Cuba Has Not Been A Bad Neighbor Or a Threat To the US -- Ever. There Is No Cuban Taint. [View all]

[ancianita]

Reposted from another thread because I'm sick of the Bernie-Cuba "taint" claims going on around here.

I AM a Cuba apologist. The terrorist has been the USA, trying to kill Castro several hundred times.

I hate when I read this stuff in America, but I won't back down from addressing it. It's been WE, the USA, that have been the terrorists. This is our proven, unclassified history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro

I lived just north of Miami for fifteen years, from age 3 to age 18, and made friends with at least three Cuban refugees who worked in the area. From 8th grade on I acquired conversational level Spanish in and out of school, and learned a lot about the Cubans who left and the Cubans who stayed, all during the many waves of Cuban "refugees" arriving in Florida.

Every American needs to read more Cuban history of its constant conquering and enslavements, about Jose Marti, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and others who fought for Cuban independence from colonial enslavement and exploitation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#Independence_movements


Batista was a popular Cuban military veteran figure turned mafia capitalist. Hell, even I knew that because my parents told me so. Everybody in South Florida knew that Batista was tied up with Mayer Lansky's gambling mafia and who-knows-what-else. Castro and Guevara drove him out because Cubans suffered poverty and starvation under Batista. We, the ever bad neighbor of El Norte, helped Batista become dictator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista


Cubans who left were Batista loyalists. Right wing. Pro-fascist. Pro-capitalists. They did well in Miami because the gaming capitalists of South Florida welcomed them.

Batista's Cuban supporters are still in Florida! They love Trump for the same reasons they loved Batista!

But not all of them. Some of them are working class Cubans. They know the old Cubans up in Ybor City, in Tampa, the first city founded by Cubans in Florida.

Cuba’s reputation for educational prowess is well earned.

I've talked to Cubans during two two-week visits in the last three years, and I can attest that they are well educated, whether they push a cart, farm, drive taxis or work in restaurants and hotels. Being a teacher, I made it a point to ask them how education in Cuba was for them. The literacy HAS been a miracle, and is the highest in the Caribbean if not the Americas. We can thank the lawyer, Fidel Castro, for setting up free education from 1st grade through college, whether you want to or not.

There's a reason their medical school has turned out thousands upon thousands of doctors who have aided Cuba's African allies struggling to throw European asset strippers off their lands. We can thank the doctor, Che Guevara, for setting up Cuba's medical school in Havana, and Cuba's hospital system.

I visited, with a group of six other Spanish speakers -- a local Cuban university professor explaining everything on our tour with us, and thoroughly answering all our questions -- the northern farmlands and villages of Pinar del Río, Artemisa, La Habana, Mayabeque, Matanzas and Cienfuegos provinces. Many visits, talks with Cubans, photos of farmlands and people, and great learning about their so-called "poverty." In the south, on my second trip, a full week in Santiago de Cuba, formerly Oriente province, my guide for two days was a native Santiago resident, a lovely, proud young woman who rode me around by taxis and pedicabs, taught me so much history from Fidel's grave and the world class cemetery of the greats of Cuba in Santiago, through the city, all the way to the castle/forts on the coastline. (El Morro is a similar one in Puerto Rico)


Oh, I do know American propaganda a lot better now. I know that every single thing I've learned from Cubans and Cuba shows that what this government has said is the real propaganda, the same I've read since I was a kid learning about Cuba from Cuban refugees.


No country who struggles for sovereignty or freedom is clean. Not a single one. Our revolution didn't look clean to proxy supporters on both sides, and it will always appear that way to those who are told to see freedom fighters as terrorists.

MY Bottom Line: I challenge anyone in DU to travel to Cuba and not come back changed toward a positive view of Cuba. If they don't come back with an entirely changed view of Cuba, I will pay their air fare AND buy them a cerveza. Hold me to it.

The only "parrots who don't know better" about Cuba are those who haven't, don't, or won't go to Cuba to see for themselves, and prefer to parrot this mal vecino's propaganda dished out for the last 60 years.

We should be ashamed of what bad neighbors we have been to all of the Americas, especially Cuba, which we've coveted like an empire vulture since the last century. Oh, and Alice Walker, a great American writer, was among the first to challenge the travel sanctions imposed on US by our own government; you know, a wall.

Let's not drag Cuba through the mudslinging of our primaries. Cuba is no pernicious, horrible neighbor to be used as a club to beat any of our candidates over the head with. Cuba is NOT Russia. In any way. Do not fall for this false equivalency of bullshit. Cuba is in TOTAL solidarity with Africa, by its own proud claims.

Cuba and its people, for all they've suffered at our hands, do not in any way deserve this unconscious, ignorant treatment. Nor do our candidates.