But we didn’t know!!!
In January 1959, I was eleven years old. At that time, my parents owned a small restaurant, and my dad spent the quiet late afternoons there watching TV, and hanging out with his cronies. I vividly remember being in the restaurant one day and watching scenes from Cuba on TV, and his negative reaction to what he said was the new communist in power on the island.
So if my Dad, an average farm boy from the mid-west, and WWII Vet knew from watching black & white TV of the time that castro was a communist SOB how is it that so many others closer to events feign ignorance?
Just wondering.
Also wondering if Venezuelans are now an echo, and if we are next.
Ziva, I was just a few years younger than you at that time, and yet, I have clear memories also.
From the very beginning I remember my mother and a lady who lived next door discussing how terrible things had become overnight. Of course I had no idea what they were talking about, and they certainly didn't explain anything to me. But I vividly remember her calling FC a communist. On one occasion I remember the neighbor bringing over a little black book which many years later I recognized as the Bible. She read a portion about a monster with horns who was completely evil. She said this was fidel, and my mother seemed to agree.
My family left very soon after that and growing up in a city that had few Cuban immigrants at the time, I quickly forgot my early experiences. For a very long time I was just another americanita. A little over a decade ago, I began to see signs all over of the same kind of conditions that led to the Cuban tragedy. I have realized that although I had thought myself impervious to politics, my parents' life and input is very much with me.
I'm so very thankful for an intelligent mother who was able to discern the truth behind the euphoria.
These days, I feel closer than I ever thought I would to my brothers and sisters who were part of that first wave, and as a result are able to see the writing on the wall that eludes so many.
It's a lonely and bitter experience to have endured, but it makes it even more painful that we are called nothing more than mafia or wing-nuts. I love this site and never miss a day of it. If only a small handful of people can wake up and distinguish fact from propaganda as a result of its existence, then it is all worth it.
God bless you all.
Ziva,
I often wonder the same thing, but allow me to try to answer your question. In my opinion, the reason that so many people close to events feign ignorance is that many of the people close to events are well-placed "scholars" and "academians." So-called Cuba experts like Wayne Smith, Susan Eckstein, Julia Sweig, Marifeli Perez-Stable, Lisandro Perez, Max Castro [although we don't hear from him anymore, THANK GOD], etc.. are the first line of people who are always consulted when a major newspaper like the New York Times discusses Cuba. We all know what U.S. counterintelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Simmons has said. Apparently, the Cuban tyranny has done a good job of placing moles in influential positions. Remember Ana Belen Montes? She was in charge of writing reports that were later used to draft Cuba policies by the Clinton Administration.
It's like a trickle down effect. These pro-Castro folks have important positions. From their well-placed seats in the state department [Belen Montes] or their offices in important universities [Eckstein], they spread misinformation that runs like poison through the bloodstream of the United States body politics. Then their quotes are always cited by cancerous tumors like the New York Times, a newspaper that back in Stalin's reign had spies that were denying the gulags and portraying that monster, Stalin, in such rosy colors that you would think that they were talking about a Walt Disney character. The way that the media in the US works is that there are a few national newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post-- being the two most influential-- whose stories are always picked up by smaller newspapers. So that its that trickle down effect. The hideous New York Times writes an editorial asking for total capitulation from the US to the Castro tyranny and a 1000 small papers all over the country pick it up. Then of course, you have Reuters and AP. Anita Snow[job], anyone? Castro has his cronies all over the place--like an octopus with its tentacles spread out. In essence, he is dictating American opinion. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to who will talk to me about those "crazy, right-winged nuts" in Miami. And they know that I'm Cuban [sigh]. These people are doing nothing more than mouthing the New York Times.
Castro has done a job that would put Goebbels to shame. Its a double assault. You villainize the victim, so that we are totally discredited. This is why it's always people like Susan Ecktein who are consulted when it comes to Cuba. When was the last time that you read an article where a Cuban American Cuba expert Jaime Schlucki, or Juan Clark were consulted? The only Cuba experts that are consulted who are Cuban-Americans are those that follow the regime's party line.
Remember when raul succeeded his brother as emperor? These Cuba experts were tripping all over themselves calling him a great reformer.
Did they really believe that he was a reformer? Not unless they are blind. These Cuba experts are information launderers They launder information out of Cuba and make it respectable in the USA.
I still have people asking me, "but hasn't raul made reforms in Cuba? Isn't he democratizing the country?"
Ray, Belen Montes was in the DIA, not State.
Ally Kat, "my parents' life and input is very much with me." Although they are no longer with me, in recent years, especially pertaining to politics, like you, I realize that many subtle exchanges witnessed left a very important lasting imprint. I thank them often for their wisdom.
When Whittaker Chambers left the communist party, he said he was joining the losing side. He described the same tactics of infiltration of our press, government, labor unions, universities, etc by communists (today it's Islamists, too) and no one paid any attention to him. The (probably much infiltrated already) state department filed away all of his warnings and victimized him and vilified him. Only after so many came out of the woodwork with their warnings and it was impossible to ignore, and that took a decade at least, did they begin to listen. Still McCarthy and Hoover are dirty words and anti communism is a joke to many in the country to this day.
Winston Churchill, Chambers, Cuban exiles, all variations on a theme.
I used to write William Buckley about forty years ago to warn about terrorism against Israel being only a precursor to the rest of the world and we ignore it at our peril. To his credit, he paid attention and wrote many long articles using my warnings and others' long before anyone else began to pay attention to the current trend of a rebirth of Islamists who think they have a right to control everyone else.
To this day anti communists like me are called paranoids. It has been ever thus and ever it will be until the entire free world, what's left of it, figures it out.
I don't expect that ever to happen.
In Cuba, in the early days of Fidel's rule some Cubans warned of the danger of a communist in power;others said "it can't happen here."
At the beginning of Chavez' regime in Venezuela, some sounded the alarm; the response was "it can't happen here."
Today, whenever I bring up Obama's openly communist associations and his not-so veiled extreme leftism, I hear "it can't happen here."
Just as we're not addressing the external threat from a very real "axis of evil", we're not addressing the internal threat, the just-as-real "axis of evil" consisting of a coalition of the uninformed, the opportunists and the plain old wicked.
Honey and aar33178, you are both spot on.
I think that above all else Fidel has always been an egotist - he would have supported any system that allowed him absolute control.
I don't think there is any doubt that Raul and Che were die-hard Marxists who really believed in Communism - however I think Fidel would have been just as happy with Fascism or any other system that allowed him to play Emperor.
Ah, but not capitalism. That requires individual freedom. But try to tell that to a lot of Americans nowadays as we prepare to give up our freedom to a totalitarian government here.