“...it is very doubtful whether Cuba would have reached even the relative prosperity which it did in fact achieve had it not been for large American investments.”
With all its problems, the most important of which was political, Cuba in
1958 remained one of the more advanced and successful Latin American societies.
The revolutionary version of pre-Castro history has been so widely diffused
in the American and European media during the last four decades that
such an assertion seems preposterous on its face. It is not, however, an opinion
confined to disaffected Cuban exiles or Anglo-Saxon conservatives. No less an
authority than veteran Communist Party chieftain Aníbal Escalante is on
record as avowing that “Cuba was not one of the countries with the lowest standard
of living of the masses in Latin America, but on the contrary one of those
with the highest standard of living.”
Quotes from Cuba: The Morning After by Mark Falcoff
Before I go any further I must add that my article which was not intended to be political but which has obviously upset some of you, used the phrase about rich Americans exploiting Cuba because that is quite simply the way that it is portrayed in Britain and Europe.
Ah, my point exactly, this is the European perspective that is making its way back to Cuba.
My mother witnessed at first hand the barbarity and repression of Batista's police and the poverty which many Cubans lived with at the time. She witnessed a small boy of no more than 8 years old being shot by Batista's police in cold blood and yet you say that Cuba was more tolerant than Britain before 1959, people were not being murdered by the police in 1950's Britain!My first source (see above) does a more than adequate job of discussing Batista.
I don't know about you, but my mother brought me up with a saying that had there been no ---------- (can't remember the date of Batista's coup), there would have been no 26th of July. But Basista's regime was a far cry from what replaced it.
One of the many books that I have read and which goes into detail about the living standards of Cubans before Castro is Dr Eric William's `From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969. The late Dr Williams was the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and no communist or apologist for Castro but a well respected democraticaly elected politician and Historian. Perhaps you should read this book and the many others like it, that will tell you of what living standards Cubans had before Castro.Here's a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957 : "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class," it starts. "Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers. The average wage for an 8 hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage then in the U.S." (Movie Critics Aghast at Andy Garcia's The Lost City by Humberto Fontova)
My father was an exile from Batista and from what my parents have told me, the ones who fled the Island in the immediate aftermath of Castro's revolution were the crooks of the Batista government and US criminals whom the FBI were arresting as they got off of planes in Miami.Here, I take offense. Is this meant to imply that people who got out early when they saw the writing on the wall were criminals of supporters of Batista? While a striking vignette, I assure you, my parents weren't.
On the subject of de Valera, the Irish writer Tim Pat Coogan who wrote a recent biography failed to find any verification of de Valera's father's identity, although he quite possibly was a Cuban. Another connection between Cuba and Ireland that you failed to mention although there might be a reason for this is that Che Guevara's mother's family came from Co. Galway.Principles play an important role in American foreign policy and we should not callously abandon them in Cuba in the pursuit of mollifying a domestic constituency for minor economic gains or in the hope, some would argue quixotically, that trade, tourism and investments will soften a hardened dictatorship and produce a regime change toward democracy...
... If anything, the easing of economic sanctions on Cuba without major concessions from the Cuban government would send the wrong message “to the enemies of the United States” in the Hemisphere and elsewhere: that a foreign leader can seize U.S. properties without compensation; allow the use of his territory for the introduction of nuclear missiles aimed at the United Sates; espouse terrorism and anti-U.S. causes throughout the world; and eventually the United States will “forget and forgive,” and reward him with tourism, investments and economic aid. Moreover, one could argue that Cuba has an even higher burden to meet in a post September 11, 2001 world since it has clearly chosen to side with the likes of Iran and other terror states, individuals, and groups.
Food for thought.
The only people being hurt by this total embargo on Cuba are real American workers who lose sales to places like Communist China just so the Cuban colonists in South Florida can vent their spite in a perfectly meaningless way, no mater what the cost to the people who gave them refuge. The ingratitude and disdain of the Cuban colonists for native-born Americans (not to mention native Americans, just ask my cousins among the Seminoles), coupled with their unearned sense of entitlement just boggles the mind.
Now, I ask you, could I let that stand? Henry Gomez had already engaged, but I had to chime in. My comment-
Mr Deal:From whence this vitriol? Cuban colonists?
First, Cuba expropriated millions of dollars of American, not Cuban American, property. Are you going to tell large American corporations like OfficeMax, which has one of the largest claims, to just forget about what they are owed?
Second, to whom are you going to sell American wares? The average Cuban makes twenty dollars a month. You are going to sell to a government that doesn't pay its bills. Just check the financial papers. It essentially defaulted on its debt in 1986. Ask Mexico, India, Russia among others about selling on credit to Cuba. And you will have to sell on credit.
Third, I seriously doubt that companies give up doing business with a market the size of the United States because it would interfere with a market of eleven million impoverished souls.
As a Cuban American, I have no sense of entitlement. In actuality, I grew up as a second class citizen because of it. As to ingratitude, you can not be more mistaken. I once read that you have never seen an American flag being burned by a Cuban exile or a Cuban American. And it's true. Finally, if in its largess this country provided refuge for the Cuban diaspora, it is no more than it provided for your forbears, so get over it.
H/T CUBAWATCHER
Many of these characters, sitting in the basement in their underwear as one presidential candidate is wont to describe their ilk, were just making sport, and this is the type of case Anastasio Blanco was writing about in Babalu not so long ago:
For too long, many of us in the Cuban community have exerted vast amounts of energy in countering the nonsensical claims of a bunch of raving madmen.
Still, the mad emailer could not resist and stooped to commenting on a Miami Herald Tribune article. Aside from compulsion, there is the question of whether that type of filth should go unchallenged. The discussion was so beyond the pale that it didn't merit any type of reasonable response, and I felt it impolitic to question their parentage, so I fell back on my teaching experience with just a touch of Brooklyn.Somewhere between 1960 and today, something at the UN has seriously gone wrong. The speech by Dag at the end is impressive.
