Nothing Is Over Until We Decide It Is

In the immortal words of Bluto Blutarsky, upon learning that all of the members of Delta House had been expelled from Faber College by Dean Wormer: “Hey, what’s with this lying-around s**t?  Over? Did you say it’s over? Well, nothing is over, until we decide it is.”    See:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vtWB4owdE

Time for a futile or seemingly futile gesture: why let Wikitravel pollute the internet with Castrobabble of the worst sort?   Time for us to fight back.  Time to do a deed on their porch.  Time to change the narrative, to challenge the bastards.

Tonight I somehow ended up in Wikitravel, on its Cuba page. What I read made my blood boil, not just as a Cuban, but as a professional historian. They have hijacked the narrative, and we do not have to put up with it.

Here is what Wikitravel had as its first two paragraphs:   http://wikitravel.org/en/Cuba

Before the 1959 Revolution, Cuba was a popular tourist destination for United States citizens, mainly due to the large number of casinos catering to gamblers put up by the American mafia. Revolutionaries claim the Batista dictatorship was a government that neglected many of its own citizens health and welfare in order to maintain itself in power. Many Americans had beach homes during the summer and rich American companies owned large factories and land with the cooperation of Fulgenicio Batista, the ruling military dictator. Since the Revolution, Cuba has been subjected to a trade and economic embargo by the United States. Since 2009, US citizens with relatives living in Cuba have been allowed to visit Cuba.

After 1959, Cuban tourism was mostly for Cubans only, and the facilities were not renewed until the 1990s, when Cuba lost financial backing from the defunct Soviet Union and opened its doors to foreign tourism. Now many European, Canadian, and even American visitors come to the island. In the typical tourist regions like Varadero and Holguin a lot of modern 3-star to 5-star hotels are available, while in less popular tourist regions visitors are still able to rent rooms in many Cuban homes (called casas particulares).

Here is the new version, which I submitted just a few minutes ago. Let’s see if it sticks:

Before the 1959 Revolution, Cuba was a popular tourist destination for United States citizens, as well as for Europeans and other Latin Americans. Although there were a few casinos in Havana with connections to the American Mafia, they played a very small role in the Cuban tourist industry. Revolutionaries claim the Batista dictatorship was a government that neglected many of its own citizens health and welfare in order to maintain itself in power, but the Revolutionaries themselves can be accused of treating their own people even more shabbily by setting up a tourist industry in which apartheid is practiced: setting up facilities for foreigners that are inaccessible to Cubans and unaffordable in a country where everyone earns about 20 dollars a month.

Though a very small number of Americans owned property in Cuba before Fidel Castro came to power, nearly all tourist facilities in Cuba nowadays are funded by foreign hotel companies –mostly European– and the profits go straight into the Ministry of Tourism, which is operated by Cuba’s military forces. . Since the Revolution, Cuba has been subjected to a trade and economic embargo by the United States, but that so-called embargo no longer exists, in practice. The United States is currently Cuba’s second or third trading partner, and it supplies much of the food and medicine available in Cuba. Since 2009, US citizens with relatives living in Cuba have been allowed to visit Cuba.

After 1959, Cuban tourism was mostly for Cubans who were officials of the Communist Party, and the facilities were not renewed until the 1990s, when Cuba lost financial backing from the defunct Soviet Union and opened its doors to foreign tourism through foreign investment. Now many European, Canadian, and even American visitors come to the island. In the typical tourist regions like Varadero and Holguin a lot of modern 3-star to 5-star hotels are available, while in less popular tourist regions visitors are still able to rent rooms in many Cuban homes (called casas particulares). All of the hotel and resort facilities are off-limits to the vast majority of Cubans, due to their seclusion, and the fact that Cubans cannot afford them, or gain access to transportation.

Many human rights activists in Cuba and abroad have called for a boycott of tourism to Cuba, due to the fact that it perpetuates an apartheid system very similar to that of the old South Africa, and also because of the Castro regime’s innumerable human rights violations, which continue to oppress the Cuban people 53 years after Fidel Castro came to power.

This is just the frost on the tip of the iceberg, brothers and sisters. The article itself is much longer and full of disturbing “facts.” Go to it… Bluto’s right, “we’ve got to take these bastards… and we’re just the guys to do it… Let’s do it…Go, Go, Go…”  Search all Wiki sites, relentlessly, search every Wiki subject on Cuba and set it straight, and when the bastards complain or erase our stuff, let’s keep putting the truth back up, over and over and over, until we — and the truth — have the final word.