Anti-Cuban Coups

Reshaping Latin America
{Updated: Friday, April 22nd, 2016} 

     This photo -- courtesy of Fernando Bizerra Jr./EPA -- was taken this week at the Planalto Palace in Brazilia. It shows Brazil's embattled President Dilma Rousseff blowing a kiss to her loyal and fervent supporters, the country's poor people that she has so remarkably helped. But, continuing a recent trend in Latin America, Dilma is about to be impeached although she was reelected to a second term as Brazil's President in 2014. But Dilma doesn't call it an impeachment; she calls it "a coup." Furthermore, she says the "coup-leaders" are acting at the behest of right-wing U. S. members of Congress aligned with powerful anti-Castro Cuban-American hardliners, "not so unlike the 2002 coup" that briefly overturned Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Cuban-friendly democratically elected President. That coup, bloodily successful for 72 hours, was tied to anti-Castro zealots in the George W. Bush administration, which indeed famously celebrated Chavez's overthrow in the White House till millions of poor Venezuelans quickly restored Chavez to power. This week Dilma supporters pointed out that leaders of the "coup" against her met with, among others, powerful U. S. Senator Bob Corker and with Carlos Gutierrez, who was President George W. Bush's anti-Castro Secretary of Commerce. The Dilma supporters suggest strongly that what happened to Chavez is the same thing that is happening to her and other democratically elected Cuban-friendly leaders in Latin America. Dilma, a legendary fighter, is taking her fight to the United Nations today -- April 22nd -- where she is expected to point out that her "impeachment" is really a "coup" supported by U. S. factions.

       On Thursday, London's The Guardian used this photo of Dilma Rousseff in a terrific article written by David Miranda entitled: "The Real Reason Dilma Rousseff's Enemies Want Her Impeached." The British press is much fairer regarding former and current Latin American coups than the American press, and thus Miranda wrote: "Corruption is just the pretext for a wealthy elite who failed to defeat Brazil's President at the ballot box. Indeed, most of today's largest media outlets in Brazil supported the 1964 military coup that ushered in two decades of rightwing dictatorship and further enriched the nation's oligarchs."   

        The Guardian used this photo of Eduardo Cunha, the very controversial man who is leading the mighty impeachment movement against President Rousseff. After pointing out that at least 60% of the Brazilian congressman opposing Rousseff have criminal charges against them, The Guardian caption to this photo said: "Eduardo Cunha was caught last year with millions of dollars in brides in secret Swiss bank accounts." 

        The London-based The Economist used this SOS photo in its article entitled "The Great Betrayal" regarding the impeachment farce against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. If you go online to read the two aforementioned British articles, you will take note of revelations about the remnants of the 1964 Brazilian coup now in Congress and leading the coup against President Rousseff: "One of them, prominent right-wing congressman Jair Bolsonaro -- widely expected to run for President and who a recent poll shows is the leading candidate among Brazil's richest -- said he was casting his vote in honor of a human-rights abusing colonel in Brazil's military dictatorship who was personally responsible for Rousseff's torture when she was imprisoned as a youthful resistor. Bolsonaro's son Eduardo cast his vote against Rousseff in honor of the 'military men of 64' -- the ones who led the coup." That revelation about the Brazilian Congress may be eerily reminiscent of the U. S. Congress, which includes Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami as one of the most vehement congressmen opposing President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Mario Diaz-Balart's father, Rafael, was a Minister in the 1950s Batista dictatorship in Cuba. And so, the rightwing second generational congressional problem Rousseff is having in Brazil parallels Obama's U. S. problems.

       As a two-term President of Brazil, by far Latin America's most powerful nation, Dilma Rousseff once enjoyed a whopping 91% APPROVAL RATING. That was because her Workers Party greatly improved the lot of Brazil's majority poor people. Of course, Brazil's minority rich people and apparently their U. S. supporters strongly oppose Dilma's social efforts. So, what is she accused of? THE ANSWER: "She is accused of breaking budgetary laws by borrowing from state banks to cover a shortfall to pay for social programs that help poor people." Helping poor people, of course, incurs the wrath of the greedy rich.

       Dilma Rousseff is a dear friend of Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro. Her Brazilian government largely financed the billion-dollar modernization of Cuba's economically important Mariel Port. As her impeachment nears, Dilma blames it partly on U. S. anti-Castro zealots that she feels "are unchecked."  

      Dilma's friend Cristina Fernandez is also Fidel Castro's dear friend. Cristina just completed two terms as Argentina's democratically elected President and, under Argentine rules, she was not allowed to run for a third term. Like Dilma, Cristina maintained that her support of poor Argentinians and of Cuba caused "anti-Cuban U. S. factions that include greedy hedge fund Wall Street billionaires" to continually battle her presidency. Thus, Cristina's chosen successor, considered a friend of poor people, was defeated and the new Argentine President is "U.S.-friendly," which to many Latin Americans means "rich-friendly." 

       The lucrative and revengeful Castro Cottage Industry in the U. S. hasn't targeted Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Fernandez coincidentally. Harassing or impeaching two two-term Cuban-friendly Latin American presidents has a lot of fall-outs and collateral damage such as hurting Cuba, helping rich people in the U. S. and Latin America, and brutalizing poor people. Cristina said, "Cuba-friendly Presidents of Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American nations are facing the same thing Dilma and I are facing." Dilma said, "Any Latin American President who supports the majority poor in their countries will encounter unending problems from rich Americans who believe Latin America's natural resources should benefit them, not Latin American natives. From the 1950s into the 1980s, from Batista in Cuba to Pinochet in Chile, U.S.-backed dictators were armed and supported in exchange for allowing rich Americans to join them in pillaging those helpless nations. Latin American democracies finally prevailed, but my democracy, Cristina's democracy, all our democracies are still targeted by like-minded U. S. imperialists." As she fights her impeachment, Dilma presumably will make similar claims at the UN today -- Friday, April 22nd.

        As a beautiful young and non-poor girl in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff became a guerrilla fighter against a U.S.-backed Brazilian dictatorship that was, she believed, "brutalizing poor people," She later said, "If little Cuba could overthrow a U.S.-supported dictator, why couldn't big Brazil? Yes, little Cuba inspired me to try."

The Brazilian dictatorship arrested Dilma Rousseff.

       The very day she was forced to sit without her glasses at a sham trial, Dilma had already been beaten on her back, buttocks, and legs -- areas hidden by her clothing to appease the dictators. She was told that if she didn't publicly admit to treason, she would be beaten daily, which she was. But she never admitted to treason, just to "trying to keep foreign-backed dictators from preying on my country's poorest people."

       Later when she was the democratically elected President of Brazil with that 91% approval rating, Dilma Rousseff was asked by the United Nations to provide details of her years of torture by the Brazilian dictatorship. As the above montage and photo shows, she provided those details, evoking memories that made her cry. Her vivid testimony was recorded by the UN and by the Hague and to this day "crimes against nature" are being pursued in trials against some of those long-ago but unpunished perpetrators.

       This photo of President Dilma Rousseff was taken this week at a news conference in Brasilia in which she confirmed that she will be at the United Nations in New York today to explain why she believes the impeachment proceedings against her constitute "a coup." It is believed that she decided to fly to the UN after she learned that "coup leaders" had, among other things, met with "known U. S. meddlers in Brazilian and Latin American affairs, and I mean backers of other coups." It is believed she was referring, in particular, to U. S. Senator Bob Corker and Cuban-American Carlos Gutierrez, two men she compares to Otto Reich and Roger Noriega. {People throughout Latin America still consider Reich and Noriega as two prime Bush administrators who backed the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez}. 

         Bob Corker has been a Republican U. S. Senator from Tennessee since 2007. He is currently the powerful Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Unfortunately, Brazil and Cuba are still classified as foreign countries. If Mr. Corker indeed met with people President Dilma Rousseff believes are "coup leaders," perhaps she and the United Nations need to know what transpired at that meeting.

        Carlos Gutierrez was born 62 years ago in Havana, Cuba. From 2005 till 2009 he was U. S. Secretary of Commerce in the administration of President George W. Bush. An extremely wealthy businessman, he is currently co-chair of the right-wing Albright Stonebridge Group, a think-tank regarding foreign relations.

        When he was President Bush's Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez was extremely unkind to his native country, Cuba, especially during the period when the island was devastated by back-to-back hurricanes and he teasingly withheld aid. If, as President Dilma Rousseff believes, Mr. Gutierrez has had meetings with people she considers "coup leaders," perhaps she has a right to know what transpired at that meeting. Moreover, perhaps the American people need to know...considering the fact that past coups and support of dictators in Latin America has so massively deflated the United States image around the world.

Dilma Rousseff is a great lady.

         But Dilma Rousseff is a sad lady today as she prepares to fly to the United States tomorrow to fight at the United Nations against her unwarranted and unsavory impeachment. She has fought all her life for poor people, especially the poor people in her Brazil and in Cuba. That is not an impeachable offense, except in the eyes of greedy rich people who have been her lifelong enemies. She has twice been democratically elected President of Brazil after being imprisoned and tortured in her youth by a U.S.-backed dictatorship. Today the people who should be impeached are the ones trying to impeach her. And saddest of all for democracy-loving Americans, it appears that once again some of the "coup leaders" might be rich and powerful Americans who, as in decades past, will never be held accountable for their actions.

        This Associated Press photo shows Brazilian women strongly supporting their beloved President, Dilma Rousseff, as they try to defend her against the coup being orchestrated by a band of unsavory rich Brazilians who could care less about Brazil's poor and middle class citizens.

         This poor Brazilian lady has ample reason to cry. Rich thugs are trying to impeach her President, Dilma Rousseff. Portuguese and Spanish are the two main languages in Brazil. In Portuguese, the banner this lady is holding says, "DOWN WITH THE COUP, IMPEACHMENT NO." She punctuated the words with tears.

It's not an impeachment.

It's a coup.

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Fidel Addresses Congress

Appears Fairly Strong

Wants No Major Changes 
Mentions His Impending Death 

       This was Fidel Castro yesterday -- Tuesday, April 19th -- addressing the 1,300 delegates at Cuba's National Assembly in Havana's Convention Palace. The photo is courtesy of Amara Garcia Mederos/EPA. His appearance was carried on state television and he was greeted with loud applause. He began by saying: "I'll be 90 years old soon. Soon I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the idea of the Cuban communists will remain as proof of this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them." His voice was strong but trembled occasionally. At times he referred to the written notes of his speech. His words and tones served as a suggestion to his 84-year-old brother, President Raul Castro, not to change the Cuban system drastically, and not to sacrifice Cuban principles just to gain concessions from the United States, which he referred to as "the enemy." Fidel turns 90-years-old on August 13th. He seemed to consider this appearance as a farewell address to the National Assembly and, via television, to the Cuban people. His recovery from the near-fatal respiratory illness in July of 2006 is ongoing but obviously he feels the coda is near. It was also apparent yesterday that he feels at peace with himself and is quite proud of the revolution he forged, one that cataclysmically altered Cuba's course.

Fidel speaking; Raul listening; Tuesday, April 19th, 2016.

        85-year-old rebel ally Jose Ramon Machado Ventura congratulates Fidel after his speech yesterday, April 19th. The 1300 delegates were awed when he mentioned "The last time I will speak in this building."

"I'll be 90 years old soon."

"Soon I'll be like all the others."
"The last time I will speak in this building."

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Screwing Cuba...Again!

"Legally," of course!!

         This photo -- courtesy of Cristobal Herrera/European Pressphoto Agency -- shows The Adonia docked in Miami. It is the pride of Carnival Cruse Lines and it was scheduled to make an historic cruise to Cuba on May 1st, but that won't happen. The Adonia carries 703 passengers and most of the bookings had been sold for the May 1st trip to Cuba but some suites and balcony cabins were still available at rates exceeding $6,000 per person. Carnival had scheduled the Cuban cruise with the understanding that Cuban-Americans could not purchase tickets, abiding by a Cuban law. It is, in fact, a reasonable law designed to protect Cuba from terrorism but it was sure to provide a huge opening, as Carnival has discovered, for the hard-line Cuban-Americans who dictate America's Cuban policy, at least the portions not bravely and finally challenged by a courageous U. S. President, Mr. Obama. So, why is there a Cuban law banning Cuban-Americans to arrive on ships while Cuba allows hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans to visit the island each year via airplane flights? The answer is simple: Cuban airports have the capacity to screen passengers to make sure that terrorists do not arrive with weapons, bombs, etc. The Cuban ports simply do not possess such screening precautions. The always lucrative and still revengeful Castro Cottage Industry in the United States, by dominating the Cuban narrative since 1959, can easily belittle such Cuban precautions only because it has thoroughly propagandized Americans.

        Arnold Donald, Carnival's Chief Executive, understood Cuba's reason for banning Cuban-Americans from the cruise ship, at least till he buckled under. In announcing that Carnival was postponing the scheduled May 1st voyage, Mr. Donald says he is negotiating with Cuba to change its policy. He said, "The issue has been a top priority with us, and our team has been working hard to reach a positive outcome."  

     Regarding Cuba, United States Secretary of State John Kerry's acuity, of course, often gives way to political correctness. In Miami, in regards to the Carnival episode, last Friday Secretary Kerry said, "Cuba should change its policy." On behalf of the U. S. government, Kerry is not permitted to admit that Cuba has suffered mightily from Miami-based acts of terrorism, not to mention that Cuba  -- supported by history as well as topical headlines -- claims that Miami is still a safe haven for well-known anti-Castro terrorists.

       Carlos Gimenez was born in 1954 in Havana. He is the Mayor of Miami-Dade County. He doesn't like Fidel Castro, which some people consider an excuse to endlessly embargo or otherwise harm innocent Cubans. Mr. Gimenez says that Carnival's proposed cruise to Cuba "is violating the county's human rights ordinance." I wonder...indeed, a lot of people wonder...if any of the top officials in Miami-Dade County would ever admit that human violations also should relate to innocent Cubans not living in South Florida.

       Emilio Milian, if he were alive today, would probably be concerned about Cubans on the island. In 1976 Emilio was the top Cuban-American newsman in Miami when he loudly and bravely spoke out against Miami-based terrorism against innocent Cubans, such as strafing coastal fishing cabins with cannon fire from speed boats, bombing Cuban hotels, and even blowing up the civilian airplane Cubana Flight 455.

        The heroic Emilio was car-bombed, producing one of the hundreds of such criminal headlines in Miami throughout the 1960s and 1970s that made the AP's crime reporter, Edna Buchanan, a journalistic legend.

         Edna Buchanan won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News as the AP's star crime reporter. She is now 77 and an award-winning crime novelist. In the famous "Cocaine Cowboy" documentary, Ms. Buchanan was featured standing on a hotel balcony with the Miami skyline as a backdrop. She turned and gestured toward that splendid skyline, pointing out that much of it was built by the rampant drug trade that roiled Miami throughout the wild and bloody 1960s and 1970s after it had roiled Havana in the 1950s.

        Beginning in 1959, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the U. S. government put Luis Posada Carriles and many other anti-Castro zealots on the U. S. payroll and sent them to the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. That was where soldiers and police from U.S.-friendly dictatorships -- such as Batista's Cuba, Trujillo's Dominican Republic, Somoza's Nicaragua, etc. -- were trained and then sent back to their native countries to protect those dictators. After Batista was overthrown on January 1, 1959, Brigade 2506 -- consisting of Cuban exiles such as Posada -- was clandestinely created at Fort Benning for the purpose of recapturing Cuba, but it later failed in its infamous Bay of Pigs attack in April of 1961, which mainly served to only make Fidel Castro even more of a revolutionary icon. It also made Posada and many other Cuban exiles more determined than ever to eliminate Castro's revolution. In a famous interview -- conducted by the great Ann Louse Bardach for the New York Times -- Posada praised the American taxpayers and the richest of the Fort Benning graduates, Jorge Mas Canosa, for backing his explosives and sabotage training. {He later recanted the mention of Mas Canosa}. In that interview Posada also admitted his role in the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, but also later recanted that confession. However, he has never recanted and, in fact, has always bragged about his decades of terrorist acts against Cuba, including the bombing of a Cuban hotel in which a young Italian tourist was killed.

       Luis Posada Carriles was born on February 15, 1928 in Cienfuegos, Cuba. So, he is now 88 years old but he has recently made the television news in Miami by taking to the streets to publicly protest President Barack Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Posada Carriles hasn't had problems with U. S. authorities but the last time he was freed, with help, from a Latin American prison was in Panama, where he was imprisoned for attempting to kill Fidel Castro at a venue where Castro was making a speech.

       Jim DeFede was an Emmy Award-Winning journalist and a top columnist at the Miami Herald when he wrote a famous column pointing out that terrorism against Cuba is the same as terrorism against the UK or America or any other country. He particularly excoriated Miami members of the U. S. Congress -- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers -- for their efforts to free Posada Carriles from the Panamanian prison. Jim is no longer with the Miami Herald but today he's a brilliant broadcast journalist in Miami.

      Josefina Vidal is Cuba's Minister of North American Affairs. She has worked tirelessly with the Obama administration to normalize relations, and she has succeeded in some prime areas such as getting Cuba removed from the punitive Sponsors of Terrorism list, re-opening embassies in the two capitals for the first time since 1961, etc. But she is not about to agree to "full normalization" as long as the embargo, imposed in 1962, remains in place or as long as the U. S. refuses to "seriously discuss" the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba. She realizes that those two things "won't happen as long as Miami dictates Cuban policy to the U. S. Congress and the majority of Americans put up with it." And this week she is irked that "Cuba is being misrepresented by Miami and Washington" concerning Carnival's scheduled but now postponed May 1st cruise to Cuba. "Cuba," she says, "has allowed hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans to fly to Cuba each year, because we welcome them and because our airports can screen them to prevent possible terrorism. But our ports do not currently have that ability and that's the only reason Carnival was told about our concerns. Of course, as always, Miami and Washington insist there has never been Miami-directed terrorism against Cuba. And that is a lie. We have a lot of graves, far too many, that prove the lies."

        Also, another cruise line -- Pearl Sea Cruises -- had sold tickets for a trip out of Miami with stopovers in the seven Cuban cities as depicted in this advertisement map. The tickets were being sold after the U. S. granted permission but Cuba has since denied permission to Pearl Sea for these cruises, again with ample reason. With the vast influx of American tourists since President Obama's Dec.-2014 announcement about normalizing relations, Cuba simply does not have the capacity to handle the tourism overload. There are Cuban hotels totally sold out for the entirety of 2016; last week there were headlines confirming that Cuba has run out of beer amid plans to build additional breweries; etc. Of course, Cuba doesn't expect Miami or Washington, or the American people, to consider the fact that the island simply is not ready for such a tourism boom or that, yes, Cuba tries to protect its citizens from terrorists, like other nations do.

      In addition to the U. S. allowing cruises to Cuba for the first time in over half-a-century, the U. S. has reached agreement with Cuba for the first commercial U. S. airplane flights to the island since 1962!! In fact, 110 such daily flights are now in the works beginning in the fall, with 20 to Havana and up to 10 to each of nine other Cuban cities. Again, the problem is...Cuba is not ready for such Obama-orchestrated normalization!! Right now it doesn't have enough hotel rooms, enough beer, enough...of a lot of things. The Los Angeles Times this week had two informative articles. One was entitled: "Carnival Will Let Cuban Natives On Its Cruises After All -- But Will Cuba Accept Them?" The answer is, "Not really, not until Cuba has screening procedures in our ports like we have in our airports." The other informative LA Times article this week was entitled: "Airlines Get Nasty in Competition for Routes to Cuba." Yes, Cuba wants to accommodate those eager U. S. airlines, but it also wants to prepare for the huge influx of additional passengers. If Mr. Kerry, Mr. Gimenez, and others don't consider Cuba's side of the equation, Ms. Vidal is ready to toss in the towel on normalization. "Like all sovereign nations," she said this week, "we need to protect our citizens from being harmed by terrorism or, regarding tourism, from being unduly overwhelmed."

In other words:

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Cuba Will Miss Obama

But Prepares for His Exit 

        This photo shows Saturday's opening {April 16th} of Cuba's National Congress, which is only scheduled every five years. At the rostrum kicking it off is Cuba's 84-year-old President Raul Castro. The backdrop is a huge photo of his 89-year-old brother Fidel. The two clapping men on the right are also worth mentioning -- 85-year-old revolutionary icon Jose Ramon Machado Ventura and, in the blue shirt, Raul's heir apparent Miguel Diaz-Canel who turns 56 next week, April 20th. In the speech, Raul Castro stressed the impending transition to a post-Castro Cuba by telling the one thousand delegates on hand that future delegates must be under sixty, which would eliminate the now very elderly heroes of the Cuban Revolution. The other thing he stressed was for Cuba to be on the "alert" for the continuation of underhanded U. S. influence. He voiced appreciation for the efforts made by President Obama to "ease the hostility" between the two neighbors but clearly didn't expect two Cuban prerequisites to normalizing relations -- ending the embargo and returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuba -- to be accomplished during the final 8 months of Obama's two-term, 8-year presidency. Thus, beginning in January of 2017 he said Cuba can expect that the Republican U. S. Congress will "reassert itself" even if another Democrat replaces Obama in the White House and despite the excitement "Obama aroused" in so many U. S. companies that "seek to do business with us." President Castro also stressed that Cuba must expedite "economic reforms." Emphasizing non-U.S. foreign companies, he projects a Chinese or Vietnamese-style Cuban economy. He is abundantly aware of the political transitions or turmoils that are embroiling some of Cuba's very best friends -- including Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. 

       It is fitting that yesterday's Cuban National Congress acknowledged that the inevitability of age has finally caught up with the revolutionaries who impacted the world when they overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship on the first day of January, 1959. Unless there is unforeseen internal or external events dictating otherwise, Miguel Diaz-Canel will be the first post-Castro leader of Cuba but, beyond doubt, the island's well educated and highly restive young adults will play huge roles in Cuba's future. The above photo shows Cristina Escobar, Cuba's brilliant 28-year-old television news anchor and a respected expert on U.S.-Cuban relations. Fluent in English as well as Spanish, Cristina recently told U. S. journalist Tracy Eaton, in a video posted on YouTube, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island." Cristina, and many young Cubans like her on the island, share the Castro brothers' intense distrust of the United States. "Progress regarding reconciliation is nice and long overdue," Cristina very cogently says, "but we would be stupid to trust the hard-line Cubans in Miami or the Republicans in Washington. They have proven to be untrustworthy and any wishful thinking that they will change would be both meek and cowardly. My generation of Cubans on the island must encourage all Cubans on the island that our future is in our hands. We should get shed of America's and Miami's influence altogether. Our heroes are those who fought and died or fought and lived striving for sovereignty and independence that Spain and the United States kept from us for the 500 years prior to 1959. We must fight just as hard to keep it. I don't want a damn thing from the U. S. except TWO things -- an end to the blockade and a return of Guantanamo Bay. Only then will Cubans on the island breathe normally. Till then, instead of criticizing us and trying to destroy our government, the American leaders should shut-up and deal with their own problems in Miami and the U. S."

         The U. S. embargo, which Cuba calls a genocidal blockade that is a noose around its neck, has been in effect since 1962. It's the longest and cruelest embargo ever imposed by a strong country against a weak one. If Americans don't understand that fact, it is because the Cuban-exiles and their right-wing sycophants, who put it in place and have kept it in place all these decades, have also dictated the Cuban narrative in the United States. Declassified U. S. documents confirm the reason it was imposed in 1962: To starve and deprive the Cubans on the island for the purpose of enticing them to rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro. That dastardly law was imposed on Cuba right after the failed and humiliating military attack at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961, followed by many unsuccessful assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, had failed to recapture the island, an island that had been so brutally pillaged by the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship from 1952 till January 1, 1959 when the Cuban Revolution triumphed. By not being concerned enough or informed enough to acknowledge such facts, Americans since the 1950s have, on the international scale, caused far more harm to the U. S. image than to Cuba's. The UN each October acknowledges that fact with a 191-to-2 vote, which unconcerned and uninformed Americans tend to ignore.

       Mightily irking Cristina, the United States stole the plush port of Guantanamo Bay in 1903, five years after it gained dominion over Cuba with the easy 1898 victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War. Cuba was the long-awaited grand prize but, while it was at it, the U. S. also gained dominance of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines -- like taking candy from the fast-fading empire of imperialist Spain.

      The Cuban-American hardliners and their right-wing sycophants in the U. S. Congress chortle when they tell the world that the U. S. acquired Guantanamo Bay in a "legal, binding treaty." They make that claim hiding behind the skirts of the world superpower and assuming that everyone is either too ignorant or too scared to challenge their lie. No Cuban was in attendance when the Treaty of Paris was signed to end the Spanish-American War in 1898. And no Cuban, of course, was in a position to resist when the U. S. stole Guantanamo Bay in 1903. The U. S. agreed to pay $2,000 a year and in 1934 the U. S. doubled that amount. From 1898 till 1959 the stooge leaders of Cuba took the money. But after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Revolutionary Cuba has refused to cash the U. S. Treasury checks, which simply have piled up in the lower right-hand drawer of one of Fidel Castro's desks. To this day, no unbiased person or nation will describe the U. S. occupation of Guantanamo Bay as anything but a mammoth imperialist theft. Yet, as with a host of other American laws related to Cuba, the U. S. is willing to accept the international scorn, apparently because it is the nuclear superpower. The updated comments about Guantanamo Bay by Raul Castro and Cristina Escobar are pertinent, I think, because they reflect the strong viewpoints of Cuba's Old Guard and Cuba's Twentysomething Generation that is determined to chart the future course for the pugnacious island. Cristina's are particularly relevant because they reflect the fact that, with the more famous help of the Castro brothers and some other men, Cuban women fueled the revolution. 

       This historic photo was taken by Lee Lockwood after daylight in Havana on January 1, 1959. Take note of the Associated Press caption beneath that photo. Cuban citizens, especially women like the two on the left, frantically tried to keep the Batistiano and Mafiosi leaders from escaping the island because they wanted them to be held accountable for what they had done. But in the hours before daylight that morning, after word came that the charging rebels had taken the key city of Santa Clara southeast of Havana, a vast array of getaway airplanes, ships, and boats had already taken the top echelon of Batistianos and Mafiosi -- Fulgencio Batista, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, etc. -- to safer havens, such as U.S.-friendly Dictator Rafael Trujillo's nearby Dominican Republic and, especially, to nearby Mafia-friendly Miami, Florida.

       Armed female citizens like this one, many of whom were former front-line guerrilla fighters, roamed the streets of Havana after daylight on January 1, 1959, hoping to find fleeing Batistianos and Mafiosi.

This female thanked Fidel Castro outside Santiago de Cuba.

         On the long trek from Santiago de Cuba, Fidel didn't reach Havana until January 7th, 1959. All along the way, euphoric Cuban females like this one barely gave him time to light his then-very-famous cigars.

       This young Cuban female couldn't wait to kiss the first tired rebel she saw. And there are historic reasons that Cuban females were the most joyous people after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

         After all, the Cuban Revolution was fueled by brave Cuban mothers like these who very boldly and courageously took to the streets to protest the murders {"asesinators"} of "our children" {"nuestros hijos"}.

        And Cuban women from start to finish fought doggedly on the frontlines of the Cuban Revolution. Three of the most notable heroines are shown above arriving in Havana after the monumental victory.

Tete Puebla today is a General in the Cuban army.

   In this interview General Tete Puebla was asked why, in the aforementioned photo, did she look "a little glum" on the "euphoric day" she arrived in Havana "after chasing the Batistianos off the island?" She replied, "Well...Lidia, Eloisa, and all of us were a little glum. We were disappointed that Batista and the Mafia leaders did not hang around to fight us. What they did to my Cuba was...horrendous. I will never forget it."

And believe it or not....

           .......there are young female Cubans on the island today, like Cristina Escobar, who empathize with those historic revolutionary women like General Tete Puebla. "I wish," Cristina says, "Americans had a fairer perspective of the Cuban women who spawned and fought the revolution and why they did it. I've been to the United States as a broadcaster, but I love my island. I love its history, it's struggle to be sovereign and independent. The revolution gave us that but since January of 1959 the elements in the United States -- Cuban and American -- that want to overthrow it and again make Cuba a conquered dependent nation are incessant. The Revolution gave us many things -- free excellent educations, free excellent health care, free food and shelter, and the lowest crime rate and the lowest infant mortality rate of almost any country, certainly including the United States. Yet, there is so much more the revolution could do, good things, if the U. S. wasn't always trying to re-conquer us. Americans need to know that many great Cubans fought and died for Cuban independence and that many of us have those feelings today."

  

         Most Americans, sufficiently propagandized since the 1950s, have no clue about what Cristina Escobar says or why she says it, or why she is Cuba's top broadcast anchor instead of being Miami's, which she well could be. But most great historians, such as Philip S. Foner {above} clearly understand every word she says. In his 1962 book -- "A History of Cuba & Its Relations with the United States, Vol. 1" -- Foner wrote: "The story of Cuba's struggle for liberation from four-hundred years of Spanish domination is one of the great epics in history. The struggle for over half-a-century to change its status from a theoretically independent state, dominated by American imperialism, into a truly independent country is equally and truly inspiring." 

      Cristina Escobar wishes that Americans knew as much about Cuba's history as historians like Philip Foner, or even unbiased American journalist like Tracy Eaton. On Eaton's YouTube video you can hear Cristina lament the image that she says propagandized Americans have of Cubans on the island -- you know, smoking cigars and jumping into 1950s cars or getting on flimsy intertubes to cross the Florida Straits to partake of the special financial rewards that both entice and await them. Cristina says, "The United States has always misjudged us -- with the theft of Guantanamo Bay, supporting Batista's brutality and thievery, attacking the Bay of Pigs and supporting terrorist acts against us, inflicting upon us the blockade that any other nation would have succumbed to, and projecting a U. S. Congress that shows no respect for democracy or for innocent Cubans on the island but one that discriminates massively in favor of certain Cuban exiles. If Americans put up with that for another half-century, rest assured we on the island do not intend to." And that is the same Cristina Escobar who told U. S. journalist Tracy Eaton, "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy." Cristina, you see, has keenly studied U.S.-Cuban history. She is aware that, after the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U. S. promised to bring Cuba democracy. Now she's wary of more promises.

And now a more peaceful note:  

    This little guy is a Vermilian Flycatcher. The photo is courtesy of Steve & Dave Maslowski via Birds & Blooms Magazine.

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