It seems the New York Times is done gloating about its victory over the evil Cuban exiles who don’t love the Castro dictatorship.
Their game now is to sugarcoat the banality of evil, to revive its own outworn dirge about the evils of the “U.S.-backed Batista regime” and to rewrite Cuban history to make it seem as if the Castro dictatorship is a praiseworthy utopian experiment conducted on noble savages.
For someone who has not lived in Cuba as a Cuban, crushed under the boot heel of the Castro regime, these revolting puff pieces will seem charming, especially because most of the readers of the NYT are leaning left to begin with, and the Castro regime tends to be viewed by them as some sort of “social justice” redistributionist scheme.
Hitchcock time. Yes. If you are Cuban, you understand the horror of it all, and your helplessness, much like so many Hitchcock characters.
The NYT is doing a damn good job of twisting the truth and making you seem like a criminal, even though you are really the victim in a dastardly plot.
You and all Cubans are just like Roger O. Thornhill.
If you’re not Cuban and you want to know what it feels like to be a Cuban in exile, watch Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” and imagine being the character of Roger O. Thornhill, played by Cary Grant.
Unlike a Hitchcock film, however, justice will not prevail in the end when it comes to Cuba and those victimized by the Castro regime.
We Cubans are no different from the American natives who got royally screwed by European invaders. We are toast. And we’d better face that sad fact.
And we’d better learn to come face-to-face with our worst enemies more often: those absolutely evil cretins like Robert Guild, the man featured in this NYT article, who loves the Castro regime and thinks of Cuba as a “mysterious mosaic.”
He runs a travel agency that has had a long relationship with the Castro regime and he is drooling over the changes promised by the Castro-Obama pact.
He and the NYT pretend that they are not promoting is the ultimate in bigotry and neo-colonialism. But they can’t fool everyone, especially themselves. They know exactly what they’re doing, and their shameless pretense is inexcusable.
So, if you want to understand what Hannah Arendt meant by “the banality of evil,” forget about Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem in 1961 , just take a close look at the above photo of this travel agent named Robert Guild smiling like the Cheshire Cat in his New Jersey travel agency in 2015, and also meditate on the photo below, which depicts the racist neo-colonialism he makes possible.
Traveling to an Open Cuba
Q. You’re not of Cuban heritage, so how and why did you get involved in this agency?
A. At Wesleyan University in the mid-1960s, I was active in social justice causes, including supporting the Cuban revolution against the American-backed government of then-President Fulgencio Batista. it. In 1969, as a member of the Students for a Democratic Society, I helped organize the first Venceremos Brigade to Cuba in defiance of travel restrictions. Later, one of the brigade members who worked for a travel agency got me hired there. Friends started Marazul in 1980 and invited me to join.
What were the goals of Marazul back then?
From the beginning, Francisco Aruca, the founder, focused on reuniting Cubans living in exile in New Jersey and Florida with their families. The goal was to normalize relations between the two communities, if not between the two governments. Those goals remain the same.
What was your assignment?
Many of those exiles became immigrants who wanted to visit Cuba to see their relatives and also to understand their culture and their own past. My job was to develop educational, academic, research and cultural programs for Cubans, as well as for non-Cubans. Essentially my job has not changed. We’ve sent several hundred thousand Americans to Cuba despite the travel restrictions.
How will the opening of travel to Cuba affect your job?
It will mean a whole lot more work; we’ve already seen increased interest and inquiries. But we also anticipate that the new laws will reduce the piles of paperwork and other bureaucratic obstacles.
How about for your own agency?
Though we are ahead of the curve since we’ve worked with the Cuban government for 35 years, we anticipate that a lot of new travel agencies will flood the field. We need to find our own unique niche.
How often do you go to Cuba?
About four times a year, though it will probably increase. I plan to go in a few weeks. Each time I discover a new colorful tile in the mysterious mosaic that is Cuba.
By the mid 1960s, Batista’s government, which ceased to exist forever as of 1-1-59, was nothing but a memory. WTF is this blatant fellow traveler talking about? Is the interviewer an idiot or just acting like one? But give the “activist” some credit for honesty: “we’ve worked with the Cuban government for 35 years.” I bet they have, and how. Lord, the nausea.
But you know what? The clients for Marazul and comparable outfits knew or should have known the score, and they still played along. One can chalk that up to the power of emotional blackmail, but only partially. There’s been a great deal of excess and lack of control, not to mention lack of dignity. Vile operators like this cretin who took advantage of such weakness, to the obvious benefit of themselves and Castro, Inc., were simply going after easy pickings–and opportunists are as inevitable as flies on dog shit.
This disgusting piece is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, which one would think even the NYT would avoid for the sake of appearances, if nothing else, but evidently it can’t help itself. However, that is also a form of honesty, even if the intent was altogether different.