Al fín

I was born in paradise.

The land of rum and salsa and the medianoche. Six months later, it was paradise lost en la medianoche.

Bad luck, bad karma, brujeria…who the hell knows? But I got to know hell and the devil himself: fidel.

And the devil and his minions destroyed society, outlawed decency and canceled Christmas. It was their way or death, my parents chose neither, they chose the highway. Actually, the shark infested waterway, but that was better than turning your first born over to the devil for indoctrination. But…not so fast…Paradise had turned into a hellish island prison. Yes, and hell came with its own shark infested moat around it, complete with machine gun equipped coastguard boats to prevent the inmates from trying to escape to the shark infested waters. Absurd, but it made sense, even to a child. No one is going to stay in hell voluntarily and the devil needs souls to torture. No escape.

You either joined the torturers and became part of the red mob of minions or you got tortured. It was that red or white. It was unthinkable for decent people to join the devil and so we became the tortured. Every day, it seemed, there was a new hellish edict designed to torture, torment and subjugate us into submission. After all, the devil loved to torture and torment, but what he was really after, what he really wanted was your soul. So with each dreaded new day, you could look forward to the dark evil cloud that seemed to hover over paradise lost blocking out God’s light. No hope.

So my sentence in hell on Earth lasted for nine long years. Childhood was cancelled. It was too bourgeois a concept for hell. Again, absurd, but it made sense since children don’t belong in hell. We were to be “pioneers” instead…junior minions… mini hate mongers. Education? Hardly - just intimidation and indoctrination and slogans. Lots of revolutionary slogans. Lots. They wanted me to be like che. Imagine that. To be like a racist, homophobic, cowardly Argentine who reveled in personally administering coup de grâce to the firing squad victims. Innocence lost in Paradise lost. Even a “pioneer” can see the pattern here… All was lost.

And….as the plane finally lifted off the Varadero airport tarmac, I remember telling myself to look back at the hell I had just left because I might never see it again. I forced myself to look back as the plane sped away from the coastline, seeing the green island rapidly disappearing in the distance. Good! I hated that place and all the crap we put up with anyway! (Sometimes the hardness that comes with losing one’s innocence at an early age can be quite useful.) And as I sat there in the air conditioned cabin of National Airlines 707 climbing to reach the cruising altitude of 13,000 feet, (I will never, ever forget that), I realized my grandmother, Ramona was dead. Dead. She had died, suddenly, four months earlier. The devil had killed her, her weak heart had not been able to withstand the constant stress of the daily onslaught of misery and humiliation dished out by our tormentors. I was convinced. I hated them and him most of all.

To be exiled in the land of plenty isn’t half bad. One could make an argument that leaving paradise was the best thing that ever happened to me as I settled into an American Dream life that fit like a glove.

But, even on the most beautiful of occasions, on the greatest of days, like when the Giants won the Superbowl back in ’87, there was always a part of me that couldn’t be totally happy. That feeling would return. Suddenly I’d be back in the air conditioned cabin of the National Airlines 707 climbing to reach the cruising altitude of 13,000 feet watching paradise lost fade into the horizon and hating the devil. I had left a tiny bit of myself there in Paradise Lost. The devil had gotten a grip of it and torn it from me, forever. Give the devil his due.

One by one, those in my parent’s generation started to die, not being able to outlast their tormentor, the devil. The devil always won, it seemed. And as much as I tried to put it behind me, the devil was there at every funeral, taunting me, pulling me back into the air conditioned cabin of the National Airlines 707 climbing to reach the cruising altitude of 13,000 feet.

And for the last 10 years or so, since the devil has been preparing for his trip back to Hades, my biggest fear has been that he would outlast my parents.

I lay there in bed. It’s late. I should have gone to sleep hours ago, but I’m checking Facebook on “Precious”, my iPhone. And I read it. fidel died. Again. Funny. We will now have to endure another proof of life video from the regime of the devil wears Adidas variety. Great. But wait, this is from an actual news organization…

And back I go…swoosh… back into the air conditioned cabin of the National Airlines 707 climbing to reach the cruising altitude of 13,000 feet.

The TV is already on Fox News when I turn it on,(no CNN in my house since Elian), and they confirm it. But, they go right into commercial. My wife tells me to put the local news and viola! It’s true! And I’m cruising at 13,000 feet. Finally. Al fín.

I was going to call my parents. I had dreamed of this phone call all my life, but I didn’t. The devil had already taken so much from them. They would find out in the morning and call me. Give them their day.

And so, they never called. I finally called them and didn’t bring it up. I asked the old man how his back was doing as he was having a flare-up of arthritis. Then I asked if he had heard the news and he talked about it as if the pot banging on calle ocho was going on in some far away land.

And there I was…my ears popping in the air conditioned cabin of National Airlines 707 circling…always circling looking for that piece of me forever lost in paradise.

Grape Anesthesia

So I called up the old man and asked him if he ate his grapes.

He did. My mom put them in sandwich bags. Why didn’t I think of that?

And so I asked him “What where you doing 54 years ago?” and he said “Probably eating my last grape.”

The old man is half existentialist, half cynic and half comedian. In Cuban you can be medio anything. In fact, four medios add up to a peseta.

So I said “Seriously, What where you doing fifty years ago when Batista was leaving Cuba”

And he said: “Seriously, We had no idea. I was probably eating the last grape”

And I thought abut it as I saw all the people partying on TV and heard the distant music of a neighbor's party.

The world as we know it could be changing as we sip our champagne and eat our last grape and even with the instantaneous communications of today’s world, we wouldn’t know it.

So I imagined that New Year’s Eve in 1958 and all the hard partying, dancing Cubans sipping Cidra and chomping on grapes totally unaware that the island they were floating on was about to be swallowed up in a whirlpool of change.

And little did those that knew what was about to happen imagine that 54 years later the island would still be sinking into that swirling, bottomless abyss.

The inevitable yearly visit of my asterisk-my cross-the moment where I realize that the New Year celebration is also the anniversary of the day that freedom died-had arrived,

And the second glass of champagne became not a toast but a bitter grape anesthesia.

Happy New Year*.

For me, New Years has always been a celebration with an asterisk-Happy New Year*.

The New Year brings with it the promise of renewal and the hope of better days to come. Unfortunately, for me and all freedom loving Cubans, it also marks the day that we lost our freedom-the asterisk.

Since this January 1st marks the 52th year of the “revolution,” it means that many more of the generation that were young adults when Castro came to power did not live to see Cuba’s return to freedom. Come to think of it, that means that most Cubans alive today were born after the day of the asterisk.

So, most of us that live on the hyphen have to rely on the ever dwindling generation of Cubans who new life in Cuba before the asterisk to tell us what it was like to live in Cuba when life there was normal. And, I’m sorry, but living under the oppression, indoctrination and rationing that came with the totalitarian regime of Fidel Castro is anything but normal.

When I was a child, I used to listen in amazement of the stories that the adults told of how things were like before Castro. I could not conceive of being able to travel abroad and come back to Cuba without permission or going to the bodega and buy whatever you had money for without a ration book.

I do have a point.

I clearly remember one New Years Eve that my mother and grandmother were fussing over grapes. Yes, grapes. You see Cubans have a tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight for good luck. I think that’s a carryover from the Spaniards, bless them.

Anyway, on that particular New Years, there we no grapes to be found and my grandmother was not happy with Fidel. And when I asked her what the big deal with the grapes was, she said it was bad luck if you didn’t eat the 12 grapes. She told me how before Fidel the whole family would get together and have a party and I would ask her about all the stuff they ate and drank and it all sounded like a fairy tale to me.

S o that New Years Eve was the first of many without grapes which was ok with me since getting force fed those 12 grapes at midnight took all the fun out of getting to stay up late. Later on though, my superstitions got the best of me and I started to worry about what horrible bad luck would befall my family if we didn’t eat our 12 grapes at midnight. Fidel would never leave, (that proved to be a well founded fear), or we would never get our exit.

I was sure that every obstacle and struggle our family endured in the next few months was due to not eating the 12 blessed grapes. Sometime in February or March, I must have professed my “grape theory” to my father. He proceeded to smack me in the head with a classic Cuban father cocotaso and to tell me not be a comemierda. ( Not having a comemierda for a son ranks high in the Cuban father’s hierarchy of priorities) And he proceeded to explain to me his Castro theory the way only a Cuban father could. He explained that we could have each eaten a truckload of grapes and other than the ensuing cagalera, it would hot have made a bit of difference because all of the problems were caused by Castro. That’s the “No Castro, No Problem” model which admitedly held a lot more water than my childishly superstitious “grape theory”

I’ve eaten my 12 grapes every year since coming into the US. Even when I’ve gone to a party where there are no grapes for the midnight tradition, I’ve had them waiting for me when I got home. I tried taking them in my coat pocket one year, but that’s a another messy post.

I called the old man to see if he had his 12 grapes ready and he said they were taking them to their New Years eve party. I told him not to take them in his pocket. He told me not to be a comemierda. He still worries about me.

So eat 12 grapes at midnight for good luck or just because you can and raise you glass to celebrate this Happy New Year* and hope that next year it will be just a plain ‘ol Happy New Year.

Happy New Year*

Chachita

Whether you call her La Virgensita. La Santisima, Nuestra Senora de la Caridad, La Caridad del Cobre or just "Cachita"-because only Cubans would have a nickname for their patron saint- or Ochun, today is her day.

And I got me one of those big old candles with her likeness on it and I'm going to light it right now and join the millions of Cubans that today pray that, just like she saved those three Cubans from the storm so long ago, that she protect our fellow Cubans from the Hurricane that is battering the island today. And that once the clouds begin to clear that the light of freedom shines brightly to every corner of our enslaved island.

Multiple Choice

I’m probably the only Volvo-driving, France-loving , latte-sucking, tofu-chomping holistic-wacko, neurotic vegan weenie anti-Castro Cuban blogger. Maybe not, I prefer café con leche to latte.

As a Democrat, I have philosophical differences on the size and scope of government with most of my fellow Cuban bloggers. But we do agree that in civil, economic and political life should all be based on free exchange of ideas.

A government by the people and for the people can be a proactive and positive force in society.

We all know what happens when government isn’t for the people.

In recent years, government has grown so that it seems that it doesn’t exist for the governed but for the governors. The governed have become the masses to be lead to wherever the governing class sees fit.

And that is tyranny.

Side-stepping the democratic process in order to exercise a party’s political will against the will of the people as was done when the National Healthcare bill was passed is not government for the people. It is government in spite of the people.

And in spite of the out of control governing class dictating how we live our lives, I figured the “masses” had pretty much given up and were more concerned with Dancing With the Stars and American Idol than with their elected officials

Lo and behold, though, came the tea party. Out of nowhere. And they are mocked, even by the sitting president, as “tea baggers.” Sad.

And I’m watching the news last night and hear the very same President say:

"So the challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify, specifically, what would you do?" he added. "It's not enough just to say get control of spending. I think it's important for you to say, I'm willing to cut veterans' benefits or I'm willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits or I'm willing to see these taxes go up. What you can't do, which is what I've been hearing a lot from the other side, is we're going to control government spending, we're going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts, and that magically somehow things are going to work. Now, some of these are very difficult choices."

Now, for starters, if you accept President Obama’s premise that’s it’s up to the citizens, because after all, the tea party is just that, a bunch of concerned citizens, why should it be their responsibility to come up with the $4 trillion he and the current congress has put us in the hole for? Isn’t that what elected leaders are for? to solve or problems? That’s like blaming the crime victim for the crime.

But no, I do not accept his premise that it’s up to the tea partiers, or citizens, to come up with a plan to fix his mess.

I don’t really think he President Obama gets it. I know he’s a constitutional professor and all, but really. The above quote, to me is mind boggling.

In a democracy, we have elections. Elections are tests, multiple choice tests. A, B or C. They are not essay questions.

If the law professor doesn’t realize this soon, the next few elections may very well turn out to be even simpler-a true and false test, yes or no. And the citizens will say no to his premise that its their responsibility to come up with solution for their leader’s messes and kick him and his like – minded elitists out.

Therapy

I’ve pretty much given up reading “news” on Cuba. It pretty much all boils down to some “reporter” parroting the regime’s lies. This guy here, Marc Frank, apparently likes parroting the party line since before becoming Reuter’s man in Havana he wrote for the People’s Daily World, a Communist Party USA publication. Heh.

Frankly, I didn’t realize that Frank had written this piece for the Financial Times that I linked into from Drudge, so I started reading and (screaming at my screen).

So, as a therapeutic exercise, I have copied that article here along with my expletive deleted comments.

I don’t feel better now.

Financial Times
AMERICAS
Economy & Trade

Cuba to cut 500,000 from state payroll
By Marc Frank in Havana

Published: September 13 2010

Communist Cuba will shift (shift?)hundreds of thousands of state employees to the private sector (what private sector?) in 2011 as the government prunes more than 500,000 workers from its payroll.

The official trade union federation (the regime) said on Monday that eventually more than a million jobs would be cut. (Is it still going to be illegal not to have a job in Cuba?)

“Job options will be increased and broadened with new forms of non-state employment, among them leasing land, co-operatives and self-employment absorbing hundreds of thousands of workers in the coming years,” (in the coming …years!…hmm…does the socialist paradise have unemployment insurance?) the union statement said.

According to a document circulating within the higher ranks of the Communist party in preparation for the “reorganisation of the labour force” announced on Monday, 465,000 non-state jobs would be created in 2011, of which some 250,000 would fall under the category of new licences for self-employment. (ha I see the regime controlled “private sector”)

Self-employment, begun in the 1990s, (wow, Fidel invented self-employment in the 1990’s..wasn’t his mother self employed in the world’s oldest form of self employment?) covers everything from family-run restaurants to car repair shops, construction and artisans. Non-state jobs included workers hired by the self-employed, ex-state employees such as taxi drivers who would move to a leasing arrangement, and employees of small state businesses that went over to a co-operative form of administration, said sources who have seen the plan. (sounds like a well centrally planned private sector)

The plan represents the most important reform undertaken by President Raúl Castro since he took over from his brother Fidel in early 2008, and the biggest shift to private enterprise since all 58,000 small! businesses were nationalised in 1968.( in 1968 ?!?! 9 years after Fidel & co. turned the place into a concentration camp? How about all the businesses confiscated from 1959 to 1968?!?!? BUT in one year they will create 250,000 jobs….hmmm….so between 1959 and 1968…never mind…in 1968, Cuban exiles owned more than 58,000 small businesses in the US)

Raúl Castro has fostered discussion in the media (lies) and grassroots meetings (more lies) on the problems afflicting the socialist economy, (an oxymoron) but he has made mostly minor changes up till now. The exception has been agriculture, where Mr Castro has leased state lands to 100,000 farmers and loosened the state straitjacket on sale of farm inputs and produce. (some private sector, they get to work the government’s land…more like the feudal sector, really)

The government reported ( and I parrot without question) more than 85 per cent of the Cuban labour force, or about 5m people, worked for the state at the close of 2009. There were 591,000 workers in the private sector, with most of those being farmers (serfs) and 143,000 self-employed. (slaves) The massive layoff of 10 per cent of the state labour force is scheduled to begin in October and stretch through March. New licences for self-employment would be issued beginning in October , the sources said.

Geographical limitations on self-employment and prohibitions on obtaining bank credits, doing business with state entities or hiring labour outside the family, would be eliminated. (not to mention what criteria will be used to issue these licenses? Will Yoani Sanchez or Darsi Ferrer be issued licenses? Who needs to get bribed to get a “license”, Antonio Castro?....please!)

Better accounting would be demanded of businesses, and the way they were taxed would be changed. As well as taxes on income, the self-employed would pay a sales tax and 25 per cent social security tax for themselves and each employee, the sources said, while co-operatives would pay a tax on profits and social security.(wonder if they’re issuing any licenses for tax attorneys?)

The state expected tax revenue from the self-employed to jump from 250m pesos ($9.4m) this year to about a billion pesos in 2011, the sources said. (or else…you don’t want to have to get audited by state security)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

Blue Movies

OK, so I don’t go to the movies.

I haven’t been to a movie theater in years.

For a while there, every time I went to the movies I would regret it. I’ve had the cell phone talker, the narrator, the chatter all sitting near me. Hell, I’ve even had the snorer and the soundtrack singer. So eventually I gave up and just wait for the movies to come out on DVD.

This weekend a friend got “Avatar” in Blue Ray and invited me over. He takes pity on me because I still watch a 27 inch analog tube TV.

Oh boy. Great effects. After a while you swear those cartoons are real.

However…what about the plot?…unreal.

After the movie was over, I proceeded to explain to everyone why they had just sat through communist propaganda. Laughter ensued.

People just can’t believe that I just can’t sit there and enjoy a movie without looking for the subliminal red flags of communist propaganda. I don’t know, maybe I’m just gifted or cursed.

Avatar, of course, pins the noble savages against the capitalist profit seeking military-industrial complex.

The blue “aboriginals”, (really, red would have been more original), of course, live as one with Mother Nature in a communal egalitarian Utopia. They are so communal that they even connect to the planet, Pandora, and every living thing on it through some tentacle-like appendages. They are like “the Borg” only nicer.

These folks don’t have material possessions, or clothes and they don’t need them because since they understand that they are part of the collective whole. All they need to do to be happy is to be one with each other. Awe.

Their memories are collective. They are ruled by a wise old leader who has inherited his position. No need for elections or debate here. He makes all the decisions.

In the Pandoran jungle Utopia, they are all equal and call each other brother or sister, depending on their genitals. And they refer to themselves as “The People.” (The People’s Republic of the Na’vi, anyone?)

Now, of course, this sounds a lot like John Lennon’s candy coated communist manifesto, “Imagine,” except for the “no religion” part because Na’vi worship a tree or something. (not too sure on that). Maybe they should have been green instead of blue, but green or red people are not as stylish as blue people and the left is all about style.

But it also sounds a lot like Castro’s idea of a perfect society. Or a leftist Hollywood wet drem. Oh wait, Castro is leftists Hollywood’s wet dream.

And the answer to the question of whether I can enjoy a movie for “just” entertainment is yes.

But, Avatar, is a movie with a message. It is a morality tale and as such you are supposed to “get something out of it.” And I did. A bunch of collective, communist propaganda.

Really, I don’t know see how you can get anything else out of it. You have the individualists who are out for themselves on one side and the collectivists who sacrifice their individuality on the other and the whole point is to show the viewer how suppressing their individuality for the good of the whole is the way to roll.

Unfortunately, us humans are not built to roll that way and the only way to make humans roll that way is for heads to roll because we have to be forced, or coerced …or brainwashed…err…educated by cool, friendly cartoon characters.

God, isn’t that just what the evil capitalists do when they advertise?

And A Little Birdie Told Me...

I was a mischievous child. Always up to some secretive mischief.

I thought I could get away with anything.

A psychologists would probably say I was “Acting out,” but it was rebellion. Totalitarian society encourages small individual acts of rebellion, I think.

And I was thinking about my “acting out” and I though of my grandmother, Ramona.

That old woman loved me more than anything. And I knew it. And I would take advantage of it.

I remember playing with the veins in her wrinkly hands. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. And I remember her telling me about all the bad things that I thought I had done secretly and I would ask her how she knew and I remember her telling me a little birdie told her and I would be furious at the little, big mouthed bird.

And I think back in amazement of how such a young child would know about the evils and dangers of communism and know enough to keep his mouth shut yet he believed that some little bird was ratting him out. I guess it kind of made sense that in a place where everybody was ratting everybody else out, even their own family, and all the walls had ears that birdies would tell all. But, still, the cynicism mixed with innocence is mind-blowing in retrospect.

And so I think of Ramona, and the little birdies that talk to her. They told her Fidel was a devil when they perched on his shoulder in that now infamous “sign”

And I remember watching the tattle taling, gusano eating, chivato birds flying freely around while we were trapped in the world/s biggest bird cage. The birds, they were free. Free to fly to Florida and eat Ham and chew chiclets and play with Rosie.

And I also remember the time I freed the “azulejos” by opening their cage door, but I don’t remember if I did it because I hated them because they told on me or because I wanted them to fly North. I just remember getting in trouble for it.

And I was reading Yoani’s blog the other day and she had a post about a “Wild Beast” and it was about “Twitter”. Twitter’s logo is a blue bird and the whole purpose of “tweeting” is to tell everybody what you’re doing,(sometimes to annoying detail).

And Yoani was talking about how equipped with a cell phone, dissidents can tell a little blue birdie called “Twitter” what’s going on in the Cuban cage in “ 140 character fragments” so the little birdie can tell all

He didn’t know that our tweets travel to cyberspace through the rough sending of
text-only messages by way of cellphones. Nor could he imagine that instead of
ending up in the hands of a member of the British intelligence services, our
brief texts go to this blue bird that makes them fly through cyberspace.

And I though of how the birdies are signing and a different tune and how its being heard all over the world…

…a little birdie told me.

And the hits keep coming...

And so in the last post I explained why I find it offensive to call the tea party people “tea baggers”

But it gets much worse than that.

Now we have the president of the US mocking concerned American citizens because they don’t share his world view.

Being a life long Democrat, I’m not all too thrilled about has happened to the Democratic party in the last 20 years, It has been high jacked by the left-over left of the sixties, by a bunch of now over the hill clueless hippies.

So I was, unlike some of my friends, a bit pleased to see that someone was making an attempt to lure the president back from the left edge of radical foreign policy by dangling some green in front of him.

Of course, I’m talking about the Estefans.

In reality, politics is about influence and influence is about money and Obama proved that it’s pretty easy to buy his influence even if it’s by one of the only minorities that don’t march lock and step with the Democratic party-The Cubans.

Sorry, I’m not a fan of one-party systems.

Now, in a candy coated way, the ever “diplomatic” and “politically correct” Gloria said as much:

The beauty of this amazing nation is that anything is possible! Even hosting a very political evening to get the “ear” of my President

And in a not so diplomatic way, Estefan warned the president that the considerable sum she helped raise for his party came with some strings attached by quoting Dr. Lawrence J. Peter:

“Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.”

Unfortunately, while he was in Miami the president decided to do to the American people the very thing that the Estefans were lobbying him to put pressure on the Castro regime to stop doing to the Cuban people.

See, the Castros, through their sate – run media ridicule and mock any opposition in order to marginalize it and that is exactly what president Obama did. During the fundraiser, the president had this to say about the tea partiers who were protesting on tax day:

`You'd think they would be saying thank you,''

As far as I know past presidents have always shrugged off protesters and critics rather than to try to mock and ridicule them.

At least he didn’t call them tea baggers or terrorists.

The latter fell to former president Bill Clinton who warned that those angry tea partiers could incite home grown terror a la Oklahoma City bombing:

"But when you get mad, sometimes you wind up producing exactly the reverse result of what you say you are for."

Sure... Timothy McVeigh was home watching “I Love Lucy” re-runs and tuned into some anti-Clinton protest on TV and decided to kill a bunch a people.

If you listen to these two presidents, you get the impression that they would have sided with the tax loving King George instead of with the American patriots.

But that’s not the point. One can shrug off their point of view.

It’s much harder to understand why these two can’t just shrug of the respectful and sincere criticism of many taxpayers who don’t agree with them and try to blame the people rather than realize that ultimately, in a democracy it is the people who choose who's to blame.

Shrugs

I haven’t been writing lately. Frankly, the run-up to the 2008 election and the election of a President who thinks that the US constitution is flawed shook me to the core. The cult of then candidate and now president Obama’s personality, all hinging on vague concepts like hope and change and Marxist inspired posters as well as the inability of the opposition to mount a coherent defense of the core American value of a constitutionally limited government, brought back such horrible memories of the Cuban tragedy, that I resorted to burying my head in the sand for over a year, playing ostrich, barely sticking it out on occasion to mutter “I’ve seen this movie before.”

At times, I’ve threatened, in desperate jest, to go back to Cuba. I tell my life partner that I already rode the runaway train of socialism down once and have no desire to do it again. At least Cuba has already hit rock bottom.

And so here I am today, writing. Head out of the sand and squinting. Grimacing at all that my senses are taking in. Surrounded by an all too familiar ugly, foul smelling, painful reality that’s leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

I was watching TV and they were talking about the tea party activists. Whatever. They wear t-shirts and hats, make signs, wave them at the TV cameras, pat themselves on the back and tell each other what great Americans they are and then they go home and nothing changes. A stupid waste of time, really. Kind of like going to a Star Trek convention.

And they were referring to these folks as “tea baggers.” Apparently this is offensive.

Sheesh! Everyone is way too sensitive these days.

Then, I read on a blog that “tea bagging” was a “sexually” offensive epithet and Hah! that made me interested enough to Google “tea bagger” on my miraculous 3G smart phone and Oh My God!, or OMG in 2010 text lingo. Who knew?!? I certainly didn’t. Wow, right there on Wikipedia! It takes a lot to make this old “gusano” blush.

Oh, pardon my spanglish. Lemme esplain what a gusano is…

Ah yes, “gusano”, Spanish for worm, a lowly, belly crawling creature that feeds off rotting carcasses and refuse. That’s what I was called in Cuba when I was a kid. That’s what all of us who didn’t think Fidel Castro had all the answers or was the only one with the right to ask questions were called.

I mean if you didn’t think that government, Fidel’s or Batista’s or Pepito’s, could abolish the constitution, or had the right to force you to do things you didn’t want to do, like “volunteer”, or that it had no right to take your property and give it to someone else, you were a “gusano.” You were a “counter revolutionary”- against the party, against Fidel. So you were ridiculed and shamed with an insulting moniker made to conjure up a disgusting image...a “gusano.”

Some of “gusanos” were lucky enough to escape Castro’s totalitarian amusement park to a place where you could, if you wanted, wear funny t-shirts and hats and wave signs that mostly say hooray for our side and we cherished this more than anyone will ever know. Being allowed to do so, really, even in this day and age, is a rare gift…an unalienable gift endowed by our creator…that’s denied to so many.

And the best thing about this country was that its constitution was so respected that whenever harmless kooks carrying signs and screaming at the tops of their lungs for whatever reason got together and demonstrated, everyone just shrugged.

Imagine that.

Some nut standing in the middle of the street screaming the total opposite of what you believe in and you just shrug.

Amazing!

And why? because of the flawed, according to our president, piece of a paper that founded our government.

Really amazing.

And so I shrugged, starting in November of last year. Because I believe in the constitution and its “negative powers.” I believe in elections.

But when I see celebrities, folks in the media and some elected officials calling these tea party nuts an offensive name like “tea bagger” just because they’re carrying signs and wearing funny t-shirts and hats and patting themselves on the back for being patriots. Damn-it it breaks my heart because it hits way too close to home for this old “gusano.”

These folks aren’t doing anything more than a Trekie does at a Star Trek convention, really. Then, they go home and pay their taxes. I mean, most people shrug off the Trekies (ok some do give understandably quizzical looks), but these tea party folks get called names-a hideous, insulting, sexually charged epithet just because they have a different concept of the role of government.

And really, that you just can’t shrug off.

Nostalgia...

Para Ziva:

Eres mas cubana que una palma real.

Olé!

Hubo un lugar
Donde los árboles lloran
Y yo no he parado de llorar

Po’ ti seré
Eterno maaa-nan-tial

Cuba linda de mi vi’a
Cuba linda siempre la recordaré
Yo quisiera verte ahora
Como la primera vez

Cuba linda de mi vi’a
Cuba linda siempre la recordaré

¡Ay!
Cuba linda de mi vi’a
Cuba linda siempre la recordaré

Flor de mayo, Sevillana
Flor de mayo que a mi patria levantó
Yo quisiera verte ahora
Como la primera vez

Flor de mayo, Sevillana
Flor de mayo que a mi patria levantó

¡Ay! Flor de mayo, Sevillana
Flor de mayo que a mi patria levantó
¡Éje!

Coro: Te recordaremos
Aunque me cueste morir

El Cigala: A mi me gustaría una mañana
Después del café bebí ’o
Pasearme por La Habana
Con mi cigarro encendi’o

Coro: Te recordaremos
Aunque me cueste morir

El Cigala: Primita oh Dios te vea
Primita oh Dios te vea
Rodando de mano en mano
Que como la ¿****?

Coro: Te recordaremos
Aunque me cueste morir

El Cigala: A mi me gustaría una mañana
Después del café bebí ’o
De pasearme por La Habana
Con mi cigarro encendi’o

Coro: Te recordaremos
Aunque me cueste morir

El Cigala: Lararararaaaai
Larararararaaalai

(piano solo)

Lararalalalala
Laralaaa

Die Already!

Die Already! The Miami Herald needs the money. As Fidel rumors swirl, our newsroom plan awaits BY MANNY GARCIA Manny Garcia is The Miami Herald's Senior Editor/News. At Miami Herald Media Company, Fidel Castro is the journalistic equivalent of a kidney stone -- a constant pain who never seems to go away, and you pray that he passes, soon. Castro is part of our collective newsroom psyche, even outside One Herald Plaza. You could be on an African safari when Fidel dies and you gotta come home. Publisher's orders. Everywhere I travel, I take ''the Cuba plan,'' a three-ring binder with every possible scenario for when Fidel dies. Calling-tree diagrams. Bank accounts. Satellite phones. Fixers. Fast boats. The Cuba plan went on a Mediterranean cruise with my family. It's been to Barcelona, Rome, Vancouver, Disney World -- even down North Carolina's Nanthahala River -- safely tucked in a waterproof bag while my son and I rafted. Sad, huh? You've gotta understand that the Cadaver-in-Chief is our story and biggest challenge. The Cuban government will not give us a journalist's visa to report from there, claiming we are the exile's lapdogs, which is garbage. Meanwhile, some exiles call us Granma North. So we sneak reporters into Cuba to write about what's going on. We don't publish their bylines because it's dangerous, and you run the risk of getting caught and hassled by the authorities. While that's going on, we sit here at Mother Herald and prepare some more for the Big Day. We sit in meetings, long meetings, going over possible stories. Phrasing. Tone. Length. We got at least five different versions of Fidel's obit, pegged to the time of day or night he dies. We built a Web page for the big day -- dubbed the `Holy (bleep) page. We've got Castro plans in English and Spanish, as well as every conceivable photo of Fidel: young, old, fatigue-clad, pajama-clad, vegetative. We stare at his tinted eyebrows. You've seen them -- a hue possibly achieved only using abuela's Roux Fanci-Full rinse No. 52, Black Rage. So we keep training and waiting for him to die. You've heard that joke where Fidel outlives us all? Well, he's outlived journos involved in cobbling out the earliest Cuba plans. Others quit, retired or just figured they should enjoy life away from the Cuba plan. (On a positive note, Fidel was a great recruiting tool. ''Where would you rather be when Castro dies?'' It worked!) But we hang in there. WORD OF MOUTH On a recent night, the rumor mill kicked in full-throttle -- Fidel had had a heart attack. He'd had a stroke. He's in a coma. Fifo is dead. My friends call. My relatives call. ``Por fin se murió el hijo de la gran [prostituta]?'' ``Did the son of the great [prostitute] finally die?'' I've never understood the ''great'' part of that phrase. No, Fidel's apparently alive and in yet another track suit and slippers. The Cuban government releases a photo of Fidel, this time with Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is holding his hand. We stare at the photo. He looks no different from an abuelo you'd see at Hialeah Hospital wearing the silk pajamas his nietos got him at the Pembroke Lakes Mall -- except that this abuelo is a dictator. 'It's a friggin' wax dummy.'' ``No man, he's looking better.'' ``Please, it's Photoshopped! He's dead.'' FALSE ALARM The truth is we don't know squat. So we polish up the Cuba plan some more, send people to Cuba, call State Department sources who know even less than we do. At all times, we try to act super smart and prepared for Anders Gyllenhaal, our executive editor, who asks pointed questions. ``Is he dead?'' Not too long ago, Juan Tamayo, a long-suffering keeper of the Cuba plan, sat in a room with us to see if we needed to scale back our ambitious Cuba plan. Fidel had refused to suddenly die -- a wonderful scenario, in a journalistic sense, setting the stage for a fat Special Edition that could be on the streets within hours. You felt deflated. The kidney stone remained lodged. The old bastard would find a way to hurt even our single-copy sales on his way to Hades.

Every Picture Tells A Story, Don’t It?

Fidel’s revolution has always been about images. The picture perfect dictatorship.

And that image has been successfully sold to the unsuspecting consumers in the market for a Utopia for half a century.

Fidel’s one and only talent has been to lie and sell slavery as revolutionary martyrdom-Patria o Muerte. He was able to tap into the Cuban unconscious and push all the right emotional buttons with symbols. The beards and crucifixes of the early revolution, the fatigues, four hour speeches, the Korda Che picture on t-shirts and cigars later and now the tracksuit and blog have all been part of the symbolic look of his revolution’s marketing campaign.

Castro’s 50 year propaganda campaign has managed to convince the world that even after 50 years Cuba is still undergoing a revolution that was over on Jan 8 1959. The world’s longest going out of business sale.

Ironically, this week that picture perfect dictatorship wasn’t exactly all that picture perfect thanks to a couple of pictures.

Fist off, Newspapers in Argentina and Venezuela as well as most of Miami were questioning the authenticity of the picture that showed the Argentine president next to a “rejuvenated” and some would say a fake Castro. Yawn.

But, I did show the high resolution digital photograph to a friend who uses photoshop and other software to legitimately “fix” photographs. I also told her the story of how a Cuban official “handed” the photo to the Argentine in public. When she finished laughing-she swore she wasn’t laughing at me and my Cuba obsession-she said that the high resolution digital image was that of a scan. So if someone took a digital photo, doctored it, printed it than scanned into a high resolution image, unless they were really bad at “photoshopping” the image, she couldn’t tell if it had been altered. And she said, what difference does it make, anyway?

OK, so it caused me the price of a latte to find out what I already knew.

The other not so perfect picture that caused a stir, especially on the island, according to Yoani Sanchez, was the Cuban Flag Picture in Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party.

In it, the white star on the Cuban flag was black. Doesn’t sound like a big deal in a country that’s been stuck in 1959 since well, 1959. But it was. It was such a big deal, The next day Granma printed an explanation. A translated Yoani comments:

There are errors that have much greater symbolic weight than hundreds of successes. Evasive stars and readers who interpret their escape; Islands that live dependent on prophesies and superstitions; days to remember the national hero and flags that dare to show what so many people keep silent about.

And all while the substitute dictator, who like the evasive star had left the scene of the crime and was in Moscow drinking Vodka, eating boar fat, (yuk), and nostalgically reliving the glory days of the USSR.

Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

CatholicVote.org

CatholicVote.org

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Even In Hindsight, Future Uncertain

Unlike others, I didn’t get a chance to “reflect” on the recent “changes” in the world this week.

Maybe that was a good thing because now I can do so with the benefit of hindsight.

But even looking back, things are a bit blurry and hard to make out in the distance. Hindsight is not always 20-20.

We started the week expecting the big announcement after the inauguration.

Did we get it?

I had a feeling that the latest rumors about the demise of Fidel, was the latest setup by the regime and that they were going to prop up the tracksuit tyrant for yet another gruesomely uncomfortable photo op. I figured they would have posed him next to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet because of her red pedigree, but in hindsight, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, made more sense because of her  bought and paid for- one $800k suitcase at a time-lack of pedigree.

The speculations all started with Chavez shooting of his mouth by delivering a eulogy for Fidel on his un-real(ity) TV show.

Chavez also compared Obama’s scent to that of Mr. Danger. And as repulsive and un-masculine as it is to compare the scents of your male enemies, it does give an insight into  Chavez’s very primal world. A world were where the big dogs mark their territory and he goes around sniffing the boundaries.

So, lo and behold, right after the inauguration, the brothers Castro decide to embrace President Obama, making Chavez the odd socialist new man out. Raúl wished President Obama luck and even said he “seemed like a good man.”

Then, President Fernandez de Kirchner, announces to the world that even Fidel is caught up in the Obamania sweeping the world and that he “believes” in Obama, all stenches aside. She also dispels the rumors, started by Chavez, that Fidel has one foot in the grave.

“Fidel” then gets reflexive in his blog and praises the “11^th” American President, saying that “no one could doubt the sincerity of his words” and that President Obama is “the living symbol of the American dream.”

 Talk about a stench. Something smells fishy-very fishy.

While I can see what Fidel sees in President Obama: a bit of himself, it is totally out of character for Fidel to talk about the American Dream.

Castro’s dream society is one where the individual is totally subjugated and the state, Castro, is omnipotent, His is the Nazi and Soviet dream, not the American Dream where individuals are free to pursue their own life, liberty and happiness. That is his nightmare, the  kryptonite to Che’s super new man, the holy water to his demon.

There was much talk of the announcement of Fidel’s death after President Obama’s inauguration.

I have no idea about Fidel’s health, but I doubt that Castro wrote this last reflection, where he embraces the embodiment of the American Dream.

Whoever wrote this reflection could be signaling the end of the revolution-which is like announcing the death of Fidel. Fidel is the revolution and the revolution was the antithesis to the American Dream.

In this online essay, Fidel has been cast aside as a an obstacle that “gets in the way of the comrades from the Party and the State as they are called to make constant decisions to tackle the objective difficulties derived from the world economic crisis.”

They could very well have just announced the end of an epic 50 years of “struggle” and “resistance” to an idea by embracing its embodiment-a truce in the “battle of ideas.” Or do they sense that America’s dream has been forever changed by its embodiment?

Time and hindsight will tell.

But it does seem that the regime has decided to embrace the embodiment of the American dream, President Obama, as the way to objectively tackle its economic difficulties. The embrace doesn’t have to be out of love, but in communist Cuba’s jineterismo tradition, out of necessity-American credit, American tourists and American dollars. This “reflection” attributed to Fidel and the full court press campaign against the embargo by the regime’s sympathizers, apologists, fellow travelers and all round useful idiots are definite clues to its goal.

This can only be achieved by burying Fidel.

I think they just might have.

 

 

… And the Devil says :

Do you believe in a God that satisfies
Do you believe in a God that opens eyes
Do you believe in a God that tells you lies
Or do you believe in me?

Do you believe in a God that brings you down
Do you believe in a God that wears a crown
Do you believe in a God that makes you bow
Or do you believe in me?



..the leap of faith...

An Arm, A Leg And A…

Freedom is expensive.

Historically, it has been literarily been paid for with blood.

Some would give an arm and a leg to be free and have.

And some men in Cuba are willing to part with a piece of something that’s very dear and near to them in order to have the opportunity to join a very exclusive club and leave Castro’s dungeon.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…
Like many young Cubans, 23-year-old Yosniel Castro wants an opportunity to leave this Communist-ruled island for a better life. Unlike many of his peers, he may have found a way out: Judaism.
…
The journey from Havana to Jerusalem, however, isn't easy. The process of converting to Judaism takes years and includes being approved by a council of elders at the synagogue and then an ordained rabbi. Since Cuba has none, usually converts have to wait for a visiting rabbi from Israel, Argentina or Chile. Last but not least, male converts have to submit to a ritual circumcision. In 2007, dozens of adult Cuban men underwent circumcision as part of their conversion process.
…
Since 1992, Bet Shalom has had a rotating troupe of mentors from Argentina, often rabbinical students, who usually commit to a two-year stint, instructing younger members of the congregation as well as conversos. The latest mentor, Fernando Lapiduz, hails from Rosario, in Argentina's grain belt.

.
In 2007, his first year in Havana, Mr. Lapiduz converted 71 Jews, including nearly two dozen adult men. They were required to submit to ritual circumcision by an ordained mohel whom Mr. Lapiduz imported from Argentina. "He did them all in one week," says Mr. Lapiduz proudly.

.
Mr. Zabicki was lucky -- he was circumcised in Mexico a week after his birth. "For those older guys...Well, it was a pretty complicated operation," he says with a grimace.

.
A complicated operation and an ironic situation to say the least.

.
While Castro’s role model, Hitler, was persecuting, incarcerating and slaughtering Jews in Europe, many Jews either converted to or pretended to be Christian in order to escape the his concentration camps.

.
And now in Cuba people convert to Judaism in order to escape Castro’s island concentration camp.

Some Socialists Are Better Than Others

I’ve got a wound in my soul. It’s called Elian.

I know its never going to heal, but it doesn’t hurt as much as when I was injured.

Elian was every Cuban. We were all a scared refugee at some point saved from the jaws of the sharks. Some figuratively, others all too literally.

I’m glad they didn’t throw me back into the shark tank, but would they have? Would they have been that blind, that cruel?

Obviously yes.

When the people, the system, the society you look up to let you down by doing something immoral it hurts, especially if they hurt a child in the process.

The mantra back in ‘00 was that “the boy belonged with his father.”

No argument, no explanation, no anecdote, no picture, no nothing could convince some people that to send a child back to some parents was child abuse. It was my hatred of Fidel blinding me. I could not see.

Indoctrinating a child into a cult of hate, lies and immorality even with their parent’s consent doesn’t make it right. It is still child abuse. Especially in a totalitarian country where everyone belongs to the state and Papa Fidel has parental rights over all the children, their parents and their pet dogs. Even in the child-welfare community where I worked at the time, this logic was rejected in favor of the “the boy belongs with his father” bumper sticker rationale.

So now I read that Adolf Hitler, the birthday cake boy from Jersey, has been taken away from his neo-nazi parents by the State. It seems that naming a child Adolph Hitler is considered child abuse or is it the environment of hate that the parents are instilling in this child that’s considered child abuse by the Garden State?

Now I’m confused. I thought children belonged with their parents.

Maybe Cuban children are to be measured by a different yardstick than the lily white supremacists?

What’s also troubling is that no ShopRite bakery employee would have batted an eyelash if it had been a birthday cake for a kid named Che or Fidel Castro or Mao Zedung or Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin. Much less would NJ’s DYFS have taken any child named after a communist away from their parents because of the environment of hate that the children may be exposed to in a communist household could be considered child abuse.

The same crowd that defends socialism and the communist murderers who have been responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000 people in socialist states, have turned on one of their own: Adolph Hitler.

Hitler is the pariah even though his body count is considerably less than Stalin’s or Mao’s. Nazis, you see, are far right, the opposite of a communist-or so they would have you believe.

But Hitler was one of them, a socialist. "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei —the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Clearly in Nazi Germany, the individual interests were subjugated for the common good and Hitler and his thugs ran the German economy by deciding what would be produced at what price, etc. In a word: Socialism.

I guess some socialists are better than others.

The Rerun

The show is about to start.

The rerun.

They should call this movie Déjà vu … They should call this movie Déjà vu … They should call this movie Déjà vu …


They’re setting the stage and props, going over security. You know, the usual.

Fidel’s demise is the talk of the media. And yet it seems that in the place that would welcome that news the most the news, Miami, it’s being received with a shrug and a smile. And as much as the media would like to see Cuban youths banging on pots on the street, by chumming the waters, it just doesn’t seem to be happening.

My kids will probably celebrate Fidel’s death because they think that it will probably mark the end of the dinner time lectures on the evils of Fidel, communism, the left and baggy pants. Yes, baggy pants are a communist plot.

Dr. Mario thinks that they might make the announcement on the 20th to compete with Obama.

I think that once Chilean President Bachalet arrives in Cuba, she will get her chance to kiss Castro’s colostomy bag in front of the cameras. And the regime will have fooled those gusanos in Miami on last time.

But that’s a rerun too. And the emotional response the second or third time you see the movie isn’t the same.

And I've seen this movie before.

Fading

Apparently Fidel Castro hasn’t reflected on anything since December 15. And he hasn’t been reflected in a camera lens for even longer.

And not too many people have noticed.

I think if Hugo Chavez hadn’t opened his mouth about the world never being able to see Fidel walking around the countryside in his uniform again, no one would have really noticed.

I certainly didn’t. I did find it odd that his half brother Raúl was traveling around Latin America for the first time since he took over and there weren’t any comments from the colostomy gallery.

But now the speculation about his health and mortality are staring up again.

It’s amazing to see how much Fidel’s star has faded since he took ill.

Unlike his pal Che, who died young, his star burning out fast and bright, Fidel’s is fading.

Which of course reminds of……

My my, hey hey

Rock and roll is here to stay

It's better to burn out

Than to fade away

My my, hey hey.

Out of the blue and into the black

They give you this,

but you pay for that

And once you're gone,

you can never come back

When you're out of the blue

and into the black.

The king is gone but he's not forgotten

This is the story of a johnny rotten

It's better to burn out than it is to rust

The king is gone but he's not forgotten.

Hey hey, my my

Rock and roll can never die

There's more to the picture

Than meets the eye.

Hey hey, my my.