Cuba Has NO CHANCE

 And Here's Why!!

         This AP/Ramon Espinosa photo shows Cuba's 85-year-old President Raul Castro instructing guests in Santiago de Cuba Saturday night -- Nov. 3-2016 -- after a laborious caravan had taken the ashes of his 90-year-old, more-famous brother Fidel Castro from Havana back to their home area in eastern Cuba. 

        Then last night Raul took to the rostrum to praise his brother Fidel, and shed some tears. The big headline from the speech was that Fidel's wishes will be granted to make sure that a cult of personality surrounding the legendary rebel will not evolve. Raul said, as ordered by Fidel, there will be no statues of Fidel and no streets, buildings or any such other edifices named for him.

      The 4-day journey from Havana to Santiago ended late Saturday and returned Fidel Castro's remains to the area where he was born in 1926 and where he launched his Cuban Revolution in 1953. This Sunday morning -- Dec. 4th, 2016 -- his ashes were buried in a quiet ceremony at a private family plot.

      The reason I believe the vulnerable but pugnacious island of Cuba has no chance as 2016 is about to turn into 2017 is not because revolutionary icon Fidel Castro died at age 90 on November 25th, 2016.

       And the reason Cuba has no chance on the eve of 2017 is not because the incoming President of the anti-Cuban colossal to the north, Donald Trump, went to Little Havana in Miami prior to his election and promised the aging members of Brigade 2506 {which infamously attacked Revolutionary Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961} that he would "recapture" the island for them before the last of them died of old age.

       But this photo, which speaks a thousand silent words, is the reason after all these decades that Revolutionary Cuba has no chance. This photo was taken this week for USA Today, America's largest newspaper. Like the rest of the mainstream U. S. media, USA Today has neither the guts nor the integrity to tell the truth about Cuba. To cover Cuba's monumental and historic event this week -- the death of Fidel Castro -- USA Today typically sent Alan Gomez, it's Cuban writer, to the island to report on Castro's demise at age 90. Gomez is a Miami-based Cuban-American with a massive family bias against Castro and his Revolution because he booted the Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders off the island two generations ago, way back in January of 1959. For the most part, he only booted them to nearby Miami, the famed U. S. city that since then has been known as Little Havana, the capital of the first and only Banana Republic on U. S. soil. Alan Gomez is the only type U. S. journalist allowed to regularly report on Cuba and Cuba regularly allows him to fly back and forth to the island from Miami, knowing his articles in USA Today will be vehemently biased against Cuba. That was, of course, the precise case this week when Gomez's two heralded articles about the death of Fidel Castro featured and highlighted {above} the malicious comments of Berta Soler, the most dangerous Cuban dissident and, according to many everyday Cubans, surely one of the best-funded.

      This USA Today photo of Berta Soler was featured in the first of Alan Gomez's two extremely biased articles this week in America's largest newspaper. Both articles highlighted vicious quotes from Berta Soler explaining why she was euphoric over the death of Fidel Castro, with Alan Gomez and USA Today trying to convey the lie that all the Cubans on the island felt exactly the way Berta Soler does. The sheer fact that such "journalism" is a blatant distortion of reality doesn't faze Alan Gomez, USA Today, and the rest of the mainstream U. S. media. My lament over that depravity is not in defense of Fidel Castro or Cuba but, instead, it is in defense of my two higher priorities -- America and democracy. You see, unlike many propagandized Americans, I regret such things as the recent 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations that, in astounding international unanimity, denounced America's anti-democratic Cuban policy that either cowardly or unpatriotic Americans, for two generations now, have allowed to persist unchallenged.

      This photo also says a thousand words about why Cuba now has no chance. It shows Berta Soler brandishing her biggest anti-Cuba weapon -- a passport. As with Cuba's other two most famed dissidents -- Yoani Sanchez and Guillermo Farinas -- Berta Soler can now fly back-and-forth from Havana to Miami and to the U. S. Congress in Washington or to other Western capitals around the world. When they return to Cuba each time, they are armed with far more celebrity and, many say, far more funds to conduct their overthrow-the-Cuban-government enterprises.

         This photo shows Berta Soler in Europe smiling as her earphone explains in Spanish why she has received a major award from right-wing European sources for her anti-Castro activities on the island.

       This photo shows Berta Soler being heralded at a ceremony in the United States Congress hosted by vicious and now very rich anti-Castro U. S. Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez. The other lady in the photo is anti-Castro zealot Yolanda Huergas. Unmentioned, of course, at that news conference was and is the billions of tax dollars that, since 1959, have flowed out of Congress to support an unending barrage of anti-Castro schemes as well as to fund an unending torrent of programs that also enrich and empower anti-Castro zealots via the vast and lucrative Castro Cottage Industry that will continue to flourish in the U. S. even after the death from old age of the 90-year-old Fidel Castro, who has a page in the Guinness Book of World Records for having survived some 627 or so assassination attempts, which is interesting because he always fought from the front-lines while the Batistianos fled to the U. S. to hurl their bricks back at him, always missing him but always hurting everyday Cubans on the island with such things as hotel bombings, a civilian airplane bombing, and an economic embargo that is the longest and cruelest, since 1962, ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation. For those reasons, the rest of the nations in the world oppose -- by a UN vote of 191-to-0 -- the Batistiano-dictation of America's asine, cruel Cuban policy.

      But that anti-American Cuban policy will continue despite its zero international support. The above photo explains why that is so. That's Senator Menendez escorting the apparently well-heeled Berta Soler through the halls of Congress. Like the other six most-vicious Cuban-American members of Congress, anti-Castro zealots and beneficiaries like Menendez can't be voted out of Congress although, amazingly, all polls show the majority of Cuban-Americans -- even in Miami and New Jersey -- favor President Obama's decent efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, not their cruelty. However, the chances of such moderate Cuban-Americans getting elected to Congress are slim & none and, quite frankly, probably dangerous.

       Back on Cuban soil with more fame and supposedly more resources after visits to Europe, Miami or Congress, Berta Soler is better able to direct her Ladies in White in massive anti-Castro demonstrations. Most everyday Cubans resent the disruptions and often taken actions against them. But apparently the primary aim of Ladies is to provoke photos such as the one above in which Cuban soldiers react. A photo like this generally gets far more coverage in the U. S. media than far more anti-government demonstrations in the United States...such as the one taking place now by Sioux Indians on the Standing Rock Reservation that straddles the North and South Dakota borders. In mostly crime-free Cuba, police shootings of civilians don't seem to occur for eager photographers or Smart-Phone videographers, so provocative demonstrations are designed as primary tools in which to help stir anti-Cuban passions -- especially in the United States but actually not in Cuba among more enlightened everyday Cubans.

           A photo like this, Berta Soler well knows, will greatly increase her support in the U. S. Congress and other rich spots. But London-based international media giants such as Reuters are free to also report that the demonstrations that provoke them are mostly "nuisances" for everyday Cubans and "major headaches" for female Cuban soldiers, like the ones shown above, who primarily have to end up dealing with them.

       This is not to say that anti-Castro dissidents on the island -- such as famed blogger Yoani Sanchez -- should be silenced, jailed or mauled. But I am saying that no foreign nation should be the prime impetus or the prime funder of such dissidence. The Cuban Revolution way back in 1953 was, in fact, spawned by the incredibly wicked United States and Mafia support of the thieving, brutal, and murderous Batista dictatorship. Thus, Revolutionary Cuba should not be constantly criticized in the U. S. for being sensitive to the well known and well funded and unending U. S. efforts to overthrow the Cuban government, efforts spear-headed by rich, powerful and unchecked Cuban exiles and their easily acquired sycophants such as the Bush dynasty. QUESTION: Would the United States be sensitive if China or Russia or Iran openly financed and legislated well-known efforts in those countries and in the U. S. to overthrow the U. S. government? I believe the answer is "Yes" and that is also the answer that little Cuba is earnestly trying to convey.

        Like with Berta Soler, the most famed and supposedly the richest anti-Castro dissident on the island, Yoani Sanchez, is now allowed by Cuba to fly back-and-for to Miami and the U. S. Congress. She is flanked above in the U. S. Congress by two prime Cuban-American dissidents -- Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, who seem to believe that recapturing Cuba is their primary duty as opposed to working on saner and more decent projects that concern the American people. Prior to getting Cuban passports to fly around the world, Yoani's anti-Castro blog had already made her the most famous Cuban dissident. AND THEN, guess what? After visits to Miami and Congress she returned to Cuba and announced she had enough funds...money...to also add a well-funded and multi-staffed DIGITAL NEWSPAPER, which she did.

        Thus, it doesn't take much imagination to know why the "Made in USA" label is often attacked to anti-Castro dissidents in Cuba like Yoani Sanchez. As far as I know, Cuba doesn't fund United States dissidents on United States soil, and if it did it probably couldn't afford to fund free healthcare and free educations through college for all its citizens or to fund scientists who have invented vaccines and medicines for cancer and diabetes that doctors and clinics in the United States are desperately trying to get access to if the greedy Batistianos will relax the embargo long enough for Americans to acquire such medical help from a little revolutionary government that both the World Health Organization and the Pan Am Health Organization say "should be health and educational models for the rest of the world," considering what Cuba has been able to accomplish despite the embargo...and other criminal assaults...imposed by miscreants hiding behind the skirts of the world's superpower, the superpower that was surely the most respected nation in the world till it began getting 191-to-0 denunciations in the United Nations related to CUBA!

     The antithesis to Berta Soler and Yoani Sanchez in Cuba is Cristina Escobar, a passionate, extremely talented Cuban who will passionately defend her island. Americans are not supposed to know it, but there are more Cristinas on the island than Bertas or Yoanis. The image above is taken from an interview respected Florida journalist Tracey Eaton videotaped in Cuba for the Pulitzer Center. Two versions of that interview are posted on YouTube in case you want Cuban information not dictated by the Batistianos who insist on controlling both the Cuban narrative and Cuban policy in America. The bilingual, well-educated Cristina Escobar on this video says, "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami or Washington." Also, as the headline in the above graphic alludes to, Cristina said, "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than journalists in the U. S. have to tell the truth about Cuba." 

      At age 28, the happily married Cristina Escobar is a truly brilliant broadcast journalist, in either Spanish or English. She proves that each day on Cuban television and she proved it when she made headlines in Washington when she covered the last diplomatic session between Josefina Vidal and Roberta Jacobson. Cuba will be a better place if its future is determined by young adults on the island like her as opposed to self-serving rogues off the island in Miami, New Jersey and Washington. A 77-year-old Cuban told a Reuters reporter this week, "As old as I am, I would again take up arms to follow someone like her." The old man, teary eyed, pointed back at his television screen at an image of Cristina Escobar. He called her, "A mi nina." -- "My little girl." Many Cubans think of her that way but young adults consider her "a leader." 

        This photo of Cristina Escobar was taken since the death of Fidel Castro. That's why she looks so sad. And no matter what the rich and powerful Batistianos say in the U. S. -- or the well-funded Berta Soler and Yoani Sanchez say in Cuba -- Cristina Escobar HAS A RIGHT TO FEEL SADNESS and not jubilation over the death of a fellow Cuban, a Cuban who fought and didn't run, an inspiration he may have left behind.

        And despite what self-serving anti-Castro zealots so cowardly and piously dictate, a sad Cristina Escobar does not hide her grief or sell her soul to conform to more powerful but much more insidious forces both in Cuba and in the United States. Study her face as she studies an image on her Smart Phone, an image from a street in Cuba where other Cubans are also reacting to the death of Fidel Castro. Hers is a face that will have a say-so in the future pertaining to Cuba's fate, and that will be so regardless of what President Trump or the Batistianos concoct for her island in the turbulent months that lie ahead.

            The previous three photos of Cristina Escobar were taken by Roberto Garaycoa Martinez on November 29th, 2016 in Cuba. Her talent and her passion for her island remind me of Celia Sanchez.

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Fidel's Last Journey

Evokes memories of Celia Sanchez!!

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins.

      At this very moment, Cuba's revolutionary icon Fidel Castro is taking his very last journey after 90 years on this earth, and most of those days he was making daily headlines that reached to the United States and even around the world. These first three photos are courtesy of Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France Press/Getty Images. They show a caravan of motor vehicles currently making the long, laborious 600-mile trek from Havana on the western tip of Cuba to Santiago de Cuba on the eastern tip of the alligator-shaped island. The vehicle above is pulling a trailer that contains a urn that has the cremated ashes of Fidel Castro, taking them back to the region where he was born. It is also the region where the revolution that will always be synonymous with his name was launched and mostly fought to rid the island of the vile U.S.-backed and Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship. When I saw NBC-TV video of the above caravan, it brought tears to my eyes. I say that unapologetically and totally unafraid although I know enough about the Cuban Revolution to know that both first and second generation Batistiano exiles on U. S. soil are still very dangerous, and murderously so. Having said that, I should add that the tears were for Celia Sanchez, the heroine of the Cuban Revolution and, in fact, its most important player, just ahead of her soulmate -- Fidel Castro. I consider myself a history buff and the historic figure I most love and admire is Celia Sanchez. And that's why the NBC video brought unashamed and unafraid tears to my eyes. The caravan now making the trek from Havana to Santiago is eerily reminiscent of the caravan that carried Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro from Santiago to Havana during the first week of January, 1959, to take charge as the new leaders of Cuba after the amazing triumph of perhaps history's most implausible revolution -- the one that chased the Batistianos, the Mafiosi and rich U. S. businessmen back to the locales from whence they came -- which was the United States of America, mostly the Mafia havens of southern Florida and New Jersey.

 Cubans watching the Havana-to-Santiago caravan.

 More cubans watching the Havana-to-Santiago caravan.

        This photo was taken on January 4th, 1959 when Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro were in a much different caravan going in the exact opposite direction -- Santiago to Havana -- from the one taking place right now. It was also a slow, laborious journey from January 1 till January 7 of 1959 because of the boisterously happy throngs all along the way. Notice how tired the still-celebratory Fidel was and how tired the more-businesslike Celia was; she, more than Fidel, just wanted to get to Havana and begin the revolutionary rule of her island. If Celia appears more unhappy than tired in this photo, she was. She had just been told on the stopover in Cienfuegos, via a transmitter-phone hook-up with Che Guevara in Havana, that "all" the Batistiano and Mafiosi leaders had fled Havana in their pre-arranged getaway ships and planes, which were loaded with "tons of cash and gold bullion" the murderous thieves hadn't already shipped to Swiss banks or to Mafia-friendly or owned banks in Newark and Miami. Till January 1, 1959...as the guerrilla leaders...Celia and Fidel had stayed behind to secure Santiago, Cuba's second largest city and former capital, while sending the rebel army led by Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara to capture the vital city of Santa Clara and then the grand prize of Havana. Santa Clara was captured in the closing hours of 1958 but by dawn on the first day of 1959 Che and Camilo had broken Celia's heart when they told her the Batista-Mafia leaders "had escaped." Celia's distraught reaction, later revealed by Camilo, was: "GOTDAMMIT!! Now till me 'n Fidel get there, check with the people on the streets and round up any and all of the Batistianos still there that they know harmed them." That order was carried out. Later, public inquisitions and trials were carried out. First Fidel, the lawyer, was the prosecutor but Celia, the prime decision-maker with Fidel's total support, fired Fidel because she thought he was too lenient on the Batistiano-Mafiso prisoners. She replaced Fidel with Che Guevara, the doctor. That markedly increased the work of firing squads, but still -- truth be known -- not as much work as the long-maligned Cuban peasants wanted. There are black-and-white videos and photos, as well as reports by renowned journalists such as Herbert L. Matthews of the NY Times and Carlos Franqui, that prove everyday Cubans, including women and children, pointed accusatory fingers at prisoners and then at Che Guevara for fear that he, like Fidel, was going "too easy" on the left-over criminals. If that aspect of the Celia-Fidel-Camilo-Che-Raul-Vilma-Haydee take-over of Havana does not compute with what you have been told, then it's because...for the most part...you have been lied to about the demise of the Batista-Mafia rule in Cuba and its aftermath since 1959. In any case, Celia's sadness on Jan. 4-1959 {depicted above} when she should have been euphorically happy, derived from the fact that she had just been told the Batista-Mafia leaders had "escaped" Havana. Celia was hoping they would stand and fight with something akin to the guts and determination that she -- as well as other women and men -- had displayed throughout the conflict.

       This map shows the current 14 provinces of Cuba and the three aforementioned cities -- Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. Cienfuegos was the city in which Celia got the telephone message form Camilo and Che that "all" the Batista-Mafia leaders had fled, quite massively disappointing her.

       This perceptive photo shows Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro in the early days of Revolutionary Cuba. Yes, that's Fidel one morning relaxing in the rocking chair with his slippers in front of him as though he didn't have a care in the world. Celia is over on the porch-couch busily engaged in work, as always. It's an appropriate photo because Celia was the decision-maker and Fidel's primary role, believe it or not, was to massively support those decisions, whether or not he fully agreed with them. Of course, that too is something Americans have been propagandized not to believe but all the Cuban insiders and all the best historians -- including Fidel's best American biographer Georgia Anne Geyer -- have documented those facts. SO, instead of listening to convenient and self-serving lies, study the photo above and comprehend it -- Fidel relaxing because he could and Celia working tirelessly because she had to.

        The London-based media giant The BBC, which still has the freedom to tell truths about Cuba, says this was the very first photo that shows Fidel Castro and Celia Sanchez together. It was taken Dec. 2-1957 after he had finally joined her revolution in the foothills of Cuba's imposing Sierra Maestra Mountains. Fidel had served two years in a Batista prison after his ill-fated attack on Batista's Moncada Army Garrison on July 26-1953. Then in safe-houses orchestrated by guerrilla leader Celia and other heroic Cuban women such as his lover Naty Revuelta, Fidel managed to avoid Batista's murder squads and barely vacated the island to continue his anti-Batista activities in Miami, New York and Mexico. Then he and 81 other rebels left Mexico on a leaky and over-loaded old yacht...the famous Granma...to hook-up with Celia's guerrilla unit on a pre-arranged Cuban beach. But 15 miles shy of that beach, the Granma began sinking and the rebels tried to swim and wade to shore, some unarmed. A call from Mexico had alerted Batista to their departure and a Batista helicopter patrol spotted the Granma's approach as it tried to rendezvous with Celia. A Batista army on shore ambushed the rebels, killing all but 17 of them either on the beach or capturing and executing them as they tried to escape into the thickets and brambles. Celia and her guerrillas could have beaten that Batista army and she did so after racing to the beach where the Granma was forced to ditch the rebels. Celia still managed to save the lives of 17 rebels -- including Fidel and Raul Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. The great Carlos Franqui's book "The Twelve" gave the first details of that Granma episode; he thought just 12 of the 82 rebels had survived but later it was determined that the figure was 17. Later Georgia Anne Geyer in her superb Castro biography provided excellently researched details about the historic event. Both Franqui and Geyer used this famous Celia Sanchez quote about saving the lives of Fidel and 11 other soon-to-be-famous rebels who would live to join her war against Batista. That quote is: "If they had gotten to the beach where we waited, all of them would have been saved. They would have found trucks, medical supplies, food, drinks. It would have been a walkaway." Her last word..."walkaway"...has always intrigued me but the more I studied her, including on a trip to Cuba, it was typical Celia -- business-like and succinct with no frills. Batista's biggest bounty, for good reason, was on her head. Cuba's best historian, Pedro Alvarez Tabio, also for good reason, wrote: "If Batista had managed to kill Celia Sanchez anytime between 1953 and 1957, there would have been no viable Cuban Revolution, and no revolution for Fidel and Che to join." The 99-pound doctor's daughter was the revolution's greatest guerrilla fighter, its greatest recruiter of rebels and money and weapons, and its greatest decision-maker. Yes, the photo above is the first ever taken of Celia and Fidel together and it was taken Dec. 2-1957. But his worship of her began in 1953, his first year in a Batista prison when he learned that her revolution was still alive. Though Celia died of cancer at age 59 on Jan. 11-1980, Fidel's worship of her and the ground she walked on extended until 10:29 P. M. on Nov. 25-2016, the moment he died.

       Like with the definitive photo of Celia and Fidel on the porch in the early days of Revolutionary Cuba, this photo taken during the Revolutionary War is just as perceptive. It shows Celia, at their base-camp high up in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, holding a candle so Fidel could devour a book and so she could study a rebel report on the location and strength of a Batista army down below. That's so she would know precisely when and how to attack it. Later, Fidel confirmed on such nights -- even as they were careful about the visibility of campfires, candles and even lit cigarettes or cigars -- that he "devoured" books such as his later-friend Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls," which was Fidel's "favorite war-time novel." They were both fighters by day but night-owls under the Caribbean moons and mountainous foliage. During the war and later in Revolutionary Cuba, Fidel never failed to support Celia's decisions even, according to his biographer Georgie Anne Geyer, when Celia chose to "over-rule" his suggestions. Of course, two famous still-living intimates of both Celia and Fidel -- Marta Rojas and Roberto Salas -- confirm that historic relationship between the two prime players in the still very viable Cuban Revolution.

       This famous photo also defines Celia Sanchez. It was taken during a lull in the Revolutionary War. Note that Celia, as always, is all-business -- which at the time was winning the war. The second all-time most powerful revolutionary female guerrilla fighter and decision-maker -- Celia's dear friend Vilma Espin -- is gaily enjoying the break in action. In 1959, right after the revolutionary victory, Vilma married Raul Castro and became the beloved mother of his four children and till the day she died of cancer in 2007 Vilma was one of the most powerful people on the island. This photo, by the way, was taken by the all-time greatest female war photographer -- Dickey Chapelle -- who was killed on a Vietnam battlefield in 1965. 

Celia and Fidel -- 1960.

Celia and Fidel -- 1964.

 Celia, Fidel & peasants who loved them.

     Back in 1953 in Batista's Cuba a beautiful young woman named Marta Rojas was a young journalist trusted by Batista. Marta was, unknown to the Batista goons, also a member of the Celia Sanchez-led Urban Underground that was the biggest threat to Batista. Marta was so trusted by Batista that he gave her special permission to visit and interview Fidel Castro in his prison cell on the Isle of Pines, so Batista could prove that the hero to all the peasants, Fidel, was still alive and not tortured to death as other captured Moncada prisoners were -- including Haydee Santamaria's brother and her fiancee. Washington, mindful of the Herbert L. Matthews' articles in the NY Times, also didn't want the peasants' hero murdered because reports already were circulating about Batista's goons murdering children as a warning to peasants not to resist. Each time she visited the imprisoned Fidel, Marta took a note he had written to Celia Sanchez out of the prison in her bra and the Urban Underground's job was to get it to the rebel leader Celia. On her visits back to Fidel's cell, Marta took notes from Celia to Fidel in her bra. That communication linked Celia and Fidel indelibly long before they ever met.

       After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Marta Rojas remained dearest friends of both Fidel Castro and Celia Sanchez, often letting Celia pre-read her latest articles. In the above photo, that is Marta Rojas introducing Fidel in December of 1959 for his very first television address to the Cuban people.

      This first week of Dec.-2016, as that caravan is taking Fidel Castro's remains back to Marta's hometown of Santiago de Cuba, Marta Rojas is still very much alive and a renowned legend in her own right as a significant player in both the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba. For decades she carved out a brilliant career as a journalist and as the author of five famed novels. In fact, she is being nominated for a Nobel Prize for her life's work. Marta, a sweet and dear lady who answered my Celia Sanchez questions, knows more about Fidel and Celia than any living soul. In 2005, after my visit to Cuba to research my bio of Celia Sanchez, Marta in a precious email from Cuba to Wyoming told me, "Although Celia died of cancer in 1980, she is still the prime decision-maker in Cuba. That's because to this day Fidel rules Cuba only as he precisely believes Celia would want him to rule it." In another email, Marta sent me a copy of the January-1980 Celia Sanchez obituary that appeared in the national newspaper, the Granma. Marta herself wrote that obituary.

        For decades, the self-serving Batistiano dictation of America's Cuban narrative and America's Cuban policy...the one opposed by that 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations...has conveniently for them dictated that everyday Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba, lest they might get wise to the litany of self-serving Batistiano lies. But the famed actor, Danny Glover, is a special American and thus he has had the freedom to visit Cuba and make some decisions about the island of Cuba on his own. Mr. Glover is shown above with the legendary Marta Rojas. Like Mr. Glover, if you ever get to Cuba and want to know the truth about Fidel Castro, Celia Sanchez, the Cuban Revolution or Revolutionary Cuba, the best place to start...if you're lucky...is Marta Rojas. Otherwise, you're probably stuck with an avalanche of Batistiano lies rammed down your throat.

        Without a doubt, Celia Sanchez had more intelligence, more guts and more decency than any Batistiano or Mafiosi she chased off her island of Cuba, mostly to their Florida and New Jersey strongholds. Till the day she died on Jan. 11-1980, she regretted they fled to safer havens by Jan. 1-1959 instead of hanging around Havana to fight. She was a fighter, not a runner. And her cause -- to end the murders and deprivations of Cuban children -- was just.

       This Carlos Barria/REUTERS photo shows a hazy dawn rising in a remote area of Cuba known as El Maja. These Cubans are lining up or sitting beside the road that they expect the caravan carrying the remains of Fidel Castro will pass. The caravan started in Havana on the northwestern tip of Cuba and is traveling the 600-miles to Santiago in the southeastern tip of the island. It is eerily reversing the Santiago-to-Havana journey that Celia Sanchez and Fidel Castro took in the first seven days of January-1959 to take over as the post-Batista leaders of Cuba. Yes, it's nostalgic for me because of the nexus it has to Celia Sanchez. And I don't give a damn how many Batistianos know that.

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Fidel Facts Filter Forth

Even in the United States!!

     This Getty Images photo was used yesterday -- Nov. 30-2016 -- to illustrate a major article in the New York Times written by Mac Maharaj. The article is, if you care to dial it up, entitled: "FIDEL CASTRO, A SOUTH AFRICAN HERO. It's the type of article that Americans are not supposed to pay attention to and, indeed, even the NY Times is very brave to publish it. When the top Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, sharply criticized Cuban-exile terrorists for killing innocent Cubans, such as hotel and airplane bombings, Emilio was car-bombed; when Jim DeFede, the top columnist at the Miami Herald, excoriated Miami Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress for their flagrant support of the best-known Cuban-American terrorists in Miami, Jim DeFede was fired and the terrorists he alluded to by name were given, and still have, sanctuary and heralded citizenry in Miami. But the aforementioned NY Times article courageously stated that Fidel Castro "buried apartheid in Africa," ending on that continent one of the most vile forms of racism. As a dissident to white minority rule, Mandela was imprisoned for 28 years in a small room with only a bucket for a toilet. After Cuban soldiers sent to Angola by Castro won the historic Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Mandela not only got his freedom but was elected President of South Africa. Later, as the world's most beloved Civil Rights figure, Mandela was honored World Wide...including the White House. BUT ON A TRIP TO MIAMI HE ENCOUNTERED ANTI-MANDELA DEMONSTRATIONS FROM THE TYPE OF CUBA-AMERICANS WHO HAVE BEEN BANGING POTS-AND-PANS AND DEMONSTRATING WILDLY TO CELEBRATE THE DEATH OF FIDEL CASTRO, A FRONT-LINE FIGHTER WHO CHASED THEM TO MIAMI TWO GENERATIONS AGO IN 1959 AND THEN WENT TO THE FRONT-LINES TO DEFEAT THEM IN 1961 AT THE BAY OF PIGS BATTLE. The NY Times article yesterday suggested Fidel's Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Africa was and is as impactful on history as his Bay of Pigs battle in Cuba.  Among the article's primary conclusions were these:

               "Fidel Castro lived his life on an impoverished island at the doorstep of the mighty United States yet left an imprint on the history of the world. The world will always know there was a man named Fidel Castro."  

      It is not likely that any of the Batista-Mafia figures that Fidel Castro kicked off the island, or any of the rich and powerful anti-Castro demonstrators in Miami this week, will ever be mentioned in any context of leaving a positive "imprint" on the world nor is it likely that "the world will always know" them. Yet, in the U. S. media...except for rare exceptions...such extremely biased Cuban-Americans as the Diaz-Balart brothers, whose father was a key Minister in the ousted Batista dictatorship, are allowed to saturate printed articles and the broadcast airways with unchallenged venom about Revolutionary Cuba and, by words or implication, unchallenged praise for the brutal and thieving Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba. 

 Aug. 13, 1926 -- Nov. 25, 2016 

      Therefore there are ample reasons that Fidel Castro {now his legacy} will always be passionately loved or passionately hated. But his most indelible imprint is not on Africa -- as the NY Times article suggested yesterday. It's also not on Fidel Castro's own beloved island of Cuba. It's the imprint he made and leaves on the United States of America. Prior to 1952 when thugs in the Eisenhower administration sicced Batistiano and Mafiosi thieves and killers on Cuba, the U. S. was deservedly the world's most beloved and respected nation and democracy. But not now, not after the ousted Batistiano-Mafiosi leaders were booted out of Cuba by Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959 and allowed to re-establish Little Havana in Miami as their new capital, with tentacles that soon extended to the U. S. Congress...and even the White House when allies like the Bush dynasty are in power. While Americans are propagandized to disbelieve those facts, they would have extreme trouble, for example, explaining why notorious and self-avowed anti-Castro terrorists have been and still are free and heralded citizens of Miami. And Americans, for example, are totally unable to explain away the 191-to-0 unanimous international condemnation of America's endlessly ongoing Cuban policy as registered by a UN vote on October 26, 2016. In other words, Fidel Castro says more about the United States, the world superpower, than he says about his island of Cuba. And, with all due respect to the NY Times, Fidel Castro's 90 years on this earth say more about the United States of America than they even say about the continent of Africa. If that doesn't mesh with U. S. history, it does with world history.

        The backing of the U. S. did not obscure the historic fact that the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba from 1952 till 1959 was a thieving-murderous bunch of world-renowned thugs running rampant over a helpless island, at least till it was chased to nearby Florida by the underestimated Cuban Revolution.

Batista vs. Fidel.

Who won and who lost? 

       But the victorious Cuban Revolution only resulted in two generations of anti-Castro zealots resurrecting the Batista scourge on U. S. soil and backed by the U. S. Congress as well as the White House when Bush-like allies occupy it. This photo of former Batista Minister Rafael Diaz-Balart and his four sons -- two of whom have been elected to Congress from Miami -- is used courtesy of the Washington Post.

       This photo is a reminder that Cuban women were prime guerrilla fighters in the revolutionary war that rid Cuba of the Batistianos. Take special note of Tete Puebla. That's her on the far left after she had gained fame as history's greatest teenage guerrilla fighter. The photo shows Tete the day she rode into Havana with female warriors only hours after the Batistiano leaders had fled. She later explained that the reason she looked "a bit glum" was because "we hoped the main killers would have stayed around and fought us." 

        Tete Puebla is today a General in the Cuban army. After her heroics as a female guerrilla fighter, she rose through the ranks of the regular Cuban army as a fervent defender of Fidel Castro. Presumably, she will just as fervently defend his legacy. But Americans are not supposed to know about Cubans like Tete Puebla because the mainstream U. S. media only tells them about vicious anti-Castro dissidents like...Berta Soler. Alan Gomez, for example, is an anti-Castro Cuban-American zealot based in Miami and that qualifies him to be the primary Cuban reporter at America's largest newspaper, USA Today. Cuba allows Gomez to fly regularly to the island, well knowing his articles will shortly be extremely biased against Cuba. This week on the first U. S. commercial plane to fly to Havana in over half-a-century, Gomez flew to Cuba and his article yesterday -- Nov. 30-2016 -- highlighted only Berta Soler complete with a gigantic color photo of her and quoting her thusly: "I don't celebrate the death of any human being, but the death of a dictator? Of a tyrant? Of course I would." Neither Alan Gomez nor USA Today have the guts to balance such garbage with, say, a comment from Tete Puebla who would still fight to the death to defend Fidel Castro's legacy.

        This is the photo that Alan Gomez and USA Today used yesterday -- Nov. 30-2016 -- showing extreme anti-Castro dissident Berta Soler celebrating the death of Fidel Castro. The article was intended to convey the message that Soler represents the majority opinion on the island and that is a typical lie from the mainstream U. S. media. Most everyday Cubans on the island oppose Soler and believe she is not only influenced but funded by U. S. elements. If Gomez would have gone out on the streets and randomly asked everyday Cubans, they would have told him that. But apparently Gomez was only instructed to visit the impressive home of Berta Soler, a home that irks less well-off Cubans. So much for U. S. journalism!   

       In 1959, the first year of Revolutionary Cuba, female guerrilla fighters like this one had become members of the block-by-block Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. That still viable and vital creation was the work of the three most important female revolutionaries -- Celia Sanchez, Vilma Espin and Haydee Santamaria. Thus, today -- all these decades after the triumph of the revolution -- the CDRs are credited with not only keeping remnants of the Batistianos off the island but also with making Cuba perhaps the most crime-free nation in the Western Hemisphere. But in 1959 while the rebel shown above was adapting to her new role, Rafael Diaz-Balart had created the very first anti-Castro paramilitary unit on U. S. soil and anti-Castro zealots like the infamous and still-living Luis Posada Carriles had already been sent to Fort Benning in Georgia to begin training as Brigade 2506, the CIA-directed unit that attacked Cuba in the Bay of Pigs disaster in April of 1961 only to enhance front-line fighter Fidel's worldwide legend.

       Back in October United States President-elect Donald Trump stood before a huge Brigade 2506 poster in Miami's Little Havana area and essentially promised the Cuban hardliners that he would re-capture Cuba for them. As Commander-in-Chief of the world's strongest military, and in an America facing a dearth of patriotic defenders and even democracy-lovers, he might do it. Then again, Trump as Goliath might not!! 

       Unchallenged propagandists in Miami, Washington, and the mainstream United States media have convinced many Americans that almost every one of the 11.2 million Cubans on the island hated Fidel Castro when he lived and will now hate his legacy even more while they yearn to take advantage of such discriminatory U. S. laws as Wet Foot-Dry Foot that entice Cubans, and only Cubans, with special rewards the instant their front foot touches U. S. soil. Therefore, Americans are not supposed to know about Cristina Escobar, a brilliant 28-year-old bilingual broadcast journalist cut from the Celia Sanchez-Tete Puebla mold. In Havana, in Washington, and on YouTube videos, in Spanish and English, Cristina Escobar has made this statement: "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington." 

      A stunning broadcast journalist on Cuban television, Cristina Escobar made history and headlines when she was in Washington to cover the last of the four diplomatic sessions conducted by Josefina Vidal and Roberto Jacobson. Cristina became the first Cuban ever to ask questions at a White House news conference and she ended up asking Josh Earnest six questions. Then in interviews and speeches around Washington she repeatedly made this point: "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the United States than journalists in the United States have to tell the truth about Cuba." That may or may not be true but she believes it and she indeed is an expert on U.S.-Cuban interactions. In fact, her University of Havana thesis was entitled: "How Obama Will Affect U.S.-Cuban relations" and her conclusions were eerily accurate. In any case, before Cristina left Washington and returned to her beloved Cuba -- ignoring for the second time all the instant rewards Wet Foot-Dry Foot would have given her -- she was congratulated by such veteran U. S. broadcast journalists as NBC's brave Andrea Mitchell.

Batista underestimated Celia.

America underestimated Fidel. 

Trump might underestimate Cristina. 

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