Widow with frozen US fortune dies in poverty

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: The independent

A widow living in Cuba whose fortune was trapped in a Boston bank by the US trade embargo has died at the age of 108 without having ever received her money. Mary McCarthy died in her rundown Havana mansion after failing to get treatment for respiratory problems due to a shortage of cash, according to her godson and heir, Elio Garcia. "She had been suffering the embargo for 50 years," he said.


McCarthy, born in Newfoundland in 1900, moved to Cuba in 1924 when she married her husband, a wealthy Spanish businessman. She became a member of Cuba's high society, co-founding the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and an orphanage for boys. Her husband died in 1951, but she stayed in Cuba.



Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/widow-with-frozen-us-fortune-dies-in-poverty-1662956.html

[drmeow]

1. Cognitive dissonance

ARGGG

rich elite

Cuban embargo

rich elite

Cuban embargo

rich elite

Cuban embargo

rich elite

Cuban embargo

melt down, melt down, help meeeee

BTW - I thought Cuba had socialized medicine - what gives with the "failed to get treatment ... due to a shortage of cash"?

[MADem]

12. They do, but care is rationed to some extent.

They have a lot of doctors, but Fidel (or his brother, now) uses the doctors as a commodity, a way to show the flag and gain influence. A lot of them are in Venezuela now. Others are in Africa, Bolivia, other places where Cuba wants to make an impression. At least twenty thousand of them are away from home. They aren't given a choice, either--it's like being in the medical military. They're also kept under close watch while they are out of the country, because some of them have been defecting to the USA.

There's also a shortage of equipment. They have health care that is ten thousand times better than it was pre-Castro, but even Castro, when his condition got wobbly (and his doctors screwed up his operation because he was a noncompliant patient), went outside Cuba to get the health care he needed. He got himself a SPANISH doctor, who had his work cut out for him because Castro had refused to wear "the bag" and got all infected and almost died as a consequence.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16234069.htm

MIAMI, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro has long prided himself on Cuba's doctors and free public health care system, but that system seems to have let him down after he fell ill in July , U.S.-based doctors said on Tuesday.

Based on a report in Tuesday's edition of Spain's El Pais newspaper, the doctors -- who have no first-hand knowledge of Castro's condition -- said Castro had received questionable or even botched care at the hands of health experts on his communist-ruled island.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/24/castro.health/index.html

....Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, chief of surgery at the Spanish public hospital Gregorio Maranon de Madrid, departed Thursday for Cuba aboard an airplane the Cuban government chartered, El Periodico de Catalunya reported.

The Cuban Embassy in Spain oversaw all details of the visit, the paper said.

The plane also carried medical equipment, some of which is not available in Havana, in case surgical interventions or new therapeutic treatments are needed, the article said.....



It's not Medical Paradise in Cuba. It's simply way, way, WAY better than it used to be, and the emphasis is on preventive care. They can't do it all, and they don't have it all, though. It's a popular fiction to suppose that.

[pnwmom]

32. Plus, at the age of 108, it's likely that no treatment would have

saved her.

[EFerrari]

2. How is that possible? They have great socialized medicine.

?

[Selatius]

8. "Great" is subjective. Compared to France, Cuba's system is poor in comparison.

But something has to be said about an impoverished country living under over five decades of economic embargo receiving a ranking of 39 when the US holds a ranking of 37 according to the World Health Organization's last published list of best health care systems in the world.

[Judi Lynn]

10. They are crippled for the equipment they need, like respiratory, cancer treatement, dialysis

machines because of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. They can't even buy them from other countries if they contain even one tiny part with a U.S. patent on it.

It's been that way for years. What equipment they have is very meager, so the small step in prevention, and small procedures are extremely important there.

This report given at the U.N. explains the devastating aspects of the embargo:

"Denial of Food and Medicine:
The Impact Of The U.S. Embargo
On The Health And Nutrition In Cuba"
-An Executive Summary-
American Association for World Health Report
Summary of Findings
March 1997

After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. But since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo-one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.

A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc.

Recently four factors have dangerously exacerbated the human effects of this 37-year-old trade embargo. All four factors stem from little-understood provisions of the U.S. Congress' 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA):

1. A Ban on Subsidiary Trade: Beginning in 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban has severely constrained Cuba's ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. Moreover, recent corporate buyouts and mergers between major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies have further reduced the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba.

2. Licensing Under the Cuban Democracy Act: The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed in principle to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons to mitigate the embargo's impact on health care delivery. In practice, according to U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so arduous as to have had the opposite effect. As implemented, the licensing provisions actively discourage any medical commerce. The number of such licenses granted-or even applied for since 1992-is minuscule. Numerous licenses for medical equipment and medicines have been denied on the grounds that these exports "would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests."

3. Shipping Since 1992:The embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo to Cuba. This provision has strongly discouraged shippers from delivering medical equipment to Cuba. Consequently shipping costs have risen dramatically and further constricted the flow of food, medicines, medical supplies and even gasoline for ambulances. From 1993 to 1996, Cuban companies spent an additional $8.7 million on shipping medical imports from Asia, Europe and South America rather than from the neighboring United States.

4. Humanitarian Aid: Charity is an inadequate alternative to free trade in medicines, medical supplies and food. Donations from U.S. non-governmental organizations and international agencies do not begin to compensate for the hardships inflicted by the embargo on the Cuban public health system. In any case, delays in licensing and other restrictions have severely discouraged charitable contributions from the U.S.

Taken together, these four factors have placed severe strains on the Cuban health system. The declining availability of food stuffs, medicines and such basic medical supplies as replacement parts for thirty-year-old X-ray machines is taking a tragic human toll. The embargo has closed so many windows that in some instances Cuban physicians have found it impossible to obtain life-saving medicines from any source, under any circumstances. Patients have died. In general, a relatively sophisticated and comprehensive public health system is being systematically stripped of essential resources. High-technology hospital wards devoted to cardiology and nephrology are particularly under siege. But so too are such basic aspects of the health system as water quality and food security. Specifically, the AAWH's team of nine medical experts identified the following health problems affected by the embargo:

1. Malnutrition: The outright ban on the sale of American foodstuffs has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993.

2. Water Quality: The embargo is severely restricting Cuba's access to water treatment chemicals and spare-parts for the island's water supply system. This has led to serious cutbacks in supplies of safe drinking water, which in turn has become a factor in the rising incidence of morbidity and mortality rates from water-borne diseases.

3. Medicines & Equipment: Of the 1,297 medications available in Cuba in 1991, physicians now have access to only 889 of these same medicines - and many of these are available only intermittently. Because most major new drugs are developed by U.S. pharmaceuticals, Cuban physicians have access to less than 50 percent of the new medicines available on the world market. Due to the direct or indirect effects of the embargo, the most routine medical supplies are in short supply or entirely absent from some Cuban clinics.

4. Medical Information: Though information materials have been exempt from the U.S. trade embargo since 1 988, the AAWH study concludes that in practice very little such information goes into Cuba or comes out of the island due to travel restrictions, currency regulations and shipping difficulties. Scientists and citizens of both countries suffer as a result. Paradoxically, the embargo harms some U.S. citizens by denying them access to the latest advances in Cuban medical research, including such products as Meningitis B vaccine, cheaply produced interferon and streptokinase, and an AIDS vaccine currently under-going clinical trials with human volunteers.

http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html

[EFerrari]

13. Of course. Thank you, Judi Lynn.

The story was sort of oddly told so it threw me off a little.

[Judi Lynn]

14. No doubt if she had her money she would have simply hopped a plane to Miami

and gotten treated there, with no problemo, if help wasn't available in Havana.

I'd like to see more on this story before it's over.

[AlphaCentauri]

20. video of her house in Cuba

the house doesn't look like other news articles describe it

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/meet-cubas-penniless-millionaire-mary-mccarthy/2012278087/?icid=VIDURVNWS03

[Judi Lynn]

29. The picture seems to contradict writers who think we'll never know.

That's the way it is with articles on Cuba: they've reached the place in our media most of these clowns don't believe we'll ever know the difference no matter what they write as we'll never get the chance to go there and check it out for ourselves.

That's going to be a problem for the biggest liars, and propagandists among us when we finally start going there in big numbers. I'm certain they all thought the US government would simply take over the Cuban government, (that's what Cuban "exile" Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said they thought when her family moved to Miami) and that would give them the time to change it all back, and put back the greedy, violent, racist fools in charge who were there before, and all would be smooth sailing for them.

That's not going to happen, according to what I've heard the Cuban people themselves say, as witnessed by real Americans who have friends there, and as reported occassionally in articles written by Cuban travelers. The reaction of the people themselves to the Bay of Pigs invasion should have illuminated that question for anyone! They would NEVER go along with that until their dying breath.

That house in no way whatsoever resembled what the articles told us, you've got that right. She could even afford to keep a bunch of peacocks as pets, for chrissakes!

[shanti]

41. ok, she lost me

when she talked of *ush's "good heart" and being "such a gentleman". :eyes: there's no fool like an old fool.

[Hannah Bell]

46. she wants her money, what's she going to say, "bush the running dog of the capitalists"?

i doubt she's a fool. i think it's more you don't parse the language of politics.

[shanti]

58. ok

i see what you're saying. ass kissing didn't do her much good tho...

[Hannah Bell]

45. wow, some "decaying mansion"! she could probably get $1 million for the knick-knacks.

i seriously doubt she was denied respiratory treatment in cuba. she's 108, she lives in a non-decayed mansion (not expropriated in the revolution), & the video of her wanting the money is from 2008 when she was 107.

i'd guess she was a friend to the rev & wants the money either for heirs or gov.

btw, for those who don't believe our media lie to us daily, this is a good example of same. "decaying mansion," "dies in poverty" my eye.

[AlphaCentauri]

57. also She was exercising her freedom of speech with out a problem

contrary to what many believe that there is none in Cuba

[bitchkitty]

17. Thank you, Judi Lynn.

As always, your research is informative and enlightening. I found the original post a bit confusing, and I think there is more to it than what is reported in the article.

[Judi Lynn]

28. I think you're right, undoubtedly. The corporate media seems unwilling to depart from the pattern

it has followed since the early 1960's. Pity, isn't it?

They spew that rot into every article, as if it would be a mortal sin if they didn't villify the Cubans' revolution every chance they get, for fear citizens here would get the bright idea of overthrowing our system, too.

You can believe people would be tempted to do it if there were death squads rumbling through our streets, stalking dissidents, taking them prisoner, torturing them, then flinging them out in town, or hanging them from light poles as a lesson for others, or hanging them in trees out near cities like Santiago de Cuba. Here are two photos of some mothers in Santiago de Cuba marching down a street there to the embassy to speak with the American ambassador, imploring him to intercede with Fulgencio Batista, whose people had taken some of their sons, tortured and murdered them. When they got to the ambassador, Earl Smith, some of them ran up to talk to him, and the police turned fire hoses on the rest.


http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/cuban-rebels/protest.gif

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/cuban-rebels/revolutionaries-15.gif

"Stop murdering our sons"

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/cuban-rebels/protest-2.gif

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/cuban-rebels/protest-1.gif

The color photo was taken of a street in modern Santiago de Cuba decorated with doves for a festival.

http://artfiles.art.com.nyud.net:8090/images/-/Marc-Pokempner/Santiago-de-Cuba-Print-C10071566.jpeg

[La Lioness Priyanka]

71. great in comparison to how poor they are as a nation. not great like in england, canada or france

[FarLeftRage]

3. Well... she was 108!

I am certain that had she gotten the care she needed, she might have had few years left...

[AndyTiedye]

4. Making it to 108 isn't bad.

[bottomtheweaver]

5. If she lived to be 108,

I don't think she died because she couldn't aford a doctor.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Here's a longer version of that story from the Reuters site:

Canadian denied U.S. fortune dies at 108 in Cuba
Sat Apr 4, 2009 1:15am BST

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN0343405520090404?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you for posting this. I heard about her years ago.

Here's an earlier story about her:

St. John's native to mark 107th birthday at Havana villa
Last Updated: Friday, April 27, 2007 | 2:19 PM NT
CBC News



First photo taken in 2006.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2007/04/27/mccarthy-birthday.html

~~~~~~~~~
Adding a story from 2007:

Rich Canadian widow cash-strapped in Cuba
Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:39pm EDT

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Canadian Mary McCarthy lives in the same mansion she and her millionaire husband moved into 62 years ago in the once-posh Country Club area of Havana.

Peacocks still strut the one-acre garden under royal palm trees, but the lawn is overgrown and the house filled with Napoleon III furniture, chandeliers and a Steinway grand piano is falling apart.

At the age of 107, McCarthy is wheelchair-bound, but still dresses up for visitors in a satin dress, silk blouse and chiffon scarf, red lipstick coloring her wrinkled face. Her pearl necklace and earrings, though, are plastic.

Her real jewelry and the small fortune she inherited when she was widowed in 1951 have been frozen in a Boston bank since the United States placed Cuba under sanctions after Fidel Castro's leftist revolution in 1959.

That's because she lived in Cuba and did not leave with most of her wealthy Cuban neighbors who fled to Miami when Castro nationalized businesses and steered the Caribbean nation toward Soviet communism.

The Cuban government confiscated her properties and her husband's leather factory, assets valued at $4 million, and she was left only with "Villa Mary," a dilapidated mansion in need of repairs where she lives in virtual poverty.

Since January this year the U.S. government has let her withdraw a $96 a month allowance from her U.S. bank after Canadian diplomats interceded on her behalf.

McCarthy is asking U.S. President George W. Bush to free her money so that she can live her remaining days with dignity. She would also like to have her family's "trinkets" released.

"They said they couldn't give it to me because I live in Cuba. That's the only money that I have left. It is in Boston, but I live in Cuba, that's the great terrible, terrible thing," she said during a recent visit to her home.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSN0721902420070812

[AlphaCentauri]

19. "He's a good man," she told CBC News last fall.

McCarthy, who met Castro at her mansion, once vowed to outlive him, and she may still get that wish. Over time, McCarthy has come to believe that the Castro legacy is not all bad.

"He's a good man," she told CBC News last fall. "He has his ideas … but he's a good man."

McCarthy said she hopes the United States will in her lifetime lift an economic embargo that she says is strangling her adopted homeland.

[bird gerhl]

27. Hmm... a textbook case of Stockholm syndrome mayhaps?

Mayhaps indeed.

:think:

[Judi Lynn]

30. Are you saying she had been kidnapped and was being held hostage?

Probably not likely.

[Joe Chi Minh]

38. She doesn't know who she is, never mind what she's saying.

[Hannah Bell]

47. you know this - how? she seems quite aware to me. esp for 108.

[Judi Lynn]

51. Take a look at post #27. I think he was referring to that genius! n/t

[Joe Chi Minh]

68. I was talking about bird gerhl.

[FreakinDJ]

22. What an Outstanding Woman

[applegrove]

7. Those maritimers know how to live a long time. Both my grandmothers were Nova Scotian. One died at

97, one at 103. There is actually a scientific cluster of octogenarians in the maritimes or in people who are descended from them.

[panader0]

9. She may have well died younger if she had all that money.

[bobshin]

37. I suspect as much also.

And I bet she lived a lot better than if she was medicated for old age.

[FreakinDJ]

11. You mean Cuba does not have Socialized Medicine

Wow this is News

[bird gerhl]

15. Another life tragically cut short by totalitarianism.

:cry:

[Regret My New Name]

16. haha...

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. Barely the teeniest fraction of the number who've died in the US, where you

have the ugliest one of all; the home of a quarter of the world's prison population. Mostly poor and/or black - the most penurious folk, often jailed on trivial charegs, financially preyed upon after their incarceration by a monstrous, privatized penal system, by an equally oppressive and exploitative, probationary, privatised officialdom.

How do you manage to sleep at night? Or don't you have a conscience?

[bitchkitty]

18. She lived to be 108?

Sounds like the preventive health care paid off in her case.

Interesting that she chose to stay in Cuba. Could she have gotten her money back if she'd immigrated?

[ShortnFiery]

21. Yes, don't ya think that at 108 yo, getting a higher frequency of respiratory treatments would have

EXTENDED her life to say ... 109?!? :crazy:

"Mary McCarthy died in her rundown Havana mansion after failing to get treatment for respiratory problems ..."

[bitchkitty]

25. Like I said, the original article is kind of unclear.

She failed to get treatment - did she just decide not to accept treatment? Or was she too weak and rundown, with no caregiver to take her to the hospital?

At age 108, I would think that it's time to stop breathing. Not trying to be funny, but damn! I'll be lucky if I make sixty. I'd love to live to be an ancient old crone (scaring all the neighbor kids, lol).

[Alcibiades]

23. Avoiding going to the doctor prolongs life

Or so they say. At least they cannot kill you by screwing up your treatment.

[wisteria]

24. That money belonged to her and should have been returned years ago.

It is just wrong to keep this woman's money. It doesn't make any difference if she lived well or she didn't or that she lived to 108 or not.

[Summermoondancer]

54. I agree she should have received her money

the emargo is against the Cuban government not against her.

[Judi Lynn]

60. The embargo has always intended to make things so painful for the people they will overthrow their

own government, just to bring an end to the economic hardship. This wonderful tradition ( :sarcasm: ) goes back at least as far as the Breckenridge Memorandum, written regarding Cuba, Christmas Eve, 1897 by the Undersecretary of War to President McKinley, John C. Breckenridge:

~snip~
We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army.

More:
http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/bmemo.htm

[Summermoondancer]

69. The problem is she wasn´t Cuban

so she shouldn´t have been expected to overthrow anything..it wasn´t her battle to fight...she was from Europe and should have been able to use her money as she saw fit...but apparently she didn´t lose all of her money, because look at that house! I would have to say it is probably one of the finest on that island.

[regnaD kciN]

26. Whoo-hoo! More money to fund another bank bailout!!!

:sarcasm:

[provis99]

31. why do they call her a Canadian?

If she moved out of Newfoundland in 1924, then she wouldn't be a Canadian. Newfoundland only became part of Canada in 1949. I also don't get why they say she lives in a decrepit house. She lives in a goddamn mansion! I would gladly trade my shitty little apartment for her "decrepit mansion". Jeez, I hate the right-wing controlled media.

[MADem]

61. Just because she moved (or visited) Boston at age 24 doesn't mean she

ceded her "Newfoundland" citizenship. When Canada took it over, they took the citizens on, as well.

She was, simply, a Canadian expat, living in Cuba. Her status as a Canadian is probably the reason she got to keep her house. She got birthday greetings from the former PM when she turned a hundred, and got invited (as high profile expats do) to at least one formal event at the Canadian embassy. It's not so hard being an expat when you have an embassy in town--or at least in the country!

Framed congratulations from Pope John Paul, Queen Elizabeth and former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien on her 100th birthday hang on walls in need of a coat of paint.

Pictures on a sitting room table include Castro in his trademark green military fatigues greeting a lively McCarthy during an embassy reception for Chretien when he visited in 1997.

HAVANA HIGH SOCIETY


McCarthy, who was born in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1900, met Spanish-born businessman Pedro Gomez Cueto at the opera in Boston. He swept the 24-year-old music student off her feet and down to Havana, a city booming on the wealth of sugar barons and a playground for the rich.

Gomez Cueto made his fortune manufacturing boots for soldiers at his Havana heel factory during World War II. As a member of Cuba's high society, McCarthy co-founded the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra, played golf at the Country Club, funded charities and danced at lavish parties at the Havana Yacht Club that she can barely remember today.

After Castro and his guerrillas took power in 1959, the Canadian widow visited her wealthy friends in their Miami exile. She found them in temporary lodgings waiting to return to Havana as soon as the United States ousted Castro.

McCarthy decided to go home and wait it out. Four decades later, Castro's government is still in power, though the ailing Cuban leader has not appeared in public for a whole year, and Mary McCarthy is as cash-strapped as Cuba's state-run economy.

"I stayed in Cuba because my husband was dead and I inherited the property," said McCarthy, who has no family that she knows of left in Canada. "Besides, I like Cubans. They are the best people in the world."

Last year Stan Keyes, the Canadian consul general in Boston at the time, wrote to the U.S. Treasury office that enforces sanctions against Cuba, to request the transfer of her funds to Canada.

http://www.javno.com/en-lifestyle/rich-canadian-widow-107-cash-strapped-in-cuba_70593

[pnwmom]

33. I think the heir is making this point now mainly because he's tired of waiting

for the money. Which is understandable. But I doubt that lack of money for medical treatment is what killed her -- at the age of 108! She and her doctors had been doing something right.

[tomm2thumbs]

34. she said 'Bush has a good heart and is a gentleman' in that aol video - and still no $$$$

imagine that - i guess Bush didn't have such a good heart and wasn't such a gentleman afterall - maybe that video link should go out with the article just for perspective

[AlphaCentauri]

42. That was her last pledge to the butcher of Guantanamo

[lunatica]

35. She was 108 years old! That makes Cuban medicine a success, no?

Even if she had all her money and lived like a wealthy woman does anyone think she may have died just anyway. Or do the wealthy not die?

:silly:

[ohio2007]

36. but the article said she "suffered in anguish" for 50 years....guess $ trumps health

[lunatica]

40. I didn't find those words in the article posted by the OP

But I did see this quote:
"according to her godson and heir, Elio Garcia. "She had been suffering the embargo for 50 years," he said."

So have all the people in Cuba. Which I think is bad. The US has shown itself to be really stupid about and to it's neighbors to the south. It's no wonder populists have been elected in South America recently. It's backlash.

[Judi Lynn]

43. Our corporate media have always made certain we are completely in the dark

about what has been happening in Latin America, as the suffering, and grief there have been connected directly to regimes whole-heartedly supported by our government, unfortunately. Mass torture, murders, disappearances have been going on for decades, while our own tax dollars have been poured into programs to overthrow elected Presidents, stage coups, prop up puppet murderous dictators like Augusto Pinochet throughout.

Of the Presidents who've served during the time _{George W. Bush} was in the stolen Presidency, these are the South American Presidents who were elected by their own countries who ALSO were victims of violent, repressive right-wing dictatorships:

Last Updated: Thursday, 30 August 2007, 02:28 GMT 03:28 UK
Brazil reveals military rule list
By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo

Brazil has for the first time published an official document detailing atrocities said to have been committed during the military dictatorship.
The country was under military control from 1964 to 1985.

The book was launched at a ceremony attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was himself briefly imprisoned under the dictatorship. It accuses federal agents of rape, torture, executing prisoners, and concealing bodies of victims.

They are also alleged to have decapitated people.

The new book, "The Right to Memory and to Truth", was published on the anniversary of Brazil's amnesty law passed in 1979. That law, passed as the dictatorship was drawing to a close, pardoned all those said to have been involved in crimes committed under the regime, as well as those who fought against it.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6969812.stm

NY Times biographical matererial on Lula:

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

~snip~
At 12, after completing fifth grade, he began to work full time, finally being hired at a screw-manufacturing plant, where he remained for four years. During his free hours, he studied at a technical school and was certified as a lathe operator. Transferring to a sheet-metal plant, he often worked overtime and lost part of the little finger of his left hand in a job accident. When he was laid off during a recession, he spent six months going door to door until he was again able to find work in another factory.

While still in his 20's, he also suffered the loss of his first wife in childbirth because the couple could not afford adequate medical care. Mr. da Silva began his union career at 22, urged on by an older brother, who was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party. In 1975, the year the brother was arrested and tortured by the military dictatorship, Mr. da Silva was elected president of the metalworkers' union in a São Paulo suburb.

By 1980, after leading a series of combative (and mostly successful) strikes, he had become a national figure. But when his union organized another walkout that year, he was arrested, stripped of his post and convicted of violating the dictatorship's draconian National Security Law, a verdict that was overturned on appeal.

More:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/luiz_inacio_lula_da_silva/index.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Argentina's President Néstor Kirchner:

RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: President Hands Over Former Torture Centre
By Marcela Valente

~snip~
The president, who was himself an activist in the Peronist Youth, and who belongs to the generation of many of the disappeared leftists, said at his inauguration that he was coming to the government as ''a son of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.''

''I form part of a decimated generation, which was castigated with painful absences,'' said the president, who was himself briefly imprisoned twice during the dictatorship, and who saw many of his friends and fellow activists disappear.

On his first day in office, on May 26, Kirchner ordered 27 army generals, 13 admirals and 12 brigadier-generals into retirement, in an unprecedented purge of the military brass.

He later overturned a decree that blocked the extradition of former members of the military wanted by foreign courts in connection with the disappearance in Argentina of citizens from Spain, Italy and other countries.

At the president's behest, Congress annulled last August the amnesty laws that in the late 1980s put an end to prosecutions of junior officers and soldiers who were deemed to be ''following orders'' when they committed human rights crimes.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=23021

Chile's President Michelle Bachelette:

Chile's Bachelet visits site of her own torture
15 Oct 2006 01:41:56 GMT
Source: Reuters
Printable view | Email this article | RSS XML <-> Text <+>

By Manuel Farias

SANTIAGO, Chile, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Chilean President Michelle Bachelet returned on Saturday to the place where she was imprisoned and tortured more than 30 years ago under military rule, paying homage to those who didn't survive.

This was the first presidential visit to Villa Grimaldi, one of the most infamous of the secret detention centers used by Augusto Pinochet's secret police in a brutal crackdown on leftist dissent during the 1973-90 military dictatorship.

Bachelet toured the memorial park built amid the ruins of the detention center, peering at a mock-up of the center before its demolition and stopping at a wall bearing the names of the 229 prisoners who were kidnapped and killed.

She also went inside a replica of the small tower where detainees were often sent before being murdered.

"These are painfully evocative hours, they are minutes of sad memories, at an instant when terror reigned, but above all this is a time to reaffirm life, liberty and peace," Bachelet said during the inauguration of a new theater in the park.

A medical doctor who became Chile's first woman president this year, Bachelet and her mother were held and tortured at the center before fleeing the country in 1975 to exile in Australia and East Germany.

Her father, an air force general, died of a heart attack in a prison camp where he was tortured.

More:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14386234.htm

Paraguay's Fernando Lugo was persecuted by Alberto Stroessner, who gave haven to German Nazi monsters like Dr. Mengele, and was Paraguay's President for 35 years, F(his own party ruled for 40 years) fully supported by the U.S. Government:

Wikipedia

Lugo's family was not particularly religious; by his own account, he never saw his father set foot in a chapel.However, his upbringing was emphatically political. His uncle Epifanio Méndes Fleitas was a noted Colorado Party dissident and was persecuted and exiled by General Stroessner's regime. His father was imprisoned twenty times, and some of his elder siblings were sent to exile too. He received his basic education at a religious school in Encarnación, all the while he worked selling snacks on the streets. At age 17 or 18, against his father's wishes of him becoming a lawyer, Lugo entered a normal school, and began teaching at a rural community. He was well accepted within this people, who were very religious, but they had no priest. He recalls that he was touched by that experience, discovering his vocation, and so he decided to enter a Society of the Divine Word seminary at age 19. Lugo was ordained a priest on August 15, 1977. That same year he was sent to Ecuador as a missionary for five years. There he had the opportunity to learn about the controversial Liberation theology. He returned to Paraguay in 1982, and after a year, the regime's police asked that he be expelled from the country.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Lugo

http://www.elpais.com.nyud.net:8090/recorte/20070427elpepuint_1/LCO340/Ies/Lula_izquierda_Bachelet_ayer_durante_reunion_Moneda.jpg

Lula and Bachelet

http://spanish.safe-democracy.org.nyud.net:8090/media/chavez_lula_kirchner_01.jpg

Chavez, Kirchner, Lula da Silva

http://200.82.82.210.nyud.net:8090/fotos/Lula_Kirchner_1.jpg

Lula, Kirchner

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0flycVMadDcTi/340x.jpg http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/09pJaHCfvt2Gc/340x.jpg

Fernando Lugo and.. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Fernando Lugo, Michelle Bachelet, and.. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

[ohio2007]

56. The story is about Elio who wants his inheritance ( greed )

Elio wants the $96 mo stipend transferred into his name .

.....Washington allowed her to withdraw just $96 a month......

No ?

[Judi Lynn]

59. Clearly responding to post #40, too easy to grasp. The part to which I responded

was "It's no wonder populists have been elected in South America recently. "

Why not take the time to understand what you're reading? Can't hurt.

[ohio2007]

55. So you did see it stated between the lines

that Elio ( her godson) is looking for his meal ticket and "just deserts" inheritance. ;)

according to her godson and heir, Elio Garcia. "She had been suffering the embargo for 50 years," he said."


How old is that gold digger Elio ?

[earth mom]

44. I don't get it. Couldn't she just have traveled to the U.S. to get her money?

She wasn't Cuban, but Canadian, so none of this makes sense! :wtf:

[JayMusgrove]

49. She could have traveled to Nova Scotia, but it's cold up there!

In Nova Scotia, she would have been old but cold but also rich.
And she would have had free health care in good Canadian facilities. She chose to stay in Cuba, poor but comfortable until 108.

I have little sympathy for this person, but we know Bush could have given her a million or tow if he had wanted to...

No fool like an old fool.

[Hannah Bell]

65. um - did you check out her "decaying mansion" in cuba? i'd say she was quite comfortable in cuba -

& warm.

[IndianaGreen]

48. All of the Cuban money that was frozen is long gone, pocketed by the banks' investors

The biggest travesty of the embargo is that the same corporations that raped and pillaged Cuba since her independence, added insult to injury by confiscating all of the money that belonged to Cubans on the pretext that they were doing it to bring freedom to that island.

I remind you all that before the revolution Guantanamo used to be a whorehouse for American sailors where they could indulge in sex with young girls.

[Judi Lynn]

52. They were actually known the world over as "The Whorehouse of the Caribbean."

I've seen it in writing, and have heard it twice in documentaries from Europe about Batista's Cuba. Creepy!

Just did a quick search to see what turned up immediately:

What You Don’t Know About Cuba

Cuba was known as the whorehouse of the Caribbean and it gained a reputation as the capital of American vice shortly after the start of Prohibition in 1920.

* Christopher Guly
* | 17 Jun 2008

~snip~
A recent story in Maclean’s magazine pointed out that Cuba was known as "the whorehouse of the Caribbean" and that it gained a reputation as "the capital of American vice" shortly after the start of Prohibition in 1920 when Cuba was used as "a giant warehouse" for liquor smuggled into the US.

Infamous American mobsters such as Meyer Lansky, Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Giuseppe Bonanno were given free reign. The most influential mafia members would meet in Lansky’s suite at Havana’s Hotel Nacional and divvy up the proceeds from prostitution and casinos. Lansky was the kingpin, having arrived in Cuba about a decade before to help boost the revenues of two casinos at Havana’s famous Oriental Park racetrack.

The Americans came in hordes. Few Cubans benefited, aside from the Cuban military, which controlled most of the country’s gaming operations and which included Fulgencio Batista, the US-backed Cuban general who would twice take control of the country by coup. By the time of the 1959 revolution, Cuba was a perfect storm of heavy-handed US government policy and illicit business activity.

More:
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/78/what_you_dont_know_about_Cuba.html

Here's a site a great poster at CNN's "US/Cuba policy" message board found around 2000, and shared with us there. We all nearly passed out laughing at this stuff. The individual articles were written and published in the 1950's, when the U.S. was still doing heavy business in Cuba. Each section was created to introduce future travelers to Cuba to various aspects of Cuba after dark.

If a left click doesn't get a photo to open, then try a right-click and "view image" on the drop-down for a larger version of the photos of Cuban entertainers working there at the time:

Cuban Nightlife - Entertainers, etc.
http://cuban-exile.com/menu1/!entertain.html

[MADem]

63. It was also a popular location for child abusers to engage in their horrific vices, as well.

I really would like to know WHY we maintain an embargo. The real reason, not the fake "commie" reason.

I do think there's a reason that may well have to do with JFK's murder in Dallas. It just makes no sense, otherwise. They were a puppet-client of the former USSR; we've managed to kiss and make up with them, and we did that while they were still the USSR...it just makes NO sense to me to continue to berate a tiny little island nation.

I've a feeling there's a dossier somewhere in the hallowed halls of our government that tells all.

I also notice that Presidential candidates, down through the years, have always said they'd "look into" normalizing relations with Cuba, but then, once they get in office, they say "Fuck, no." It's almost as though they get in the job and someone hands them that dossier. As members of the smallest club in the world (The President's Club) they take any effort to off one of their own rather seriously--it becomes personal. Quite recently, Biden said "No plans to normalize" with Cuba in response to a query. Of course, that's a bit more hopeful than "Fuck, no." Perhaps, though, they're counting on Fidel going belly-up during this administration and they're waiting for that to happen.

Of course, Fidel is tough--his doctor recently said he could go back to running the country if he'd like. I guess he's made an impressive recovery.

[Hannah Bell]

50. I find Pedro Gomez Cueto Co, Cuba = agent for AC Lawrence Leather, Massachussetts

http://books.google.com/books?id=PO0CAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=Pedro+%22Gomez+Cueto%22+leather&source=bl&ots=sRh_LMJz0g&sig=EmzoC8nREPBOGrvVuGW7HG57O_s&hl=en&ei=CxHZSZj-HpCAtgPAqJGzCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9


"By the end of the 19th century, Peabody was well established as the major player in the leather tanning industry; however, it was in 1894 that Peabody was crowned the king with the formation of the A. C. Lawrence Leather Company. Arthur C. Lawrence came to Peabody in 1894 and at that time the total valuation of manufactured products in Peabody was $6 million and 10 years later in 1905 it had increased to $20 million. In 1909, just 15 years after arriving in Peabody, the A. C. Lawrence Leather Company employed well over 2000 employees. The A. C. Lawrence Company’s patent leather division, located on Pulaski Street off the Waters River, was the largest in the world as well."

http://www.booksie.com/non-fiction/book/scatterbrain/peabodys-leather-industry.

[Judi Lynn]

53. Excellent idea! I have to leave but intend to examine this later tonight. Thank you! n/t

[llmart]

64. I'm curious.....

Judi Lynn - Every time there's a thread on DU about Cuba you have the most interesting information about it and I, for one, find it fascinating and informative. What is your link to Cuba? Is it just a subject you have a passion for and have learned a lot about? Have you ever travelled there? Thanks for enlightening me and others. I'm old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis.

[Judi Lynn]

67. Didn't have a clue about Cuba at the time Elián Gonzalez was brought ashore in Florida.

I assumed I knew it all. Didn't have any suspicion I didn't.

I became interested in the child's story when I started noticing there was something really STRANGE about the attitudes of the Cuban "exiles" they were interviewing on tv news programs about their opinions on whether the child should stay or be able to return to his father.

I was seeing a belligerence, a haughtiness, snottiness, surliness, and imperiousness among those people which seemed so out of place, so ugly. I started paying much closer attention, trying to take it all in, studying their faces. You may remember seeing one particular round little snarling face of their most frequent "spokesperson," Ninoska Pérez Castellón.

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/posada/ninoska-novo.jpg
Someone asked her about the "Miami Mafia," and she whirled and hissed at them that there was no "Miami Mafia" in such a way it looked as if she would easily stab him if she had a knife. That really got my attention.

Discovered a message board at CNN's website on Elián Gonzalez. There were so many people pouring into that place to register their opinions they were flying through there like rockets. I would lurk, and read for hours on end, as ordinary Americans, and Florida and New Jersey Cuban "exiles" and their offspring and newer US Cuban citizens (always so much more moderate, and NOT hostile to their island's government) all met and slugged it out. Some of the hardliners raged and raved from morning 'til late at night, some of them appeared to come in shifts and leave, being replaced regularly by others just like them, as if they were on a factory schedule! When some of them got so emotionally violent they got banned, they were quickly replaced by others just like themselves.

The vicious ones were the "exiles." They even threatened everyone else, and some of the posters said their own computers were being attacked. I didn't know enough about computers to know how anyone can determine this, but these guys were very matter of fact about it.

One guy, Marty, started his own Cuba message board, a guy who lived in South Florida, and immediately his new pickup was trashed, and he decided it wasn't worth the effort and he took it down.

I was literally so scared of these Miami "exiles" I was afraid to start posting, as I had seen the pure hatred in their messages, and was actually afraid someone would come after me. After lurking for months, I finally took the plunge and dived in, got chased around vigorously, and learned quickly the way to handle these things is make sure you already have the information on hand you can use for proof when you venture your opinion, and you'll take the wind out of their sails when they think they'll just have you for lunch. If you've got the information, they will lose!

You will learn most right-wing bluster is hot air, they don't have any facts to support them. If you press them, they'll start changing the subject over and over. If you persist, they'll either ignore you or disappear for a while. They just don't have reality to support them. Take your assurance from that.

There was another Cuba message board, on the Delphi message boards, and at that one, one of the rabid "exiles," "First Cowboy" actually was physically threatening another poster with a relentless beating!

Even the older Cuban "exile" women, like one who posts at the Miami Herald currently, "Marianao," slashed and hacked away at people as if there were no tomorrow. I was astonished at their hatred, their venom, and pure vicious ill will toward everyone who didn't share their politics.

They all truly would have been ecstatic if someone could have found a way to kill that child's dad so he couldn't get him back. You may recall that Janet Reno had government people checking on who the people were staying in the house around the Gonzalez house in Miami's Little Havana, and discovered there were heavily armed people all around them, including some very dangerous characters who came and went from the house regularly. That's why they ultimately went in at 3:00 in the morning, once the family refused to follow the court order and turn over the child to government agents so he could be returned to his father, to avoid the violence they could expect to meet in the daytime or evening.

When one of the reporters for George magazine went to Cuba and did a huge investigative article on the child's background, his family, etc., he uncovered the fact (also confirmed by N.Y. Times journalist Ann Louise Bardach in HER trips to Cuba) that the man who claimed control of little Elián Gonzalez in the U.S., his drunken great-uncle Lázaro had already met the kid before when he went to Cuba ON VACATION and stayed with the child's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his new wife, and Elián. Lázaro slept on Juan Miguel's bed in his own room, and Juan Miguel, as a generous host, slept out in his car for the duration. In the daytime, Lázaro went out fishing, then, in the evenings, Lázaro headed for the hotel bars, etc. and got loaded, then headed for home, where he crashed and slept it off, only to repeat it all over the next day.

This was his vacation plan, and, as repayment for their generosity, he gave the family a GOAT.

When I came across this news I was astonished. This story DOES NOT FIT WHAT WE HAVE BEEN TOLD FOR MANY YEARS. If Cubans have run away from a terrifying ogre and a dangerous government in Cuba, fleeing for their lives to the United States, where they can find FREEDOM, why do they even consider GOING BACK ON VACATION? I was obsessed by this question. Started looking for answers, discovered it wasn't a rare event at all. No way. Happened frequently by 2000.
Apparently the Miami "exiles" weren't afraid Cuban police would throw them in prison, and they would be eaten alive by Fidel Castro after all! Imagine that! They went home to visit on purpose, without fear. How could that be?

This would mean we have been told LIES consistently, deliberately by our own corporate media for years and years.

I started trying to find out everything I could, since then, and learning what whoppers I had been fed all my life about Cuba led me to start wondering about the OTHER countries south of our border. Once you reach this point you will find you can NEVER go back to the way you were before. That "you" is gone forever.

I have been so fortunate to get more personal information from people who grew up and lived in South America, and people who lived and worked there for decades. This information made me completely aware we have been completely, and deliberately misled. We have been lied to about what has happened in Latin America, and our own country's part in it.

You'll be astonished by all that opens up for you once you start researching "military dictatorships," "genocide," "torture," "disappearances" all over South and Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico. Throw in "Nazis," as well.
It gets so wild you will be furious about the lengths to which people went to keep us ignorant of what our own tax dollars (we are obligated to pay) were being used to do to innocent, helpless people.

Thank you for your post, sorry it took so much space answering, but this represents a complete change in my life triggered by hearing THE TRUTH, and making the necessary adjustments.

[llmart]

70. No need to apologize for your lengthy post.

Again, I find it interesting and informative. I was fortunate enough to grow up with parents, especially my father and his father, who taught me to question everything that's in our newspapers and other media. I have always had a healthy skepticism of what our country does that we don't know about. I never believed the stories we were given about Cuba. I saw a PBS program on Cuba a few years ago and it opened my eyes once again. I think there are many Americans who would love to visit Cuba and many who actually do.

[excess_3]

62. move to a different country? n/t

[Raine]

66. Well she lived to 108

that's no small thing.