Marking Half A Century Of Resistance

50 Years Ago, Fidel Castro gives a 4 hour speech on the road to Havana

In a predictable and conflicted article, The New York Times, the newspaper of record, noticed that today the Cuban Revolution is celebrating its 50th Anniversary, its Golden Anniversary.

The Times writes in the fourth paragraph of an article focusing on how four bodies, presumably from Cuba but perhaps from elsewhere, washed onto a Florida beach in August and have not yet been identified:

Fifty years ago today, many Cubans cheered when Fidel Castro seized power in Havana, and even now the revolution attracts many fans — as evidenced by the Canadian tour agencies advertising trips “to celebrate five decades of resilience.”

But the bodies [the unidentified ones in the morgues] speak to a different legacy. Here in South Florida, where roughly 850,000 Cubans have settled over the years, repeated waves of painful exile and family separation define the Castro era. The revolution never met their hopeful expectations, the island they love has slipped into decay, and for many, this week’s golden anniversary provides little more than a flashback to traumas, old and new.

What a wonderful setting for remembering the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. In a morgue. With bodies that might come from the US. That's what the Times feels that Cuba deserves.

Of course, the senseless half century US blockade and the economic failure of the USSR and a continual US policy of economic destabilization might have something to do with the revolution's present economic difficulties. But never mind seeing the many causes of Cuba's complicated isolation and problems. It was "the revolution [that] never met their hopeful expectations..." and, according to the Times, not other factors.

The Times continues:

But for many, the revolution’s 50th anniversary has inspired a period of reflection. Cubans across Florida say they are mourning privately, or trying to forget, and formal commemorations are being kept to a minimum. If Miami in the 1980s was a place of militants, where “Havana vanities come to dust,” as Joan Didion famously wrote, today it is also a home to newer arrivals who ask: Must the pain go on?

A poll released this month by Florida International University shows that 55 percent of Cubans in Florida favor lifting the United States embargo against Cuba, up from 42 percent a year ago. It is the first time a clear majority has held that position since the survey began in 1991.

Even among those who support the 46-year-old embargo, like Senator Mel Martinez, a Republican, continued damage to families has become a more prominent concern.

And while we're at it, let's just ignore, in apportioning the causes for "private mourning," the Bush administration's severely restricting the amount of money US people can send to their relatives in Cuba and its clinging to a blockade that causes "continued damage" to families separated by the Florida Straits.

Even the GoldfatherII had a clearer, more nuanced understanding of the Cuban Revolution.

There are many, many reasons to take serious issue with the Cuban government's record on human rights and freedom of expression and lack of democracy. I don't deny that. But it's a mistake, a tragic mistake to overlook the fact that 50 years ago Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Battista was a US puppet and his nation was ripe for a popular Revolution. He was overthrown by a home grown revolution led by Fidel Castro. And it's equally a mistake to overlook that for half a century a mere 90 miles away from Florida, Castro and his government, who nationalized and seized many foreign owned properties, have weathered exploding cigars, the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts, destablization, fly overs, threats, a blockade, isolation, and persistent attempts to overthrow him from the most powerful nation on earth.

Credit where credit is due.

Nobody could have predicted 50 years ago that in 2008 Cuba would celebrate the Golden Anniversary of its Revolution in continued isolation. And nobody could have predicted that the US's policy would be such a gigantic failure.

Fidel, Fidel, Fidel

Bet you didn't know that El Lider Supremo spoke such an idiomatic Ingles. Well, he does. And you know what? Cuban beers, Cervesas Bucanero and Cristal are really fantastica!!

h/t The Latin Americanist

Fidel Resigns

A Havana billboard (AP Photo)

The text in English of Fidel's message today. It, of course, is long and rambling. How could anyone expect anything else after all of this time?

Fidel has been a genius at survival. He's weathered everything from the Bay of Pigs invasion, exploding cigars, fly overs by former Battista stooges, the bloqueo, the end of the Soviet Union. And he's done it 90 miles from the US. He's provided excellent health care and universal education. Unlike the US, he's managed to prevent Hurricane disasters. He's managed to form alliances throughout the hemisphere and world despite US attempts to destabilize and depose him by making ordinary Cubans suffer. And, most important, he's left Cuba's direction to the Cubans.

Has he been perfect? No. Has he committed human rights violations? Yes. But he's due enormous credit for maintaining his Revolution for 50 years and his unwavering insistence on autonomy for Cuba. I only wish more US citizens could appreciate exactly what he's done for Cuba. And the extent of US efforts to thwart him.

Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

Bush's Fidel, Fidel's Bush

cross posted at daily Kos


This past Thursday, October 24, George W Bush again made it abundantly clear that he has no concept of recent history or of the present circumstances in Cuba.

In a speech Bush called on the Cuban Army, that's right, the Cuban Army to overthrow the Cuban government. London Times reported:

President Bush yesterday called on Cuba’s army to overthrow the “dying” regime of Fidel Castro and side with the forces of democracy, the latest attempt by a US president to end Havana’s half century of Communist rule.

Mr Bush, in his first major address on Cuba since Mr Castro fell ill and handed power to his brother Raul last July, laid out new steps to encourage democracy on the island. They included an international “freedom fund” funded by US allies to reconstruct Cuba if it ended one-party rule.

And that wasn't an isolated statement. Not by a long shot:

In a direct message to the Cuban military and police, Mr Bush said “when Cubans rise up to demand the liberty they deserve, you can defend a dying order by using force against your own people” or, he said, the military can embrace democracy.

“There’s a place for you in a free Cuba,” Mr Bush said.

A free Cuba. One hardly knows what Bush's conception of that place would be like. Would Cubans have to give up their free health care so they could have a system like ours? Would they have to give up their research into stem cells so that they could uphold fundamentalist values? Would they have to repatriate those who fled their prisons during the Mariel escapes? Would they continue to have to be spied upon, wiretapped, surveilled, data-mined without court supervision? Would they have to institute a regressive tax structure so that the poor supported the rich? Would they have to return to the US industries they nationalized? Would they have to return land that the Revolution distributed? Bush isn't saying.

The specifics be damned, Bush was full of tough talk:

In a reference to Raul Castro, Mr Bush said the US “will not support the old way with new faces.” He predicted that democracy was coming to Cuba, and that the people of Cuba can “hear the dying gasps of a dying regime.” Mr Bush is the tenth US president to call for the overthrow of Castro, who seized power in 1959. The policy of successive US governments, including Mr Bush’s, has been to isolate Cuba economically and diplomatically with the goal of undermining Castro’s rule.

That approach has yet to succeed, however. In recent years Castro has received significant economic aid from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and China.

Bush also offered internet access to Cubans and a scholarship program for Cuban youth if Havana moved toward democracy. But that's already coming from Venezuela and Beijing.

And when Bush says that democracy is coming, the usual comparison is to that bastion of recently overthrown dictatorship and instantly imposed democracy, Iraq.

Bush ended his speech by proclaiming, "Viva Cuba Libre!"

Immediately after the speech, Cuba, of course, accused Bush of encouraging violent uprisings against the government. That's no surprise. And it seems justifiable. After all, the US has encouraged uprisings in one way or another, ranging from overflights, and outright invasions, to exploding cigars, and attempted poisonings for almost 50 years. It's nothing new.

Meanwhile, according to Reuters today Fidel weighed in on the Bush speech.

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro poked fun at President George W. Bush [today] for proclaiming "Long Live Free Cuba," likening it to Spain's king saying the same during his colonial rule over the island. /snip

The slogan was first used by Cuban independence fighters, known as Mambisis, in 1868 as they began their decades-long war against Spain's colonial rule. It was also the battle cry of Fidel Castro's guerrilla fighters in the late 1950s.

Raul Castro often ends speeches with the slogan instead of Fidel Castro's "Motherland or Death."

"I never imagined I would hear the words coming from the mouth of a U.S. president 139 years later," Castro said in an essay titled "Bush, Mambi?" carried by the official media.

"It's as if a king in those times, or his governor, proclaimed 'Viva Cuba Libre,'" Castro said.

According to Reuters, in his speech

Castro compared the Mambisis, who freed their slaves, with President Abraham Lincoln's abolition of slavery, then quoted Lincoln's famous words in reference to the Bush speech.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time or all of the people part of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time," Castro said.

Cuba on Sunday marked the 48th anniversary of the death of revolutionary hero Camilo Cienfuegos, who disappeared in a plane crash, and earlier this month that of Guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara.

"For what their names symbolize, we respond to the false Mambi: Viva Lincoln! Viva Che! Viva Camilo!" Castro concluded.

So, here we go again. A war of words. A show. The Republican politics of stupidity. Didn't anyone understand the origin of the quote? Has Republican cronyism displaced every government functionary with even moderate intelligence?

If Bush were serious about fostering democracy in Cuba, it would be irresistible in Cuba if he simply took down the blockade. That would allow trade and it would permit US citizens to visit. That would immediately move Cuba toward democracy. But fostering democracy isn't what this latest dust up is about. No. It's just Neanderthal politics. It's about Bush, Mr. 24%, hanging on to the last vestige of his dying support in South Florida, in the Cuban expat community.

It's nothing new. And, of course, it's just not helpful to US interests.