Thanksgiving In Cuba

Reflects U. S. Ties
Posted: Friday, November 27th, 2015::

       This remarkable EFE photo was taken Thanksgiving day -- November 26, 2015. It shows some of the more than one thousand people -- Cubans, Americans, Japanese, Albanians, etc. -- dancing the salsa at the famed Malecon seafront in Havana, Cuba. 

        This photo is courtesy of Penn State University. The Penn State baseball team is playing a 4-game series this week at Latin American Stadium in Havana. #28 is the Penn State third baseman Willie Burger fielding a ground ball against Ciego De Avila, which won the game 2-to-0 in Game 2 of the series. The American university had played the Industriales in Game 1. The Good Will supersedes who wins the games.

        This photo is courtesy of Havana Times.org. Fifty members of the American peace group Code Pink held a Thanksgiving Day hunger strike at the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As the sign indicates, Code Pink wants the United States to close the military base and return the land to Cuba.

Colonel Ann Wright is the leader of Code Pink.

7-story U. S. Embassy building in Havana.

        On Thanksgiving Day 2015 an insightful new book -- "Cuba 1959" -- was released in the U. S. It is an amazing portrait of the first week in January of 1959 when Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution replaced the overthrown Batista dictatorship. Most of the photos, such as the one above, have never been published before. Burt Glinn, on assignment for Magnum Photos, was the photographer. He passed away in 2008 but now this book chronicles in pictures what happened in Havana that eventful week.

       By the time Burt Glinn arrived in Havana from New York on January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista's getaway airplane had landed in the Dominican Republic, Mafia kingpin Meyer Lansky was safe in Florida, etc. But Glinn was there in time to photograph this shoot-out as Batista loyalists fired shots at the conquering rebels.

     The EFE photo above was taken on Thanksgiving Day -- Nov. 26, 2015. It shows some of the more than 3,000 Cubans stopped by Nicaraguan soldiers at the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. They reportedly have been told by human traffickers that a possible normalization of relations between Cuba and the U. S. might cause an end to a litany of U. S. laws favoring Cubans that encourage Cubans to defect to the U. S. One of those laws -- dating back to the Cold War in 1966 -- is known as Wet Foot/Dry Foot and allows any Cuba that sets foot on U. S. soil to have permanent residency and instant welfare. On Thanksgiving Day this week, member nations of the Central American Integration System, known as SICA, voted unanimously to condemn U. S. laws that strictly favor Cubans and strongly discriminate against all non-Cubans.

            The Central American Integration System {SICA} includes these countres: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, and the Dominican Republic. Observer nations include: Mexico, Chile, Brazil, China, Spain, Germany, and Japan. SICA has offices at the United Nations. Its unanimous vote on Thanksgiving Day to condemn Wet Foot/Dry Foot, the 1966 U. S. law that still induces Cubans to defect to the United States while discriminating against all non-Cubans, will be ignored by the United States government just as the recent 199-to-2 vote in the UN condemning the U. S. embargo of Cuba is routinely ignored year after year. 

     This heart-wrenching Reuters photo was taken Thanksgiving Day in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. These Honduran women are mourning relatives newly killed in a city that leads the world in homicides. Reuters reported that there were 15 such murders in the 12-hour period its reporters covered on Thanksgiving Day. Cities in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala -- just below Mexico's southern border -- have murder rates comparable to Tegucigalpa. On Thanksgiving Day Aljazeera America's brilliant journalist, Mary Jane Gliha, hosted a documentary directly from the scenes of constant murders in those three countries. Her documentary is entitled "Mexico's Migrant Crackdown" and, if you missed it, it's worth going online to view it. Teenage girls desperately trying to escape forced prostitution and murder are interviewed in their desperate attempts to reach the Mexican-U.S. border. But Mexico is now "cracking-down" at the behest of the U. S. and rounding them up and sending them on 12-hour bus rides back to Honduras, where the girls told Mary Jane Gliha they will try again if they are not routinely murdered for refusing to be forced prostitutes. If those girls were Cuban, they would be home free and on welfare the moment their front foot touched U. S. soil at the Mexican border. While Cubans have powerful incentives, mostly economic, to reach the U. S., Cuba is not engulfed with gangs or violent crime. The special Cuban laws in the U. S. that so mightily favor Cubans are strictly political and revengeful as well as being undemocratic. Ask the Honduran women depicted above on Thanksgiving Day, or study Ms. Gliha's documentary.

By the wayAnd by the way:

      The EPA photo above was taken at an air show Thanksgiving Day at the Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand. It shows two Chinese J-10 fighter jets stealing the show with spine-tingling acrobatic moves. China has upgraded its air force and navy.

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Vilifying Cuba, Sanitizing Batista

One Side of A Two-Sided Story

Updated: Friday, November 27th, 2015

        Greg Abbott has been the Governor of Texas since January 20th, 2015. He was the Attorney General of Texas the previous 13 years. He is shown above with his wife Cecilia and their daughter Aubrey. Mr. Abbott is 58-years-old and has been a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair since 1984 when an oak tree fell on him during a storm. On Monday he will fly to Cuba to lead a large trade delegation. Earlier this year New York Governor Mario Cuomo led a huge trade delegation to Cuba. Texas has the 12th largest economy in the world. While in Cuba, Governor Abbott will visit Cuba's newly refurbished state-of-the-art Mariel Port Economic Zone 28 miles southwest of Havana. He said, "With a new era of eased trade and travel restrictions between the U. S. and Cuba, and as the 12th largest economy in the world, Texas has an opportunity to capitalize and expand its economic footprint in Cuba."

       This Dallas Morning News photo shows Senator Ted Cruz of Texas with his mentor, Texas Governor Greg Abbott. All the main Texas newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, have reported on Cruz latching onto the Bush dynasty when he cut his political teeth in Texas but his mentor was Greg Abbott. Cruz, believing his presidential bid will never be hurt by anything he says or does regarding Cuba, has sharply rebuked Governor Abbott for his trip to Cuba starting Monday. 

      Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, not unexpectedly, went ballistic when they heard of Governor Abbott's trip to Cuba starting Monday. Cruz is a first-term U. S. Senator from Texas and Rubio is a first-term U. S. Senator from Florida. They are well-financed Republican candidates to be President of the United States. Their comments relating to Governor Abbott's Cuban trip are asinine and will not be repeated here.

       Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are self-serving zealots unfit to be President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States. There are certainly a plethora of Cuban-Americans fully qualified to hold those positions, but not these two bought-and-paid-for radicals. As their comments regarding Governor Abbott illustrate, they believe they can do or say anything related to Cuba and it will not cost them a single vote. As Commander-in-Chief, they obviously believe there is nothing they could do regarding Cuba that would draw a rebuke from proselytized and propagandized Americans. They might be right. For sure...Batista's Cuba, the Cuban Revolution, and Revolutionary Cuba say a lot more about the United States than they say about Cuba.

          Virtually since sunrise on January 1, 1959, the Cuban narrative in the United States has been dictated by two generations of the leading remnants of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, which was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution. By 3:00 A. M. on Jan. 1, 1959, Batista and Mafia kingpins such as Meyer Lansky were flying to safer havens -- such as nearby Miami. The U. S., since 1959, has not been transformed into a Banana Republic but its democracy has been severely scarred by almost six decades of anti-Cuban vitriol from U. S. soil, including such things as assassination attempts against Cuban leaders, the Bay of Pigs military attack, the terrorist bombing of the child-laden Cubana Flight 455 airplane, and a litany of anti-Cuban/pro Cuban-exile laws easily and permanently passed by a Batistiano-directed U. S. Congress. That being said, propagandized Americans can not be expected to understand the photo depicted above, because the proselytized or intimidated U. S. media certainly doesn't report such things. But the photo shows the U. S. Congress being briefed a few days ago on this important topic: "Beyond the Rhetoric: Why Cuban Innovation Matters To Our Health In The United States." The speakers included some of North America's greatest medical experts and included two members of the U. S. Congress -- Karen Bass and Barbara Lee -- who actually care more about helping U. S. citizens than hurting Cubans on the island. The impassioned speeches educated Congress on Cuba's medical techniques and advances -- including medicines, vaccines, and the island's admirable and unique pre-natal care of pregnant women -- that is "unavailable to United States citizens because of the long-standing United States embargo against Cuba." 

       Gail Reed is the Executive Director of the MEDICC Review. MEDICC is a highly respected organization that promotes cooperation instead of antagonism between the U. S. and Cuba regarding medical techniques and advances. One of her latest projects was spearheading the aforementioned congressional session. Gail Reed's mission is an honorable one: To help American and Cuban citizens. Her dishonorable opponents, however, continue -- decade after decade -- to successfully dictate congressional laws designed {1} to hurt Cubans on the island to induce them to rise up and overthrow their revolutionary government; {2} to enrich and empower Cuban-exiles in the U. S.; and {3} to control the Cuban narrative in the U. S. by codifying the vilification of Cuba while sanitizing the Batista-Mafia rule that preceded it. In that milieu, it is virtually verboten for the U. S. media to introduce Americans to the other side of a two-sided story, such as the medical expertise of Gail Reed and her commendable efforts to bring out cooperation, not hubris, between the two neighboring nations. On Gail Reed's MEDICC website, she has posted four videos of impassioned, knowledgeable, and honorable people pleading for the U. S. Congress to allow medical cooperation between Cuba and the United States. But it is a U. S. Congress and a U. S. media that, mostly, has deaf ears and heartlessly cold reactions to anything even remotely positive regarding Cuba.

          Like Gail Reed at MEDICC, Sarah Stephens at the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas is mostly shunned by the U. S. media, which affords unlimited time to almost anyone who benefits economically or politically or revengefully from the continuation of U. S. antipathy towards Cuba. That's unfortunate in a democracy considering that Sarah Stephens probably knows more about U.S.-Cuban relations than any American. Recently on the Cuba Central segment of her Center for Democracy in the Americas website, Sarah Stephens expressed optimism that, at long last, there is hope that President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba are showing some positive results despite the dire opposition of self-serving Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress who conveniently ignore even the majority opinions of Cuban-Americans in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Ms. Stephens optimistically summed that up with these words: "This cat has scampered out of the bag. The U. S. policy transition to a post-embargo world is underway, and the forces to make the new policy irreversible are now getting stronger." Let's hope so, not only for 11.2 million innocent Cubans on the island but also for the U. S. democracy that, for far too long, has been demeaned by a handful of Americans, a handful of Cubans, and a handful of Mafiosi who, since the 1950s, have very firmly and self-servingly maintained a tight grip on America's Cuban policy. Unfortunately, that unholy grip includes the U. S. Congress and the U. S. media -- despite the Herculean and courageous efforts of aforementioned women such as Congresswomen Karen Bass and Barbara Lee as well as brilliant, well-informed democracy-lovers like Gail Reed and Sarah Stephens.

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Who Owns Marco Rubio?

And Why the Question Matters

Photo courtesy: Charles Krupa/AP/New York Times

          Yesterday -- November 23rd -- the New York Times had a major editorial entitled: "Senator Rubio's Stealthy Donors." It's a reminder that many democracy lovers are concerned about who actually owns Marco Rubio, a legitimate concern considering that unlimited and often unknown political cash donations, both domestic and foreign, can seriously purchase America's vulnerable democracy at the highest level, namely the White House. This is not picking on Mr. Rubio. From his days in Florida politics -- emerging from Miami's Little Havana neighborhood as an anti-Castro Cuban-American backed by the Bush dynasty and the Tea Party -- Rubio's lust for money is well-documented although mostly ignored by the mainstream media that fawns over the young, undistinguished Senator as their unabashed presidential favorite, and not just the right-wing Fox News. Earlier this summer the New York Times detailed in a major article startling financial shenanigans by Rubio ranging from questionable use of a Republican credit card to various real estate transactions, etc. The next morning Joe Scarborough, the former Florida congressman now a top anchor at MSNBC, flashed that article in front of the camera and loudly proclaimed that the damning revelations "would get Marco elected President!" Morning Joe might be right and he'll probably like yesterday's damning, and scary, New York Times editorial. It began with these words:
                    "Of all the abuses involving hidden political money sloshing through the presidential race, one of the most brazen is being perpetrated by campaigners for Senator Marco Rubio...."
            After that opening, the New York Times editorial yesterday went into alarming detail about the "the hidden political money" supporting Marco Rubio's bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

          When the New York Times a while back reported in detail about some of Marco Rubio's financial shenanigans dating back to his political days in Florida, Joe Scarborough the next morning, in anchoring his MSNBC Morning Joe program, flashed that article to his viewers and sternly predicted that it would help get Marco Rubio elected President. Whether its usually left-wing MSNBC, always right-wing Fox, or middle-of-the-road CNN, network news operations in the U. S. will likely continue to promote the Rubio presidency till the very end. So, don't be surprised if Morning Joe holds up yesterday's New York Times editorial and sternly declares that it will help get Rubio elected. In an endlessly strange election campaign, the process is poorly served by the sheer incompetence and flagrant biases of the electronic "news" media.

         Incredibly, for the past six months billionaire businessman Donald Trump, a non-politician, has been the leading Republican presidential contender, apparently because American voters have finally tired of bought-and-paid-for politicians. Trump, and others, believe that multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, owns Rubio. But that's debatable because, since he hit the Senate running for President, Rubio has spent most of his time courting what seems like every conservative or right-wing billionaire on the planet. While unabashedly doing that, of course, he has cast by far the fewest votes of any Senator.

      So, whether or not...or which...billionaire owns Marco Rubio is important -- especially considering Rubio's obvious hunger for cash and the unconscionable fact that America's two-party political system now allows unlimited cash donations. Does Sheldon Adelson, depicted in the upper-left in the above montage, own Rubio? Or Charles Koch, shown on the right? Or is it the billionaire auto mogul in Miami who has vowed he will spend whatever it takes to put Rubio in the White House? Or is it the shady and "brazen" organizations mentioned in yesterday's New York Times editorial? Or...maybe it's none of the above. But it is something that voters in a democracy should ponder and Rubio should confront.

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Argentina Election Hurts Cuba

Victory for Wall Street Billionaires

       Mauricio Machi was elected President of Argentina yesterday. It's a major victory for rich Argentinians, for Wall Street billionaires in the U. S., and for anti-Castro zealots in Miami. The major losers are Argentina's poor majority and the island of Cuba. Repercussions will resonate loudly throughout the Americas and the Caribbean.

       Sunday's election of Mauricio Macri as Argentina's next President might epitomize a vanishing breed of Cuban-friendly leftist leaders in Latin America.

       The loser, 53% to 47%, in Sunday's Argentine election was Daniel Scioli. He was Argentina's Vice President from 2003 till 2007 and then the powerful Governor of Buenos Aires Province since 2007. Significantly, he was President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner's hand-picked choice to succeed her as the next President of Argentina.

Photo courtesy: AP/Natacha Pisarenko

       This was the photo used today by The Guardian above the headline that reads: "As Argentina's Queen Cristina Says Farewell, Her Enemies Wait In The Wings." The 62-year-old Cristina Fernandez Kirchner leaves office on December 10th after eight years as President. Her late husband Nestor Kirchner had been President the previous four years. Cristina's "enemies waiting in the wings" include rich Argentinians, Wall Street billionaires, and Miami right-wingers who will now rule Argentina and quite possibly signal a conservative or right-wing shift throughout Latin America. Cristina had hoped her many social programs benefiting poor people would allow her hand-picked successor, Daniel Scioli, to succeed her. It just wasn't to be. Mauricio Machi, her U.S.-backed opponent, won and, like Cristina, Cuba lost.

       Cristina Fernandez idolizes Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, whom she credits with expediting democratic elections in Latin America that replaced foreign-backed dictators. Cristina, as shown above, has always been a welcome guest in the Havana home of the now 89-year-old Fidel Castro and his wife Dalia Soto del Valle. Cristina has said, "Fidel did the impossible and changed the face of Latin America. Argentina and other nations believed foreign-backed dictators would forever rape and rob us at win, with our natural resources being stolen. Fidel's Cuban victory in 1959 against the U.S.-supported Batista-Mafia dictatorship was impossible, till he did it. His longevity has also been impossible, but he still lives...and so will his long legacy."

        Throughout her two-terms as President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez has made sure to "gain sustenance from visits with Fidel, when mostly we discussed the plight of poor people and the greed of the rich." With the demise of the 12-year reign of the socially-minded Peronist Party in Argentina, it will be interesting to see if the upcoming rule of the Macri-Wall Street presidency in Argentina will care as much for Argentina's poor people as Cristina Fernandez has for the last twelve years. 

           As of today, there are three two-term female Presidents of key Latin American nations: Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, Michelle Bachelet of Chile, and Vilma Rousseff of Brazil. Like Cristina, who leaves office on December 10th, Michelle and Vilma are sadly close to waving good-bye to their tenures. Like Cristina...Michelle and Vilma are dear friends, admirers, and home-visitors of Cuba's Fidel Castro. In recent months, these three women, or associates very close to them, have complained about such things as "Wall Street money from New York meshing with wealthy conservatives in our countries now threaten to turn Latin America away from democracy back to the foreign-domination that prevailed deep into the 1970s." 

     This photo still sends shivers down the spines of some democratically elected Latin American leaders. It shows U. S. President George W. Bush welcoming Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado to the White House. In 2002 Bush had anti-Castro zealots Otto Reich and Roger Noriega as key Latin American advisers when a Venezuelan coup briefly overthrew the Presidency of Cuba's prime friend at the time, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. To this day, Venezuela's government ties Maria Corina Machado and the Bush presidency to that coup.

     This chilling photo was taken on April 12, 2002. It shows U.S.-friendly businessman Pedro Carmona swearing himself in as President of Venezuela after the military coup that had ousted President Hugo Chavez, who was then naked and tied to a chair in a cell. When this photo was taken there were well-known celebrations at the White House in Washington as well as in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, according to the Miami Herald and other media sources. President Pedro Carmona read the names of a list of supporters and among the names was that of Maria Corina Machado, alleged  close friend of President George W. Bush.

      However, the coup lasted only 47 hours. A counter-coup led by peasant-loving Lina Ron restored Hugo Chavez to power on April 13, 2002. Wearing a baseball cap and wielding a blow-horn, Lina stormed through Caracas on the back of a pickup truck and shouted: "Washington, Miami, hear this! Return my President to power within 24 hours or I will lead a scorched-earth assault from Caracas to Miami and Washington!" Network television sent images around the world as millions of Venezuelans began following Lina in the streets of Caracas. The supporters of the original coup caved in to Lina's threat. Her President, Hugo Chavez, was returned to power and he accepted a kiss from Lina. Later, Chavez was asked, "Did that little lady scare all of those mighty people that bad and that quick?" Chavez famously replied, "Lina even scares the hell out of me!" After being quickly reinstalled by Lina Ron on April 13, 2002, Hugo Chavez remained Venezuela's Cuban-loving President until he died of cancer in 2013. Lina Ron died of a heart attack at age 51 in 2011.

Her "scorched earth" warning was heeded in 2002.

Maria Corina Machado with President George W. Bush.

Bottom-left signature above supporting President Carmona on April 12, 2002.

Venezuela's continuing powerhouse dissidents.

       Nicolas Maduro has been Venezuela's President since April 19, 2013. Born 52 years ago in Caracas, Maduro was Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor. His reign is tenuous because of dire economic problems exacerbated by low gas prices but he primarily blames U.S.-backed dissidents for most of Venezuela's ills. He recently said, "The rich elite, backed as always by Washington and Miami, want Venezuela's resources that they will share with rich foreigners. We have been down that path before. We are not alone. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina are all similarly targeted. If we are to survive, we must all fight together as one force."

        Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro recently is known to have taken his survival message to Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow.

        Nicaraguan President Danny Ortega, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and Bolivian President Evo Morales are Cuba's three most powerful friends in Latin America...along with the three female Presidents -- Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, Vilma Rousseff of Brazil, and Michelle Bachelet of Chile. But Cristina Fernandez will be replaced next month by a newly elected U.S.-friendly President in Argentina.

By the Way:

       Congratulations to Lydia Ko, the most amazing athlete on the planet. Yesterday in Naples, Florida, she won this trophy as the top female golfer in the world. She was born 18 years ago...on April 24, 1997...in Seoul, South Korea, and is now a New Zealander. Lydia Ko took over as the top women's golfer last year at age 17. There are more famous athletes, but only one Lydia Ko. {Ko photos: Getty Images}

      In Naples Lydia Ko won another $1 million for being the top women's golfer for a second straight year. That's a million dollars in cash she is holding before her mom Tina put it in a bank. She has over $7.5 million in golf earnings already but that will be minuscule compared to the endorsement money that will be showered on her. 

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Florida City Loves Cuba

A Notable Love Affair

            Today -- Sunday, November 22, 2015 -- The Tampa Tribune -- used the above photo to illustrate a major article written/photographed by Paul Guzzo. The article is entited: "HAVING ENDURED EMBARGO, TAMPA-CUBA TIES GROW EVER STRONGER." The photo above shows two Cuban women mingling in front of a small, entrepreneurial clothing store. Guzzo points out that back in the 1880s Tampa and Cuba developed a close cultural and business relationship via such mutual associations as the cigar industry and Cuba's struggles against Spain's imperialism. He writes: "The bond seemed broken in 1961," which was the second year of revolutionary rule on the island after the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship.  In 1961 the U. S. and Cuban exiles failed to recapture Cuba with their failed attack known as the Bay of Pigs. And in 1961 Guzzo pointed out that "the U. S. imposed a travel and trade embargo that isolated the island nation." Guzzo returned to Cuba and discovered "...that the people of Havana never stopped thinking of Tampa as a brother. Signs were everywhere this week that ties have grown stronger again in the year since President Barack Obama first moved to normalize relations between the two nations." Guzzo noticed that the Tampa-Havana camaraderie was evident in such things as a fishing tournament and "Tampa citizens were very prominent this week when 600 U. S. citizens participated in the Havana Marathon." Guzzo cogently quoted one Tampa visitor as saying, "Tampa is back in Cuba, but it never really left."

          This was the wildly successful Marabana Havana Marathon in Havana this week that featured 600 United States runners. Because it was a positive event, only a few fair-minded U. S. media outlets, such as the Tampa Tribune, mentioned it. In his column today in that newspaper, Paul Guzzo reported on many pros and cons, providing both sides of a two-sided story. Some of the observations included:
              ****Florida will benefit from a new marine partnership that allows research of Cuba's pristine reefs to help grow reefs that are dying in Florida waters.
                    ****A Tampa runner in the above marathon, Lynn Gray, said, "I'll return to Tampa with nothing but good things to say about the Cubans. I feel a connection to Cuba now." That type of quote is the last thing visceral exiles in Florida, who have dictated that everyday Americans are the only people in the world who can't freely visit Cuba, want to hear or to see in print, but Paul Guzzo included the quote in his article.
                    ****Guzzo wrote: "Americans can fish in Cuba now if they're in a competition, but visiting purely for tourism remains illegal under the embargo."
                ****"One of Havana's most popular beers has a link with Tampa. It's called Bucanero."
                  ****"With a Cuban-American population that is the third largest in the U. S. dating back to the 1880s, Tampa shares foods and architecture with Cuba. Cuba celebrity, architect Eusebio Leal, visited Tampa in October and was treated as a rock star for restoring over 300 landmark buildings in Old Havana."
                  ****"Cuba welcomes the help many Americans are providing...including the four-person Tampa medical team led by surgeon Kenneth Gustke of Florida Orthopedic Institute." The group provided knee and hip replacements. Cuba's universal health care is superb but the surgeons from Tampa had better equipment because the embargo prevents Cuba from purchasing some of the material that it needs.
                       ****"Tampa is a star as organized visits to the island are growing more popular."
                 ****Tampa was among Jose Marti's favorite U. S. cities...Fidel Castro had early support for his revolution from Tampa...Tampa gangster Santo Trafficante Jr. helped the American Mafia create a casino industry in Havana."
         With the U. S. embargo against Cuba still preventing everyday Americans from visiting the island to judge it for themselves, unbiased observations from journalists who do visit remains important. Paul Guzzo's long article in Sunday's Tampa Tribune was fair and balanced...uh, almost like having the freedom to go there yourself.

       Journalist Pual Guzzo mentioned Santo Trafficante Jr. as a prominent Tampa-Cuba connection, and he sure was. During the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba from 1952 till 1959, Trafficante Jr. was fourth in command behind Fulgencio Batista, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky. In the 1930s Santo Trafficante Sr. became the Mafia kingpin of Tampa. When Trafficante Sr. died in 1954 he turned Tampa over to Trafficante Jr. When the Cuban Revolution defeated the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in January of 1959, Batista, Luciano, Lansky, Trafficante Jr. hastily escaped to safer pastures. Trafficante Jr. was briefly arrested by Fidel Castro but freed because at the time Fidel still harbored thoughts of peaceful relations with the U. S. Back on U. S. soil in Tampa, Trafficante Jr., like his father before him, was one of the top Mafia celebrities, free as a bird as his demeanor in the above photo attests. In the gray coat with the satchel is his very efficient lawyer Frank Ragano. Trafficante Jr. died in 1987 at age 72. Before he died in Tampa in 1998, Ragano in a book confessed that Trafficante Jr. and other well-known Mafiosi, unhappy with being booted out of Cuba, tried mightily to work with the CIA in trying to assassinate Fidel Castro. Ragano also confirmed that Trafficante Jr., Sam Giancana, Carlos Marcello, etc., also massively targeted the Kennedy brothers -- President John Kennedy and presidential contender Robert Kennedy. Trafficante Jr. provided an unconscionable criminal nexus between Havana and Tampa. 

       Many books -- such as "THE TAFFICANTES: Godfathers from Tampa, Florida" -- had plenty of fodder from declassified FBI and CIA documents to tie the Trafficantes of Tampa to a litany of crimes in Cuba during the Batista reign and in the U. S. before and after the Batista dictatorship.

But the Tampa-Cuba connection enjoys happier times now:

        Kathy Castor was born in Miami 49 years ago but she has represented Tampa brilliantly in the U. S. Congress since 2007. For one thing, in defiance of the post-Batista political leaders in Miami, Ms. Castor has worked tirelessly to bring about normal and peaceful business relations between Cuba and her Tampa constituents.

      As a Miami-born member of the U. S. Congress from Florida, Kathy Castor deserves a medal for having the sheer courage and decency, over a sustained period of time, to actually treat Cubans on the island decently while also trying to do all she can to help the people in the Tampa area who have kept her in Congress since 2007. Rare birds like Kathy Castor are few and far between in a U. S. Congress that, according to a recent poll, had an approval rating of 9%, apparently the 9% that have bought-and-paid for it. Yes, the Tampa-Cuba connection -- which the Tampa Tribune featured today, November 22nd -- includes Tampa's representative in the U. S. Congress, Kathy Castor. Of course, because she's unwilling to be bought-and-paid-for, she is not one of Florida's current presidential contenders, although she should be.

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