Cuba's Yoani Sánchez Speaks Out - Full Interview | MetroFocus

[MADem]

23. So, you're saying USAID conspired with Raul Castro to install this dissident blogger in

Cuba, by sending her off to Switzerland for several years, then sending her back home to ... write a blog and get harassed routinely?

Or are you just saying that both agencies are covertly supporting her, one hand unknowingly washing the other?

Seems like a lot of intrigue. A lot of work, too, if that's the case. Why not just let her blog away, and shake an occasional fist at her, rather than beating her up, screwing with her husband, playing the "held without charges" game (see the article where that is discussed upthread) and in general, just being a jerk?

Plus, while Raul seems to be loosening up in preparation for bowing off the stage, it could hardly be said that he's been at all consistent when it comes to his treatment of dissidents. He's more of a one step forward/two steps back type. It's all fits and starts. I honestly think his biggest headache is how he's going to keep the lights on and the buses running in the years ahead. The little Doctors For Oil arrangement with VZ might not last forever, and most of his other friends have cash flow issues.

He needs to rapproach with USA, but there's a devil in those details that is stopping that--not sure what it is, but every president since Carter has made some kind of noise about closer ties while running as a candidate, and then it seems like they get into the Oval Office, have a look at a TS/SCI NOFORN folder or something, and then say "Fuck that shit." It's the oddest thing. The campaign rhetoric NEVER matches the post-election actions. They do stupid stuff (here's more food, here's some humanitarian aid, your relatives can visit more...) but they don't do the Big Kahuna Reach Out that they almost all talked about when they were young, dumb and innocent.

I'm not going to play the conspiracy theory game, because I have no idea, but it just seems damned strange to me that we can rapproach with China, with the former USSR, with frigging Vietnam after fifty eight thousand of our children died foolishly in the heat and mud...but we can't "get over" Cuba and a Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis that is over a half century old? It just doesn't pass my smell test that they remain "Unforgiven." They have to have done something....well, unforgiveable....? And I'm guessing--not with any knowledge, mind you--just speculating--that we'll never normalize with Cuba so long as Fidel lives--he's the guy they're pissed off at. He's the Unforgiven One--that's how it seems to me. And he's no spring chicken, but I do think he is a tough old bird--he could live for another decade with good care, good nutrition, taking it easy and not trying to do too much, if he doesn't have any more major issues like that last round of butchered operations, and he doesn't fall and break anything.

I admit, my curiosity about what that's all about has remained unabated down through the years. I know Cubans who migrated to PR fifty years ago, and they're surprised, too, that it is still an unresolved thing all these decades later. Their kids don't identify as Cuban, they call themselves Puerto Ricans, they've married Puerto Ricans, and the only time they hear the "Cuban thing" is when they get ribbed for being high-handed or aggressively ambitious, or something like that--but it's more of a joke (sometimes meanspirited, other times not) than something that they relate to day-to-day. They wonder if it's down to November 22 63, and I have to wonder that, too...?