1st Cuban Migrants Land in Florida Since Castro’s Death

The Wall Street Journal reports Cuba’s sendoff for Castro was an extravagant one. He jailed or executed political opponents. “These are areas of Fidel’s work that people did not necessarily know about, they knew about the opposition to the United States taking over their country but the people did not, and certainly I got very enlightened as to the depth at which Mr.Castro was in deliberation of these African countries in particular”.

When she learned of his death on November 25, Aguilera said she felt “elated”.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of the island, holding his picture and chanting “I am Fidel!” as a convoy took the cedar urn containing his ashes on a four-day trip from Havana to Santiago’s cemetery.

“I don’t think it’s going to change anything in Cuba, but I’m hoping it will”, James said, adding that if things were going to change in Cuba they would have already. “But it is still a really joyous occasion for exiled Cubans”.

What is especially alarming is when our vice president says that we need leaders like Castro.

The impact of his long clash with the United States is still being felt.

Castro’s agenda during that April 15-26 visit was similar to that of today’s recently inaugurated leaders: he spoke at the National Press Club, had lunch with USA officials, appeared on the Sunday television news program Meet the Press and visited the Capitol, where he met with then-Vice President Richard Nixon.

Gonzalez has mixed feelings over Castro’s death. To wit, as the Miami Herald reported this week, Danielo “El Sexto” Maldonado, a “detained Cuban artist who mocked Castro’s death, “was badly beaten” ” by Cuban government agents, according to his family. Even the incidental noise of Cuban life seemed to fade away. “I’ve always wondered how closely Fidel monitored Raul [Castro]’s positions, and if that will change”. It feels like I lived in a dream. Illiteracy became widespread. The little rural schools were attended only by half the school-age children-barefoot half-naked, and undernourished-and frequently the teacher must buy necessary materials from his own salary.

The Americans surprised by Donald Trump’s victory should look at the following two statements and not be surprised anymore.

Socarras Bigelow’s father participated in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, when the Central Intelligence Agency attempted to train Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro in 1961. The way the government deals with the church, it is not the most friendly way.

When the legislators and media discuss Cuba and talk about “democracy”, they are talking about capitalistic democracy where the rich get rich by taking advantage of the poor. “Like a Spanish expression goes: There’s no evil that survives 100 years”.

“I love the people and the immediacy of life there”, Marquez said.

Castro gave Cuba an outsized influence in world affairs.

“Fidel has demanded (there be no cult of personality)”, she said. They finally drove him from power on December 31, 1958, and Castro arrived in Santiago the next day to declare victory in the central square.

They might mention Castro’s vast fortune estimated at just under a billion USD while his citizens (more like subjects) had to exist on 20 dollars a month. He did not meet Obama during his historic visit to the island, instead penning a column that warned Cubans not to trust the president’s “honey-coated” words. “Fidel refused to even acknowledge it and then he wrote that article slamming the “empire” in the national newspaper The Granma”. “When people are oppressed, they are told what to do”.

DonkeyHotey/Alex Guibord/FlickrCanadian Prime Minister and woke bae Justin Trudeau earned some well-deserved mockery for his fawning statement praising long-time Cuban dictator Fidel Castro upon his death last week.

As a teenager, Marquez said she admired Castro.

“You know how young people are?” she said. The incoming administration’s apparent interest in halting détente and substituting a transactional relationship that ignores Cuban sovereignty, suggest that the most likely Cuban response will be a consolidation of conservative thinking. Most were initially from Cuba’s educated upper and middle classes who feared persecution by the new Cuban leader. In preparation for that possibility, she hid paperwork that would help them with their re-entry to the country in their house and buried about $250 in American currency under a tree, James said.