the island's fresh emphasis on "small farms," private entrepreneurs, and the solicitation of foreign investments. Does it mean the revolution is finally "doomed" or is it merely in a "transitional" stage? Daily clues reveal that the answers are slowly but surely evolving in Cuba.

       

     
       Since 1959 Ramon Machado Ventura has been in the Top Five of revolutionary leaders and a Fidel loyalist since March 10, 1952, which is the date the Batista-Mafia dictatorship moved from South Florida to execute the coup that took over Cuba. Machado Ventura, who graduated from the University of Havana in 1953, was a medical doctor and Fidel a young lawyer. In October of 2014 Machado Ventura is due to turn 84 while Fidel will turn 88 in August. Along with the 82-year-old Raul Castro {He turns 83 in June}, these two old revolutionaries epitomize at least a transition to a new Cuba as dictated by a natural phenomenon -- mortality. But every step of the way -- from March 10, 1952 till today -- Ramon Machado Ventura has been at Fidel Castro's side. 

     
     It is interesting to note that the post-Castro leader of Cuba will not have a last name of "Castro" nor will he have any direct connection to the island's iconic revolutionary glory. His name will be Miguel Diaz-Canel. That's him in the middle of the photo on the left. Miguel is 53-years-old. He was born in Santa Clara on April 20, 1960. Fidel Castro has 8 sons. All are well educated and accomplished in areas such as medicine, science, and law. And all 8 are very loyal to their father. But, it should be remembered, Fidel once fired his oldest son, Fidelito, as head of Cuba's Science Federation. At the time, Fidel famously said, "This is not a monarchy!" Miguel Diaz-Canel is proof Fidel meant those words.

   However, many Cuban experts in the U. S. government still believe Luis Alberto Rodriguez {left} is the person most likely to be the post-Castro leader of Cuba. Rodriguez is 54-years-old and a Major General in FAR, Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. More significantly, he heads the Enterprise Administration Group that controls about 80% of the Cuban economy. Also, he is married to Deborah Castro Espin, the oldest daughter {52} of Raul Castro and the late Vilma Espin. It is believed that Rodriguez's economic skills, not nepotism, have accounted for his staying power and advancements although it is well known that he has had major differences with both Deborah and Raul.

    

    
    
    Of Raul Castro's four children with revolutionary heroine Vilma Espin, the 52-year-old Deborah has the most influence with her father. She is often beside him at meetings, as shown here, and she is perhaps his most trusted adviser, especially on domestic and women's issues. Her power is one reason many expect her husband, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, to one day be the leader of post-Castro Cuba. 

    

   It should also be noted that Raul Castro's favorite grandson is Raul Guillermo Rodriguez, the son of Deborah and Luis Rodriguez. Raul Guillermo is also the primary bodyguard for his grandfather, President Raul Castro. 

   Photos of Raul Castro often show a young man attentively beside him but few have known the young man's name -- Raul Guillermo Rodriguez -- or his role as his grandfather's main bodyguard. In addition to his father Luis Rodriguez and his grandfather Raul Castro, Raul Guillermo has an uncle, Luis' brother Gustavo, who lives near Naples, Florida. Gustavo's wife Maria has a daughter by a previous marriage to Alexis Castro Soto del Valle, one of the five sons Fidel has had with his current wife Dalia Soto del Valle. Raul Guillermo's 52-year-old mother Deborah has two sisters -- Mariela, 51, and Nilsa, 46 -- and one brother, 48-year-old Alejandro. So, Cuba's Castro clan has an extended list of blood relatives, both male and female, but the post-Castro leader of Cuba will be Miguel Diaz-Canel, a non-Castro who was born in Revolutionary Cuba in 1960 -- meaning he is also a non-revolutionary like 54-year-old Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Raul Guillermo's dad. Fidel Castro's 8 sons have no political leadership ambitions.

Bluebirds photographed by Linda Bumpus for Birds & Blooms Magazine.

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