Powerful piece, LV. This movie sounds like it's worth seeing.
"Yet there are people who embrace Fidel believing the myth of a peasant led revolution that ousted the rich and gave right to an oppressed mass. They are the ones who need a history lesson, so they can learn that the rebel army led by Fidel was packed by white rich college educated kids, as well as middle class kids and everyone who wanted Batista out."
Absolutely right. The ignorance of people who support Castro, your Jimmy Carter's, your Harry Belafonte's, and others, is absolutely stunning and disgusting.
"I’d like to see all those people who call Bush a Nazi, a tyrant, a dictator or even dare compare him to Hitler say such sandeces to a Holocaust suvivor, to the families of the thousands of desaparecidos under dictatorships such as Videla’s, Pinochet’s, Franco’s. They seem to conveniently forget that if Bush were all those things Cindy Sheehan, for starters, would be long dead, the Code Pink women would at the very least be political prisoners, and there would be no discussion of an immigration reform. We’d simply be hunting them down."
Again, you hit the nail on the head. Bush certainly isn't great, but he's no Hitler, or Castro. Ridiculous rhetoric from ridiculous people.
"Someday the truth about Cuba will come out; someday people will be able to see that those rabid angry guayabera clad Cubans who have been fighting for 47 years were right. One day the world will awaken, and like with the Holocaust, have to deal with the guilt and the shame of having looked the other way, of having preferred to play blind because not seeing means that you can avoid the responsibility of doing something. Problem is, like with the Holocaust, history catches up with people. And they will end up being in the wrong side."
I sure hope that the world learns the truth about Castro. It's not as if there aren't people in Cuba and abroad, like you yourself LV, presenting the other side of the argument that we don't see on TV. In graduate-level international relations courses last year, I got snickered at when I called Castro and Che Guevara murderers (regarding my decision to not see the "Motorcycle Diaries" movie or read the book), and people leaped down my throat defending them, while the professor just watched. Admittedly, I am in Boston, but it was still dismaying.
Keep up the good work!
Passionately but rationally stated. The clueless "sandalistas" of today have no idea what a hitler or hitler-wannabe is...for one thing, hitler, as did castro, allowed no elections once in power. Mr. Bush will be leaving office in 2009.
Someone who knew the real hitler quickly identified the hitler of Havana, and so informed my parents, this being part of the reason why they decided to leave Cuba while the leavin' was good and relatively easy. We had a good family friend, a German who had been caught in the nazi era, having served in the army and taken prisoner by the Russians, which had very adverse effects on his health. He traveled to Cuba yearly, spoke fluent Spanish, and was very familiar with the customs and quirks of the Cubans, of whom he was quite fond.
The last year he was in Cuba was 1960.
He informed my parents he would not return because "castro was reminding him more and more of hitler, doing the same things, talking the same way, same hysterical/histrionic speeches, men in uniform on the streets (SS in his day, "barbudos" in ours), propaganda blaring all over the place..." He kept his promise. To this day we remember gratefully his good advice - in essence: "get out of there."
Bush is hitler? Gimme a break. "Sandalistas" and their moonbat fellow travelers do deserve to live under a hitler, however. Maybe then they will learn something.
great post. I did one about these people being on the wrong side of history as well. If I can locate it, I'll send you a link.
Well said, Ventanita.
It kills me that those masses that NEED this history lesson most, refuse to hear it.
Your comments are so true, yet Castro has done such a good job in public relations that lots of people believe him totally, no matter what others say. They don't want to see the fact that more than a million have left for good. They base their history in what Castro has published. And some of these folks are supposed to be sophisticated and well-read.
"By the time Hitler was done with his short reign, he was responsible for more deaths than possibly all US led invasions combined. And these are the same people who place Fidel on a pedestal, and Cuba as the model to follow? Did they have too much acid in the 60’s or are they smoking something they aren’t sharing?"
I don't know why, but this reminds me of my senior year English teacher. We were reading "NIGHT" by Elie Wiesel. My teacher was so passionate about the book. The one thing she kept urging us to remember was to learn all we could, and never forget these atrocities or she said we would be doomed to let history repeat itself.
You guys are kidding, right? do check the demographics for Cuba and compare them to the rest of latin america. Compare them to its neighbohrs. I suggest you go to the UNESCO page but the CIA world factbook might be a source you consider reliable.
The text somewhere asks for people who question Castros evil to learn history. That is a funny thing to say. If history is what you want then i suggest you answer who owned 80% of the land before Castro? not Cubans. Which country had a de facto control of Cuba through the Platt Amendment? Implemented from 1898 until Machado's regime through, i believe, 4 invasions.
I am not quite sure what anyone has to say against Castro. Compared to other leaders who have had to defend their country from imperial aggression, FIdel Castro has done quite a good job. The US has strangled the island for half a century and the people of Cuba still support the man.
I see all of you. I see you all over Miami, you call yourselves Cubans but you are all white. A few are mulatoes and all of you are racist. Most of you have direct blood ties with the US and SPain, which means that your family had been in CUba for less than 2 generations. If you came from Spain, you came with nothing and was allowed to steal, if you came from the US you came in with a lot, to buy an impoverished land and was kicked out for stealing.
Latin America needs you capitalist trash out. And refrain from commenting, i hate idiots who claim to know about Latin American history but then spew off cold war propaganda. Read a book.
KOb, I suggest two things to you. First, have the balls to not be anonymous, only cowards do not provide an email address. Secondly, read a book yourself, go see the data on Cuba pre-Castro. If you truly believe that the Cuban revolution was a Social Revolution such as the Bolsheviks, you are not only mistaken but dilusional. The revolution was funded by wealthy Cubans, as well as middle class Cubans. As stated the Rebel Army was comprised of college educated students, such as Castro and Guevara themselves. Even the US wanted Batista out.
In addition, by making attributions about Cubans you are just as racist. Fidel has done nothing but destroy the island by nationalizing EVERYTHING from the sugar industry, to the nickel and copper mines, to the tobacco field, to the agriculture, to even the restaurants and mechanic shops and then running all of them into the ground. Imperial aggression? Give me a break. Fidel wanted Cuba for himself period, and was content to be supported 100% by the USSR - he loves freebies!
The people of Cuba support Fidel? If such a travesty is true, why are there no free elections with an opposing party? Why did he go back on his word? Why are there political prisoners just for opposing him? Why does he need the rapid response brigades to attack dissidents? Why are there even dissidents?
Additionally, just exactly how much time have you spent LIVING in Latin America or Cuba as a local and not a tourist? Some of us here, these idiots you call, have done one or the other, or both. Get a clue and learn English - its you were not you was. .
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read a book?
You should perhaps take your own advice... at the very least you'll be preoccupied and it'll keep you from being another spigot of castro propaganda and lies.
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