Miami Fights Back

Obama Needs to Duck!!
And so does Carnival Cruise Lines!!

        Carnival Cruise Lines this week is reeling after incurring the wrath of the vast Castro Cottage Industry, a powerful and normally unchallenged enterprise that has reserved the right, since the 1959 overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba, to dictate America's Cuban policy. Abiding by President Obama's brave and mammoth efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, Miami-based Carnival -- the world's leading cruise line -- planned to begin Miami-to-Cuba cruises next month, May 1st. This week, on April 13th, a major article in USA Today began with this paragraph: "The first cruise ship scheduled to sail to Cuba from the United States is under fire and now faces a federal lawsuit {in Miami} because people born on the island are forbidden from the voyage." Carnival very innocently had assumed that was OK because of all the U. S. laws that sharply benefit Cuban-Americans, including allowing them to freely go to Cuba, but sharply discriminate against everyone else, including average Americans who have been denied permission to travel to Cuba since 1962 thanks to all those U. S. laws that favor Cuban-Americans and discriminate against everyone else. But Carnival now realizes it left itself vulnerable to the Castro Cottage Industry, especially one that is fuming about President Obama's mighty efforts to normalize relations with Cuba.

       Carnival's motto is "FUN FOR ALL. ALL FOR FUN." It's a good motto, except if the Castro Cottage Industry headquartered in Miami dislikes it. With Carnival's plans for that May 1st cruise to Cuba known for weeks, the wonder is why it took so long for the Cuban hard-liners in Miami to take Carnival to one of those convenient Miami courtrooms. After all, at least till President Obama bravely removed Cuba from the Sponsors of Terrorism list, Miami lawyers had green lights to charge Cuba with whatever they wanted to think up and then easily win mammoth lawsuits in Miami courtrooms in which Cuba was not even represented. And then, by U. S. law {remember how easily such laws have been rammed through the U. S. Congress} the power of the U. S. government backed up those claims, firing off huge checks from Washington to fulfill those lawsuits with what it sometimes called "frozen Cuban assets." And so, for all those decades Cuba was on the Sponsors of Terrorism list, Miami lawyers had an additional Gold Mine.

       Robert Rodriguez {above} is the high-profile Cuban-American lawyer in Miami who sued Carnival, the giant cruise line based in Miami. My advice to Carnival is...settle quick, REAL QUICK! Although the majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami support President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, it is still a handful of anti-Castro hardliners in Miami who have set and still maintain the city's Cuban posture just as it is only anti-Castro hardliners -- Ros-Lehtinen, the Diaz-Balart brothers, Rubio, Curbelo, etc. -- that can get elected to the U. S. Congress from Miami although polls show most Cuban-Americans are not hard-liners.

        This week's lawsuit in Miami against Carnival Cruise Lines reminds me of Ana Margarita Martinez. Back before President Obama finally removed Cuba from the Sponsors of Terrorism list, Miami lawyers could sue Cuba for whatever their clients wanted them to sue Cuba for. With Cuba never even represented in those Miami courtrooms, the verdicts were...uh, let me say...rather foregone conclusions. Ana was born in Cuba but, tuh, flowered into a beautiful woman in Miami. Ana, like so many others, sued Cuba. Her claim was a bit unusual but...what the hell...it was a claim. She was married to Juan Pablo Roque for seven years, but he got very homesick for Cuba and returned to the island. Ana also claimed he liked Fidel Castro, so her claim was essentially that her marriage was a ruse and it actually constituted being raped via false pretenses. She won her case and was awarded $7.175 million plus $20 million in punitive damages for a total of $27.175 million dollars. It was later reported that, with the government's help in securing the money, Ana was given three Cuban airplanes that had been hijacked from Cuba to Florida. But this true story gets even better.

         Juan Pablo Roque, before he left Ana in Miami and returned to Cuba, was well known in Miami's famed Little Havana anti-Castro conclave. In this photo, for example, Juan is shown with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, perhaps America's most notable and most visceral Cuban-born anti-Castro zealot {not counting Miami's infamous Luis Posada Carriles}. Ros-Lehtinen has represented Miami in the U. S. Congress since 1989.

       This is Juan Pablo Roque, Ana's ex-husband and Congresswoman Ileana's ex-friend. He is shown here on the telephone after he left Ana and returned to Cuba. The Miami News covered the story like a blanket and called Juan in Havana. He was asked, "Juan, what do you miss most about Miami?" Now if you like Soap Operas, you probably think Juan replied, "My beautiful former wife Ana, of course." But you would be wrong! He immediately answered, "MY JEEP!!" I kid you NOT!! As a democracy-lover, I wish I were kidding you.

        This photo shows the beautiful Ana Margarita Martinez in Miami with Juan's BELOVED JEEP and the fruits of that nice lawsuit. But I have a coda to this story that will knock your socks off. When I first started these Cubaninsider essays, one of my first posts was on November 2, 2011, and it was entitled "The Country That Raped Me." It chronicled Ana's successful Miami lawsuit against Juan. That essay is still posted and you can access it by Googling: "The Country That Raped Me" (A True Story) Cubaninsider." And you might want to do that because -- LO 'N BEHOLD -- last month, March of 2016, Ana herself sent a comment to that post!! If you Google up that post you can read Ana's comment at the end of it and also my reply back to her. Her belated comment makes me almost feel like a part of this courtroom Soap Opera.

        And now you know why I advised the Carnival Cruise Lines to make a quick settlement regarding the Miami lawsuit lodged against it relating to its proposed cruises to Cuba. As far as I know, and probably as far as Ana knows, those Cuban-American lawyers haven't lost too many lawsuits in Miami courtrooms.

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Obama Beat Miami

And Miami Admits It

         This photo is courtesy of Astrid Riecken-MCT. It was used this week to illustrate an important article in the Kansas City Star. The photo shows three of the most hardline anti-Castro members of the United States Congress -- Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Robert Menendez -- applauding Bay of Pigs veterans. The article blared this headline: "CONVERSATIONS ON CUBA LEAVES OUT MIAMI'S ONCE-MIGHTY POLITICAL GUARD." The article had three highly significant sub-titles:

{1} "The Cuban-American Politicians Have Been Left Out."

{2} "They Were Not Involved in Obama's Cuban Policy."

   {3} "The Group Faces the Prospect of Four More Years of the Same."  

       Actually, Patricia Mazzei of the Miami Herald wrote the aforementioned article that I read when it was republished in the Kansas City Star. That's why it appears to be an admission that Cuban hardliners in Miami are hurtin' for certain because Barack Obama has been the first U. S. President since 1959 to successfully challenge them on a Cuban policy that most unbiased observers believe has mocked the U. S. democracy long enough. Mr. Obama, realizing that their rigid input would never remotely comply with his plans to normalize relations with Cuba, simply left them out in the cold while he astutely and bravely used his Executive Authority to thrust ahead with remarkable achievements, such as removing Cuba from the untidy Sponsors of Terrorism list, reopening embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961, and greatly increasingly the reasons Americans can actually visit Cuba. All this was accomplished even thought the Miami hardliners still have dictatorial control of the U. S. Congress on issues such as the ungodly embargo that has hobbled Cuba since 1962, at least till Obama punctured much of it. Here's the way Ms. Mazzei put it: "Left out of the conversation: anyone who disagreed, including the eight Cuban Americans -- Republicans and Democrats -- in Congress 57 years after the Cuban revolution. Half of them -- one Senator and three Representatives -- hail from Miami, the new city exiles made in Havana's old image." 

       Patricia Mazzei's long article then lamented Miami's being "left out of the conversation" by Obama. She then gives a first-hand account of how Miami became "the new city exiles made in Havana's old image." Of course, being a top journalist for the Miami Herald, Ms. Mazzei presented the viewpoints of the exiles from the ousted Batista-Mafia dictatorship that were booted out of Cuba, at least the views of the hardliners who, prior to Obama, dictated America's Cuban policy although polls now show that most Cuban-Americans in Miami support Obama's approach, not the late Jorge Mas Canosa's approach and certainly not the infamous Luis Posada Carriles' approach. Regarding the Miami hardliners and politicians, Ms. Mazzei wrote: "For eight years, they've had zero input on the issue on which some of them built their political careers. And now they face the prospects of four or eight more years of the same, with a new White House tenant come January. Of the five presidential candidates left from both political parties, a Cuban-American Republican, whose father is from Matanzas, has adopted the traditional hard-line position on Cuba and vowed to reverse Obama's policy. On the other side, there is deep commitment to Obama's Cuba doctrine." Ms. Mazzei's reference to the Cuban-American presidential contender, of course, is Ted Cruz. In the long article she liberally uses vicious anti-Obama quotes from Miami contributions to the U. S. Congress such as Havana-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, whose rich father, Rafael Diaz-Balart, was a former key Minister in the Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Also, Ms. Mazzei liberally quotes such powerful benefactors of America's Castro Cottage Industry as Mauricio Claver-Carone. So if you want an update on Miami's hardline reaction to President Obama's Cuban overtures, you should go online and read the entire article. Patricia Mazzei knows Miami's Cuban-American hardliners and she knows precisely how they grabbed hold of America's Cuban policy to suit their whims and goals. She proved that when she wrote this line: "Jorge Mas Canosa had the ear of President Ronald Reagan." Indeed he did, and that's how just a handful of the most hard-line Miami Cubans, especially since the Reagan-Bush administration, acquired unencumbered dictation of America's Cuban policy, at least till President Obama reined it in a bit. 

Reagan was President and G. H. W. Bush Vice President from 1981-1988.

      The Reagan-Bush presidency from 1981 till 1988 ran roughshod over U. S. democratic principles in its alignment with Miami's Cubans, about the time it embroiled Oliver North and some Cuban-Americans in the infamous Iran-Contra conspiracy. {Horseback photo courtesy of Politico}. For sure, right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration in 1959 -- VP Richard Nixon, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, etc. -- had tied the U. S. government to the Batista-exile extremists. But those ties became indelible, as Patricia Mazzei referenced, when, "Jorge Mas Canosa had the ear of President Reagan."

Mas Canosa famously leaning in on President Reagan's ear.

          But this photo, showing Mas Canosa having Vice President George H. W. Bush's ear, is far more important in the annals of U.S.-Cuban relations than all other photos since the 1980s. This is the nexus that meant most to Mas Canosa, and the one that endeared him to the Reagan administration with his friend Bush as his uncontested prime supporter. The Bush-Mas connection also crystallized the Bush dynasty's unfathomable ties to the Cuban-American extremists in Miami, an alliance that extended from the two-term Reagan administration to the one-term George H. W. Bush presidency, the two-term George W. Bush presidency and the two-term governorship in Florida of Jeb Bush. Although Jeb's lushly funded bid for the Republican presidential nomination was unceremoniously ended this year, both the Bush dynasty and the Republican Party continue their self-serving, right-wing alliance with the extreme Cuban hardliners.

         This photo shows President George H. W. Bush handing a souvenir pen to Havana-born anti-Castro zealot Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She has been in the U. S. Congress from Miami since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager. The next souvenir pen, in honor of signing a very punitive anti-Cuban bill, went to Jorge Mas Canosa, who is in the black suit. Bush Sr. sealed the Bush Dynasty-Miami Cuban alliance.

       These four Republican presidents -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush -- all forged extreme right-wing agendas against Cuba, including the total of 16 years that Nixon and Bush Sr. served as Vice Presidents. {The art work above is courtesy of and available at www.imagekind.com}. As Patricia Mazzei referenced, the same thing would happen if the Republican Cuban-American Ted Cruz ever makes it to the White House. Remember what Ms. Mazzei wrote when she mentioned the five current presidential contenders: "Only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz....has adopted the traditional hard-line position on Cuba and vowed to reverse Obama's policy." But again, Ms. Mazzei's most pertinent sentence was the one about Jorge Mas Canosa tying up with the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. Surely, no Cuban-American -- not Cruz, Rubio, Menendez, the Diaz-Balart brothers, and Ros-Lehtinen all rolled into one -- has had the money or the power to match Mas Canosa, who shaped the malleable Republican Party to suit his Cuban agendas.

         Jorge Mas Canosa was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1939. He died at age 58 as a young billionaire in Coral Gables outside Miami in 1997. The above black-bordered AP image of Mas Canosa was used in reporting his death and the AP highlighted his reign as "the leader of the Cuban exiles." He had been, in effect, the leader of the Cuban-Government-in-Exile since the early 1980s when the Bush in the Reagan-Bush administration designated him as such. Thus, Mas Canosa...in that fashion...pioneered the Bush-paved path that other powerful Cuban-Americans have traversed -- including Cruz, Rubio, Ros-Lehtinen, the Diaz-Balarts, etc., etc., etc. But only Jorge Mas Canosa created the political fact-of-life that essentially gave the Miami Cubans dictatorial control over both the Republican Party and the U. S. Congress when it came to America's Cuban policy. To understand today what President Obama has achieved regarding Cuba, you need to comprehend what Mas Canosa crafted on behalf of the Cuban-American hardliners.

        This photo shows Jorge Mas Canosa in his 2nd Lt.'s uniform at Fort Benning, Georgia. Right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, many fleeing the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba ended up in Miami and then the most vehement anti-Castro Cubans were sent to the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Unknown to the American taxpayers who were paying for it, that's where the U. S. was training Latin American soldiers and then sending them back to support U.S.-friendly right-wing dictators -- such as Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican, and Somoza in Nicaragua. On Jan.1-1959 Cuba became unique by becoming the first nation to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictatorship. Proving that the U. S. immediately planned to recapture Cuba, any young Cuban-exile male who vowed to overthrow Castro was put on the payroll at Fort Benning -- and that included such soon-to-be famous {or infamous} anti-Castro zealots such as Luis Posada Carriles, Felix Rodriguez, Jorge Mas Canosa, etc., etc. Upon graduation, they were inducted in the anti-Castro Brigade 2506 and continued training at bases in South Florida and friendly dictatorships such as Nicaragua. It was Brigade 2506 that launched an air, land, and sea attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. President Kennedy, who had inherited the Bay of Pigs plan from the Eisenhower-Nixon administration, was told by the CIA that the attack would be "a piece of cake" and that "Fidel will run for his getaway airplane when he hears the bombs from our Air Force." The U. S. warplanes were disguised with the Cuban insignia to perpetuate the lie that the attack was a popular uprising that didn't involve the U. S., with even Adlai Stephenson, the respected U. S. Ambassador to the UN, lying to the world that the U. S. was not involved, until a downed U. S. airplane unveiled the great American lie.

           American taxpayers and democracy-lovers had no idea that the U. S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning was training foreign soldiers that would be sent back to support U.S.-friendly dictators like Batista, Trujillo, Somoza, etc. That is, till the 1990s when President Clinton held a news conference to apologize for it. Then there were demonstrations like the one above demanding the U. S. close it...forever!

              Well, even after the Clinton news conference, the infamous Army School of the Americas was not closed, not exactly. But at least it was renamed and is known today as "The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation." And as you can detect from the above political cartoon, President George W. Bush was mocked for continuing to fund, with tax dollars, the "School" that affected Cuba so drastically.

           But unlike Batista, Fidel Castro didn't have a getaway airplane. He raced to the front-lines at the Bay of Pigs and led the successful defense of the Cuban Revolution, greatly exacerbating his legend.

         While the U. S. and the Cuban exiles were preparing for the Bay of Pigs attack, the U. S. government before, during and after the attack lied to the U. S. people, denying any U. S. involvement. But even the planning was an open secret as this article in the New York Times illustrated. Insiders at Fort Benning, unhappy with the subterfuge, kept Cuban decision-maker Celia Sanchez informed about Brigade 2506 and she even knew exactly what they were being paid and when they shipped off to countries like Nicaragua and Guatemala to continue their training. Celia and Fidel had, in fact, visited the Bay of Pigs prior to the attack to devise their defensive plans. As reported later by Cuban journalist Carlos Franqui and by Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times, Fidel at the Bay of Pigs prior to the attack pointed to two ridges and told Celia, "We need machine guns placed there, and there." But even after Szulc's article in the NY Times depicted above, and even during and after the attack, the United States lied about participating in it.

    Cuban rebels at the Bay of Pigs inspecting a downed U. S. B-26 Douglas Invader warplane.

              Cuban rebels, including a female on the right, inspecting a downed B-26 at the Bay of Pigs.

Brigade 2506 Bay of Pigs prisoners.

         In December of 1962 Fidel Castro sold Brigade 2506 prisoners back to the U. S. for $53 million, much of it paid in the form of many crates of Gerber Baby Food. As the photo at the top of this essay indicates, to this day the Cuban-Americans in the United States Congress celebrate the Brigade 2506 attackers.

But the Bay of Pigs attack was Fidel's triumph, not Brigade 2506's.

       This montage shows Fidel Castro on the front lines at the Bay of Pigs and President Kennedy flummoxed back at the White House as he received the sad news. Kennedy's fuming included his famous exclamation: "If I could I'd blow the CIA to smithereens!!" Yet, after the Bay of Pigs, Mr. Kennedy allowed his brother, Attorney General Robert, to devise plans that repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro.

         This is Fidel, visiting the UN, holding a cigar and showing a U. S. newspaper blaring a headline about another plot to kill him. The Guinness Book of World Records confirms that Fidel, nearing his 90th birthday on August 13th, easily holds the world record for surviving the most assassination attempts in history.

        As you can see above, Celia Sanchez, the most important Cuban rebel, said she, Fidel and the other rebels got "far too much credit" because "our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots." There are, of course, some historians and unbiased journalists who agree with her.

        Yet, the Bush dynasty in the United States has made sure that two generations of post-Batista Cuban-Americans have become rich and powerful as the chief orchestrators of America's Cuban policy.

        For example, Cuban-born Jorge Mas Canosa and his three sons born in Miami {above} all became billionaires after Jorge Mas Canosa was anointed leader of the Cuban-exiles, after which he created such tax-funded enterprises as the anti-Castro propaganda machine, Radio-TV Marti, which operates out of lush studios in Miami and till this day soaks taxpayers for many millions of controversial dollars. Mas Canosa's three sons now run their father's multi-billion-dollar MasTec Corporation that employs over 15,000 people.

       To have even a basic understanding of U.S.-Cuban relations since the 1950s, you need to read and study this book -- "CUBA: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW by Julia E. Sweig. For sure, what the great Ms. Sweig documents is not available in the mainstream U. S. media, certainly not since newsman Emilio Milian was car-bombed after complaining about Miami-based terrorism against innocent Cubans or since top columnist Jim DeFede was fired by the Miami Herald when he excoriated Miami members of the U. S. Congress -- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers -- for supporting Miami's most famed Cuban-American terrorists. Julia Sweig's book depicted above, for example, details the most important advice the Reagan-Bush administration gave Jorge Mas Canosa when he was anointed leader of the Cuban exiles: Study the Jewish lobby AIPAC and then replicate it. Mas Canosa did, and founded the mighty CANF.

        After you have read and studied Julia Sweig's book, you need to read and study Ann Louise Bardach's seminal CUBA Confidential: LOVE AND VENGEANCE IN MIAMI AND HAVANA. Ms. Bardach, far better than anyone else, delineates how Mas Canosa and the other Miami hardliners easily dictated their Cuban policy to the U. S. Congress, over and above any interference from any Democratic president, easily enacting binding U. S. laws such as Helms-Burton that grossly harmed everyday Cubans on the island and greatly helped Cuban hardliners. Ms. Bardach's vivid depiction of Miami hardliners jetting up to Washington to celebrate those laws is beautifully documented but far too juicy for the intimidated mainstream U. S. media to even mention. Ms. Bardach also brilliantly explains how two Democratic presidents -- Carter and Clinton -- were easily blown away when they tried to sanely sanitize America's relations with the island of Cuba.

       And so, after this circuitous journey that began with the Patricia Mazzei article that admitted President Obama has beaten Miami because of his sheer brilliance and boldness regarding Cuba, I have ended with the superb books by Julia E. Sweig and Ann Louise Bardach. To understand Obama's victory and that article this week by Patricia Mazzei, you really do need to read those two books by Ms. Sweig and Ms. Bardach. And, I believe, a quotation by William Faulkner actually best sums up America's relations with Cuba from the 1898 Spanish-American War till today. Below is that timely William Faulkner quotation:

       And because "the past is never dead, it's not even past," these Cuban-American hardliners in Miami's Little Havana are adamantly opposed to President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. As William Faulkner would know, the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961 is as topical as today's sunrise in Miami. 

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My Cuban Odyssey

It Started With A Photo

       Truth be known, this photograph started my Cuban odyssey back in the 1980s. At the time, I probably knew two things about Cuba -- "Castro" and "Havana." I then had no more interest in the island of Cuba than, say, Jamaica or the Aleutian Islands (wherever they are). I noticed this photo, quite by accident, in a bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, in 1982. It was on a postcard that was on a circular rack. I lifted it up, studied it, and then dropped it back in its slot. I purchased the hardback book that had enticed me to the store and then went out to my car, starting it up. But looking straight ahead, the image of that photo on the postcard came back at me from the windshield as if from a mirror. I turned the ignition, cutting off the car motor. I reentered the bookstore and purchased that postcard. I remember it cost me $1.06. I guess the six cents was the sales tax. The little girl clutching the block of wood...I didn't know at the time that she was Cuban...fascinated me initially and then, after taking time to study it, I succumbed to it, allowing it to grab hold of my heart and my imagination. But I still didn't know the story behind it. I just assumed that the little girl had a very special attachment to that block of wood. But why? She was, for sure, a beautiful little girl, with big eyes and an awesomely expressive face. What state did she live in? Was she poor? Was she rich? Who took the photograph? Why did she love that block of wood so much? I didn't have those answers, yet I knew the photo was natural and that the block of wood was special, not a prop. The back of the postcard, at least, revealed the photographer's name -- "Alberto Korda." The name looked Spanish to me. I guessed he was Mexican. The other answers took a few days; in 1982, you know, Google had not yet been invented.

        
        The "Alberto Korda" tip on the back of the postcard prefaced my trip to the library where a helpful librarian expedited my research. Korda was born in Cuba on September 14th, 1928. But all other references to him in the library related to a rather famous photo Korda had taken in 1960 of Che Guevara, the Argentine doctor who had become famous as a guerrilla fighter in the Cuban Revolution, which had shocked the world by beating the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship on January 1, 1959. I, in fact, had seen images of Korda's "Che" photo...on T-shirts, coffee mugs, collegiate dormitory walls, etc., but they had never interested me enough to ever take special note of them or even wonder why they were so ubiquitous. But the little girl holding the block of wood did impact me. Very much. The problem was, at least in Richmond in 1982, all my initial research on Korda led right back to "Che." Therefore, I remember spending more than a few days and nights wondering, pondering, about that little girl holding the block of wood. Why was that block of wood so special to her? The elusive answer verily challenged me.

         I distinctly remember getting irked about the ubiquity of Korda's "Che" photo every time I tried to find out about the Korda photo that really concerned me, the one of the little girl and her...block of wood.

          But gradually, as I learned more about Alberto Korda in my diligent efforts to separate him from "Che," the photo of the little girl and the block of wood came more into focus. That helpful librarian, perhaps wary of my persistence, surprised me one day with an intriguing update. She directed me to an article about Korda in the London Daily Mail. The "Che" photo had made him and his name "Korda" world famous. The significance of the article resonated strongly with me when the librarian pointed to a segment she had cordoned off with a blue magic-marker. Just past the obligatory references about "Che," there was a quotation, underlined in yellow by the librarian, that instantly quickened my heartbeat. The article quoted Korda saying these revelatory words: "But truth be known, my excitement about the Che photograph emerged only after it began to take off. Yes, it is why I can hold exhibitions in London and around the world. But apart from the money and fame, the photograph that has most affected my life...and changed my life the most...is that one over there, the one on the upper-left of that display rack." The Daily Mail reporter then said, "You mean...the little girl?" Korda, obviously showing emotion, said, "Yes, I mean...the little girl."

"Yes, I mean...the little girl."

        Alberto Korda died of a heart attack on May 25th, 2001, while holding an exhibition of his photographs in Paris, France. "Yes, I mean...the little girl." Till the day he died, of all the historic and iconic photographs he took, Korda was most famed for and will eternally be identified with "Che." But the one dearest to his heart was the one of the little Cuban girl holding the block of wood. She was not only holding it, she was loving it. She was pretending it was a doll. It was her most treasured possession. Her parents, you see, were too poor in Batista's Cuba prior to the Revolution to buy her a doll, or even buy products to make her a doll. But Korda noticed that the little girl prized her doll, the wooden block of wood, more than most rich little girls would love their expensive dolls. That little girl, and the photo he took of her clutching her doll, not only "affected" Korda's life but "changed" it. He was aware, in the Batista-Mafia dictatorship of the 1950s, enormous amounts of money were being made by the Batistianos, the Mafiosi, and rich U. S. businessmen who owned most of the so-called "legitimate" businesses and companies in Cuba.

Korda had seen poverty like this in Batista's Cuba.

And Korda also saw poverty like this in Batista's Cuba.

        And Korda saw brave marches like this in Batista's Cuba as mothers, outraged over the murders of their children, killings supposedly designed to quell dissent, actually fueled the Cuban Revolution.

       Abundantly aware of the one-sided poverty and unconscionable brutality in Batista's Cuba, Korda fervently supported the Cuban Revolution that defeated the Batista-Mafia dictatorship on January 1, 1959.

        After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Korda became Fidel Castro's official photographer and later said that Fidel "never told me what to photograph or what not to photograph. I chose the subjects." This Korda photo shows Fidel with Earnest Hemingway and was taken when Korda was with the newspaper Revolucion. Korda traveled with Fidel to the U. S. in April of 1959 and took many famous photos during that 12-day trip. In the next ten years he also traveled with Fidel to Venezuela, Russia, and other countries.

            Korda took this photo of Fidel Castro on April 16, 1959, in Washington, D. C. It shows Fidel looking reverently up at the Jefferson Memorial. On that day, Fidel was a heroic and very popular U. S. visitor.

        Korda took this photo of Fidel on April 18, 1959. Fidel is shown reading dispatches at the Cuban Embassy in Washington. He didn't know then that the embassy would soon be closed for half-a-century.

       Everything was fine and celebratory for Fidel, Korda, Celia Sanchez, Camilo Cienfuegos and the rest of the Cuban entourage on their 12-day trip to Cuba in April of 1959...until Vice President Richard Nixon flummoxed Fidel {above} by telling him the Cuban exiles and the U. S. would "be back in charge of Cuba within weeks." That, of course, has never happened in all the decades since, but Nixon's boastful and imperial words set the tone that has existed since April of 1959, at least till Mr. Obama tempered it.

   In the interim, the great Cuban photographer, Alberto Korda, found everlasting fame in 1960 with his iconic photo of "Che." But till the day he died in Paris on May 25th, 2001, the photo that was dearest to Korda's heart was the one he took during the Batista dictatorship, the one of the little Cuban girl clutching the block of wood and pretending it was her doll. When I first saw that heart-wrenching photo in 1982, only with the help of a diligent librarian could I discover how Korda himself had been touched by that little girl, and that hard-to-obtain information first came to me with the 1982 article in the London Daily Mail. But now here in 2016 we have Google...and even Wikipedia! So in just a matter of a few seconds a researcher can now discover what Korda thought of that little girl. In Korda's Wikipedia bio, you can see that he says: "Nearing 30, I was heading toward a frivolous life when an exceptional event transferred my life: The Cuban Revolution. It was at that time that I took this photo of the little girl who was clutching a piece of wood for a doll. I came to understand that it was worth dedicating my work to a revolution which aimed to remove these inequities."

Korda and the photo that made him rich and famous.

Korda's Little Girl...and her doll.

The "exceptional event" that changed Korda's life, and mine.

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