Photo
above was taken during the “snowmaggedon”
that hit New England, but fortunately fizzled for us in DC. While winter
has its drawbacks, it can also lead to warm get-togethers, like a Mexican fandango
music and dance party in the neighborhood last Sunday (as per photos).
[Sorry for font changes throughout, but when I've tried to make it uniformly bigger, the whole thing crashes, so best not to tamper.]
Equatorial Guinea, one of the most repressive regimes
in Africa (which is saying a lot) and the only one that’s Spanish-speaking, has
been hosting soccer’s African Cup of Nations. I do highlight in my Cuba book
that country’s abysmal human rights record, which I became aware of only after
translating some documents for Amnesty International (see p.16 of my book).
Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor for the
1994 terrorist attack on the Jewish headquarters in Buenos Aires,
was found dead in his home; apparently murdered just before he was to testify.
I remember being in BA in 1995 and going to the neighborhood where that attack
had occurred, seeing the still destroyed buildings there. When I tried to take
a photo, a policewoman on guard stopped me. Very strange doings now and
stranger still are the comments of President Cristina, who, thank goodness, is
on her way out, as she seems to have become increasingly erratic. I’ve asked
Argentine friends for clarification, but none has been able to provide it.
The
statelessness issue of Haitian descended people in the DR continues:
They chose to identify me as a “Spanish
hospital interpreter,” only one of many hats I wear. Inexplicably, I’m shown in
the photo at a reading at an independent bookstore for my new book, Confessions of a Secret Latina: How I
Fell Out of Love with Castro & In Love with the Cuban People, along
with 3 long-term (20 years+) Cuban political prisoners featured in
the book. If anyone wants to forward my blog to their own contacts, that would
help promote the Peace Corps idea. It would also help if mention is made (as it
was not by Huffington Post) of my recent book—or books, including Triumph & Hope: Golden Years with the
Peace Corps in Honduras, which help support my Honduras and perhaps future
Cuba projects.
An actual
Amnesty International researcher and staff member, very involved against the US
embargo and in favor of the Cuban Five, had his own post:
While we
are opening websites, here’s another item to be read and forwarded:
Castro told Ted Kennedy 40 years ago
that Cuba was ready for change
Mark
Schneider, Robert Hunter, The Boston
Globe, 22 Jan 2015
Perhaps
if the US had reached out to Cuba earlier and if Fidel had accepted (a big “if”
when the Soviets were still supporting Cuba), then possibly hostilities would
have calmed much sooner. The 1990s’ “special
period” 20-25 years ago seems a more likely time when a deal might have been
made.
Human rights in Cuba have not been
advanced in the short term
by the US/Cuba accords—in fact dissidents report that repression is worse,
perhaps because they are trying to test the limits now to see if anything has
changed, which apparently it has not, and the Cuban government wants to make
sure that they understand that. If the most basic human rights are peaceful
free expression and assembly, then such rights do not exist in Cuba. If these rights
were actually allowed and most Cubans still favored the Communist Party,
especially as expressed through a fair and competitive electoral system, most
Americans, as well as others from around the world, would gracefully accept
that outcome. However, a free election scenario is not going to play out any
time soon and would not have played out even if relations between Washington
and Havana had remained at status quo ante.
Unfortunately,
Cuban authorities have been digging in
their heels about allowing their own citizens more freedom. “Even a
relatively simple measure such as granting U.S. diplomats freedom of movement
around Cuba, she [Cuban negotiator Josefina Vidal] said, is tied to reduced
U.S. support of dissidents, whom Cuba says are breaking the law by acting to
undermine the government on behalf of U.S. interests.” Since when is supporting
free speech a matter of advocating US interests? Aren’t we trying to advocate
for ordinary Cuban citsens’ interests? Besides, aren’t our two nations friends
now, so that our interests and Cuba’s are not necessarily in opposition? Vidal seems to be caught up in the old
mindset of the US as the enemy. See the full article on http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-digs-heels-concessions-part-better-us-ties-223741839.html
According to a Cuban American observer: Although Cuba is going to play the victim, as before, in advocating the lifting of the rest of the embargo, the best policy is one of a gradual conditional lifting of the embargo where every restriction to be lifted requires a previously specified economic or political reform from the Cuban government. However, I sincerely think Obama has gone too far in the opposite direction! The Cuban maxim that comes to mind is: "¡No tan calvo que se le vean los sesos!" (Not so bald that brains are showing!)
According to a Cuban American observer: Although Cuba is going to play the victim, as before, in advocating the lifting of the rest of the embargo, the best policy is one of a gradual conditional lifting of the embargo where every restriction to be lifted requires a previously specified economic or political reform from the Cuban government. However, I sincerely think Obama has gone too far in the opposite direction! The Cuban maxim that comes to mind is: "¡No tan calvo que se le vean los sesos!" (Not so bald that brains are showing!)
Another Cuba watcher comments: Raul is torn. He wants to keep hostility
toward the US as the foundation stone of his temple, as seen by the
less-than-subtle Havana docking of Putin’s spy ship (at the very visible cruise
ship dock!) while negotiations were getting underway. At the same time, the
regime has run out of sugar daddies, as Maduro sinks beneath the waves. The US
is the most suitable candidate for this role. Raul is confident that the Cuban
people’s quasi-medieval mindset will keep them helplessly mired in their
customary inmovilismo. The people are unhappy and will grumble in their
private conversation but take no public action. Also pathetic is news that
Detroit sees little Cuba as the savior of the auto industry, as if 11 million
hungry Cubans, after spending their meager $20 monthly income on food, will
have any residual income left to save Detroit’s bacon by purchasing shiploads
of SUVs!
Still another commentator
observes: The Cuban government could
afford to keep the US at bay and use them as a big bad wolf while it still had
sugar daddies who supplied the minimum amount of basic necessities to keep
the Cuban population above starvation levels. But absent Russia or Venezuela,
who are having problems of their own with low oil prices, and no other
prospective sugar daddy in sight, Raul can't continue to play hard to get with
the US now. He has got to make a deal.
Cuba is important only to a small slice
of the American constituency; most would be happy enough to add Cuba to the
list of tropical isles they might want to visit--and it's a large, very
beautiful island with lots of beaches. But the US is now very important to Cuba
and Raul is making lots of bold demands: return G'tmo, get totally rid of the
embargo and travel ban, pay reparations for the embargo, have an embassy but
with personnel restricted to Havana and keeping their distance from democracy
activists, require American investors and travelers to do business only with
the Cuban government and military, and Cuba's not returning any
criminal fugitives, and don't meddle in its internal affairs. I guess that's
his opening salvo, perhaps more to alert the folks back home and his
allies around the world, including a few in the US, who have been pretty loyal
even though Cuba gives them nothing in return but progressive bragging
rights.
A friend agrees with my statement just
above: I would assume that Raul's
many demands are just opening gambits in the negotiations, stated for domestic
consumption and for international supporter, who, he hopes will back up Cuba,
since Cuba all by itself is pretty weak at this point, both economically
and politically, resting only on the laurels of Fidel's outsized reputation.
A Cuban
dissident, who actually prefers to consider himself an opponent, is Jorge Luis
García Pérez, nicknamed Antúnez, someone who appears in my
book Confessions of a Secret Latina: How
I Fell Out of Love with Castro & In Love with the Cuban People. He
provided part of the impetus for me to write the book when my former Latino
friend challenged me to substantiate a previous remark about Afro-Cubans being
disadvantaged, a statement that had particularly galled him. I cited the case
of Antúnez, a human rights and
democracy activist imprisoned from 1990 to 2007, referred to by other
dissidents as Cuba's Nelson Mandela. His wife founded the Rosa
Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights. Why had Antúnez spent 17 years behind bars? In 1990, State Security agents
overheard him saying that communism
was an error, words considered
treasonous. I said that Antúnez,
his wife, and several other Afro-Cubans were then on a hunger strike, something
my former friend dismissed by saying “The case of one man who happens to be
Afro-Cuban and was imprisoned …doesn't prove a thing.”
Antúnez and his wife Yris were allowed by the Cuban government to travel together recently and met at the Washington office with Amnesty International staff and me in my role as volunteer coordinator for the Caribbean. (See photos above taken of the couple at dinner the night before and at the Amnesty office.) Then, I received the following message:This week, U.S. civil rights icon, U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), met with Cuban civil rights icons, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antunez" and Yris Perez Aguilera. Antunez is a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, who served 17-years in Castro's gulag, while Perez Aguilera heads Cuba's Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights.
Antúnez and his wife Yris were allowed by the Cuban government to travel together recently and met at the Washington office with Amnesty International staff and me in my role as volunteer coordinator for the Caribbean. (See photos above taken of the couple at dinner the night before and at the Amnesty office.) Then, I received the following message:This week, U.S. civil rights icon, U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), met with Cuban civil rights icons, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antunez" and Yris Perez Aguilera. Antunez is a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, who served 17-years in Castro's gulag, while Perez Aguilera heads Cuba's Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights.
Previously, I had urged them both, traveling here separately
after not being allowed to travel together, to reach out to African Americans. However,
they seemed uncertain about how to do that, partly because of languagebarriers,
also because of understandable confusion about American politics. Yris, the
wife, had then issued a statement castigating the Congressional Black Caucus
for snubbing their request for a meeting on a visit to Cuba, not quite what I
had in mind. So the meeting with John Lewis is a real victory. (See photo
above.)
Antúnez, as might be expected, is not happy now with
the US/Cuba accords, which he says have increased repression on the island. He and
his wife met with us at the Amnesty International Washington office, where he gave
us information about a prisoner named Ciro Alexis Casanova Pérez whose case he hoped we would
take up. The prisoner, a known dissident, was given 4 years for causing a
public disturbance during which he shouted anti-Castro slogans and unfurled
homemade banners.
When first meeting Yris last August, I’d given her a copy of my Cuba book, asking whether she thought she could get into the country. She assured me that she had ways, but on this last visit, she said it had been confiscated by state security, so next time, I will try via the diplomatic pouch, if possible. Not that Cuban authorities were necessarily unaware of my book before that, but now they certainly do know about it, not that I was planning a trip there any time soon.
Talk about possibly unintended consequences, releasing the remaining Cuban Three may have now given them a leg-up in the Cuban political system, especially Gerardo Hernández, the ostensible ringleader and convicted spy most closely associated with the deaths of four Brothers-to-the-Rescue, whose plane was shot down by the Cuban military. He and the others have already been touring and speaking all over Cuba and Hernández recently became a father, thanks to artificial insemination facilitated by Vermont independent Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy, who was instrumental inobtaining the release of the Cuban spies as well as in relentlessly denigrating USAID’s Cuban democracy efforts, maybe the man to thank or blame if Hernández becomes Cuba’s future leader. See following article: Heroic homecoming for Cuban agents brings speculation about future in politics By Nick Miroff, Washington Post, 1/18/2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/heroes-welcome-for-cuban-agents-brings-speculation-about-future-in-politics/2015/01/18/390926fe-9a95-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html
When first meeting Yris last August, I’d given her a copy of my Cuba book, asking whether she thought she could get into the country. She assured me that she had ways, but on this last visit, she said it had been confiscated by state security, so next time, I will try via the diplomatic pouch, if possible. Not that Cuban authorities were necessarily unaware of my book before that, but now they certainly do know about it, not that I was planning a trip there any time soon.
Talk about possibly unintended consequences, releasing the remaining Cuban Three may have now given them a leg-up in the Cuban political system, especially Gerardo Hernández, the ostensible ringleader and convicted spy most closely associated with the deaths of four Brothers-to-the-Rescue, whose plane was shot down by the Cuban military. He and the others have already been touring and speaking all over Cuba and Hernández recently became a father, thanks to artificial insemination facilitated by Vermont independent Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy, who was instrumental inobtaining the release of the Cuban spies as well as in relentlessly denigrating USAID’s Cuban democracy efforts, maybe the man to thank or blame if Hernández becomes Cuba’s future leader. See following article: Heroic homecoming for Cuban agents brings speculation about future in politics By Nick Miroff, Washington Post, 1/18/2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/heroes-welcome-for-cuban-agents-brings-speculation-about-future-in-politics/2015/01/18/390926fe-9a95-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio invited Rosa
Payá, daughter of the late Cuban democracy activist Oswaldo Payá, as his State
of the Union Guest. (I have met both father and daughter, as mentioned in
my Cuba book.)
Antúnez and Yris were invited by Speaker
Boehner.
Changing focus now, another fatal shooting by a
child who found a gun: “Missouri
9-month-old fatally shot in his crib by 5-year-old brother, police say.” Don’t people know by now to lock up their guns
if they feel they must keep them in their homes? More recently, 3-year-old in
New Mexico shot his father and pregnant mother with a gun he found in her
purse, but didn’t kill them.
In a national survey, Hawaii earns top honors as the
state with the lowest gun death rate, while Alaska has the highest. Hawaii also
has the lowest rate of gun ownership, while Alaska has the highest. Unfortunately,
my attempt to post a dramatic chart showing the 5 states with the highest rate
of gun ownership with their corresponding highest rates of gun deaths versus
the 5 states with the lowest rate of ownership with their lowest rates of gun
deaths would not copy onto the blog, so Google such studies yourself and see the
differences, indicating that the risk of a gun death in the high ownership
states is often more than 4 times as great as in the low-ownership states. Does
high gun ownership reflect a more aggressive culture of gun violence, where everyone
feels the need of gun protection because other citizens around them are all armed,
or does just the sheer rate of gun ownership promote a culture of violence and
gun deaths? Perhaps, gun ownership both
reflects a culture of violence and reinforces it, the usual vicious circle. In
Alaska and other high gun-owning states, probably animal hunting is also
popular, while not so much in the low gun-owning states.
The nationwide gun death rate, by
the way, is 10.64 per 100,000, and the total number of Americans killed by
gunfire rose to 33,636 in 2013 from 33,563 in 2012. Of note: The top five
states with the lowest gun death rates are “blue” or Democrat-voting states,
while the top five states at the other end of the spectrum are “red” or
Republican-voting states.
Finally, we all are familiar with the capriciousness of luck or fate, which guides
our entire life despite our most meticulous efforts to plan ahead. It begins,
very basically, with our own conception, a unique roll of the dice, resulting
in the fusion of gametes, the intermingling of genes, to produce each of us. So,
none of us is a stranger to the role of luck in our lives in giving us our
parents, connecting us with a spouse or lover, and guiding our career path,
also in providing us children and sometimes taking them away, as in my
experience. And so did fickle fate wipe out a family on the
outskirts of neighboring Annapolis, the quaint, historic city that serves
as Maryland’s capital. Just days ago—actually a few nights ago—a luxurious seaside mansion went up in flames, shown by
video in real time on the internet as it lit up the winter darkness while
firefighters struggled for 10 hours to contain it. Later, in the charred
remains, investigators found the incinerated bodies of the owners and their
four grandchildren, visiting on a sleepover. Apparently a dry Christmas tree,
still up and decorated, perhaps with lights turned on for the kids, was the
source of the conflgration. How it
happened is less important than that it did happen to a family who had enjoyed
amazing material success, but then was virtually wiped out in minutes. I feel terribly
for the parents of those kids, one of whom also lost his or her parents, never
mind the great material loss. I’m sure the parents now agonize about how their
children might have suffered as flames consumed them. All their good fortune,
wealth, and privileges went up in smoke. Can anyone ever recover from something
like that? Would they even care to recover and go on living? I remember a
similar incident not so long ago, when a woman who had achieved great
professional success against the odds and had bought and refurbished an historic
mansion, located in Pa., as I recall, then, while she was out in the evening,
the house burned down with her parents and three children all inside. I’ve heard
nothing about her since, but I’m sure she’s still in pain, assuming she is
still alive, exactly what the parents of the four children killed in Maryland
will be feeling for the rest of their lives, unless they are fortunate enough
to experience amnesia or dementia before their own deaths. Twenty years on, how
hard has it been for me to lose my son and foster son in deaths not nearly so
painful?
Yet, while some folks are in the wrong place at the
wrong time, others are in the right place at the right time—just enormously
lucky, as we see constantly on internet news—got a surprise $1,000 tip or found
a diamond ring in a wax candle. As former
President Jimmy Carter once observed, life is unfair.
Talk with you again after my return from Honduras.
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