CUBAN AMERICANS: Hard-liners, moderates, appeasers
October 31, 2007 | The Miami Herald
By Frank Calzon
According to some analysts, Cuban Americans — depending on their reaction to President Bush’s recent Cuba speech — may be cataloged as hard-line, moderate or appeasers. But can they?
If one were to look beyond the labels, this is what one would find:
• “Hard-liners” are Cuban Americans who believe that the real issue is freedom and not U.S.-Cuba policy. They agree with Bush that the Cuban regime needs to talk to the Cuban people and allow Cubans to talk before negotiating with anybody else, including Washington. In a role reversal, it is Bush — not the Cuban government leaders — who insists that Cubans, not foreigners, decide the destiny of their island.
Why should those Cubans be identified as hard-liners? American civil rights leaders who demanded the dismantling of all segregated facilities — drinking fountains, buses and hotels — were not. Today, neither is Burma’s courageous opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who calls on the outside world not to travel to Burma and for foreign governments to put sanctions on Rangoon’s military regime. And the label, which is sometimes used as synonymous with ”extremists,” was not applied to the South Africans who urged the world to boycott that country’s racist regime in order to achieve change in Johanesburg.
• Some “moderate” exiles demonstrate their moderation by continuing to have illusions about negotiating with the Castro regime. Why do they say so little about the government-sponsored rapid deployment brigades who throw rocks, yell obscenities and sometimes threaten to burn the homes of Cuban dissidents? Is Martha Beatriz Roque, the former Cuban political prisoner and dissident leader from Havana who supports the embargo, a hard-liner?
It is time to go beyond the simplistic question of, Are you for or against the embargo?
If you ask me, ‘Are you for lifting the sanctions in exchange for the release of political prisoners, the relaxation of the Castro brothers’ economic decrees that prevent Cuba from achieving its economic potential, the opening of all segregated facilities to all Cubans where now only foreigners are allowed?” my answer is a resounding Yes.
But if I am asked, ”Are you in favor of lifting the embargo so that American tourists could join other foreigners in Cuba’s segregated hotels, so that the regime continues to abuse and beat not only political prisoners but their relatives, so that Cuban newspapers and radio stations continue to function under the strictest censorship?” I would have to say No.
Cuban-American moderates, as quoted in some articles, want the United States to offer partial lifting of the sanctions in the hope that the Castro dynasty will carry internal reforms. They ignore the fact that the business as usual approach has been tried for years by Spain, Canada and others and has done nothing but help to keep the regime in place.
The Bush administration and other democratic governments want to help the Cuban people rebuild a prosperous, democratic Cuba. The naysayers see a nefarious plan behind the president’s offer; yet only those siding with the Soviet Union described in similar terms the Marshall Plan, which, generously funded by the United States, made possible the reconstruction of a democratic and prosperous Europe after World War II.
• Then there are the “appeasers” — Miami Cuban exiles who broadcast radio programs in Miami taped by the Castro regime in Cuba. Cuban Americans cannot win for losing. If we criticize such outrages we are labeled extremists and hard-liners. If we ignore the Miami pro-Castro radio and TV programs, we are told that Cuban Americans no longer support U.S. sanctions.
Labeling Cuban Americans is a side issue. Cuban-American public opinion can be easily ascertained by looking at the votes of six Cuban Americans of both parties in the U.S. Congress. At the end of the day, Bush and the Central European governments who support the dissidents are right: The issue is neither U.S. policy on Cuba nor the European Union’s policy toward Havana, but the inalienable right of Cubans to get rid of a murderous regime.
Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Dear Mr. Calzon,
Your absolutely right. When is the outrageous abuse of civil rights and human dignity going to end? I was born in Cuba and came here at the age of 2 in the original exile in 1962, I have heard about the atrocities all my life from my family and documentaries which was my only way of connecting to the place of my Birth.
That there is a Tyrant continuing to demolish this island and its people is heart wrenching. How many lives have been affected by this regime…too many to even begin to count from generation to generation.
I love this Country I was brought up in however we are a displaced people, the dreams and hopes our Parents had for us in a place where they themselves were born now will never come to fruition, not in that way anyhow.
There is a sadness…a sadness of loss, a sadness of not ever knowing and the sadness of seeing the Country where generations of our Families were born and raised, our culture just fade away into ruin and poverty.
What was ever acomplished except destruction…how very sad.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:14 pm
This article was published on one of the national Spain daily news El Pais.
We arrived in Havana with no intention of stepping on Varadero. We thought we fitted only with a backpack of less than 9 kilos going to let us see another side of the Cuba Desk. Without political bias, no preset plans, and accommodation at home of a friend who works in the Spanish capital as cooperating in a United Nations agency. But Cuba is too complicated to try to know the way, and the shock has been so enormous that many things, from our perception of tourism to our social and political principles have been staggering.
To reach the residential area of Vedado from the popular Habana Vieja there are only two possible routes: either you walk along the waterfront, or you take a reality check by Havana Centro. We walked aimlessly until we approached the first hustlers. Dizzy from the heat and his speech to be drawn into the most sordid streets of the city. We could have taken up the nails, but we were lucky and our first contact with the picaresque Caribbean only cost us 5 pesos convertibles – CUC (just under 5 euros). In return, and without the intention of our impromptu guide, we had a first printing of everyday habanero which conditioned the rest of our perceptions about the reality of more institutionalized revolution in history. We knew about the poverty belts surrounding Mexico City, Caracas and the trash farms but had never seen favelas with marble stairs. None of our acquaintance who had visited Cuba before had talked about something else other than the joy Cuban, salsa, rum, the party, the Caribbean. It is also true that no one had mentioned sex, so we should have suspected that we hid data.
We walked in the midst of a foul odor, observed by people drinking in the doors of the “solares” dilapidated mansions inhabited by a family trapped into four walls – including what in the past was a landing at the best colonial-style and where share stoves and toilets is the way of living. We let ourselves be dragged into the building where Strawberry and Chocolate was filmed, to which our “leaders” convinced that we took was what we wanted to see as good Europeans backpacking. As they strove to associate different rooms with the sets of the film we saw inside the houses and rooms, wondering where the hell all these people been saying that there is poverty in Cuba
Arriving in Havana Vieja was like arriving at a theme park. Stately homes, clean streets, policed by Castro’s men who seek to limit the treatment between Cubans and tourists. Cubans are the victims of the Caribbean apartheid in the XXI century. Cubans who are banned from entering the Hotels made for tourist, buses, and fancy shops also for the people who have the money. The Cubans live in a world apart created for the nationals who are banned from entering to all tourists sites. And not even a question of purchasing anything, with all that is reprehensible classism. It’s even worse. Cubans to ask them do they justify this separation and tourist privileges assuming that “the Cuban are argumentative,” “there are people employed by the revolution who’s only business is to annoy foreigners, rather than restricting access.” Is that what hospitality and good treatment meant in Europe? Why is the whole country treating the visitor under a question mark?
We walked the streets looking for a tax to goi back home when we come to the very famous La Bodeguita del Medio, over flowing with “tourists” believing and fully satisfied with their consorting with the Cubans who sought only their dollars or their passports and I’m not judging them for it. I say it sincerely seek not to judge the opportunity to improve in each of the foreigners who are on the street. If I were Cuban, would be a Balsera or a hooker like every woman there is. Never have I felt such anguish over a country in such a short time. That apathy of the Cubans, seeing life drain trough the fingers (If I were here where would I go to learn how to enjoy?), There is personal mutilation of aspirations everywhere. The Cuban people gets up every day thinking how they will get to the next, they have no long or short term projects. They all criticize Fidel, without mentioning his name, because Fidel is no longer a man. For the Cubans He is a God to whom they can’t pray. There is not longer a person within a residence or a family unit who trusts anyone. That’s the power of the Revolution.
We return home exhausted and demoralized by what awaits us in the coming days. Nobody is going to take away and feel that all stories of joy and brotherhood-Cuban abroad are priced by dollars.. We expected the landlady of the building to be waiting at least with a cafe. Over the next few days we always have our many talks right on her empty kitchen: she would answer our questions and we will assume that was a novelty in her daily routine. Her name is Mari, educated like all Cubans she is an engineer. Mari talks about her husband and his travels to Europe. He went to Russia as an employee for the Cuban government in the early 90s. It was around 1990 when the marked collapsed and the beginning of the sarcastic “Special Period in Peacetime”. Sarcastic, because what really begins in the 90s was the path of solitude of the Cuban Revolution, it ceases to be a colony of Russia and can no longer selling sugar to oil price.
It reflects the time in the books of Pedro Juan Gutierrez in “Dirty Havana Trilogy” or “El Rey de la Habana”, only cruder or Zoe in “No Daily’. These are the years of hiding pigs on the city roofs top and throwing waste into the street. Times of using the bath tub as a chicken farm. It is the beginning of the process of dying from malnutrition the slowly is attacking much of the population of Havana. The news may does not reflect the number of people dying of hunger, but neither shows the number of abortions and the numbers are shuffled up to 40% of pregnancies. Slow starvation won’t kill you, at least not in a few days it can take a lifetime, but even that concept includes more food than the small portion of rice and beans the daily dish of a Cuban family.
Mari our landlady told us that once before she divorced her husband to marry an Argentine with legal residence in Spain. Vigilantes frustrated their plans and when they got to Spain both were returned to their native countries locked in their respective personal crises. So today, the landlady lives with her ex-husband, another engineer, also at home, 24 hours a day because it costs him more money going to work than stay home. She is pure rage. He is pure apathy. I asked what they believe will happen when Fidel dies. And she replied, “We will kill each other” and then she said “I keep telling myself that at least people here have weapons, or it will be like what we all saw happened in Venezuela”, and she looks at me seriously and said: “We have not guns , but we have machetes”.
Looking for a manual of Cuban history told by Cuban among one of the many book stalls in the area I met the writer Guadalberto . We were induced to take our conversation to another perspective. So far we have only had contact with a marginal sector and middle-aged people. Maybe all his criticism and despair were taken pity-seeking (ie, money) or fatigue life. Guadalberto study economics but earns more money as a peddler. Obviously, if you compare the 15 CUC which is the national average monthly wage to the 8 CUC he asks to “gringos” for each book that sells second-hand. We said that’s not going to your God uh? He told us he reads what foreigners will send him because the books Cuba are censored or simply withdraw or perhaps published in parts. He says that his favorite book was 1984, George Orwell’s but it got censored.
A single eye cannot see it all; Big Brother is not as powerful as he thinks. But then again if you are the “little sister” and that’s how we felt when we got back home Mari’s neighborhood is belongs to the Committee of the Revolution Defense. Known as the CDR they operate in every block and their function is to observe technique that Chavez wants to copy for his Bolivarian Circles. Perhaps Castro’s first intention was idealism and community work. But today CDR’s are the supervisory bodies of neighborhood life. Mari’s neighbor knows she rents rooms to tourists, like nearly all Cubans with a spare room in a decent house. For the fact that placing a room available for tourists, (not a Cuban or a foreigner with a Cuban), you pay an initial fee of around 100 euros (remembering that the base salary does not exceed the monthly CUC).
It is difficult to get out of the circuit set to foreigners, through ignorance and not wanting to get anyone in trouble, spent a considerable amount of money compared to other trips, not only for South America, if not even in Europe. If it seems to us face life in Havana? As do the Cubans? There is mischief, and magic realism. It is misery, begging and moral abuse. Abuse to vomit, because tourism makes million which do not reach the ordinary people, because they waste resources because bias access to information so that the slightest leave no option to choose.. Why not let you go or you slowly suffocate if you stay.
Because you sold to country to the youth of the world as the paradigm of the struggle for freedom and equality or is it because the left of me want to says DICTATOR of that country with all the right letters and founder criticizes while wine tasting with the Castro family the master controller of all Cuban tourism companies. Because they sell populism and demagoguery as solidarity. Because you like how the blockade is responsible, Castro is guilty. Because the fields are uncultivated and killing a cow is more punishable than killing a person. Because official data denies any incidence of AIDS but unprotected sex is right in your face. And condoms are not included in the limited monthly supply quote.
Guadalberto wonders if it was the first time we were in Cuba. The first and last, we answered. Sure, it concluded, you prefer to return to Soma. Don’t deny it; It But not the material world is not what I miss. It is his ability to change people’s life what causes me anxiety. It is easier to bear the shame of living in a happy world where no one is aware of the opportunities it has. It is simply the right of having choices.
In summary, the glorious Revolution has been a huge failure. But one thing is certain, Castro and his group of powerful “put fear” commanders,. They live better than us and they are kings compared to the impoverished and demoralized people we met in Cuba. It is not fair and it is time we awaken to the harsh reality of this beautiful but abused people.
Flee from the land where one man controls all the powers, it is a land of slaves.
Simón Bolívar
May 25th, 2010 at 8:25 am
End the Blockade of Cuba. Notice I did not use the false word of “embargo”! This is the longest economic siege in history – bar none. 1960 to the present – 50 YEARS.!!
Then, the semantic juggling practiced by the U.S. government to deceive and confuse (propaganda} as regards its true intentions towards the Cuban Revolution, as a subversive strategy in the field of ideas. Possibly one of the best examples we can invoke to define the most important U.S.measure against the Cuban economy is the substitution of the word “blockade” with “embargo”. Their intentions are still very much alive today. If only the AVERAGE U.S. citizens knew what these terrible intentions really are……….even right now. President Obama knows and I hope he has at least as much success with ending this Blockade as he had with his Medical Assistance program.{which is at least a start compared to our Canadian med. plan, } however……well done Sir!
Free Cuba Now!!!
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