Artists Against the Embargo

Susan Caraballo, executive director of Miami's Artemis; and Elizabeth Cerejido, curator at FIU's Frost museum, went political this week by signing up with ENCASA, a group of Cuban American scholars and artists who have united to call for the United States to lift the embargo of Cuba.

http://www.artemisarts.org/

http://www.fiu.edu/~museum/home.html

Comments

[john]

Go protest the commies, start hunger strikes, and shake your fist at them Miami Cubans. That surely will help take down Fidel.

[David]

I miss the old Tropical Park Racetrack and the Jaycees haunted house, Arbetter's Hot Dogs on Bird Road and skating at Tropical Park almost every night.

[E.C.Ballard]

Apart from the priviledged few in the Cuban govenment, everyone wants change. The issue is what sort of change. The unwillingness or inability to admit that the old approach has failed miserably speaks to the true desires of the powerful within the Cuban exile community. They are the same people who supported the Batista regime and want, despite the unreality of their hopes, to reinstate the old way. That is of course contrary to the wishes of the majority in Cuba who must have the ultimate say rather than being dictated to by an exile community. Instead, they have pandered to and manipulated the sincere emotions of the exile community for their own purposes.

Change will ultimately come but it most likely will not be of the sort that Miami's elite would prefer. And as long as it remains to be seen what will happen, there exists the hope that it will neither be a continuation of the misfortunes that Cuba has suffered over the last several decades, nor what the Exile leadership desires. The decisions should be made by the Cubans themselves and not by the ex-Cuban leadership living outside of Cuba, and really blind to the desires of the Cuban populace.

The powers on both sides of the straits despite their claims to the contrary, have shown a real lack of concern for the average Cuban living on the island. Unfortunately, those who have the power in the US to provide real leadership are entrenched in unrealistic and selfish dreams. They are motivated by greed and revenge rather than a desire for real change. While the end result of the Cuban Revolution was lamentable that does not negate the fact that it was entirely necessary - and at the time suported by the vast majority of Cubans.

Cuba deserves better. If the leaders of the exile community were committed to the welfare of Cubans instead of vested interests they would try to offer real alternatives. That would afford them a welcome place in the hearts of all Cubans and show that they have real vision.

Instead they continue to be part of the problem. Their failure to demonstrate responsible and thoughtful leadership is perhaps the greatest tragedy in modern Cuban history.

[JMS]

I was born and lived in Cuba for nearly eleven years. I lived in El Vedado, in La Habana, my father had high (Director General of Calixto Garcia Hospital, Chief of Military medicine in Camaguey province, and Assistant Director General of Public Health) postings in the post-Batista government. He is not, nor was he ever a communist or a Fidelista. I say such, not as a showoff, but as manner of bona fides. I know of which I speak. I have seen despair and desperation, including but not limited to many a mother lining up outside of my father's (home) clinic, to beg him to declare their sons and/or daughters medically incapacitated, so they would be not conscripted by the army, etc., to fight in foreign wars, such as Angola, Yemen, etc.--from which many did not return, and if they did, they did so maimed or severely mentally disturbed. Also, whenever demonstrations were called against the U.S., a truck would pull up in front of your house, someone would knock on the door and compel you, usually by not so veiled a threat that if not willing to participate, your job could be in jeopardy, or worse. This usually happens on Sundays, one's only day off from work. Or how about someone in the neighborhood whom you just happened to strike as not just as fervent pro-revolutionary, or plain did not like you, would trump up contra-revolutionary charges against you? What happened then was that a public trial would be convened. This consisted of someone bringing out a table and placing in the middle of the street, and members of the neighborhood would in turn bring out and sit in their own chairs, listen to the trumped up charges, invariably rendering, at the prompting of the presiding head of the local CDR, a guilty veridict, resulting usually in a sentence of, if not actually jail time, without any due process, forced labor in one of the government collective farms, months away from your loved ones. Or how about, as I directly witnessed as I child while playing marbles, someone being forcefully dragged down stairs, if not beaten and driven away, never to be seen again, by one of the many internal/secret police or G2. Then, usually a few days later, the property having been sealed off, and the personal effects removed, a foreigner or two, would appear, the property would be unsealed and the furniture therein would be removed. That's just a brief taste of some of the things I saw, not the least of which, and most indelibly imprinted in my memory is that one of my father's lady patients jumping to her death from a 4th floor balcony upon learning that her 13-year-old daughter had been repeatedly and brutally raped by Castro's militias in one of the many, and throughout the island, Escuelas al Campo, or farm schools, where students from La Habana, etc., were forcefully transported to live, and supposedly study, but actually just work in the fields, while constantly indoctrinated in Marxism.

I majored in history, both American and Cuban history. Thus, I find it amazing that so many claim to know so much, yet are so mistaken about Cuba and the present predicament of those in the island, as well as the attitudes or purported predispositions of those in exile. Castro and his communist elites, both there and his acolytes here in the U.S. and elsewhere, are the problem, not the Cubans in the U.S. nor the general population in Cuba.

Yes, there was inequity and poverty in Cuba prior to the arrival of the Castro government, yet most Cubans prior to it lived and thrived, as it is proven by the further fact that there was at no time prior to 1959, any mass emigration to the U.S, where many less a Cuban lived than Americans lived in Cuba.

This is in part due to the standard of living in Cuba prior to the advent of Castro, having been the highest in Hispanic America, but also the fact that, if given a choice, Cubans would prefer to live nowhere else, but Cuba. That standard of living was greater than that of Puerto Rico, under direct American (commonwealth) administration and aid, without the burden of income taxes, not to mention the mostly and ostensibly mostly ethnically European South American countries such as Agentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile, which by way of this comparison, I in no way wish to belittle or offend.

The Cuban standard of living, prior to 1959, can be thus only and directly compared to that of the U.S., whose dollar currency was valued at 10 percent less than the Cuban Peso, as of late 1958 and early 1959.

Other facts regarding Cuba prior to January 1, 1959 (before Castro)include: Cuba was number one in Latin America and fourth in the world insofar as the national income of its workers. Cuba had the highest of all Latin American countries, 23% of annual GDP, devoted to education. Cuba had lowest unemployment rate in Latin America, 7.07%. Cuba had, respectively, the sixth and eighth highest, minimum (in dollars) agricultural and industrial sector salaries in the world. Cuba had a social security system for workers/laborers and professionals alike, whom directly participated in its management and administration (unlike the federally managed U.S. Social Security administration). Cuba had the lowest child mortality coefficient in Latin America, 37.6 deaths per thousand, and the third lowest in the world, as well as first in Latin America, of 5.8 per thousand. Cuba had an availability of 35,000 public and private hospital beds, meaning one bed per each 190 inhabitants (that is commensurate with the most industrialized countries). In Cuba one out of 27 inhabitants owned a motor vehicle. These prior levels of standard of living, again, nearly 50 years ago, were accomplished and maintained by many of those who managed to escape Castro's tyranny and are part of the U.S. exile community.

Present day statistics unavaible, and thus using those 20 years old, or so, shows that only government elites are allowed to own cars in Cuba. Prior to Castro one of each inhabitants owned a TV set, whereas at present, one has to work at least six months, as well as accrue recognition or merit from the Communist Party, and then wait one's turn to obtain a TV set, a refrigerator, or a radio, other than, of course, obtaining one through the black market.

Without Castro, there would not be an exile community. Oh, yes, I know the common refrain: What about that during Batista? Well, there were a few thousand Cubans in exile in the U.S. during Batista, but most of them, including my parents, returned to Cuba following the overthrow of Batista, only to ultimately (after waiting for 11 years before being allowed to leave, yet not my father, for he was a doctor and most of them had left during the very first years of Castro's regime), went again into, and remain in exile.

As to the overthrow of Batista, unlike the commonly accepted myth of it having been effected by Castro, it was actually thousands and thousands of others, including most of the middle class that brough it about, only to thereafter be betrayed and persecuted into exile by Castro. A significant number of that exile middle class community, as well as others, including blacks, laborers, etc., subsequently, yet unsuccessfully attempted to rid the country of Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as did thousands of peasants durig the also anti-Castro El Escambray insurgency. Such, not quelched or defeated until 1966, it arose from the forced collectivization (as Stalin did in Russia in the 1930s)of farm lands by Castro, after he had promised to redistribute confiscated private lands to the peasants, following the Agrarian Reform Law enacted in 1959.

Cubans endorsed and worked in many different ways for the overthrow of the corrupt Batista regime, but not the country being taken over by a communist tyrant. Castro did not openly declare Cuba a Marxist-Leninist state until after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. By then he had not only taken over the mass media, as well as created an extensive armed militia, but also confiscated (or as he put it, nationalized) all private property, in addition to personal weapons, and and all but destroyed the thriving Cuban economy, with the help of the failed, and so called revolutionary hero, che guevara. He also created the CDR (Comites de La Defensa de La Revolucion, or Comitees for the Defense of the Revolucion) on each city block, to continuosly monitor the activities of the populace. One of such CDR branches was right above our house, on the second floor of the same, confiscated or nationalized by Castro from my family; while the regional CDR headquarters were next door to us. Once again, I know only too well of which I speak.

While I would not in any way defend Batista and the batistianos, the precursors to the present Cuban tragedy, it must be said that insofar as dictatorships go, Batista's was an authoritarian one, and not totalitarian as Castro's. Hence, there was enough or relative freedom during Batista's regime for it to allow itself to be overthrown vis-a-vis the present 47-year, and likely not soon to be over, Castro dictatorship.

Well founded criticizm of he exile leadership is after all but freedom of speech. One should be clear, however, that most of that leadership, like most Cubans, wish only for true freedom in the island. As to the old failed ways, as it were, I believe such ostensibly refers to the current U.S. embargo against Castro. Cuba presently, and insofar as it pays its huge debts, and even if it does not--trades with just about any other country on earth, it wishes. I believe further that those who advocate for the lifting of the embargo, are in fact advocating for U.S. taxpayer-funded trade, to prop up the moribund (as Castro appears to be, per a just viewed video clip on TV) Cuban economy , and in turn the crass and perverse ongoing militaristic dictatorship.

As to the all of the other rhetorical pablum from this individual against the Cuban exile community and leadership, no one will institute the old ways. Batista is dead and gone, and so are most of his most ardent supporters. As to the exile community, or its leaders having a prominent say in the future of the island, those Cubans in exile, and their descendants, most of whom I believe will remain in the U.S., are entitled to not just a say. After all, although free and mostly prospering here in the U.S. and elsewhere, they have also lost and suffered greatly, as I and mine have and continue to both here in the U.S. and in the island.

In concluding, the only viable and hopeful vision and option is that of not only a Castro-free Cuba in total, but full and unfettered access to it by Cubans here in the U.S., as well as others, and their capital, knowledge and abilities--for the benefit of all. Afterall, how terrible could anything proposed by freedom-loving Cuban exiles be than that afflicting that forsaken island for the last 47 years?

Sincerely, JMS