Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Fidel Resigns But China Rules
February 19, 2008
For almost 50 years Fidel Castro touted the "Revolucion" in defiance to American arrogance, but today he resigned. The problem with this present-day historical entry is that most Americans are ignorant of the truth about Castro and Cuba in his political standoff with U. S. Political leaders.
The United States of America has maintained a presence in Cuba ever since the invasion in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. In contradiction to the Teller Amendment, after the war, the U. S. Congress passed the Platte Amendment, which contained an article that basically forced the new Cuban Senate to make available as much land as the U.S.A. required for its military bases. The Cubans rejected this plank in its new U.S-sponsored constitution for two years, but wilted under pressure, and in 1901 Guantanamo Bay became a reality. From then until now, the U.S. has never left Cuba. And for fifty years, Cuba was controlled by CIA-backed dictators, the last one being Fulgencio Batista, who for more than twenty-five years acted as a king-maker in Cuba.
The other side of America's control of Cuba and its mainly black and mulatto population was due to the foreign investment of the United Fruit Company and other corporations that before the War of 1898 had more than fifty million dollars invested in Cuba's sugar and tobacco crops.
The inhumane treatment by American companies soon became an irritant to young Cuban Law students of whom Fidel Castro was only one. They organized demonstrations that brought shame to Batista and his circle of friends. Offering some concessions, Batista made a deal with the student to stop their demonstrations, but Fidel and a few others distrusted the deal. They declared themselves rebels, went up into the Sierra Madres, and the "Revolucion" had begun.
During the last twenty years of Batista's dictatorial rule, Havana became the playground for America's nouveau riche, its Congressmen, and members of the mafia. Other West Indian Islands jealously referred to Cuba as the Queen of the West Indians, but they all, having similar problems with the United Fruit Company, watched with bated breath as the common people flocked to Castro's Revolution.
If we fast forward to the ticker-tape parade that Americans gave Fidel as he rode up 8th Avenue in New York City, we also see an ambitious Richard Nixon who, with an insatiable appetite for the White House, spoke into history some of the most damnable words that would design the political stalemate of the century. He told President Eisenhower that Castro, a man who had come to seek aid from the United States, was a communist. This would turn out to be one of his pet labels, but it would also seal Castro's fate, especially since many powerful people in Congress and those with huge investments in Cuba wanted the island back and under their control.
History has recorded that besides the Bay of Pigs, the CIA tried 8 times to assassinate Fidel Castro in order to take it back; and it was sometime after the second attempt that Fidel sought protection from the Soviet Union, the other world power. That was how we got to the Kennedy-Kruschev missile crisis of 1963, and the embargo that was put in place which remains to this day.
Somewhere I read a few years ago that Bush 43 recognized China, the only Communist nation remaining in the world, as the number one trading partner of the United States of America. And since he has been in power, it has been reported that China owns 1.3 trillion dollars of America's Treasury Bills. So, where are we in the history textbooks now? Castro's Revolution, which was to free poor Cubans from the tyranny of U.S. Corporations and the wealthiest Cubans, brought them nothing but grief and a 45 year old embargo maintained by America's war-hawks and continuing political rhetoric of a McCarthy-Nixon type Red Scare.
Meanwhile, the USSR and its communist ideology has dissipated since 1989, the wall is gone and the two Germany's have long re-united. North Korea is in the process of working out a deal with the United States in exchange for nuclear disarmament. China, the last of the Communist countries not only owns much of the United States by reason of its money and loans to U.S.firms, but it also enjoys status as the U.S.A's number one trading partner.
If this was fictional it would make great irony . . . but alas . . . its a diary of the lives of Cuba's poor. In the meanwhile, the sons and grandsons of those well-to-do Cubans who enjoyed percs from Batista and fled the island with their leader to Miami, live under a steady diet of political rhetoric that a Communist dictator took their parents property without reason and gave it to the people of the Revolution. But little do the one milion Cubans in Miami know that a Republican conspiracy has served to keep them isolated all these years for selfish political ends. Just as the Black vote was manipulated to vote for the Republican Party for 60 years before 1932, so the Cuban vote in Miami has been programmed since Ronald Reagan who allowed the Mariel Boat Lift for the same partisan political reason.
For What its Worth . . .
For almost 50 years Fidel Castro touted the "Revolucion" in defiance to American arrogance, but today he resigned. The problem with this present-day historical entry is that most Americans are ignorant of the truth about Castro and Cuba in his political standoff with U. S. Political leaders.
The United States of America has maintained a presence in Cuba ever since the invasion in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. In contradiction to the Teller Amendment, after the war, the U. S. Congress passed the Platte Amendment, which contained an article that basically forced the new Cuban Senate to make available as much land as the U.S.A. required for its military bases. The Cubans rejected this plank in its new U.S-sponsored constitution for two years, but wilted under pressure, and in 1901 Guantanamo Bay became a reality. From then until now, the U.S. has never left Cuba. And for fifty years, Cuba was controlled by CIA-backed dictators, the last one being Fulgencio Batista, who for more than twenty-five years acted as a king-maker in Cuba.
The other side of America's control of Cuba and its mainly black and mulatto population was due to the foreign investment of the United Fruit Company and other corporations that before the War of 1898 had more than fifty million dollars invested in Cuba's sugar and tobacco crops.
The inhumane treatment by American companies soon became an irritant to young Cuban Law students of whom Fidel Castro was only one. They organized demonstrations that brought shame to Batista and his circle of friends. Offering some concessions, Batista made a deal with the student to stop their demonstrations, but Fidel and a few others distrusted the deal. They declared themselves rebels, went up into the Sierra Madres, and the "Revolucion" had begun.
During the last twenty years of Batista's dictatorial rule, Havana became the playground for America's nouveau riche, its Congressmen, and members of the mafia. Other West Indian Islands jealously referred to Cuba as the Queen of the West Indians, but they all, having similar problems with the United Fruit Company, watched with bated breath as the common people flocked to Castro's Revolution.
If we fast forward to the ticker-tape parade that Americans gave Fidel as he rode up 8th Avenue in New York City, we also see an ambitious Richard Nixon who, with an insatiable appetite for the White House, spoke into history some of the most damnable words that would design the political stalemate of the century. He told President Eisenhower that Castro, a man who had come to seek aid from the United States, was a communist. This would turn out to be one of his pet labels, but it would also seal Castro's fate, especially since many powerful people in Congress and those with huge investments in Cuba wanted the island back and under their control.
History has recorded that besides the Bay of Pigs, the CIA tried 8 times to assassinate Fidel Castro in order to take it back; and it was sometime after the second attempt that Fidel sought protection from the Soviet Union, the other world power. That was how we got to the Kennedy-Kruschev missile crisis of 1963, and the embargo that was put in place which remains to this day.
Somewhere I read a few years ago that Bush 43 recognized China, the only Communist nation remaining in the world, as the number one trading partner of the United States of America. And since he has been in power, it has been reported that China owns 1.3 trillion dollars of America's Treasury Bills. So, where are we in the history textbooks now? Castro's Revolution, which was to free poor Cubans from the tyranny of U.S. Corporations and the wealthiest Cubans, brought them nothing but grief and a 45 year old embargo maintained by America's war-hawks and continuing political rhetoric of a McCarthy-Nixon type Red Scare.
Meanwhile, the USSR and its communist ideology has dissipated since 1989, the wall is gone and the two Germany's have long re-united. North Korea is in the process of working out a deal with the United States in exchange for nuclear disarmament. China, the last of the Communist countries not only owns much of the United States by reason of its money and loans to U.S.firms, but it also enjoys status as the U.S.A's number one trading partner.
If this was fictional it would make great irony . . . but alas . . . its a diary of the lives of Cuba's poor. In the meanwhile, the sons and grandsons of those well-to-do Cubans who enjoyed percs from Batista and fled the island with their leader to Miami, live under a steady diet of political rhetoric that a Communist dictator took their parents property without reason and gave it to the people of the Revolution. But little do the one milion Cubans in Miami know that a Republican conspiracy has served to keep them isolated all these years for selfish political ends. Just as the Black vote was manipulated to vote for the Republican Party for 60 years before 1932, so the Cuban vote in Miami has been programmed since Ronald Reagan who allowed the Mariel Boat Lift for the same partisan political reason.
For What its Worth . . .
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