Watching as the Cuban flag was raised at the Cuban Embassy in Washington D.C. presents a mixed blessing for those who are from Cuban heritage, as I am. My mom escaped from Cuba in 1961. She barely got out when Fidel Castro took over. And while my mom and I are happy to see relations normalizing with Cuba, something seems missing. What is missing is the story of those who escaped and lost everything due to the revolution. This happened to the many people who were not rich but rather middle class, like most people here in America.
Everything was taken from them. Their personal belongings and homes were taken. They were then moved to the country from Havana to work on farms. How strange it must have been for my mother, an office worker, and my grandmother, a teacher, to be moved from their home as all of their belongings were taken over, and then they were bused to the countryside.
What is eerie to watch are the numerous socialists and others lauding only the advancement of the people of Cuba. This happened on the backs of many middle class people who found themselves lucky enough to escape Cuba with one suitcase and a hidden photo or two.
Castro and the rest of the revolutionaries were given license to steal by both the poor and potentially the same corrupt elite which they claimed to be against. They have controlled those poor into their present reality. And while the socialist system has yielded lots of benefits including health care, education, housing, etc., there is little of free enterprise with the exception of the black market which is used to supplement the average Cuban’s income. There is no freedom to speak against the system, freedom of expression is limited and the revolutionaries needed to push common people down to achieve their goal which they now say is justified based on the results.
There is a much better solution than this manufactured socialist system, which is being lauded. It is found in the true and enforced meaning of the Bill of Rights in the US and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
What if the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion really failed on purpose? One thing that my mom could never understand is how Castro managed to stay in power all of those years. She never understood how the world’s most powerful government could not remove the dictator and free the Cuban people. It seemed so clear and easy to do, and yet it never made sense that this was not done. So, perhaps the blockade was intentional to show the “benefits” of socialism. All the while, the corrupt version of the “free enterprise system” was operating in the background with visits to Cuba from prominent, well financed Americans including Mitt Romney.
According to Gordon Duff in a 2012 article http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/11/05/romney-in-cuba/ , “Since 1999, a team of FBI and intelligence agents from Mexico have traced Mitt Romney and his mistress, Maria, Perez Andropov, a Cuban/Russian intelligence agent, traveling in and out of Cuba on diplomatic passports.
“The memo below, received from official sources, highly classified, outlines the deal made with Raul and Fidel Castro and Mitt Romney.
“Accompanying documents reveal too much about the intelligence networks that passed this on. Their report gives dates and times of travel, intercepts phone calls from Romney while in Cuba and tracks Romney as he travels through Cuba, meets with the Castros and flies back through Canada or Mexico”
And from the memo itself, “Notes: Discussions between the aforementioned persons of interest taking place on Cuban territory in the city of La Vaezero include but are not limited to drug trafficking, money laundering and currency and human trafficking into the United States of America.”
This is interesting because there is no public mention that drug and human trafficking are part of the Cuban socialist system, especially with Right Wing counter parts from here in the US. Perhaps there should be a line item on their budget?
When my mom left Cuba in 1961, Castro publicly said to the refugees. “I don’t know why you are leaving Cuba, the USA will become a communist country soon.” Looking at the people speaking yesterday, perhaps Cuba was just an incubation project to say look at all of the wonderful things created when the people were embargoed and have socialism, while ignoring background drug money, background financial players and the fact that they stole from the people of Cuba to achieve their success initially.
What if they had empowered people, honored law and order and maintained a free society? There was a lot of corruption in Cuba prior to the revolution with Havana being a mob hang out, as there is corruption here currently in the US. The revolution played on that fact of corruption, so rather than cleaning up the corruption through law enforcement means, in came Fidel Castro promising the people what was being withheld from them because of the mob rule that kept the majority uneducated and poor.
Could Castro have come in and tried to remove the corruption first? It is clear through the document from the article above that Castro still maintained it in the background. Perhaps corruption is everywhere with drug money, trafficking, etc. but in reality a free society where law and order is maintained, freedom to speak out about corruption and freedom to express your views and be heard, is the only way any society can operate justly.
It is because of injustice that restrictive laws, which are in violation of basic human rights, must be placed upon the people, as they have been in Cuba. The same players operate in the background here and in Cuba. The key is that there must be clear enforcement of the law and clearly written laws. If leaders deal in drugs, legalize and regulate drugs or arrest and prosecute the leaders that deal in them.
The corruption in both countries needs to be eliminated, and it is interesting that the back story leads to the same people who pull the strings. Perhaps this is how Castro stayed in power, the Bay of Pigs invasion failed and now the successes of Cuba are being touted. America has also been an incubation project which makes those back story players very nervous. With the internet and our ability to communicate as well as share documents and incidents very quickly, it is a very good tool to bring awareness of those who violate the law. As of yet, there has been little done to enforce the law on the puppet masters who have violated almost every law in the books to maintain power behind the scenes.
Cuba opening brings an opening and awareness to the fact that the older incubation project known as the United States of America may be coming to a close if people do not speak out and end corruption. 2016 may bring new leadership with the same corrupt people operating in the background. Our ideals may continue to quickly erode in favor of something falsely presented as a success for humanity. Only if the background is exposed on both sides, Right and Left, and human civil rights are maintained, can any system ever be a success for humanity, The puppet masters may have positioned us/US quite well, and it is up to us to expose them.