{First Venezuela, Then Cuba}
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez for months has accused the Trump administration of planning military aggression to execute a regime-change in Cuba, using the turmoil in Venezuela as the "new, finalized pretext." And now, based on Cuba's Caribbean intelligence reports, Rodriguez this week updated those charges: "Cuba denounces the movements of special operations forces of the United States to the airports of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other countries in the Caribbean, without the knowledge of their governments. The U. S. is continuing the preparation of a military aggression against Venezuela with a humanitarian pretext and with Cuba as a prime target."
While the tragic chaos plays out in Venezuela, the U. S. and most other nations recognize Juan Guido as President while Cuba, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and a few others recognize Nicolas Maduro as President. Live reports by the BBC from inside the oil-rich nation confirm that food, medicine, and other necessities are direly lacking, creating an intolerable situation. At the moment, the Venezuelan military still supports Maduro but if that wavers, all hell might break out although a United States military intervention is the last thing almost every Latin American and Caribbean nation wants in 2019.
This ABC News photo shows how the Venezuelan military has blocked the key bridge preventing the delivery of food, medicine, and other supplies from Colombia that Venezuelans drastically need. Yet, that is a humanitarian issue that is actually a two-sided story.
For sure, on the Colombian side of that blocked bridge, there are thousands of boxes filled with food, medicine, toiletries, and others things millions of Venezuelans direly need, courtesy of the U. S. taxpayers. But if you study the above USAID boxes, you will see there is a problem, an historic one. USAID, for all the good it has done, has also done some despicably political things that every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean is well aware of...and that particularly applies to U. S. relations with Cuba. Maduro's excuse for not allowing the necessary supplies into Venezuela is that they would be distributed by the U.S.-friendly opposition leaders. If the U. S. aid and the threat of U. S. military intervention were not involved, some more respected source like the European Union could possibly resolve the Venezuelan crisis with a minimum of bloodshed. But even the anti-Venezuelan/pro-U.S. Latin American nations are abundantly aware of bloody U. S. interventions in the region from Guatemala in 1953 till Chile in 1973, etc. And, unfortunately, even the most sanitized U. S. entities, like USAID, have been incorporated into such regrettable imperialist acts of the USA.
There is no denying that USAID has aided needy people around the world. But there is also no denying, when Cuba is involved, that USAID has repeatedly been used by Counter Revolutionary extremists in the U. S. to hurt Cuba's revolutionary government and to both hurt and mock the Cuban people. Thus, it should be remembered that the Venezuelan turmoil, especially as far as the Counter Revolutionary USA Cubans are concerned, deeply involves Cuba. Any Google-search would reveal USAID's involvements in undermining Cuba and promoting a vast array of regime-change efforts inside Cuba...such as, for example, the expensive "ZunZuneo" scheme, the famous "Alan Gross" saga and countless other USAID Cuban enterprises designed to aid only the Counter Revolutionary forces, certainly not the Cuban people even when they have been massively harmed by disasters such as hurricanes, the recent tornado, etc., etc.
The U. S. media, for the most part, doesn't have the courage to report on such anti-Cuban schemes as the USAID's expensive but laughable "ZunZuneo" assault inside Cuba. The photo above by Ramon Espinoso/AP was used by London's The Guardian to minutely detail "ZunZuneo" as a typical U. S. attack on Cuba and that article is entitled "US Secretly Created Cuban Twitter to..." It was created to induce young Cubans to "riot" as a "Cuban Spring" against their government and, of course, if the Cuba government resisted the U. S. military would be there to take care of the "bad guys. Of course, as far as the Cuban narrative in the U. S. is concerned, the "bad" guys aboard Cubana Flight 455 were the two-dozen teenage athletes who perished, not the "good" Miami/CIA guys who planted the bomb on the civilian plane. So, sanitizing "ZunZuneo" in the U. S. was/is par-for-the-course.
It is, of course, Little Havana-dictated Republican administrations in Washington that skewer even segments of the U. S. government such as USAID into fierce and highly funded anti-Cuban enterprises. Therefore, for a Trump administration to be perceived as the broker of the Venezuelan crisis pitting the Cuban-backed Maduro against the U.S.-backed Guido is a military disaster WAITING TO HAPPEN...with Venezuela and Cuba being the first victims of such a vile intervention but the USA itself being the secondary and long-standing victim as far as reputation, blood, and torrents of money are concerned.
This montage shows President Trump flanked by vicious anti-Cuban U. S. Republican leaders dating back to the 1950s. {Yes, the Bush influence pre-dates Reagan and, in fact, goes back to the 1950s}. In all that time, Latin American nations would probably single out 3 men as the most vile Counter Revolutionary war-mongering zealots ever empowered by these White House operatives, and those 3 are: John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Otto Reich. INCREDIBLY, President Trump has resurrected Bolton, Abrams, and Reich as KEY advisers and decision-makers regarding the Venezuelan crisis. By doing so, it is apparent that Trump assumes that all Americans and all Latin Americans are either total idiots or absolute cowards.
Right-wing thugs in the USA in 1898 fabricated the Spanish-American War to gain control of Cuba but the United States never intended to make the nearby island a beacon for Democracy. From the get-go the U. S. mandated that its military could intervene even to back imperialist whims, such as the 1903 theft of Guantanamo Bay "in perpetuity." Thus, not unlike Spanish rule, using Cuba as a piggy-bank for selected Americans was and apparently remains far more important than democratizing the island.
But the most indelible U. S. act related to Cuba came in 1952 when the top echelon of the Mafia was sicced on the island to enhance the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. The thugs in the Eisenhower administration who orchestrated that mission -- Nixon, the Dulles brothers, etc. -- of course, were never held accountable. In fact, U. S. propaganda from 1952 till today strictly blames the Cuban Revolution for all the island's problems and the USA has never forgiven Cuba for chasing the "Havana Mob" off the island in January of 1959 -- ALL THE WAY TO LITTLE HAVANA IN MIAMI, as it turned out.
Of course, any fair appraisal of history would readily conclude...as the images above document...that the Cuban Revolutionary was direly needed to end the Batista brutality. The right-wing decision-makers in Washington were plainly stupid to have tolerated what made the Cuban mothers so angry, which was, as expressed by the mothers above, the routine murders of Cuban children supposedly to quell dissent. Of course, what the images above INSPIRED were the marches above that ignited and fueled the revolution that still echoes on the world stage.
Surely the right-wingers in Washington who supported the Batista dictatorship in Cuba so rich Americans could partake of the thievery were also stupid not to at least toss a few crumbs to the majority Cuban peasants...and even provide them some shelter and food and maybe even a little health care and educational opportunities. But, as indicated above, the Batista supporters in Washington didn't think that was necessary because, after all, Batista was supported by the strongest nation in the world, the United States, and by the strongest criminal organization in the world, the Mafia.
Today Americans except the thoroughly propagandized or the totally biased realize that since 1959 Revolutionary Cuba, in sharp contrast to the Batista terror, has prioritized taking care of three generations of children. Those who have visited Cuba and closely observed everyday Cubans, like me, know that to be true. Last week the 5-year-old ballerina above advanced to the second tier as a Spanish dancer. And yes, she represents how Cuba today...although embargoed since 1962 and otherwise assailed daily by the nearby Superpower...impresses visitors to the island with how its beloved children are protected and treated. Marco Rubio, currently in charge of how the Trump extremists are targeting the island, is, in my opinion and in the opinion of the mother of this little girl, simply lying when he maintains regularly on national television that he wants "to help" Cubans on the island.
Beyond any doubt, the best quotation to describe the utter stupidity and greed of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba was both voiced and penned by Celia Sanchez, the legendary doctor's daughter who became probably the all-time most important anti-Batista rebel. In the above graphic, the Woman Project.org stresses that brilliant Celia Sanchez quotation, but I think it deserves being repeated: "We rebels...get far too much credit for winning the Revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots." Surely, if you're wondering how a small island defeated a powerful dictator who was supported by the ultra-powerful United States and by the ultra-powerful Mafia, the best starting point for answers is the above quotation by someone who would know, Celia Sanchez.
While the marches by the Cuban mothers firmly ignited the Cuban Revolution, it was the doctor's daughter, Celia Sanchez, who provided the decisive courage, the vital recruiting {of rebels and supplies}, the guerrilla-fighting, and the decision-making that made the astounding victory of the Cuban Revolution a reality. A rebel who worshiped her, Fidel Castro, agreed with that evaluation...and so did Cuba's top historian Pedro Alvarez Tabio who said, "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." Thus, I think it is appropriate that Celia Sanchez had the definitive quotation regarding her Revolution...although, of course, the "greedy cowards and idiots" she chased from Havana to Little Havana have dictated the Cuban narrative in the United States since 1959.
On Jan. 11, 1980, Celia Sanchez died of cancer at age 59. By then she had also coined another definitive quotation: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." Fidel somehow kept her prophecy alive for almost six decades till he died at age 90 on Nov. 25, 2016. Now in 1919 with the Little Havana/Batistiano-aligned Trump administration having replaced the decent Obama presidency, Cuba needs another Celia Sanchez.
In February of 2019, is there another Celia Sanchez-type that might keep the Trump-aligned Batistianos from regaining "control of Cuba?" I honestly don't know. I think there is an impressive group of well-educated, sovereignty-loving females on the island today who will TRY to replicate what Celia Sanchez accomplished against all odds. But I...just don't know. Right now, surviving Trump appears to be a monumental task for the vulnerable island.
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During the pre-Trump Obama administration when the United States finally had a President with the guts and decency to challenge the vicious Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Little Havana and in the U. S. Congress, an extraordinarily talented Cuban broadcast journalist named Cristina Escobar set a record on U. S. soil. As shown above, she became the first and only Cuban journalist to ask questions at a White House news conference...and she asked six that day.
As a brilliant news anchor, speaking in Spanish on Cuban television and in English on regional and international television when she is interviewed, Cristina Escobar is respected for her acute knowledge of U.S.-Cuban relations and she has been asked to speak on that topic at U. S. universities. When U. S. journalist Tracey Eaton interviewed her for a Pulitzer and YouTube video that evolved into a print article, Cristina made these indelible points: {1} "Cuba's fate should be up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington;" and {2} "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." As a democracy-loving American, I, unfortunately, agree with Cristina Escobar. And that's one reason I believe that the Cuban Revolution, which chased the Batista-Mafiosi leaders back to the USA, says even more about the United States than it says about Cuba.
