Cuba For Cubans

Not For Floridians!!

       Rebecca Barger, one of America's top Wedding Photographers, was in Cuba this week. She said she wanted to be there to take photographs, like the one above, before the island changed. She specifically mentioned "before Starbucks" and other American elements took over the island. Ms. Barger and many others have bittersweet feelings about the ongoing efforts to normalize relations between the U. S. and Cuba. Yes, the island badly needs sane relations with its superpower neighbor. And, yes, the U. S. needs to refurbish an image that has been so dastardly shattered, at least outside the U. S., by its dastardly treatment of Cuba, starting after the Spanish-American War in 1898 and particularly after the world's most famed democracy teamed with the Mafia to support the brutal, thieving Batista dictatorship beginning in 1952. The fleeing Batistianos and Mafiosi resettled mostly in South Florida and, from 1959 till today, have mostly dictated the Cuban narrative in America, overwhelming far more decent and much less-biased sources such as...Sarah Stephens at the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas.

       Sarah Stephens is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. Instead of being incessantly bombarded by Cuban propaganda from the likes of Marco Rubio and Maurcio Claver-Carone, Americans need to get the other...and truer...side of the two-sided story. Sarah Stephens, the democracy-lover, is a good place to start. Each Friday her CDA "Cuba Central" website provides the best chronicling of that week's Cuban conundrums. Her latest posting on Feb. 20-2015 once again referenced the fallacy of Americans relying on politicians and lobbyists such as Rubio and Claver-Carone for their Cuban information. Ms. Stephens, for example, believes it is undemocratic and anti-American for a few well-heeled people in the U. S. Congress and on Capital Hill to be able to endlessly punish innocent Cubans on the island in the guise of hurting Castro and regaining control of Cuba.

     Marco Rubio, Miami's ubiquitous one-trick-pony contribution to the U. S. Senate, thinks he will make it all the way to the White House, as early as 2016, as long as Americans continue not to associate Cuba with Fulgencio Batista, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante Jr., Luis Posada Carriles, and other Mother Teresa-like angels who populated Miami either before or after or both before and after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Heaven forbid if Americans wondered if a return of the Batistianos would be good for Cubans on the island. Senator Rubio seems intent on making sure such wonderment continues to be blunted. He also doesn't want Americans to wonder why some of his top aides recently took an all-expense-paid trip to China while he insists average Americans not be allowed to travel to one particular place -- uh, Cuba!

   Online, on television, on radio, in print, on Capital Hill, in Congress, and in the corporate world, Mauricio Claver-Carone personifies a vast cottage industry that  benefits from an American Cuban policy that the rest of the world deplores. That's why Americans are not supposed to know about such things as Cubana Flight 455 and such unbiased modern-day Cuban experts as the democracy-loving Sarah Stephens. 

       This week Netflix, the movie and television streaming giant, launched service in Cuba. Also, no less than five American airlines applied for licenses to add flights to and from Cuba. Such renewed interest, even in their nascent stages, spawned this crowded airport scene this week on the fast-changing island of Cuba. Burgeoning crowds of people and off-loaded Sony electronics are becoming commonplace. 

       This Joe Raedle/Getty Images photo shows a standing-room-only Business Forum in Miami this week casting covetous, non-hostile eyes at the nearby island of Cuba. Such forums are proliferating all over South Florida as American entrepreneurs want to participate in the reconstruction of Cuba, which will require billions of dollars to repair an infrastructure that has deteriorated alarmingly largely due to a U. S. economic embargo put in place in 1962 for the purpose of starving and depriving Cubans on the island to entice them to rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro. In February of 2015 Fidel Castro is 88-years-old and living out his life in a modest home in western Havana while thousands of anti-Castro benefactors throughout South Florida, through two generations, have luscious mansions, yachts, airplanes, and multitudes of expensive cars. Thus, after all these decades, this photo is quite interesting. It reveals hordes of business people in Miami hoping to partake, legally and decently, in the reconstruction of the island. And it proves again that resilient, pugnacious and wily little Cuba will never cease to fascinate.

       As those of us who have been to Cuba can attest, the island has eleven million of the friendliest people in the world, as well as many of the world's most beautiful and most pristine beaches. This is the beach at Cayo Largo. Cuba is a peaceful country and perhaps the safest place in the world for tourists. The wedding photographer, Rebecca Barger, said she wanted to take photographs around the island before "Starbucks" and other commercial entities invaded with a tsunami-like frenzy. It is easy to understand her feelings for the island that Columbus, back in 1492, said was "the most beautiful place my eyes have seen."

        Rebecca Barger's wedding photo in Cuba reminded me of this Getty Images photo. This American soldier, Jason Hiser, was stunned as his unit tried to protect the innocent civilians in war-torn Al Rasheed, Iraq. A little Iraqi girl bravely walked out into the street. She wanted the "noise" to stop. He knew the iraqi word for "noise." She touched his heart as she offered him an Iraqi flag, apparently in hopes that the all-consuming war would let up, at least long enough for her to have at least the semblance of the type of life that every little girl deserves. Jason Hiser and other well-meaning soldiers and photographers are seeing cities around the world totally destroyed by ultra-modern weapons with the most innocent, like this little girl, caught in the middle. This little girl made Jason Hiser cry. The rest of the world should cry with him.

       The photo of the little Iraqi girl reminded me of this little Cuban girl. This photo was taken by Cuba's greatest photographer, Alberto Korda. This child's name was Paula Maria. She had the misfortune to be born in Sumidero, a little town in Cuba's Pinar del Rio province. At the time of her birth, the lush island of Cuba was a gravy train and piggy-bank for the Batistianos, the Mafiosi, and American businessmen. And they didn't leave anything for the majority peasants, like Paula Maria's family. But she was a little girl who wanted a doll, a doll her parents could not afford. So, as many children have to do, Paula Maria improvised. She pretended a block of wood was her doll. Alberto Korda took many of the 20th Century's most famous photographs. Before he died in 2001 in Paris, he said, "The Che photograph made me famous but the little girl clutching the block of wood and pretending it was her doll changed my life, my way of thinking about life."

       The Korda photograph of the little girl clutching the block of wood reminds me of this photo. In 2015 Cuban schoolchildren are the most photographed subjects by tourists on the island. The Cuban Revolution -- which replaced the Batistianos, the Mafiosi, and the American businessmen on the island in 1959 -- has made mistakes. But unlike its predecessor, it should be applauded for the way it has protected, educated, sheltered, and cared for its children, including free and readily available health care throughout their lives. If I have judged them correctly, photographers from Alberto Korda to Rebecca Barger have wondered -- both silently and aloud as vividly expressed by their brilliant photos -- whether a return of the Batistianos accompanied by "starbucks" would be good for the children on the island. Yes, we know it would be good for gluttonous criminals and businessmen, but would it be good for Cuba's children? Based on history, I doubt that it would. And history, while not infallible, is a good yardstick Americans should keep in mind when they are constantly inundated and bombarded with incessant anti-revolutionary propaganda from the likes of well-greased politicians and lobbyists such as Marco Rubio and Mauricio Claver-Carone.

****************************** 

  

U.S.-Cuban Friendship

Obstacles Outweigh Hope
Friday, February 20th, 2015

         Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U. S. Congress, has spent two days this week in Havana. She is shown above in a friendly conversation with Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. Ms. Pelosi led a 9-member delegation of Democrats to the island. Almost every Democrat in Congress, except, of course Bob Menendez of Union City, desires some sanity in America's relations with Cuba. Menendez and four Republicans from Miami will not allow it to happen. Americans, of course, are not supposed to consider that undemocratic. In my opinion, Nancy Pelosi, a good and compassionate person, is not primarily concerned with a superpower punishing everyday Cubans on the island for another 55 years, nor is she campaigning to roll back congressional laws that favor, enrich, and empower only Cuban-Americans and their sycophants. But Nancy Pelosi, as a democracy lover, is direly concerned about the image America's Cuban policy presents to the region and the rest of the world, which is a discriminatory policy that harms Cubans on the island and everyone else. 

Good people have hope but, sadly, it is mostly in vain.

      This Joe Raedle/Getty Images photo was taken this week -- Wed., February 18th -- at the Doubletree Airport Hotel in Miami. The Cuban images were flashed on a huge screen at a standing-room-only forum that attracted entrepreneurs very, very interested in participating in the massive reconstruction of Cuba, which is anticipated after President Obama's announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba. If the process comes to fruition, it will cost many billions of dollars and put many thousands of people to work. The U. S. embargo since shortly after the overthrow of the U.S./Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 has helped create and hasten the deterioration of the island's infrastructure. The whole world, including most Cuban-Americans in Miami, long for the day when the embargo will end and more normal relations between the two neighboring nations can be established. However, for two generations since the early 1960s a handful of visceral Cuban-Americans, assisted by Republican administrations and the U. S. Congress, benefit from the embargo and other hostilities against Cuba. And that's precisely why forums such as this one in Miami are not only premature but a waste of time and effort. Democracy, decency, and the majority bedamned! It's been that way for over a half-century and it will not change, at least not substantially. Democracy is strong, but not quite that strong.

     This Ramon Espinosa/AP photo shows an American flag and a Cuban flag fronting the Saratoga Hotel in Havana this week. That's where three U. S. Senators -- Mark Warner of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri -- are staying. The three Senators informed Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and the island's Minister of North American Affairs, Josefina Vidal, that the second round of diplomatic negotiations between the two countries will take place Friday, February 27th in Washington. The first round was held in Havana on January 22nd and 23rd. Senators Warner, Klobuchar, and McCaskill are among the members of Congress trying desperately to exude hope that sanity and decency will replace a half-century of indecent insanity tied to America's Cuban policy that continues, decade after decade, to be dictated by elements of the Batista dictatorship that was ousted way back on January 1, 1959. That entrenched fact is too much to overcome.

     Roberta Jacobson, shown here during last month's diplomatic sessions in Havana, will again represent the U. S. in next week's second round of meetings in Washington. Jacobson's State Department announced yesterday -- Wednesday -- some parameters prior to the resumption of talks. The United States says it direly wants to move ahead with the openings of embassies in Havana and Washington; the U. S. says it is anxious to remove Cuba from its very, very short list of nations that sponsor terrorism. Very nice but very veiled diplomacy. Such overtures are predicated on exacting concessions the U. S. fully knows Cuba will not accept. The U. S. is demanding that Cuba allow total freedom of travel for U. S. diplomats in Cuba and the U. S. is demanding that Cuban dissidents be allowed to freely visit the proposed new U. S. embassy in Havana. In other words, the U. S. State Department is merely making a show of desiring normal relations with Cuba. The U. S. knows that Cuba is tired of the U. S. Interests Section in Havana being used to foment, stir up, and fund dissident actions on the island, trying to create havoc and turmoil injurious to Cuba. Thus, Cuba wants some assurances that the proposed U. S. embassy in Cuba will not be a continuation or enhancement of providing tools and encouragement for dissidents at the expense of the other Cubans on the island. The U. S. will never give that assurance; Cuba will thus never surrender that demand. So, diplomacy ends there.

      Just as she did in Havana last month, Josefina Vidal will show up in Washington next week to represent Cuba in the ongoing diplomatic negotiations. Although she keenly desires normal U.S.-Cuban relations, neither the Obama administration nor the John Kerry-led State Department are capable of meeting Vidal's basic demands. Thus, as in Havana last month, the diplomatic sessions in Washington next week are primarily for show. The State Department can easily remove Cuba from the terrorism list and President Obama can easily open a U. S. embassy in Havana and allow Cuba to open one in Washington. And that's where things will end in these last two years of Obama's two-term presidency. Vidal will insist that the U. S. cease using its current Interests Section and its future embassy in Havana as "cesspools" designed mostly to support and recruit dissidents on the island; but the U. S. cannot even negotiate such things because of laws and policies dictated by a U. S. Congress in which a handful of members from Miami and Union City dictate America's Cuban policy. Therefore, in Washington next week the U. S. negotiators will mainly attempt to out-maneuver or intimidate Josefina Vidal. And that will not happen. Thus, normalizing relations will not happen. To think otherwise is being naive about relevant reality.

     This map and a contaminant comment by Josefina Vidal epitomize the impossibility of normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States. Note the extremely close proximity of Havana to Key West and Miami. Josefina Vidal is abundantly cognizant of this geographical fact. Between last month's diplomatic session in Havana and next week's meetings in Washington, Vidal has fielded a litany of questions. Perhaps the most pertinent was proffered by Reuters:  "Ms. Vidal, are these diplomatic overtures really a charade?" After a significant reflective pause, she replied: "I believe you are suggesting that it is impossible to negotiate a change in U.S.-Cuban geography and that it is impossible to negotiate a change that, for decades, has seen a few benefit so substantially from continued hostility between two neighboring countries." She paused significantly again, gazing off to the right. When she looked back at the reporter, she said, "If that was what you were suggesting, I think you are correct. Yet, on behalf of a lot of good people, I think trying as hard as we can to accomplish the impossible is worth the effort. And truth be known, I sincerely believe that my dear friend Roberta Jacobson agrees with me on that colossal issue."

Impossible.

The U. S. democracy is still strong,

but not that strong.
By the way..............................................

       ....................this handsome guy is a Baltimore Oriole. Yes, he inspired both the name and the colors for the Major League baseball team. This photo was taken by Sherry Nicholson and is used courtesy of my favorite magazine, Birds & Blooms.

******************************

  

Cuba As Seen By Tourists

Seeing Is Believing
Being Told What To Think Is Not
Sunday, February 15th, 2015

         Those of us who have been to Cuba see and absorb a vibrant, resilient people who try and sometimes succeed in living their lives to the fullest, always confronting imposing obstacles such as the U. S. embargo. National Geographic Magazine {I am a subscriber} has compiled dozens of photos taken recently by travelers to the island. This lady is an exuberant dancer at a thriving cabaret club in Havana.

A young baseball player. Cuba is renowned for it homegrown baseball talent.

       A beautiful young Cuban lady. This engaging photo by Christopher P. Baker, one of two dozen spotlighted by National Geographic, shows a Quinceanera celebration in the colonial city of Trinidad, my favorite Cuban city. Quinceanera celebrates a girl turning fifteen-years-of-age. Notice the beautiful gown this 15-year-old celebrant is wearing. About ten times a day, it seems, Americans are reminded that Cubans exist on $20 a month, blaming it totally on the greedy Fidel Castro and not on such foreign evils as the half-century U. S. embargo that would have doomed far richer nations than Cuba. Such misconceptions ignore the ingenuity of Cubans. Many of them also receive nice remittances from relatives or friends living abroad. If Americans were allowed to visit, they would see scenes such as Mr. Baker saw and photographed. And seeing Cuba, as opposed to being told what to think, is the best way to judge Cuba. 

This photo shows a Cuban crossing a street and pausing to admire a vintage car.

   The most ubiquitous and most photographed subjects in Cuba are the schoolchildren. Bedecked in their distinctive uniforms, these children, on their way to and from school, are common sights all over the island. Since 1959 Revolutionary Cuba has made some mistakes, many in fact. But it has also vastly improved the education, health, safety, and longevity of its children as opposed to the gluttonous regime it replaced. Americans, since 1959, have been told differently and, I believe, that is why the self-serving perpetrators of such myths have generally succeeded in making it unlawful for average Americans to visit the island and judge it for themselves. Cuba for decades has been the only place in the world where such restrictions apply. That undemocratic process relates strictly to the fact that the remnants of the old regime, through two generations since 1959, have dictated most of America's policy regarding Cuba, including the basic freedom of Americans to visit the island. Those who do visit the island will not see a luxurious paradise, far from it. But they will see a very safe island populated with healthy and well-educated Cubans who do not deserve being punished their entire lives by a handful of rich and powerful exiles who, many believe, were booted off the island with good reason. In any case, all the other National Geographic photos are also worth checking out...in case you can't visit the island yourself. The Cuban schoolchildren above have guarantees of safety, free education through college, free heath care for life, free food if needed, and free shelter if needed. Student loans and high health premiums are not concerns. Will that change if and when rich foreigners or exiles regain control of the island? Most likely. In the U. S. a lot of already rich people get a lot richer from such debacles as the trillion-dollar student loan and trillion-dollar health industry schemes. Modern Cuba needs trade via nearby U. S. ports. But the Batista dictatorship still looms as a vivid reminder that a return of U.S.-Mafia domination is not the answer.

The shoreline on the edge of the gorgeous colonial city of Trinidad, Cuba

         On her recent visit to Havana this is Andrea Mitchell of NBC/MSNBC interviewing Gail Reed, an international expert on health issues. In this interview Ms. Reed lavishly praised Cuba for its universal health coverage and for the exceptionally high percentage of its economy devoted to health care.

        These are pre-school children photographed this week {ACN} in the city of Guantanamo, Cuba. Laura Melo of the World Food Program {WFP} lavishly praised Cuba for "providing such a high standard of food and nutritional security for its people, especially pregnant women, children and the elderly." Americans are told that the 55-year-old economic embargo against Cuba should be maintained for another 55 years because it keeps money out of Fidel Castro's non-existent Swiss bank accounts. Of course, the Cuban-exile zealots who keep pounding that message into the American psyche are living in huge mansions in Miami, Union City, and Washington while the 88-year-old Fidel Castro lives out his life in a very modest home in Havana. And of course, Gail Reed and Laura Melo wish that America spent as high a percentage of its wealth on health care and nutritional issues as the poor little much-maligned island of Cuba does.

Cuba, still the pearl of the Caribbean.
The colonial city of Trinidad, you'll note, is in south-central Cuba.

      This photo, courtesy of www.mtholyoke.edu, shows Cuban children at a choir practice in Havana. They had taken a break from their extensive music class to play ping-pong when they posed for this photo.

        Cuba, whether occupied or sovereign, has always been a treasure trove for touristic photos. This one is courtesy of old-photos-blogspot.com and it was taken it 1904. It shows a Cuban family taking a ride.

        I believe a society or a country can best be judged by how it takes care of its children. By that basic standard, Gail Reed, Laura Melo and other international experts consistently praise Revolutionary Cuba in stark contrast to Batista's Cuba.

      Peasant children, who constituted the vast majority of pre-revolutionary children in Cuba, were poorly cared for throughout the 1950s in Batista's Cuba when the gluttonous Batistic dictatorship was supported by the United States and by the Mafia.

      In 1952 when Fulgencio Batista and his Mafia friends in South Florida began their U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba, vast amounts of money were made by the Batistianos, the Mafia and U. S. businessmen. The three prime Mafia enterprises were casino gambling, prostitution, and illegal drugs. Huge deposits went to numbered bank accounts in Switzerland as well as Mafia-controlled banks in Miami and Union City. Taking care of peasant children on the island was never a consideration. Some were murdered to serve as a warning for the peasants not to resist the thieving dictatorship. That nuance of the Batista dictatorship was its undoing.

     The extreme poverty and brutality of the Batista dictatorship spawned the female-led street marches that spelled doom for Batista, the Mafia, and the U. S. in Cuba.

The NY Daily News headlined Batista's flight on Jan. 1-1959.

     As this Associated Press headline on May 25th, 1960 indicates, the Batistianos -- who regrouped back in South Florida after fleeing the Cuban Revolution -- have been trying desperately to recapture the island since January 1, 1959. If and when they do, I truly believe it will be a sad day for rosy-cheeked little Cuban girls on the island.

******************************

America's Banana Republic Congress

Intent On Overwhelming Democracy
Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

      The Internet giant Netflix announced this week that it has begun service in Cuba, a reflection of a change on the heels of President Obama's plans to normalize relations with the island. Netflix streams movies, television shows, etc., for a monthly fee. In Cuba the fee is $7.99 a month. Assuming that Americans are totally disconnected from reality in Cuba, one headline and sub-headlines screamed this myth: "Netflix Launches In Cuba; Charges $7.99 A Month To Cubans Whose Average Income Is 17 Dollars!" Interesting, but like most U. S. headlines related to Cuba it is misleading.

    This Cuban woman is in Havana, not Miami. As she walks along a street near her home she is engrossed with her Smart Phone, like many rich people in Miami. She is guaranteed a small stipend from the government, about $20. She is also guaranteed free health care without paying for anything. She is also guaranteed free education through college without having to worry about student loans. If she needs help with food or shelter, she gets it free. She can also walk the safe Cuban streets even at night without fear of being assaulted. She is eligible to get cash from relatives and friends in the U. S. She can freelance and make additional money, especially via tourism. And now with new economic reforms she is encouraged to become an entrepreneur with her own business. So, yes, America, there are more Cubans than you think in the year 2015 that can afford Netflix's $7.99 monthly fee. So when you see repetitious references to "$17 or $20 a month incomes," don't believe everything you read, most especially when it involves...poor little Cuba!!!

      America's Secretary of State John Kerry is a huge baseball fan and when he was in the U. S. Senate he bravely advocated normalizing relations with Cuba. Mr. Kerry loves the Boston Red Sox and is shown in this Politico photo throwing out the first pitch for a game at Fenway Park. This spring Mr. Kerry hopes to see his beloved Red Sox play the Baltimore Orioles in Havana. Both clubs have discussed the possibility with Major League Baseball executives. It might happen if logistics and other problems can be worked out in time. Of course, anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress will try to block Mr. Kerry's proposal or any other sane and positive idea related to Cuba, where baseball is the national pastime. That's just the way it is. 

  On December 17th, 2014 President Barack Obama announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba. That is precisely what most Americans, most Cuban-Americans, most Cubans on the island, most Cubans in Miami, most people in the Caribbean, most people in Latin America, and most people around the world desire. But it won't happen. It appears that the U. S. democracy is no longer strong enough to make it happen. This is the price democracy lovers are paying because the American people have allowed the U. S. Congress to become more of a Banana Republic sideshow than what the Founding Fathers envisioned way back in 1776. With approval ratings in single digits, most Americans disapprove of the current iteration of Congress but they are unable to change it. Cuba says a lot more about the United States than it says about Cuba, as President Obama is now discovering.

      In trying to normalize relations with Cuba, the President of the United States has American, Cuban, and worldwide support but a mere handful of self-serving Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress dictate America's Cuban policy and they are not about to relinquish it. They benefit from a Cuban policy that has been grossly out-dated for half a century, harming everyone but them. And they seem poised to keep it in place for another half century or so, defying logic, decency, and democracy.

      President Obama is anxious to open a U. S. Embassy in Havana prior to April-2015 when he will attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama. That's because, for the past six years, President Obama has been embarrassed when attending regional and international functions only to have America's unpopular Cuban policy being constantly thrown in his face, often thwarting his primary goals at such sessions. Caribbean and Latin American countries have warned him that the same thing will occur in Panama in April unless continued belligerence towards Cuba eases or ceases. He hopes at least to have concrete plans for a U. S. embassy in Havana to show the pro-Cuban factions that await him in Panama. Of course, he is also quite aware that Senator Marco Rubio and other Miami members of the U. S. Congress have fired off scathing letters to the President of Panama for inviting Cuban President Raul Castro to the Summit of the Americas that Panama, a sovereign country, is hosting. Those letters reminded democracy lovers of how Miami's anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress used their congressional power to free famed Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from his long prison sentence in Panama. Jim DeFede, the top columnist at the Miami Herald, sacrificed his job when he wrote about that Panamanian/Posada episode but the rest of the U. S. media pusillanimously cowered, as usual, in accepting that and all other Miami-engineered affronts to democracy. President Obama, as he looks forward to the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April, is very aware of the Panamanian/Posada congressional pressure and he is also aware that Posada, on December 18-2014 -- the day after Obama's announcement about normalizing Cuban relations -- led an anti-Obama rally in the streets of Miami. President Obama is also very aware of the letters on congressional stationery that have tried to intimidate Panama leading up to the Summit of the Americas in which President Obama would like to demonstrate that the U. S. Congress is, in fact, still a democratic body even if, in regards to Cuba, it resembles a Banana Republic dictatorship akin to Batista's Cuba or Trujillo's Dominican Republic back in the 1950s. {P.S.: I wonder if that may be because the U. S. teamed with the Mafia to support the vile Batista dictatorship in the 1950s and when it was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution the Batistianos and Mafiosi merely reassembled in nearby South Florida?}

       Beginning the first week of February, 2015 Senator Marco Rubio of Miami became the Chairman of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee, which includes Cuba. Not surprisingly, Rubio's very first session as Chairman became a Banana Republic-type harangue in which Rubio excoriated President Obama and everyone else for daring to express a desire to normalize relations with Cuba. Watching on C-Span as he grossly assailed helpless U. S. diplomat Roberta Jacobson, who had just returned from Havana, shamed many democracy lovers -- including Sarah Stephens, the founder and Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. I believe you would agree with that assessment if you go online and read the Feb. 6-2015 "Cuba Central" posting on the CDA website. Not only was Ms. Stephens outraged by Rubio's Banana Republic-like Chairmanship, she pointed out that he was brazenly rude to even anti-Castro Cuban dissidents he had flown in to appear before his first session as Chairman of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee. Yes, five of the most vehement anti-Castro dissidents were paraded before a packed Congress by Chairman Rubio and, as Ms. Stephens pointed out, he was even rude to them if they didn't immediately answer his torrid questions with appropriate denunciations of Cuba. Of course, in a Banana Republic U. S. Congress, don't ever expect to hear from America's best and most unbiased Cuban experts -- such as Sarah Stephens, Wayne S. Smith, Peter Kornbluh, Ann Louise Bardach, Julia E. Sweig, etc. That would be presenting both sides of a two-sided story, something Banana Republics are not accustomed to permitting. Rubio regularly greets Cuban dissidents from Havana in Washington. Just once, maybe, he should include a Cuban from the nearby island who is not a dissident, such as...Yulieski Gourriel, for example.

      Next to the 88-year-old Fidel Castro, 31-year-old Yulieski is the most famous Cuban on the island right now. Euphoria engulfed baseball-crazed Cuba on Sunday {February 8th} when Yulieski belted a homer to give Cuba a 3-to-2 victory over Mexico in the championship game of the Caribbean Baseball Classic in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Star-studded teams from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela had been favored over a Cuban team depleted by an unending parade of star players defecting from the island for multi-million-dollar U. S. contracts. Since he was 17 Yulieski has been the most coveted Cuban player but he doggedly has remained fiercely loyal to Cuba. He remains a superstar in Cuba's top league but also plays for the Yokohama Bay Stars in Japan, a country that is not hostile to Cuba and where he can play and not defect.

    So, what if Senator Marco Rubio, as Chairman of the Western Hemisphere Committee, invited someone like Yulieski Gourriel to the U. S. Congress to at least balance out all the anti-Castro zealots he welcomes like rock stars? Judging by Rubio's performance in his first session as Chairman, it would be a guatuitous farce, just as Sarah Stephens indicated his grilling of Diplomat Roberta Jacobson and even a moderate Cuban dissident were gratuitous farces. Therefore, assuming Rubio invited Yulieski to appear before the U. S. Senate, I think it might go like this:

           Rubio: Mr. Gourriel, welcome to America. Are you crazy? Are you absolutely out of your mind? For thirteen years, as a Cuban star in international tournaments, you have had opportunities to defect to the U. S. and you have not done so. Are you crazy, insane, out of your mind?"

            Yulieski: Well, sir, I...

        Rubio: Shut up! I'm the Chairman of this Senate Committee. I'll let you speak if and when I think you are ready to tell the Senate and America what a mean, despicable man Fidel Castro is. Meanwhile, I suggest, on your trip back to Cuba, you rent a car in Miami. You can drive all day in South Florida and see nothing but huge mansions owned by Cuban-Americans. Some have 5-car garages with cars that cost $300,000. Many have luscious yachts moored at nearby docks. Many have their own private jets with pilots standing by at the hangars. Many own their own islands in the Caribbean and even the South Pacific. And you, Mr. Gourriel, haven't followed those Cubans to South Florida. Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind?

             Yulieski: Well, sir, I would like to say...

            Rubio: Shut up! I invited you here to show the Senate and the Americans watching on C-Span what a horrible person you are for staying on that island that Fidel Castro took over in 1959, chasing the decent Cubans to South Florida. When we get control of it again, the likes of you will regret not having defected to South Florida or Union City where you too could have mansions and all those other things. Are you crazy? Out of your mind? Explain to this Committee why you are so stupid?

             Yulieski: Permit me, sir, to say...

              Rubio: Shut up....................................................!

   This is Sarah Stephens, the highly respected, democracy-loving founder and Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. If you think the hypothetical exchange above between Senator Rubio and Yulieski Gourriel is an exaggeration, go online and read the "Cuba Central" posting on CDA's website on February 6th, right after Senator Rubio's first chairmanship of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee in which he assailed President Obama's top Cuban diplomat Roberta Jacobson and even was rude to a Cuban dissident who apparently wasn't enough of a dissident for Mr. Rubio.

    Juan Carlos Varela is the President of Panama, a sovereign country and neither a U. S. territory nor a colony. He wasn't in office long before he got written rebukes on congressional stationery from Marco Rubio and other anti-Castro members of the U. S. Congress. They objected to President Varela's insistence on inviting Cuban President Raul Castro to the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which Panama will host in April. President Varela believed he had "the sovereign right and the moral duty to do so," especially considering that all the nations of the Americas urged him and some said that, if he didn't, they would also not attend. "Sovereign right" and "moral duty" are not anathema to democracy and the terms should not offend Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress, not even when it concerns the island of Cuba.

     If you watched on C-Span that first session of the Senate's Western Hemisphere Committee chaired by Senator Marco Rubio of Miami, you would have noticed that his tag-team partner in assaulting President Obama's plans to normalize relations with Cuba was Senator Bob Menendez of Union City. It was a reminder that the anti-Castro zealots in the U. S. Congress seek Committees that are most influential in policies related to Cuba. On December 17th when President Obama announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba, Rubio flocked to network news cameras to brag about his upcoming Chairmanship of the Western Hemisphere Committee, not only implying but stating how that would enable him to block President Obama's grandiose plans. Menendez has just concluded his run as Chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Check the Congressional Record and you'll see anti-Castro zealots adorning congressional committees, in both the House and Senate, most responsible for Cuban issues. Unfortunately, Cuba is a foreign country in the Western Hemisphere and that fact is not lost on congressional politicians from Miami and Union City.

         This photo shows Senator Marco Rubio from Miami and Senator Bob Menendez from Union City hosting dissidents from Cuba, including the famed Yoani Sanchez. As long as the U. S. government remains a democracy and not a Banana Republic, larger and more diverse groups than this din of strategists should be allowed to weigh in on something as vital as America's Cuban policy. While Cuba is a mere island, it is significant in the region and on the international stage far out of proportion to its size, population or wealth simply due to U. S. belligerence that makes the whole world cringe, especially in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America. At the very least, unless Senators Rubio and Menendez consider the U. S. Congress their private Banana Republic fiefdom, they should allow a few others to inject a thought or two on a subject, Cuba, that so mightily affects America's image around a conflicted world.     

   This National Geographic montage says Love Is in the Air.
But not in Marco Rubio's U. S. Senate.
******************************