No tiene nombre

Raul Rivero, writing for Newsweek, has a message for those Latin American hypocrites cozying up to fidel.

False Friends – Fidel’s newfound supporters are doing ordinary Cubans no favors.
By Raul Rivero

Political leaders in Latin America, intoxicated by a bad case of populism, are preparing a safe landing for Fidel Castro and his grim dictatorship. In a region that Castro bloodied with his mad policy of fomenting guerrilla wars, where a number of countries lost worthy citizens in misguided attempts to replicate his armed rebellion in the late 1950s, presidential palaces have been seized by the left through the same democratic means that those insurgents of yesteryear tried to destroy with bombs and bullets.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez provided the first and most important pillar of support to Castro. Now come gestures of solidarity from Evo Morales. The onetime leader of Bolivia’s coca farmers views the Cuban president-for-life as a good man and a democrat, and never tires of telling interviewers so. In the backdrop of this dismal tableau, waving flags and full of smiles, are Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Uruguay’s Tabaré Vázquez and Argentina’s erratic Nestor Kirchner. Bringing up the rear are the Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala and the front runner in Mexico’s presidential campaign, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
This claque of politicians is guilty of the serious crime of flagrant opportunism. To appease their impatient left-wing constituents and maintain a semblance of calm at home, they shake the hands of Cuban officials who have installed a system they themselves reject as a matter of principle. They travel to the Cuban beach resort of Varadero, they express their support for Havana and receive in return Cuban doctors and cigars.
The problem lies not just with politicians. Associations of friends of Cuba have been created in certain sectors of Latin American civil society, and a select and erudite group of intellectuals sees in Cuba a rented version of their dream. Once a year they visit their illusion, and senior officials in Havana welcome them like chiefs of state, publishing their books with government funds and herding them into venues where they are applauded. But their dream is the living nightmare of the ordinary Cuban, the man in the street who is overlooked, forgotten and marginalized.
Indeed, all these figures are helping to perpetuate in a neighboring country what they would never accept in their own: the food-ration card that dates back to 1962, a totally controlled press, a legal gag order on free thought, and paramilitary brigades with clenched fists on the lookout for counterrevolutionary tendencies. For me, who like so many other Cubans wound up in jail for daring to speak out and report on the harsh realities in my country, the public, uncritical embrace that certain political leaders bestow on Fidel Castro only serves to prolong the suffering of my people. He milks those encounters for all the propaganda he can to feed to his apparatchiks.
There are many different Cubas within Cuba, and the poorest and most populous of these Cubas has been forsaken by all of Latin America. With the exception of Costa Rica, all the countries of the region, thanks to the attitudes of their elected leaders, are in effect treating their Cuban brethren with hatred and suspicion. But one way or another the Cuban people will emerge from their hell, and hopefully in the not too distant future a free Cuba will extend a hand of friendship to those same countries that have turned their backs on its citizens.

Raul Rivero, prize-winning journalist and poet was a victim of the brutal March 2003 crackdown in Cuba which resulted in 75 dissidents, including 27 journalists receiving long prison sentences. In the fall of 2004, Mr. Rivero obtained his release from prison on medical grounds and currently resides in Madrid.

From Newsweek International
via NetforCuba

I hate to say I told you so, but…I told you so.

My biggest problem with allowing the Cuban national team to play in the US has been that it would make us complicit – accessories if you will – with the way the Cuban ballplayers are treated by their government. It is like a little piece of the island, with its lack of freedom of thought, lack of freedom of expression, lack of freedom of speech and apartheid has been allowed entry into this country. The Cuban ballplayers arent allowed to mingle with other players. They arent allowed to go out and have a nice dinner after a game. No nightclubs, no sightseeing and especially no talking to the press or fans of the game.

Yet it gets worse.

Since Thursday’s incident with a Cuban exile displaying signs reading “Abajo fidel” and “Baseball players yes, tyrants no” and fidel castro’s subsequent complaints, threats to withdraw from the tournament and impromtu rally in protest in Havana on Friday, now Bud Selig and Major League Baseball have banned freedom of speech and expression in the stands where WBC games are being played. No posters or signs of a political or ideological nature will be allowed to be displayed.

MLB goes communist folks.

I told you so.

I think he is! If I am right, the great master of American literature, and America’s greatest writer, is taking on one of the great ignored topics of the American Experience!

The Miami Cubans!!!!!!

I am so excited I can barely breathe! What greater topic is there for Wolfe’s genius than this! Tom Wolfe has chronicled the Space Program, the 60s hippies, the radical-chic frauds, Our Brave Troops in Vietnam, the mau-mauers of the welfare establishment, the self-absorbed cultie gurus of the 70s, the bond traders, the real estate moguls, and most recently, the moral scum of academia.

Now, he is writing about the great American success story! The greatest story of our age! The story of America as seen through the eyes of its most successful immigrants. It’s just so Tom Wolfe to be on top of this, to understand. If there is one writer who can do this right, it’s the great Tom Wolfe! He’s a man for our age, the great Mark Twain of our era. Now, he’s going to put Miami Cubans on the broadest American literary map!

As heroes! Because the only thing this ultra-detached and ultra-observant writer ever does is write the truth!

I saw it in a Wall Street Journal interview today and the conclusions are obvious:

What is it that Tom Wolfe believes in?

“I’m very democratic,” he says after a time. “I think I’m the most democratic writer whom I know personally, though I don’t know all writers of course.” Silence. “I also believe in the United States. I think this is the greatest nation that ever existed, still is. It’s really the only really democratic country in the world. Find me one country, just one country in the entire world that would let a foreign people–different culture, different language, and in many cases different color than the majority of the native stock–take over politically an entire metropolitan area in less than one generation. I’m talking about the Cubans in Miami . . .”

Mr. Wolfe has a habit of using experience and anecdote to gird an argument or shade a meaning, and he carries on like this for some time. Then, abruptly: “I really love this country. I just marvel at how good it is, and obviously it’s the simple principle of freedom. . . . Intellectually this is the system where people tend to experiment more and their experiments are indulged. Whatever we’re doing I think we’ve done it extremely, extremely, extremely well.” Silence. “These are terrible things to be saying if you want to have any standing in the intellectual world.”

Well. There is certainly something admirably American about Tom Wolfe–in the preoccupation with the varieties of experience; in his self-created literary persona, the Mark Twain or Ben Franklin of the 20th century. And also, especially, in his exceptionalism. If there is atavism about him, it is not a retreat from the American scene but a risk-all affirmation of its richness and possibilities. What’s the point, he’s asking, if you’re not going all out?

“I’ve begun the research for a book on immigration,” he notes. “When people ask me what I’m doing, I always tell them that, and the response is always the same. ‘How interesting’–and then their heads fall over. ‘God, how dull can it be.’ . . . But immigration I swear is an exciting topic.”

From yesterdays Impromtus column:

Finally, you may recall the item I had on Helena Houdova and Cuba last week. (That column is here.) Houdova is the Czech supermodel who went to Cuba — for charitable reasons — and was arrested and detained when she took photos of slums.

That prompted a letter from Ron Radosh, the great analyst of Communism, and other matters. He writes,

Jay,
Your comment today brings to mind my own experience years ago. Glad to see things haven’t changed much in Castro’s fairyland.

When I was there on my 1970s trip — discussed in my memoir a few years ago — I too was arrested for taking photos of things they did not want anyone to see.

My crime was snapping a photo of a lengthy line of Cubans in front of the old nationalized Woolworth store in downtown Havana. The people had heard that a rare shipment of plastic shoes from the Eastern Bloc had just arrived. It was a ration line, and they had been there all night, waiting for the store to open. I snapped the picture, and within a second I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was taken away and put in a jail cell.

It was, however, only for about seven hours. I guess Miss Houdova’s beauty accounted for her slightly longer stay. In my case, calls were put through to Cuban state security, who eventually showed up in an official car, saw that I was an official guest on a lefty trip, and admonished me to uphold my duty of revolutionary solidarity by not photographing anything that might harm the image of the great Revolution.

I replied that we had been instructed we could film anything except military installations — and this ration line on a normal street did not appear to be anything resembling such a location. They did not appreciate my reply.

Finally, after another half hour of lecturing, they let me go.

Your story leads me to suspect that the kind of freedom we take for granted won’t exist in Cuba until Fidel and his comrades in power are long gone.

Thank you, Ron, and thank you all. See you.

Thank you, Jay.

by Julio C. Zangroniz

WASHINGTON, DC — So the White House finally opened its doors on Wednesday to a carefully selected group of representatives of the Cuban exile/Cuban-American communities to discuss, allegedly, the wet-foot/dry-foot policy.
This monicker summarizes the “official” United States operating orders to return to the Island-Prison virtually all Cubans caught at sea in their attempts to escape from their “sea of happiness,” while those fortunate enough to reach U.S. soil can stay.

Most of the time, that is, because we all remember vividly that in early January, the Coast Guard arbitrarily returned to the Island-Prison a group of 15 Cuban hopefuls who had reached the Seven Mile Island Bridge in the Florida Keys after a harrowing 17-hour trip on a homemade boat.

Unfortunately for them, they landed on a part of the old bridge that is no longer connected to solid land. And just five days later, the Coast Guard shipped them right back to Cuba.

End of the old Seven-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys closest to the mainland,
believed to be the arrival point of the 15 Cuban refugees illegally returned to the island by the U.S. Coast Guard.

But fortunately for those refugees, a federal judge in Miami concluded last week that their return to Cuba by U.S. authorities was illegal, and that the U.S. government should start doing all it can to get the 15 out of Cuba as soon as feasible.

The group reportedly was ecstatic at the legal development, and they have already visited the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to start the required paperwork to be able to leave the island.

As a protest against the illegal Coast Guard action, activist Ramon Saul Sanchez of the Democracy Movement underwent a 12-day hunger strike that contributed, in great part, to focus national and international attention on the highly odoriferous wet-foot/dry-foot policy –perhaps not coincidentally a remnant of the Bill Clinton Administration.
White House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri told the Miami Herald that “the [Wednesday] meeting was designed to allow for a serious dialogue, and does not signal any change in policy as it relates to Cubans or any other country’s migrants.”

How pathetically typical of a Washington DC federal government bureaucrat.

Cuban American Congressman Lincoln Diaz Balart, nevertheless, called the meeting at the White House “frank and fruitful.”

One can’t help but wonder exactly what those fruits may be. Personally, I think the Cuban community will have better results if they patronize one of those perambulating “fruteros” or “vianderos” recently featured in Babalublog.com. Because what the White House seemed to be tellling its Cuban visitors on Wednesday was: You are here to talk, and we may listen, but don’t expect us to actually do anything about it.

For some unexplained reason, the White House omitted from the list of invitees to the Wednesday gathering such relevant figures to this situation as Democrat congressman Bob Menendez, or any of the attorneys who defended the group of “Seven Mile Bridge Group of 15,” or any “balseros,” returned to Cuba nor not, or –of course– that good ole “rabble-rouser” Ramon Saul Sanchez, who nevertheless showed up in the nation’s capital to do some behind the scenes lobbying, as well as to carry out some media interviews.

“We had hoped that this could be bipartisan, and that it kept in mind not politics, but the rights of balseros,” Sanchez told the Miami Herald and Univision. But that objective was not to be realized.

Other elected politicians who might have had a direct bearing on the discussions at the White House, such as Republican Mel Martinez and Democrat Bill Nelson, had to stay away from the Wednesday meeting due to scheduling conflicts.

At least Nelson tried to have the White House schedule the meeting for today, Thursday, but they would not comply with his request –in spite of the fact that the President and some of his top advisors are traveling in Louisiana, so either way, they would not have been involved in the discussions in Washington.

According to Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s office, the group that went to the White House, which included U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, his brother, Mario Diaz-Balart and “several spiritual leaders from Miami’s Cuban exile community,” according to a report in the Miami Herald, asked the federal government to amend the policy to make it more humanitarian towards escaping Cubans.

“Basically, what we’re seeking is procedural rights, a more human, a fairer treatment for the refugees that are intercepted at sea,” Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart told NBC.

Among the requests presented to the White House: that migrants receive some legal representation when picked up by the Coast Guard, whether on board U.S. vessels or at the Guantanamo base; that a portion of the 20,000 visas allowed by the U.S. for Cubans be set aside for those picked up at sea and in third countries; and that the federal government review the process by which the Coast Guard determines if migrants have a credible fear of persecution if taken back to the island.

Ironically, one of Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s last public appearances took place in Miami, at the Cuban Memorial in Tamiami Park on Saturday, February 25, when he inspected a model of a monument to be built in honor of those countrymen who have fallen in their struggle againt the fidel castro regime –a figure commonly felt to include unknown thousands who have tried to leave the island on anything that may float them away from that Caribbean hell on earth.

Among one of the few indications of progress from the Wednesday meeting was the announcement that Cuban American Emilio Gonzalez, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will serve as liaison between Cuban American members of Congress representatives and the Bush Administration.

Meanwhile, Joe Garcia, a Democratic Party consultant, observed that the difficulty in simply getting a meeting with the White House about the matter of the Cuban migrants shows how the Bush Administration brushes off the Cuba issue.

Perhaps something for all registered Cuban-American voters, not only those in South Florida but also around the nation, to keep in mind come the next election.

Presumably, the Wednesday deliberations at the White House were to be continued Thursday, but of course we all will have to await for the next official news release to find out if the effort continues to be “fruitful.”

Efforts to reach the White House in connection with this report, both by telephone and through its website, failed to produce any response.
###

José Leocadio Silva, 73, in the United States of America since 1959.

From the Times-Picayune:

LONG TIME COMING
A Cuban native’s 47-year quest to win American citizenship finally bears fruit, after a judge strikes down his deportation order, opening the way to the ceremony of his dreams

Friday, March 10, 2006
By Michael Perlstein
Staff writer

The man went to the federal courthouse in downtown New Orleans a day early for a dry run, familiarizing himself with the right entrance, the right courtroom, the right time. When his big day arrived Thursday, he showed up early and checked the list of people slated to become the country’s newest citizens, then he checked again. And again.

Each time, he did a double-take when he saw his name: José Leocadio Silva. Understandably, Silva was a bit nervous. Although 67 other foreign-born residents took an oath of United States citizenship Thursday in New Orleans, nobody has waited longer than Silva.

Nobody in New Orleans, nobody in Louisiana, nobody in the United States.

When Silva, 73, raised his right hand and swore his allegiance to his adopted homeland, he emerged from 47 years of legal limbo that had left him, literally, a man without a country.Since 1959, Silva has been listed as an “enemy of the state” to be deported for pleading guilty to a marijuana charge. But shipping him to his native Cuba became impossible with the United States’ embargo of that small Caribbean country in 1961.

As his American-born wife, son, 3-year-old grandson, priest and a few friends looked on Thursday, tears welled in Silva’s eyes as he joined them, finally, as citizens. Dressed in a red shirt, white jacket and blue slacks — with a red, white and blue striped tie — Silva was practically a walking, talking version of the American flag.

“What can I tell you. I’m so happy, I don’t have the words to express thank you,” he said with a still-thick Spanish accent, beaming so hard his eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “It’s very emotional. I feel blessed, blessed.”

Read Silva’s whole, wonderfully tear-inducing story here.

Hat Tip flick.

A group of anti-castro exiles sat directly behind home plate during last night’s WBC Cuba vs. Netherlands game and help up signs that read “Down with fidel” and “Baseball players yes, tyrants no“. The Cuban baseball team saw them, Cubans on the island watching the game saw them and you can bet fidel and his minions saw them.

Cuban team “officials” complained, Cuban security agents showed up to harrass the sign wielding exiles. Puerto Rican Law Enforcement officials came down and removed the Cuban agents from the stadium. The exiles were allowed to keep their signs.

That’s a grand slam for the Puerto Rican authorities and Cuban exiles living in freedom.

Read the story at The Real Cuba here, with more pictures of the incident.

Update: From the Miami Herald:

Protest leads to possible tumult after Cuban win

The Cuban team boycotted its postgame news conference and reportedly threatened to pull out of the Classic because of an anti-Castro incident.

SAN JUAN – A minor protest in the late innings of Cuba’s 11-2 win Thursday night against the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic led to the ejection of a high-ranking member of the Cuban delegation and had Cuba briefly threatening to pull out of the event.

Jose Garcia, a Cuban exile living in San Juan, sitting five rows behind the plate, held up a sign reading Abajo Fidel (Down With Fidel) that was clearly visible on the TV feed that was carried internationally, including in Cuba.

That led to a confrontion with as many as four credentialed members of the Cuban delegation, one of whom was escorted from the stands by armed police officers, who later returned to protect Garcia from further harassment.
Some members of the Cuban team left their dugout to watch the incident before continuing with the game. But afterward, Cuba refused to participate in the mandatory postgame news conference and, according to a high-ranking San Juan police official, threatened to pull out of the event.

”What happened was a great provocation on the part of four or five counter revolutionaries using signs and offensive language that violated the established norms of the organizing committee,” said a statement released by the Cuban team. “The local police, instead of fixing the problem, showed their support for [the protesters].”

The land of “The Battle of the Ideas” sure does have a problem with actual dissenting ideas, doesnt it?

Update: Granma has a hissy fit!

Update: A big Congrats to George of The Real Cuba, not only for this excellent coverage of the story and the WBC, but for being quoted in this Fox Sports article.

Some years back, a few friends and I started a domino league. Our first day, we had to pull some guy sitting at the bar of a local pub away from his Budweiser to have a fourth. A month later we had 4 tables tirando piedras. A month after that we had 10. At one time, we had about 16 tables going with people waiting in the wings.

They called me the Domino Nazi because I played old school and with passion. But regardless of my always blaming my partners for every loss, each game I played it brought me a little closer to the old men that taught me.

My buddy Harry – one of the original 3 of the domino crew – sent me the following beautifully written article on a Domino tourny in Miami sponsored by ESPN. From the Miami Herald:

ESPN on hand for Miami domino tournament

BY CARA BUCKLEY

cbuckley@MiamiHerald.com

His unkempt, bushy eyebrows all but hid his icy blue eyes, but the player still managed a piercing glare. Fixing a look of death on his partner, Alberto Fontecha hissed Spanish invectives, whistling through a gap once filled by two lower front teeth. Two-and-a-half days of domino playing, a grand and a half on the line, and he was out. They both were.

”My partner was killing me with his plays, and he critiqued me every time,” Fontecha, 73, spat after storming from the table, cursing. He pulled out a Marlboro Light, lit up and reconsidered. ”This game has no champions anyway,” Fontecha said moodily, exhaling. “It’s only luck.”

Under normal circumstances, Fontecha’s loss would be noted by onlookers and perhaps picked up on local television. But this time, this year, the annual domino tournament in Little Havana’s Domino Park, part of the Calle Ocho Festival, was sponsored by ESPN. It will later be broadcast on Spanish-language ESPN Deportes and on ESPN2 for all the world, or at least millions of viewers, to see.

ESPN’s gambit hinges on the hope that dominoes, long an entrenched pastime in Spanish-speaking and Caribbean countries — and since brought stateside — will gain the runaway popularity of televised and online poker.

The network sponsored a championship tournament in Las Vegas last fall, awarding a $25,000 prize. ESPN Deportes will start airing the tournament in seven segments later this month, interspersing the broadcast with snippets from smaller, local tournaments such as Miami’s.

Such an auspicious backing boosted the drama and intensity of the Little Havana tournament, now in its eighth year, not least because it nearly doubled the first-place winnings to $1,500 from $800 last year. But the players, nearly one and all, looked as they always do in this storied Miami nook. Viejitos, older people, with liver-spotted hands, belted paunches and failing eyes.

But they were vigorous still, competitive and, as Fontecha demonstrated, often irascible.

”My doctor, he told me to keep playing, that it was therapy for the mind,” said Celia Duque, stooped and 74, who, with her husband, Eloy, came in third, landing $200.

The tournament began Monday with 150 players from Miami and Orlando, the latter invited for the first time.

Dominos are played differently in Miami compared to most places. Here, mirroring play in Cuba, the chips, or ”fichas,” have up to nine dots at each end — as opposed to six in other communities — and the game’s name is “Double Nines.”

Each game was sudden death. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the games began around 10:30 a.m. and stretched four hours. By 4:10 p.m. Wednesday, the multitude was whittled down to the final two teams.

The final four were all Cuban-born Miamians: a nattily dressed septuagenarian and a fiftysomething janitor facing off with a former roofer and disabled retiree, both in their sixties.

Earlier in the day, the septuagenarian, Raul Jones, 77, was asked what made him so lucky in dominoes. Puffing his chest and adjusting his blue kerchief, Jones announced with gusto that it had nothing to do with luck. ”Nobody will win with luck!” he hollered, thumping his chest with a gnarled hand. “Not a santero! Not a spiritualist! Not a witch! Nobody’s going to win but a Christian!”

But now Jones sat quietly, cameras zoomed on his face, the crowd pressed in close, breathing hotly. He and the janitor, Jose Rojas, 56, were behind. The ex-roofer, Lazaro Hernandez, 65, and his partner, Armando Pulido, 61, had 145 points. Jones and the janitor had 18.

Suddenly Hernandez flubbed. He threw down his ficha before everyone had arranged their own.

”You can’t do that!” cried Jones.

”This is for $750 each!” Pulido shouted in dismay at Hernandez. “Be careful!”

Hernandez, a sun-spotted man with friendly brown eyes, shrugged sheepishly. The game went on. Hernandez and Pulido were out first. They leapt to their feet, shrieking in premature joy. But they hadn’t won yet, they only had 198 points.

The fichas were shuffled, clattering loudly. Hernandez made another mistake, tossing down the wrong chip. As penalty, 50 points was awarded to the other team.

”Stupid, stupid!” Pulido shouted at Hernandez, waving his fist and rising to his feet. The game’s referee, in slicked-back hair and a white guayabera, ordered calm. Pulido sat.

The game went on.

Jones and Rojas kept creeping up. Suddenly, it was 198 to 194. The crowd leaned closer, breathless, wringing their hands. Then Hernandez threw down his last chip. Victory. He grinned widely and the crowd whooped.

A little later, amid much backslapping and cigar-chomping, Hernandez considered what he would do with his winnings. ”I’ll pay my bills; I have a lot,” he said. Slight pause. He glanced at Jones, who was in earshot, receiving condolences. Jones and the janitor would split $400, second prize.

”I’ll also buy a pig,” Hernandez continued loudly, so Jones could hear. “I’ll invite my enemies over and roast a pig!”

”You didn’t shuffle properly,” Jones retorted hoarsely. “You can’t shuffle at all.”

But then Bared, the organizer, called them over. It was time for their award checks. Winners and runners-up threw their arms around each other, and smiled gleefully as the ESPN cameras whirred.

Because while CNN and Lucia Neuman, etal, are busy whitewashing fidel castros tyranny over the Cuban people, Fox News’ Hannity of Hannity and Colmes isnt afraid to tell the truth about the island or her people.

Tonight on Hannity and Colmes:

Thursday, March 9:
• Why are Cuban dentists imprisoned in the Bahamas and how do the U.S. and Fidel Castro factor in? We’re live in Naples, Fla. with the answer!

Tune in at 9 PM est.

Following up on Ventanita’s post yesterday here at Babalú and at Wall Street Cafe, Guillermo Fariñas’ hunger strike for internet access in Cuba is not only getting more international press in the MSM, but his fight for the freedoms we sometimes take for granted is spreading throughout the internet.

And not only through blogs but through a couple of websites and portals where political commentary is rare and unlikely.

Broadband Reports, a well known and well visited website dedicated to technical internet connection issues had the following in the “Broadband News” section:

Hunger Strike for Open Net Access – Cuban on 36 day fast for unfettered Internet

Posted 2006-03-09 09:42:02

Techdirt points to a Reuters report of one Cuban man who has gone on a hunger strike to demand full, unfettered internet access from the Cuban government. “Guillermo Farinas, a 41-year-old psychologist, went on a hunger strike on January 31 to press Cuba’s Communist authorities to respect his right to freedom of information and allow him Internet access, which is controlled by the government.” His health is quickly deteriorating, and he is refusing medical care.

Check out the comments for the above Broadband news post here.

The original Techdirt article quoted in the above is here. Do read the comments there as well. You’ll find there are quite a few people out there that truly understand why Fariñas is risking his life and laud his courage. there are also a few link in the Techdirt post that may be of interest to all.

This is great news, folks. Great news.

Hat tip Laz.