Hurricane Irma was Unkind!
Not surprisingly, Will Grant of the London-based BBC has provided the best coverage from Cuba as the island now tries to recover from Hurricane Irma. His latest headline: "Hurricane Irma: Cuba Faces Period of Darkness and Rebuilding."
Surprisingly to some, the Al Jazeera network still has some of broadcast journalism's best reporters although many -- such as Ali Velshi and Morgan Radford -- have been hired away by NBC and other networks. From Cuba Al Jazeera's Julia Galiano has filed brilliant reports on the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, such as the one above that features a heart-broken Cuban woman in tears. Yes, Cubans cry too.
The streets of the famed Vedado district of Havana remain flooded. Resident Yaritza Mendoza told the BBC's Will Grant: "This didn't even happen during the so-called Storm of the Century in 1993." As she was talking, a forensic team was removing the body of an 87-year-old victim, the 10th Cuban fatality of the storm.
The Cuban government and individual citizens are doing the best they can to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. Accustomed to natural and man-made hurricanes, Cuba 's recovery and resilience is left to Cubans. Theirs is a sovereign nation, a gift provided in 1959 by the Revolution. But most of the rest of the Caribbean includes island nations governed with the help of rich foreign nations, especially the U. S., the UK, France and the Netherlands. Russia has now sent some aid to Cuba.
While Havana itself took a terrible hit from Irma, to the northeast the fishing village of Caibarien and outlying islands like Cayo Coco were particularly devastated.
This map of the Caribbean shows Cuba as its largest island nation...and arguably its most beautiful and certainly its most vulnerable. As a starkly independent nation and the only one that has been severely punished by the nearby superpower United States since 1959, Cuba, for the most part, is left to fend for itself the best it can.
Cuba's great young broadcast journalist, Rosy Amaro Perez, lives in a section of Havana that was particularly hard hit by Hurricane Irma. She is my friend so I anxiously inquired about Rosy and her little daughter Mariana. She replied, "Thanks. We're fine. My house has been damaged. But we are alive. That's the important thing."
Rosy has helped the iconic photo above to be re-posted thousands of times by the social media. It shows the stoic resilience of Cubans playing dominoes on a flooded street in Havana. The caption to this Rosy-propelled photo said: "Se llama resiliencia. Y caracter. En fine, Cuba." {"It's called resilience. And character. Anyway, Cuba."}.
As an American, I worried about Rosy Amaro Perez and her little daughter Mariana. And I still worry about them even after Rosy told me they are "fine" although their house is "damaged." I say that because most Americans, shamefully, don't give a damn about Rosy and her daughter. That is a product of anti-Cuban propaganda that has permeated the U. S. media since January of 1959 when the Batista-Mafia leaders fled the island only to set up shop on U. S. soil with Little Havana in Miami being their new capital. Meanwhile in Revolutionary Cuba, the island can be proud of young adults like Rosy Amaro Perez who are more beautiful, more intelligent, better educated and more decent than their richer and more powerful foreign enemies.
In America since the 1950s the unholy alliance between the self-serving Bush dynasty and two generations of vicious but unchecked counter-revolutionary Cuban-American benefactors like Marco Rubio have shamed America and Democracy into receiving its well-deserved 191-to-0 condemnation of its Cuban policy in the United Nations. But unfortunately, the same propagandized and cowardly Americans who don't give a damn about Rosy Amaro Perez and her little daughter in Havana also don't have enough patriotism to give a damn about America and Democracy.
Thus, in September of 2017 the most famed Latin American terrorist, Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles, still reigns as one of the most heralded citizens of Little Havana in Miami, along with counter-revolutionary zealots Marco Rubio, Mario Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Carlos Curbelo in the U. S. Congress. A strong majority of South Florida's two million Cuban-Americans strongly favor normal relations with Cuba but only counter-revolutionary zealots seem eligible to being elected to the U. S. Congress from South Florida. Of course, neither most Americans nor the U. S. media have the guts to question such things in America's Democracy.
Before Hurricane Irma slammed into Cuba, the Jamaica Observer used the above photo to report that Cuba "typically" sent doctors and other medical workers -- "750 in all" -- to help out in already-devastated islands, including multiple nations governed by and replenished by the United States, England, France and the Netherlands.
The self-serving nexus of the Bush dynasty with counter-revolutionary Cubans started way back in the 1950s but, regarding hurricanes, it made particular headlines with the presidency of George W. Bush, the son of former CIA director and former President George H. W. Bush. President George W. Bush's Secretary of Commerce was Havana-born counter-revolutionary Carlos Gutierrez when two back-to-back hurricanes mauled Cuba, destroying over 200,000 homes. Many nations aided Cuba in that recovery but Gutierrez shamefully and cowardly represented the U. S. response. He made as if the U. S. had X-number of dollars to help Cuba's recovery but insisted it would only go to dissidents. Gutierrez held news conferences, upping the X-number of dollars each time but just teasing Cuba. He well knew Cuba was already tired of U. S. tax dollars going to dissidents as a component of the Cuban-exile effort to regain control of the island. Of course, to this day the shameful Gutierrez teasing has never been questioned by the post-1959 equally cowardly American citizens.
And ultra-rich and still-unchecked second generational Counter-Revolutionaries now abound in the U. S. to harass and dog Cuba while hiding behind the superpower might of the U. S. government and the super apathy of unpatriotic Americans.
The Diaz-Balart brothers Lincoln and Mario epitomize how very much the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 reshaped both the island and America. Rafael Diaz-Balart, the father of Lincoln and Mario, was a key Minister in the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship and then one of the richest and most zealous of the Counter Revolutionaries in Miami. Of course, Lincoln and Mario were elected to the U. S. Congress as Counter Revolutionaries with Americans still not suppose to wonder why the Miami area can't elect a Cuban who favors normal relations with Cuba even though such Cuban-Americans even in Miami constitute a very strong majority.
And so, in this month of September-2017 -- many decades removed from the 1950s -- Americans are still not supposed to give a damn when a precious, young and talented Cuban mother and her daughter are simultaneously assaulted by Hurricane Irma and the unconscionable heartlessness of an American Cuban policy that rightfully gets a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. And now you know, I hope, why I say the Cuban Revolution says a lot more about the United States of America than it says about Cuba. Yet, as a patriotic democracy-loving American, I will state for the record that...I care about innocent, egregiously targeted Cubans.
