Cuba on May Day, 2017

One Notable Change!
{Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017}

       Yesterday was May 1, 2017. May Day since 1959 has been a very important day of celebration on the island of Cuba. But this year things were different. There was someone missing this year.

While May Day is celebrated BIG in Cuba....

           .......this was the first May Day in the last 90 years that Fidel Castro has not been alive in Cuba. He died at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016. The cause was old age, a lasting insult to his U.S.-based enemies who tried a record number of times to kill him. But on the island and elsewhere, he remains the face and soul of the Cuban Revolution and, of course, Revolutionary Cuba.

         This was the last hug, at least the last photographed one, that Cuban President Raul Castro gave his older and more famous brother Fidel. Like Fidel, their older brother Ramon died in 2016. The non-political Ramon was 91. So Raul is now the only living Castro brother as the post-Castro era comes into focus.

        By the time Raul Castro entombed Fidel Castro's ashes in the first week of December, 2016, the 85-year-old Raul had announced that he would retire as President of Cuba no later than February of 2018.

        When the time comes, Raul Castro's ashes will be entombed beside those of his wife, the legendary revolutionary Vilma Espin who died from cancer in 2007. The old rebels, like old soldiers, someday die.

       Americans, of course, are not supposed to know it but this photo shows the Big Four of both the Cuban Revolution and Revolutionary Cuba, and it was taken within days of that historic transition for both Cuba and the United States because at the start of January in 1959 the leaders of the fleeing Batista-Mafia dictatorship were already plotting their revenge in nearby Miami, plots that, of course, continue till this day in May, 2017. The Big Four from left to right: Vilma Espin, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Celia Sanchez.

        This interesting photo shows Celia Sanchez driving her beloved Matari jeep in 1959 as she transitioned from being the key figure in the Revolution to then being the key figure in Revolutionary Cuba. Fidel Castro, for sure, agreed with that depiction of the 99-pound doctor's daughter...as have all the revolutionary insiders including the best and still-living historians -- Marta Rojas, Pedro Alvarez Tabio and Roberto Salas. Also, the best American biographer of Fidel Castro, Georgie Anne Geyer, very correctly stated in her seminal book "Guerrilla Prince" that Celia "over-ruled" Fidel whenever she chose to do so.

      This photo is a case-in-point. It shows Celia and Fidel deplaning in Cuba. In April of 1959, just after shedding their guerrilla uniforms and celebrating the Revolutionary victory, Celia persuaded a reluctant Fidel to spend 12 days in the U. S. because Celia, working with the U. S. State Department and the U. S. Society of Newspaper Editors, believed the Eisenhower administration would accept Cuba's newly won independence. Vice President Richard Nixon personally told Fidel that would not be so, that revolutionary rule in Cuba would be overthrown "within a few weeks." Back in Cuba, an outraged Celia informed a dubious Fidel, "There are TWO nuclear superpowers in the world -- America and the Soviets. The one close-by wants to kill us. The one far-away wants to help us. We would be stupid not to choose the far-away option." The rest is history, as choreographed by Celia, not Fidel, although he never once failed to back her up, a fact that was stated by Geyer and has been stated by the aforementioned insiders.

       This photo taken in 1958 by the legendary war photographer Dickey Chapelle, who died later on a Vietnam battlefield, shows the always studious Celia Sanchez and the usually carefree Vilma Espin during their guerrilla days. In the Georgie Anne Guyer bio of Fidel, there is a confirmed Celia quote that still fascinates but confounds me. In Revolutionary Cuba when Celia and Fidel were discussing the brutal war with journalists, Fidel mentioned "how tough" the fighting was. Celia followed up with this quote: "Oh, but those were the best days, weren't they? We were all so happy. We will never be so happy again, will we?"

      Before old age or other factors emerged, the most legendary Cuban rebels were young and surprisingly happy when they fought the war. This photo shows guerrilla fighters Raul Castro and Vilma Espin.

Right after the war was won, Vilma & Raul got married.

        Raul Castro in 2008 officially succeeded his ill brother Fidel as Cuba's President and, at long last, was receptive to peaceful and kind overtures from United States President Barack Obama, the only American President since 1898 with the intelligence, decency, and courage to deal fairly with Cuba. From 2015 till Obama left the White House on Jan. 20-2017, the U. S. and Cuba corrected and smoothed animosities dating back many decades -- such as reopening embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time since 1961. But to this day, a tiny cabal of self-serving and revengeful operatives in Miami and the U. S. Congress continue their concerted efforts to defy the wishes of the majority of moderate and decent Americans and Cuban-Americans who want to end the Congressionally mandated embargo and other punitive, imperialistic U. S. actions against Cuba. The Miami-inspired Congressional laws are also currently condemned internationally by a 191-to-0 vote in the United Nations, yet a handful of miscreants in Miami and in Congress could care less about an endless American Cuban policy that direly shames America and Democracy in the eyes of the world. Unfortunately, those miscreants have prevailed after the departure of President Obama last January and will prevail after the retirement of the last Castro brother next February.

        The 56-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel is scheduled to take over as Cuba's next President by February of 2018. He is currently First Vice President of Cuba's National Assembly and, as a powerful advocate regarding educational and health issues, he is well-liked by ordinary Cubans, including young adults.

      But the most popular politician on the island of Cuba is probably Ana Mari Machado. Of the top five Vice Presidents in Cuba's National Assembly, none is more powerful than Ana regarding daily decisions.

       And while the Trump White House and his State Department probably don't realize it yet, the powerful leaders of other nations that want to deal with Cuba all ask to meet Ana Mari Machado, as shown above.

       On her Twitter page Ana Mari Machado the other day posted the above photo. It shows a little Cuban girl in Batista's Cuba sitting in an abandoned schoolroom, abandoned because the Batista dictatorship didn't consider the majority peasants worth educating or having health care. When Revolutionary Cuba inherited that situation in 1959, it was forced to famously send thousands of literate volunteers all across the island to educate the illiterate parents and children and to register their health needs. After that successful program, Revolutionary Cuba began impressing the world with its two priorities -- using a very high percentage of its limited resources to provide free educations and health care to all Cubans.

      This photo shows the transition from Batista's Cuba to Revolutionary Cuba. The young woman on the right had been a guerrilla fighter against Batista's U.S.-backed soldiers. After the revolutionary victory, this woman was one of the thousands of literate volunteers who traversed the island teaching illiterate Cubans how to read and write. In the very typical case depicted above both the father and mother of the baby are learning how to read and write. These facts, except in America, are registered in history. For example, Wikipedia describes what you see above in the early days of Revolutionary Cuba as "the world's most ambitious and organized literary campaign." Over half-a-century later, as Ana Mari Machado pointed out on her Twitter page, the results are startling. The former female guerrilla-fighter-turned-educator shown above may be cast as a villain by counter-revolutionaries in the United States, but Ana Mari Machado as well as history considers her a heroine. The photo above is one the U. S. Cuban narrative will avoid.

   In Cuba today schoolgirls are healthy and well educated.

       When major international contracts involving Cuba are signed in Brussels, as above, or elsewhere, Ana Mari Machado's signature often represents Cuba. Back on the island, she is also a true dynamo.

     Except for purely military issues, the major day-to-day decisions on the island are hammered out at Assembly sessions like the one above. They are mostly dominated by women, in this case Ana Mari Machado and the white-haired lady at the front of the table chairing this particular Ana-directed session. 

      The Cuban lady chairing that important aforementioned Assembly meeting was Miriam Brito Sarroca. It's women like her and Ana Mari Machado that decide what's best for Cubans, and that is as it should be and just as revolutionary heroines like Celia Sanchez and Vilma Espin "dictated" it right after January 1, 1959.

      This is a dynamic Cuban leader of the island's increasingly important  twenty-something generation. Her name is Rosy Amaro Perez. She is shown a few days ago in Trinidad, the colonial city on Cuba's south-central coast. She was there...leaving her husband and young daughter in Havana...to promote a brand-new Cuban television channel -- Canal Caribe -- that operates 18 hours a day and is aimed specifically at providing more news and information to the island's already smart and more impatient young adults.

The popular Rosy Amaro Perez relaxing in Trinidad.

     Cuba's most popular and most influential broadcast journalist is the superbly talented Cristina Escobar, another leader of the island's increasingly restive young-adult generation. In Cuba and the United States, and both in Spanish and English, and on YouTube, she has made this statement: "I don't want the U. S. to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington." 

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Cuba Survives 100 Days of Trump

What Gives?

        Yesterday -- Saturday, April 29th, 2017 -- marked 100 Days that Donald Trump had been President of the United States. So far, he has not assaulted Cuba as many expected he would in those first 100 days.

       Twice in Miami Trump pointed at the "murderous" Castro rule of Cuba and vowed to reverse the monumental Obama-orchestrated efforts to normalize relations with the nearby Caribbean island.

       In one of his two blistering speeches in Miami, Donald Trump stood before a large Brigada Asalto 2506 banner and promised remaining veterans of the April-1961 Brigade 2506 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba that he would at long last reverse their humiliating defeat and also overturn Obama's positive overtures to Cuba.

       Donald Trump named to his transition team twelve of the richest, most powerful and most visceral Cuban counter-revolutionaries in America, and that included Bush-inspired veterans such as Mauricio Claver-Carone. When such names emerged in the Trump administration by the end of January of 2017, it was assumed by some that a second and more powerful Bay of Pigs-type assault on Cuba was imminent, certainly within Trump's first 100 days in office. But by Trump's 100th day, uh, well...it hasn't happened.

       This Reuters photo shows that Cuba is peaceful and placid. It was used to illustrate an article in the London-based The Guardian that is entitled: "TOP DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATOR IN CUBA WARNS TRUMP." 

       Cuba's "Top Diplomatic Negotiator" is, of course, Josefina Vidal. She brilliantly represented Cuba in negotiations with the Obama administration to slice deeply into a half-century of brutal Batistiano-directed Congressional laws that have severely hurt innocent Cubans on the island for over half-a-century and also severely hurt America's and democracy's reputation around the world, as evidenced by the current 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations of America's Cuban policy. Thus Vidal is Cuba's prime monitor and decision-maker regarding President Trump's plans for Cuba. The aforementioned article in The Guardian quoted Vidal sending this reminder...the British newspaper called it "a warning...to Trump: "Aggression, pressure, conditions, impositions do not work with Cuba. This is not the way to attempt to have even a minimally civilized relationship with Cuba." Whether that is a reminder or a warning, Vidal steadfastly insists that "Cuba be treated as a sovereign nation and not as a pre-revolutionary possession of either the Miami Mafia or the United States government." But Cuba is a vulnerable island and the unpredictable Trump is now the Commander-in-Chief of the world's all-time most powerful military. While he seems to have so far disregarded the advice of anti-Cuban extremists, he also is not likely to heed Ms. Vidal's warning.

       Of course, many political experts predict that Trump will be impeached long before his first presidential 4-year term is scheduled to end in 2020. As you can see above, those expert predictors include Allan Lichtman, one of the few people on the planet who predicted Trump would win the presidency and the man who has correctly predicted the last nine United States Presidential elections. For sure, Cuba is not a threat to Mr. Trump or to the United States but President Trump has his hands full with more pressing problems...such as North Korea, a mainstream U. S. media trying desperately to destroy him, a bevy of left-wing billionaires able to fund any Trump-impeachment movements, etc., etc., etc., etc.

      But study this photo and you'll understand that, at the moment, there are powerful pro-Cuban influences on President Trump that supersede anti-Cuban influences such as the mighty lobbyist Mauricio Claver-Carone and even the four anti-Castro Miami-based extremists in the U. S. Congress. Sonny Perdue, the former Georgia Governor, is urging President Trump to normalize trade relations with nearby Cuba.

        Sonny Perdue has just been sworn in as President Trump's powerful Secretary of Agriculture. As he did as Georgia's Governor, Sonny Perdue now has a national platform to promote his Cuban agenda, which is to normalize trade relations with Cuba to benefit American farmers and other agricultural entities.

       As Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue right now has the most White House influence concerning Cuba. And he is a very persuasive and brave man who fortunately has a sane, decent Cuban perspective.

        The above photo of Sonny Perdue was included along with the above Tweet from Jose Ramon Cabanas, who happens to be Cuba's Ambassador to the United States. As you can readily surmise from this Tweet, Cuba knows and deeply respects Sonny Perdue. While Obama used Executive Orders to make deep inroads into normalizing relations with Cuba, only Congress or Trump Executive Orders can erase them. And Congress-mandated anti-Cuban laws remain, like the one Cabanas references above that Sonny Perdue is trying to change...and that involves the continued restrictions on financing trade with Cuba.

       So now pro-Cuban advocates like Patrick Leahy and Sonny Perdue -- shown amicably discussing politics above -- are teaming up to combat the anti-Cuban extremists who have made the Castro Cottage Industry in the United States a scary but ultra-powerful and usually unchallenged force for over half-a-century. But Mr. Leahy, a powerful U. S. Senator, and Mr. Perdue, now a powerful member of President Trump's cabinet, are indeed powerful opponents of the wickedly revengeful and self-serving anti-Cuban cabal in the United States. Both Senator Patrick Leahy and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue have been to Cuba trying to create a Cuban policy for America that will benefit most Cubans and most Americans as well as boost America's reputation as the worldwide bulwark for democracy. And now Leahy in Congress and Perdue in the White House can further their sane and decent aspirations for America and for Cuba.  

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Cuba's Fascinating UNIQUENESS!!

It's like NO OTHER!

         This is an absolutely gorgeous, precious, beautiful and absolutely amazing Cuban baby girl. She illustrates why the Cuban saga is totally unique and like no other nation's history or topicality in the entire world. Her father, sentenced by a controversial Miami court, was imprisoned...supposedly for life...in a top-security California federal prison. His wife -- far, FAR away on the island of Cuba -- was not allowed to visit him. YET, she was impregnated with her husband's sperm and their reward was this little angelic girl.

       By the time this little girl was born in Cuba, her father -- his name is Gerardo Hernandez -- was miraculously out of that California prison and BACK IN CUBA IN TIME TO WITNESS THE BIRTH OF HIS UNIQUE CHILD. And now, perhaps, you know what I mean by the title and sub-title of this update. This saga's propitious turnaround relates to a United States President and a United States Senator intervening in what they considered an egregious United States Cuban policy that also currently gets a LOUD 191-to-0 international condemnation in the United Nations, a policy largely dictated since 1959 by a handful of two generations of revengeful Cuban exiles from the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba.

     Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont and President Barack Obama are the two great and brave Americans who made it possible for that gorgeous little girl to be born on the much-maligned island of Cuba. Mr. Leahy and Mr. Obama are/were rare birds in American political circles, meaning they care about totally innocent Cubans on the island and they care about the worldwide image of America's democracy.

         Prior to Donald Trump, Mr. Obama served two terms...8 years...as the U. S. President and, thankfully, he listened to the wisdom and decency of Senator Leahy when it came to Cuba, as shown above as Air Force One neared its historic approach to Cuba. Senator Leahy often visited Cuba and in 2016 Mr. Obama became the first sitting U. S. President to visit the island since Herbert Hoover arrived on a warship in 1928. Obama, encouraged by Leahy, arrived peacefully in Cuba and without any hint of belligerence...and both men in their positive political careers have had the rare guts to display dire respect for the safety and the sanctity of totally innocent Cubans on the island. And that's why Obama and Leahy played significant roles in the birth of the little Cuban girl who is now healthy and beloved on the appreciative island.

      The story of the Cuban Five is a microcosm, but a HUGE one, in the contentious and historic saga of U.S.-Cuban relations. As I suggest often in this forum and in this Google era, judge things for yourself after using your search engine and, for details about the aforementioned little Cuban girl, merely type in "Cuban Five" to access literally thousands of pages of information. The five Cubans depicted above were in the Miami area in 1998 when they were arrested and charged with being Cuban spies. But as Wikipedia correctly explained: "They were in the United States to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, The F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation and Brothers to the Rescue." The five Cubans, with ample reason, believed that those four unchecked groups were involved with or supportive of extreme and repeated acts of terrorism against innocent Cubans -- such as the terrorist bombing of the child-laden civilian Cubana Flight 455. Indeed, when a decent Cuban-American newsman in Miami, Emilio Milian, also complained about such things, he was car-bombed. But after their arrest, the Cuban Five were tried in a Miami courtroom, almost assuring their fate. Thus began a major chapter in U.S.-Cuban history.

        With their convictions and sentences in a Miami courtroom a foregone conclusion, the Cuban Five were sent to five different federal U. S. prisons with sentences up to life. Cuba immediately launched what became a worldwide clamor to "Free the Cuban Five." That plea quickly attained worldwide resonance.

Amnesty International and others joined the fight.

      When President Obama became the first American president with the guts to seriously attempt to normalize relations with Cuba, Josefina Vidal, Cuba's Minister of U. S. Affairs, was responsive but she drew a line in the sand -- "Free the Cuban Five and we will talk." The President was informed, "She means it."

Josefina Vidal stuck to her stringent DEMAND.

      President Obama, acutely concerned with Human Rights and how America's Cuban policy so acutely harmed America's image, bravely and decently defied Miami and Congress as he embraced the enormous task of freeing the Cuban five. And that was the embrace that eventually led to the reopening of embassies in the two capital cities for the first time since 1961, along with other major Obama-orchestrated steps that sliced deeply into the Miami-Batistiano-Congress axis that for over half-a-century had solely dictated America's Cuban policy, a policy that to this day receives a 191-to-0 condemnation in the UN.

       But as President Obama, aided by American patriots such as Senator Patrick Leahy, began working on freeing The Cuban Five, they had all served 14 years in separate U. S. prisons. It was widely reported that Gerardo Hernandez, shown in the middle in the above photo, was receiving the worst treatment in his California prison. In Havana his beloved wife Adriana had given up hope of ever seeing him in person again and, with all her heart, she wanted to have his baby as an everlasting remembrance of their love for each other. Unaware of the headway President Obama and Josefina Vidal were making on freeing The Cuban Five, Adriana's wish concerning a baby was conveyed to Senator Leahy. Incredibly, Mr. Leahy used his considerable power in the U. S. Senate and with the White House to have Gerardo's semen flown from his California prison to Havana and the rest is history; Adriana was impregnated with Gerardo's baby!!

        Also incredibly, thanks to President Obama and Senator Leahy, Gerardo Hernandez was a totally free man AND back in Havana in time to feel his baby moving inside his wife Adriana's very pregnant stomach!!

After watching his baby being born, Gerardo held it.

Gerardo named his baby girl Gema.

 Adriana, Gerardo, and their little girl Gema.

Gerardo and his baby girl.

Gema Hernandez Perez.

A beautiful part of U.S.-Cuban history.
And by the way:

An excellent map courtesy of Cubacasas.net.

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Another Cuban Milestone

Just 24-hours old!!

        As of today -- April 27th, 2017 -- Cubans have much better and much faster Internet service as the above Desmond Boylan/AP photo shows. Google Global Cache is now available on the island. It's a big deal and another milestone for Cuba. GGC marks the first time a foreign company has launched and hosted Internet service on the island. It enables Cubans to quickly and easily store content from Google services such as GMail and YouTube. The Cubans surfing the Internet above are in Havana and there are now 240 such Wi-Fi hotspots across the island, plus an additional 2,000 new in-home hooks-ups.

         This Adalberto Roque/AFP photo shows enthused Internet users in Havana who now have faster and better service starting today with the newly available Google Global Cache access.

        The world Internet giant Google now has its own technology center in Havana in the office shown above. It's located in the studio of artist Alexis Leiva Machado who is shown here just to the right of the two ladies. The man right behind him is Brett Perlmutter, the head of Google's Cuban office. The password to access the Internet in the studio is AbajoElBloqueo, which means "Down With The Blockade."

          This future Internet user in Cuba is also projecting an anti-blockade sentiment, the consensus opinion on the island pertaining to the U. S. economic embargo that has severely hurt Cubans like this little girl and her parents and grandparents since 1962. In 2017 the international vote in the United Nations is 191-to-0 in condemnation of the embargo, which only the 535-member U. S. Congress can end but for decades a mere handful of Cuban-American extremists have maintained with the self-servicing aid of a handful of right-wing sycophants. But today's new Google Global Cache on the island is a reflection that former U. S. President Barack Obama, at least temporarily, bravely and significantly sliced into the Batistiano dictation of America's Cuban policy, meaning that Mr. Obama was the first U. S. President since the 1950s to show proper, non-imperialist respect for innocent Cubans, like the little girl depicted above.

        This amazing Reuters photo shows that Playa Giron in Cuba has been invaded once again in April of 2017. Americans refer to "Playa Giron" as the Bay of Pigs. In April of 1961 the U.S./Cuban-exile military attack commenced at this very spot in a famously failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. This week in April of 2017 the invasion above is by a massive army of crabs. They have swarmed out from the forest and fields around the famed Playa Giron-Bay of Pigs spot in a desperate attempt to reach the welcoming sea waters so they can spawn.

A driver forced to crush crabs at Playa Giron.

In April of 1961, Fidel Castro led the Bay of Pigs defense.

Cuba calls the 3-day battle by its Playa Giron location.

The Bay of Pigs location at Playa Giron.

       This photo was taken from the Hotel Playa Giron and shows the very site where the Bay of Pigs attack commenced in April of 1961 and where the mass invasion of crabs is taking place in April of 2017. It's now a peaceful and picturesque part of Revolutionary Cuba. And after spawning in the sea the crabs don't return...and presumably neither will attacking soldiers from counter-revolutionary foreign forces. 

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