Cuba at a Crossroad

And Still in the Crosshairs!
{Sunday, February 12, 2017}

      This photo, courtesy of Tracey Eaton, shows a poster promoting this week's seminar at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. The topical topic was "Cuba At The Crossroads. It was also historical because Cuba has been at a crossroads and in a whole lot of crosshairs ever since 1492 when the gorgeous Caribbean island was discovered by Columbus, who actually didn't do it any favors when he wrote in his diary that it was the "most beautiful sight I've ever seen." Cuba's beauty combined with its strategic location has kept it in the crosshairs of every imperialist power from 1492 till 2017, especially Spain and, after the 1898 Spanish-American War, the United States. So, Cuba at the "Crossroads" didn't exactly occur overnight.

        From 1898 till 1959 Cuba was dominated by imperialist-minded America, which made its biggest undemocratic mistake when right-wing thugs in the Eisenhower administration in 1952 teamed the United States with the Mafia to support the brutal, thieving Batista dictatorship. The Batista-Mafia regime rewarded the financial and military support of the U. S. government by allowing rich American businessmen to partake in the rape and robbery of the supposedly helpless island. But during the first year of its murderous, thieving reign, the excesses of the Batistianos and Mafiosi included the murders of Cuban children, apparently to quell resistance from the till-then subdued Cuban people. Instead of quelling dissent, the murders of Cuban children was the last-straw for Cuban mothers, who took to the streets to bravely protest, demonstrations aptly reported by New York Times journalist Herbert L. Matthews but ignored by the U. S. public and by the politicians in Washington. But the protests inspired a young Cuban lawyer named Fidel Castro who kicked off a revolution on July 26th of 1953 by leading an ill-fated but hugely significant attack on Batista's Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. As John Harrigan in his book "Crosshairs on Castro" explained, from July 26-1953 till he died at age 90 on Nov. 25-2016 Fidel Castro was in the "crosshairs" of some of the world's best assassins -- the Batistianos, the Mafiosi, the CIA, and the U. S. military. Today The Guinness Book of World Records documents 638 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, truly a WORLD RECORD. But on Jan.1-1959 his Cuban Revolution chased the Batistianos, Mafiosi and U. S. businessmen off the island where, in both short and eternal order, they regrouped for the everlasting purpose of recapturing the luscious island...a process that extends to this very day in 2017.

         Indeed, the biggest mistake Batista and the Mafia, and their supporters in the United States, ever made on the island of Cuba is reflected by an historic array of black-and-white photos such as the one above. Cuban mothers -- "madres" -- marching in the streets to protest the murders -- "asesinatos" -- of their precious children -- "hijos" -- spawned the man topically and historically known as Fidel Castro, which in turn gave birth to the Cuban Revolution, which -- in essence -- to this day says more about the United States than it says about Cuba because the U. S., not the beautiful Caribbean's largest island, is the world Superpower and within its otherwise universally admired democracy there remains a cancerous sub-government of Batistiano remnants best described as The Castro Cottage Industry that, while not yet recapturing Cuba, has wedged itself indelibly and deeply into the fabric of the United States democracy.

And that returns us to the "Crossroads."

And to that seminar THIS WEEK at Rollins College.

But guess what!!

      The Cuban Conundrum this week has landed Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele Bundchen in its CROSSHAIRS.  I kid you not! As you can tell by the slogan on his red hat, Tom Brady is a huge fan of U. S. President Donald Trump, which drives the mainstream U. S. media totally nuts because the mainstream U. S. media fiercely hates President Trump AND Tom Brady is America's #1 hero after winning his fifth Super Bowl. His wife -- the world's #1 Supermodel Gisele Bundchen -- is driving America's counter-revolutionary Batistianos nuts because she is a fan of Che Guevara, the Cuban Revolution's second most famed icon behind only Fidel Castro. Now as you try to wrap your brain around all that, please permit me to explain.

       This week several of the most vicious and popular Counter-Revolutionary Cuban websites are beside themselves raving about Tom Brady's wife Gisele Bundchen being lumped in with other well-known celebrities -- such as Robert Redford and Madonna -- as alleged "Superfans" of Che Guevara. Study the montage above, starting with the famed Alberto Korda image of Che that still adorns billions of coffee cups, T-shirts, posters, etc. Then note Gisele Bundchen the Supermodel on a high-profile catwalk wearing only a Che Guevara bikini. The other photos tie Redford and Madonna into the Che fandom pantheon.

      But the counter-revolutionary websites -- severely irked about the Super Bowl spotlight cast on Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen -- also assail other renowned Che Guevara fans, such as the ultra-wealthy Superstar Jay-Z shown here proudly wearing his Che T-shirt. Jay-Z, of course, has taken his wife Beyonce to Cuba where Che's remains are buried.

       In Cuba today there are many statues of Che Guevara, with the one above being a major tourist attraction. After graduating from medical school in his native Argentina, Che took a famous motorcycle ride down through Latin America, noticing what he judged to be U. S. businesses such as the infamous United Fruit Company enslaving and robbing those countries. It was in Mexico City where Che first met Raul and Fidel Castro in 1956. Fidel told Che that U. S. businesses such as the United Fruit Company were also enclaving and robbing Cuba and that, Fidel said, was why he, Raul and 79 other rebels were heading back to Cuba to join the anti-Batista revolution being led in the Sierra Maestra mountains and foothills by the doctor's daughter Celia Sanchez. In that manner, Che became the 80th rebel to join the Castro brothers on their trek to Cuba from Mexico to rendezvous with Celia Sanchez's guerrilla army. Interestingly enough, while he later insisted on numerous statues of Celia Sanchez and Che Guevara, prior to his death at age 90 on November 25th, 2016, Fidel Castro ordered that no statues of himself would ever be erected in Cuba.

       While the famed image from the Alberto Korda photo of Che Guevara adorns billions of edifices today, the most famous image is the one above that looks down on Revolutionary Square in Havana, Cuba.

This is a statue of Che Guevara holding a Cuban child.

        Che Guevara was captured and executed in Bolivia on October 9th, 1967. The final order to kill him was issued by Cuban-American CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, famed for his connections to the Bush dynasty and today, at age 75, a famed and well-heeled hero in Miami, Florida. Rodriguez instructed a Bolivian soldier not to shoot Che in the face so he was shot nine times in his lower body. Shortly after the above photo of the deceased Che was taken, his hands were cut off so it would be hard to identify his body if his arcane gravesite was ever discovered. Years later, after meticulous research that included Che's primary biographer Jon Lee Anderson, the gravesite was finally discovered and after DNA tests proved it was indeed Che, his remains were flown to Cuba amid considerable fanfare and celebrations.

Felix Rodriguez right after Che Guevara's capture.

       Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada Carriles were among the most fervent anti-Castro Cubans who quickly became counter-revolutionary anti-Castro operatives for the United States government right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. At the time the United States had the then secretive Army of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia where it and the unwitting U. S. taxpayers trained soldiers from U.S.-friendly dictatorships such as Batista's in Cuba, Trujillo's in the Dominican Republic, Somoza's in Nicaragua, etc. Then those soldiers would be sent back to protect those dictatorships. In 1959 with immediate plans to recapture Cuba already in the works, the U. S. trained Cubans at Fort Benning to prepare for the April-1961 Brigade 2506 attack at the Bay of Pigs. On the left above in his 2nd Lt. uniform is Felix Rodriguez and on the right similarly attired is 2nd Lt. Luis Posada Carriles, easily the most famed anti-Castro Cuban-American and CIA terrorist. Today both Rodriguez and Posada are heralded Miami citizens.

       Felix Rodriguez is shown above on the right visiting with George H. W. Bush, the former CIA Director, Vice President and President. Rodriguez and almost all of the most-famed anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, including those elected to Congress, had and/or have extremely close relations with the Bush dynasty.

Felix Rodriguez was born in Havana on May 31, 1941.

      Fidel Rodriguez is shown above with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Havana-born anti-Castro zealot who has represented Miami in the U. S. Congress ever since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager.

         Felix Rodriguez is shown above campaigning with Marco Rubio, who is the presidential hopeful now in his second 6-year term in the United States Senate as one of the six most ardent congressional Cuban-American hardliners. Marco Rubio was mentored in Florida by both Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Jeb Bush.

And Guess What?

       I love to watch old movies and I love to read memoirs and biographies. My favorite actress is Maureen O'Hara. She was born in Ireland in 1920 and died at age 95 in 2015 at her grandson's home in Boise, Idaho. In 2004 she wrote "'Tis Myself" and it very beautifully chronicles her amazing life AS A HOLLYWOOD SUPERSTAR. I just finished it and, I swear, I never expected her to write a single word about CUBA. But, to my surprise, she educated me about CUBA, THE CIA, FIDEL CASTRO AND PARTICULARLY CHE GUEVARA!! 

         After two horrible marriages and a fling with Mexican millionaire Enrique Parra, Maureen O'Hara on March 2nd, 1968 married Charles F. Blair who was 11 years older than the then 48-year-old Maureen but he turned out to be the love of her life. They are shown above when he was a pilot for Pan Am but he was already a world-famed, record-holding pilot for the Air Force and had been honored as a Brigadier General with rare tributes and medals by President Harry Truman. After leaving Pan Am and marrying Maureen, Blair started his own airline with 14 seaplanes based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He and Maureen had a home on St. Croix island and she helped him run the airline as well as a popular Caribbean magazine that she published, far away from her fame as a Hollywood superstar, just as Charlie wanted. Maureen, madly in love with Charlie, wondered why all of his pilots were military men. Then she found papers that proved his superb seaplanes were provided by the CIA and she surmised that the CIA created the airline in the Caribbean to spy on Fidel Castro's Cuba, the same CIA that had, for years, been aligned with Mafia figures and Cuban exiles in fervent attempts to assassinate Fidel. As the head of the successful airline and often as a pilot himself, Charlie in 1978 was flying one of his Grumman Goose seaplanes between St. Croix and St. Thomas when an engine blew and he was killed. Maureen, who had been married to Charlie for almost 11 years, began getting strange calls asking such things as, "Who assassinated Charlie?" Already aware of his CIA connections, she began to wonder...did Charlie know too much about something? She discovered that the engine that blew had just been reworked in Puerto Rico and she learned that the pilot who was to take the ill-fated flight backed out at the last minute, forcing Charlie to fly it and its ten passengers. She would wonder the rest of her long life if indeed he had been assassinated at age 69 by...somebody. When Maureen O'Hara died at age 95 in 2015, she was buried beside Charlie at Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia.

               But hey!! Long before she married Charlie Blair in 1968, Maureen O'Hara had intimate knowledge of Havana, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In April of 1959 -- a mere three months after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution -- she went to Cuba to co-star with Alex Guinness in "Our Man in Havana." The photo above shows Maureen in a scene from that movie, which is still on cable movie channels. She was 38-years-old and had been a Hollywood superstar since the great British actor Charles Laughton brought the 18-year-old, red-headed, green-eyed beauty from Ireland in 1939 to the U. S. to co-star with him in the classic movie "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." In April of 1959 when Maureen arrived in Havana, Fidel Castro and his revolutionary soulmate Celia Sanchez were in the U. S. on a 12-day mission trying to make friends with the Eisenhower administration. But Vice-President Richard Nixon and other Washington thugs scuttled those sincere efforts and thus Fidel and Celia returned to Cuba in a defensive mode, with Celia famously declaring, "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives." Celia Sanchez well knew that the transplanted Batistianos in the United States were still powerfully supported by the superpower United States government, but history proves she lived up to her vow. Meanwhile, while filming "Our Man in Havana" beginning in April of 1959 Hollywood superstar Maureen O'Hara got to know Fidel and Che real well...intimately, some say. {Yes, you need to read Maureen's book}.

    But rumors aside, there is ample photographic and other historic documentation that Maureen O'Hara and most of Hollywood's elite, both male and female, were utterly fascinated and/or infatuated with the internationally famed rebel hero Fidel Castro. Also, it is well known that Fidel himself had a special fascination...some say fetish...with redheads -- including Hollywood superstars such as Maureen O'Hara, Rita Hayworth, etc., as well as Dalia Soto Del Valle, his wife from 1980 till the day he died on Nov. 25, 2016.

     A plethora of photos like this seem to indicate that Fidel Castro's infatuation with Maureen O'Hara, and her infatuation with him, was rather well known in Havana and in Hollywood beginning in 1959. Yet, I accept Maureen's explanation when she firmly stated that she was only intrigued with the guerrilla legend who had just led a supposedly over-matched band of rebels to victory over the combined might of a powerful dictator who was supported by the Mafia, the strongest criminal organization in the world, and by the United States, the world's strongest superpower. BUT GUESS WHAT? In her book Maureen O'Hara makes no denial of her infatuation with and love of CHE GUEVARA, which ties in tightly with the themes of this essay -- CROSS-ROADS, CROSS-HAIRS, and Tom Brady's wife Gisele Bundchen's infatuation with CHE GUEVARA that has the U. S. counter-revolutionary bloggers upset in this second week of February, 2017. 

         In her book, Maureen O'Hara revealed that she had many conversations with Che Guevara and was fascinated by, among other things, his intelligence. Fellow rebels like Celia Sanchez said Che in campsites at night would entertain them by reciting, word for word, some of the world's most famous and longest poems. One night when he startled Maureen by recounting even arcane aspects of Ireland's history and its battles, he explained that his name was Che Guevara Lynch and that his grandmother was Irish like Maureen. But beyond her fascination about Che's ties to Ireland, Maureen O'Hara makes it quite plain in her book that she was both infatuated with and in love with the strikingly handsome, charismatic, and awesomely intelligent Che Guevara, the Argentine doctor whose fame related to the Cuban Revolution is second only to Fidel Castro's. On pages 209 and 210 of her book, Maureen O'Hara wrote these words: 
                   "I had met Ernesto 'Che' Guevara very soon after arriving in Cuba. How could I not meet Che? He was one of the great heroes of Latin America. Che was often at the Capri Hotel. I would see him in the restaurant and he'd come to my table to say hello and eventually would sit down and join me. Che could talk about Ireland and all the guerrilla warfare that had taken place there. He knew every battle in Ireland and all of its history. Che knew more about Ireland than John Ford did. I couldn't believe and finally asked, 'Che, you know so much about Ireland and talk constantly about it. How do you know so much?' The Argentine mercenary and former doctor surprised me with his answer. He said, 'Well, my grandmother's name was Lynch and I learned everything I know about Ireland at her knee.' He was Che Guevara Lynch! That famous cap he wore was an Irish rebel's cap.
                      "I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. I believe he was far less a mercenary than he was a freedom fighter. I think he was a product of his grandmother and her teachings. I look back on how young and idealistic Che was when I made that picture. It's hard to believe he had already helped to topple a dictator and liberate a nation. Today he is a symbol for freedom fighters wherever they are in the world and I think he is a good one. When word came of his capture and execution, I was deeply saddened. I have no doubts he had no regrets as he faced his assassin and spoke his final words: 'I know you've come to kill me. Shoot. You are only going to kill a man.'" 

         Maureen O'Hara had memorized Che's last words on this earth, and she personally knew much more about him. She was not just fascinated and infatuated with him. I believe she was deeply in love with him.

          Believe me when I say I was fascinated by Maureen O'Hara's book, and not only because she's my all-time favorite actress. I honestly did not expect her to say a word about Cuba, the CIA, the Caribbean, Fidel Castro or Che Guevara. And most certainly, I was taken aback by her affection for Che, which she was totally unapologetic for even though by the time she wrote the book in 2004 she had lived for decades in the U. S. where the Cuban narrative since 1959 has largely been dictated by counter-revolutionary Che haters and supporters of Felix Rodriguez, Luis Posada Carriles, etc. But, you know, Tom Brady's unfathomable Super Bowl fame and his Supermodel wife's unabashed admiration of Che also caught my attention this week because of the scathing comments in the most high-polished anti-Cuban blogs.

       This is super Tom Brady's famed wife, Gisele Bundchen, wearing her Che Guevara bikini. If you look closely both above and below her navel, you will see that the bikini is festooned with dozens of images of her idol Che Guevara, Cuba's Revolutionary icon. It now begs the question...what does Gisele Bundchen and a billion other Che admirers know that the Cuban narrative in the U. S. doesn't want us to know?

          Or...consider my all-time favorite actress, Maureen O'Hara. She "spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara" and got to know him well...uh, intimately, some say. She probably knew him a lot better than Felix Rodriguez in Miami knows him to this day. So, who do you believe -- Maureen or Felix? {But please...don't ask me that question because, you see, my answer might not be politically correct or even...healthy.} 

Maureen O'Hara

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The U.S.-Cuba Impasse

Too Embedded to End!

      On January 12th, 2017 -- in the closing days of his eight-year administration -- President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that ended, at least temporarily, America's Cuba-only Wet Foot-Dry Foot law that was one of many mandated by the U. S. Congress to appease the most extreme elements of America's counter-revolutionary factions. As with all easily passed Cuban laws in the U. S. Congress, the Wet-Dry policy was designed to hurt Revolutionary Cuba while also further empowering and/or enriching Cuban-Americans. Wet-Dry for years has been a major incentive for Cubans to defect to the U. S. and, unlike all other would-be immigrants, Cubans were immediately home-free the moment their foot touched U. S. soil, complete with financial and other benefits. Like much of America's Cuban policy since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, U. S. laws seeking to hurt Cubans on the island also discriminated wildly in favor of Cubans who defect to the U. S. Prior to Obama's presidency -- the sainted U. S. democracy had never seriously intervened nor had intimidated, uncaring or uninterested U. S. citizens. President Obama's fervent effort to normalize relations with Cuba bravely defied Congress and the counter-revolutionaries. Obama, among many other things, reopened embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961; allowed commercial airplane and cruise ship traffic to and from Cuba for the first time since 1962; and otherwise sliced deeply into the extremely punitive economic embargo of Cuba that had existed for over half-a-century. The Jan. 12-2017 Wet-Dry Foot decision was Obama's final effort at instilling a modicum of democracy into America's extremely discriminatory Cuban policy, one that in Oct.-2016 received a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. But the counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans merely awaited Obama's departure from the White House on Jan. 20-2017. Since then, schemes to erase Obama's sane, patriotic overtures regarding Cuba have been in the works and will earnestly and endlessly continue.

        Yesterday -- Feb. 9-2017 -- the Miami Herald blared this major headline: "U. S. Detains 172 Cuban Migrants Following End of Wet Foot-Dry Foot Policy." The article indicated the 172 Cubans were being held at an undisclosed location while their fate was being decided, along with thousands of other Cubans still trying to enter the U. S. despite the Obama-orchestrated cancellation, at least for the moment, of Wet Foot-Dry Foot. The EFE photo above shows some of the thousands of Cubans temporarily stuck south of the U.S.-Mexican border being fed in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which is just across the Rio Grande River from Laredo, Texas. Mexico and other nations are fed-up with dealing with the trafficking of Cuban migrants.

        The photo above is courtesy of Carl Juste/Miami Herald/AP and it shows a plane-load of Cuban doctors arriving this week at Miami International Airport. That's Dr. Carlos Amigo upfront in the leather jacket. On January 12-2017 when President Obama ended Wet Foot-Dry Foot, he also ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole, another U. S. law enacted by the George W. Bush presidency in 2006 to hurt Cuba and to help the counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans. Cuba has thousands of medical personnel working in the poorest areas of many countries, including Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, etc. Like many other Bush dynasty-inspired Cuban laws, the Medical Parole ruling encouraged and rewarded those Cubans to defect to the U. S. where, like with the Wet Foot-Dry Foot law, they would receive instant and very special privileges unavailable to all other would-be immigrants. But the above plane-load of Cuban doctors arriving in Miami, along with other similar arrivals this week, are being allowed because they supposedly defected prior to Jan. 12-2017 when President Obama ended both Wet Foot-Dry Foot and the Medical Paroles. So, the Wet Foot-Dry Foot Cubans stuck just across the U. S. border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, as well as Medical Parolees arriving by the plane-loads in Miami this week are off-shoots of the Bush-to-Obama-to-Trump U. S. presidential transitions. Obama's historic Democratic two-term administration was sandwiched between Republican administrations that have been or will be collaborative beneficiaries of what amounts to a sub-government of rich and powerful counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans safely and permanently ensconced within the bowels of the proud United States democracy, now and in perpetuity. 

        Meanwhile, the U. S. Coast Guard ships and airplanes -- like those above -- remain diligent in the Florida Straits trying to intercept Cubans enticed to Florida but the expensive success of such missions has merely created higher prices from human traffickers who now emphasize the long, cumbersome and dangerous air-land route to South and Central America and then to the Mexican-American border.

    And meanwhile in Cuba, American flags fly peacefully and serenely beside Cuban flags as Cubans on the island are hopeful that President Obama's legacy prevails in its sane depiction of U.S.-Cuban relations.

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Cuba's Curious Car Culture

End of a Cycle!?

      The photo above was used this week to highlight an article by British journalist Ashley Coates on the Independent.co.uk website. The article's headline asked this question: "Is This the End of the Road for Cuba's Classic Cars." The insightful answers were indeed interesting, revealing, historical and topical.

         Back in the 1950s during the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship, rich Batistiano and Mafiosi figures imported over 125,000 of Detroit's newest, biggest, most expensive and finest autos to the island. On January 1, 1959 when the Batista-Mafia dictatorship fled the charging Cuban Revolution, what was left of the ill-gotten loot also fled the island to hook up with the Cuban-fleeced loot already sent to secretive accounts abroad or to Mafia-connected banks in U. S. cities such as Miami and Newark. But those big fancy cars were among the items left behind on the island. In the decades since 1959 in Revolutionary Cuba, the ingenuity of the Cuban mechanics in keeping those cars running decade after decade has thrilled the world, including historians who are aware that for decades the U. S. embargo and other regime-change schemes have prevented those mechanics from getting the spare parts those cars needed.

       Back in the 1950s, American businessmen, Batistiano thugs and Mafiosi kingpins {including Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante Jr.} were squired around Havana in expensive gas-guzzlers like the yellow behemoth depicted above, which is now utilized by an enterprising Cuban taxi-driver.

       But the Ashley Coates article points out that Havana streets and roads now reflect the efforts made by U. S. President Barack Obama to normalize relations with Cuba, bucking the decades-old trend since 1959 of allowing revengeful and still greedy remnants of the Batista dictatorship to dictate U. S. laws related to Cuba. The above photo shows a brand-new Infiniti on a street in Havana, courtesy of President Obama's legacy. While a handful of counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans in Miami and in Congress still dictate most of America's Cuban narratives and policies, Obama paved the way for the majority will of Americans and Cuban-Americans to at least have a voice in the quagmire of Cuban relations. Ashley Coates, for example, explains that a Cuban-American named Alfonso Albaisa is a top executive at Infiniti and, like most Cuban-born businessmen including those in Miami, Mr. Albaisa wants to do business with Cuba and has no desire to wage economic and physical wars against Cubans on the island for another half-century or so. 

         And that's why the brand-new Infiniti was spotted driving around Havana, that's why Cubans in Cuba should make Cuban decisions, and that's precisely why Ashley Coates ended the article with this sentence:

                      "The Obama Thaw may yet be stalled by the new Trump administration in the United States, but in the meantime Cubans are braced for at least a degree of change on their roads and streets." This concluding sentence, of course, is a reminder that...in a saner and more decent world...Cubans on the island and less greedy, less revengeful, and much more democratic Cubans in the United States would and should finally agree that Cubans actually living in Cuba should be allowed to chart their own roads, streets, and lives.

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A Rejuvenated Cuba

Foreign Firms Plunge In!!

        This brand-new and magnificently modern hotel signals that the island of Cuba plans to survive physically and economically regardless of the threats from the new Trump administration in the United States and the near-collapse of Venezuela, its long-time major financial partner. The official name for this hotel is Gran Hotel Kempinski Manzana La Habana and it is almost ready to open for business as Cuba's first five-star hotel. The Kempinski group is a 120-year-old Swiss company that operates 75 famous five-star hotels in 30 countries. This one is located in Habana Vieja {Old Havana} and has 246 rooms and suites.

  A Kempinski 5-star hotel room in Old Havana.

A Kempinski 5-star terrace, dining, swimming area in Havana.

A powerful, beautiful Swiss investment in Cuba.

       China is among the countries trying to help Cuba recuperate from its massive loss of oil that oil-rich Venezuela had provided in exchange for massive health care provided by Cuba. In the second half of 2016 the oil shipments from Venezuela to Cuba had shrunk by about 50%, down to 55,000 barrels a day. With China's help, Cuba is attempting to sharply increase its own production of oil but also is concentrating on developing renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and even oceanic. The Miami Herald reports this week that Cuba in 2016 repaid $5.2 billion of its foreign debt as a gesture toward encouraging other nations to invest in what looks like a more stable island that is now brimming with economic potential.

       Although his two-term presidency ended a few weeks ago, the legacy of President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba are still in drastic contrast to the previous half-century of U. S. antagonism -- economically, militarily and otherwise -- following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959. Although Obama defied the U. S. Congress by bravely and astutely using Executive Orders to roll back staunchly mandated Congressional laws designed to annihilate Cuba while also enriching and empowering Cuba's prime enemies in the U. S., the new President Trump can rescind Obama's Executive Orders with his own, which he is likely to do. Cuba, anticipating that possibility, is working feverishly with other nations -- from Switzerland to China -- to counteract what might be a sharp renewal of U. S. hubris at a time when the island's two prime Latin American supporters -- Venezuela and Brazil -- are embroiled in economic and political turmoil. But Cuba's famed resilience, boosted by Obama's dynamic tactics that revived long-dormant U. S. commerce, was already legendary.

         Donald Trump fancies himself as a master builder of hotels, such as the one above bearing his name in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Even as President, he may still be fixated on luxury hotels, even in Cuba.

       If his aides show President Trump photos of Cuba's newly built 5-star hotel -- the Gran Hotel Kempinski in Old Havana -- it would be interesting to see what his reaction would be, don't you think?

      Last week American Airlines opened an office in Havana and is now training Cubans to soon run what figures to be a very busy U.S.-Cuba connection. In fact, American is one of nine major U. S. airlines now making daily round-trip flights to ten Cuban cities, including Havana, from many major American cities. 

      This week -- February 7th, 2017 -- Norwegian Cruise Line -- announced that it is sharply "bulking up" its cruises from Miami to Cuba. Norwegian is based in Miami and it is one of many Florida businesses in heated competition with each other to take advantage of the still viable Obama-mandated overtures.

     The leader of Miami's Norwegian Cruise Line is Andy Stuart. Yesterday Andy Stuart released this official statement: "We have seen great demand from our guests for sailing to Cuba and we look forward to providing more opportunities for them to experience the incredibly culture-rich destination on a weekly basis."  

       In 2016 a record four million tourists visited Cuba and that Obama legacy, if it is to be blunted, will take some obnoxious doing by President Trump, hurting American businesses. The two tourists above were watching a huge cruise ship filled with more tourists arrive in Cuba. Prior to President Obama, commercial cruise and air traffic from the U. S. to Cuba had been illegal for over half-a-century to sate the revenge, economic and political motives of a few extremists who still chafe from the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. The photo above, made possible by Obama, also spawned such things as the new 5-star Swiss-built Kempinski Hotel in Old Havana but, more importantly, already the influx of legal cruise and air traffic from America has created many jobs and some significant profits for American businesses, including many in Florida run by Cuban-Americans. And as Cuba waits to see if President Trump will return to the pre-Obama U. S. tactic of regime-change and other fierce animosity towards Cuba, the island itself is casting sterner gazes elsewhere...from Switzerland to China.

      At this Havana news conference, Josefina Vidal -- Cuba's Minister related to U. S. relations -- was asked about the U. S. presidential transition from "the friendly Obama to the supposedly unfriendly Trump." She replied, "Every day since January 1, 1959, our primary goal has been to defend our hard-earned sovereignty and to make our citizens safer, better educated, healthier and more prosperous. We have succeeded in many of those things but not-so-much in others, with fierce opposition from neighboring America being an ongoing obstacle. The Obama presidency, for the first time really, has afforded us at least the opportunity to prioritize things other than just survival. If the Obama advances are curtailed, we will just have to adjust...again." 

Cuba's primary ADJUSTER -- Josefina Vidal.

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