June 08, 2009

Cuban Expatriate: Why Obama Reminds Me of Castro

Similar Posters of Castro and Obama

Headlines:

MSNBC 11/2008 -- Obama vows change in U.S. policy on Cuba
President-elect has indicated he's open to talks with Raul Castro

BBC 1/2009 -- Will Obama shift policy on Cuba?
The election of Barack Obama has energised those seeking a change in relations between the US and Cuba.

IPS News 1/2009 -- US-CUBA: Obama Urged to Take Bold Steps Toward Normalisation

Guardian 3/2009 -- Obama will use spring summit to bring Cuba in from the cold

Newsweek 3/2009 -- Why Obama Should Lift the Cuba Embargo

Reuters 5/2009 --  US-Cuba thaw in full swing in arts world

This site recently had the chance to talk to an America man whose family fled Castro's political oppression to come here. His thoughts include surprising observations regarding Cuba's history, and the state of Cuba today, as well as troubling parallels between Castro and Obama.

We'll call the interviewee, who does not want his name to appear, "Eduardo."

Take this as the verbal testimony of one man. I have obtained partial corroboration from one of Miami's top radio talk show hosts, Ninoska Pérez Castellón. Ninoska is quoted below, regarding some of his most surprising observations.

Per Eduardo's views Cuba is a place in which:

• Children are wards of the state - forcibly removed from their parents when they become teenagers.
• Some children are forced into state-sponsored prostitution.
• Free speech is punishable as a crime against the state.

In addition, Eduardo also sees striking parallels between Obama and Castro.

Let's get right into it.

Children in Cuba are Wards of the State; and,  the Child Prostitution Business

Vik: You mentioned that all children are wards of the state in Cuba?

Eduardo: Yes, when they get to a certain age, they all must report to the fields and cut cane, and they have sex camps over there where they train the good looking girls and the boys, they train them to have sex with each other and they also make boy prostitutes there and all that and when they have enough gas and resources and buses, well, then they will bring them to their parents on the weekends, sometimes it's every other weekend and sometimes it's once a month. So your child is taken from you. Your child is a ward of the state.

Vik: What age does this take place? What age does this..

Eduardo: I believe this happens around 12 or 13.

Vik: The state takes the children away from their families at the age of 12 or 13, today in Cuba?

Eduardo: Yes, today in Cuba, 90 miles away from United States, the most powerful nation of the world. It's a travesty, it's a travesty, we were painted as zealots, as people who are burning [American] flags and the fact of the matter is that Cuban-Americans if you know who we are, we will die for that flag.

...Vik: Now, these sex camps, this is to create prostitutes, is that the purpose of the sex camps?

Eduardo: Yes, because prostitution is an industry over there. They have child pornography and they use children, girls and boys for these deviants who go on these sex junkets to Cuba and that's the underlying reason why there is a lot of travel to Cuba, unfortunately. And there is a lot of people, lot of men and women who go over there and they don't want others to know about their sexual preferences, I imagine, so they would go over there. But there is a technique that Fidel uses on some of these people who he has been able to identify, who work with major corporations are instrumental to him. He will take videotapes of them at the resorts with these individuals and illicit activities and on the way out they will give them an envelope and say, here, there's a copy of a videotape in this envelope. When you to get to Miami, we want you to see it. Then, after that point, it is blackmail, so they get information from them that they need. So there's a whole sex lies and videotapes type of thing going on. It's pretty ugly. I don't know if it's as prominent as it once was, but it was common knowledge, nothing I'm telling you is nothing that can't be heard on the radio or in Spanish print or Spanish TV. It's all been discussed openly. However, it never reaches the mainstream media. That's 90 miles away, buddy.

History of Cuba: A Democracy Destroyed

Eduardo: My family fled in October of 1962 and I was three years old at that time and so, yes, I was born there and I became a naturalized citizen in this country.

...They were fleeing communism, Fidel Castro's communism. Apparently, Cuba had a troubled past with their leadership and President Batista, first, he was elected democratically and so you got to back up a little bit. Cuba's background is very similar to the United States. They had to fight for their independence from Spain, not from England. And Cuba was involved and helping United States as you well know, in fighting for their independence also. So, very, very similar types of paradigms on a much smaller scale, obviously.

So, fast forward to a country that finally fought for its independence from Spain and they were very much into fairness and freedom. It was all about freedom and they duly elected president Batista in a democratic way and he ran his first term that way and in the second term, he lost, I believe, that he took, he used the military to take the country by force. So he became like, sort of like a dictator, benevolent dictator so to speak. There was a lot of discord, because those weren't the rules, the rules were that we were to have free elections. So he took the country over by the use of the military and there were some firing squads and there were some short battles, one here and there.

So anyway, after that short term of turmoil, the country moved along and there was a lot of discord and lot of unhappiness about him but yet, the country seemed to continue to flourish because of the United States' presence there. You had the great companies, the oil, petrochemical companies, you had the pharmaceutical companies, and you had the Hershey's chocolate company. They were out there; they actually established a large suburb, sort of like a mini city with its own little township and everything out there.

...[Castro] sold himself as somebody who was very charismatic, somebody who really cared to rebel against the establishment, to take away from the rich, evil people who were governing the country by force and now he was going to give the young and the distraught and the poor people a chance to take ownership, their part of the fractional ownership of everything that belongs to the rich people in the country. In fact, after the big exodus, after Batista finally was, jumped on the plane and fled Cuba himself, then everybody felt, okay, this is it; this is going to change for some time to come, that -after the first wave left, they would start having parties at these mansions of the rich people who left. So now, all those properties belonged to the government so they would have parties and they would invite people over, come look, and there were certain beaches, that were private beaches, well now they were public beaches and that was a good thing. And initially there was a great deal of people who were on Fidel's side. They were totally, totally misguided thinking that they were going to get something that belonged to somebody else to their benefit and that everything was going to be fine, everybody was going to have this, so there is nobody who is going to be without anything and you would have everything that would be the basics of life and then some. So, the problem [when Castro came to power] was that anybody who was identified as not being compliant or in lock step with the revolution was either shot at a firing squad or put in a jail and their businesses were seized, their bank accounts were frozen. If you had to leave the country, you had to go through a very intricate process where you would have to basically leave with the clothes on your back and may be a suitcase with some clothes, to at least make it a few nights wherever you were gonna go. And that's exactly what happened in our case. We had a business, house, car, furniture, everything. My parents were, by no stretch of the imagination rich, but they were, you know, upper middle class. My dad was a businessman as were many who fled and he was jailed for a few months just because he had a friend that was involved in some anti-revolutionary activities. So they thought that may be he had something to do with it too, so they jailed him for a few months just in case. So, when he was let go, that's when he realized that things were very awry and so that's when, you know, my family, I guess, made their arrangements to leave and then my grandparents left and we left you know, piecemeal, but we were the first to leave. As far as similarities, a lot of demagoguery that you hear in the extreme left or the Democrat Party is very similar, and that the socialistic tendencies of wanting to share the wealth and wanting to control what you do and wanting to put extra eyes on your activities.

Why Obama's Messianic Public Image Reminds Eduardo of Castro's Rise to Power

Eduardo: The other thing was that Fidel, when he would do the presentations in an open plaza, he would have white doves around him. It was something, somewhat of a messianic type of persona that he was trying to put forth such as Barack Obama's. He had a lot of white doves around him and they wouldn't fly away because the message was that he was such a good person and so clean and holy that the doves wouldn't fly away. Well, it came to be known that those doves couldn't fly away because they had fed them steel pellets and they were too heavy to fly away. So those were special doves and some of them had their wings, slightly clipped, so they couldn't fly properly. Those were just, you know, I guess, props.

Concerns About Obama's Organizing of a Separate Political Organization

Background, from American Thinker:

...there is a new organization on the political scene -- "Organizing for America," announced by President Barack Obama in late January but officially unfurled last weekend.

Obama describes OFA as a "grass-roots movement" but OFA is a "project" of the Democratic Natrional Committee.

As Politico reported, OFA will take the 10 million person database built up by the Obama campaign "to mobilize support for the president's legislative agenda."

A visit to the OFA website reveals that supporters are not simply asked to sign up, they are asked to take a pledge. A pledge to support -- not the flag, not the constitution, not the country, not even the Democratic Party, but Obama and his "bold plan." OFA does not use the Democratic Party logo but the "O"-shaped logo of the Obama campaign in which the red white and blue of the flag are abstracted to soft pastel colors.

...You will not find any mention of OFA`s governing structure, their budget, their bylaws, or their officers at the OFA website. Donations to the website go to the DNC, but OFA is managed out of the White House. If you click on the comments button, you are taken to a link to the White House email.

Those who take the pledge are asked to "talk with people about the President's plan" and to "ask them to sign their names to the pledge" in support of Obama's policies.

So we have a Movement -- this is their term, not mine -- organized by, and loyal to, a sitting President. Pledge canvassers, armed with your name, will ask you to pledge loyalty to the President too. A president whose term has already become a permanent campaign, is signing up ground forces in a mass organization pledged to personal loyalty to their Leader.

Why this alarms Eduardo:

Eduardo: Now, these committees of defense that Fidel set up. These were people who were empowered to turn you in and in exchange for turning you in for illegal activities, they would turn around and receive a little extra of whatever rations were given out for them. So it became - they're rats, everybody was ratting on everybody. You can well imagine, you're coming home from wherever and you've got a package. This individual is on the lookout, they see that you are driving up to your driveway and they'll go right up to you and you'd have to explain to them what was in the package, open it up if they wanted to see it, if they wanted to walk through your house because they had reason to believe that you had somebody living with you who was maybe identified as somebody who wasn't friendly with the cause. Because the whole ideology is my god, something this great, something that's going to finally bring in equality to somebody, to a nation and there's not going to be anymore poverty and we know there is going to be more pain before it gets better.

Parallels Between Obama's Approach To The US Economy, And Castro's Approach To The Cuban Economy

Eduardo: That's another thing that Obama keeps going. It's going to get worse before it gets better. We're all going to have to share our, what's it, sacrifice. That was another thing, that's another parallel. We're all going to have to sacrifice for the better. So, everything's always today we are going to sacrifice for a better tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, well today, we're going to sacrifice for tomorrow and then the day after that, today we're going to have to sacrifice for tomorrow and it goes on and on and on and it turns out into a perennial sacrifice. You're always sacrificing for tomorrow. So, that's basically why we're very concerned about what we've seen recently, all this sacrificing and where is this going to lead.

Two days ago, from AP: "The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market. But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation."

Today, from AP: "Eager to show action on the ailing economy, President Barack Obama promised Monday to speed federal money into hundreds of public works projects this summer, vowing that 600,000 jobs will be created or saved. ..... [Obama] cautioned bluntly that "we're still in the middle of a very deep recession" and that "it's going to take a considerable amount of time for us to pull out of."

For Eduardo, Michelle Obama's Choice of Colors for Election Night is a Reminder of Communist Cuba

Eduardo: Something that may or not have had anything to do with it, but some people feel that it may have, was their garb on the night of the election when they won.

Vik: Yes.

Eduardo: They were wearing black and red…

Vik: Yeah.

Eduardo: …yeah and those colors signify, black is death and red is blood, death and blood, which are the colors of the movement of the July 26 in Cuba and that has also been used by that group of people in other efforts.

Vik: I believe I have heard that the designer who designed those clothes…

Eduardo: I was just gonna say that. She had a Cuban dress designer. I have not heard anything or read anything about that, about who he is but I am sure that any Cuban who is close to the Obamas, is definitely a friend of Fidel Castro's and a sympathizer of the philosophy on the left. So, I guarantee you it wasn't an original exiled Cuban who designed that dress for her.

Vik: There is no way any Cuban would be unaware of the meaning of the colors red and black.

Eduardo: Red and black is something we're kind of spooked by, because that's what we saw, in fact red and black is what Hugo Chavez wears and those were his colors when he does his presentations and everything.

Hugo Chavez

Flag of the Cuban Revolutionary Movement, Featuring the Same Colors Michelle Obama Chose for Election Night

Partial Corroboration

Seeking corroboration, I spoke to Miami radio talk show host, Ninoska Pérez Castellón. From Wikipedia:

Ninoska Pérez Castellón is a leading member of the Cuban exile community and opponent of the Castro brothers. She is a notable Spanish radio talk show host and political commentator who has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on numerous occasions. She is also an occasional columnist for the Miami Herald.

She was one of the founding member of the Cuban Liberty Council.

Background
Ninoska was born in Havana, Cuba on March 15, 1950. Her family was forced to leave the island following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Ever since, she has resided in Miami where she has played an active role in promoting a democratic transition in Cuba.

She is a graduate of Miami-Dade College and the University of Miami.

Ninoska granted permission for me to quote her. While differing with Eduardo about some of the details, her views appear to confirm the substance of much of what Eduardo said on the treatment of children in Cuba today.

Vik: I understand that in Cuba children are wards of the state. Is this correct?

Ninoska: No, they are not legally wards of the state. Cuba doesn't tell you that at 10 years old they take your kids away. But once a child starts going to school, the communist ideology is imposed. Sometimes, not necessarily when they are 10, but maybe a little older, they have to go to schools in the countryside, to do farm work live in a community. More like 13 or 14. I'm not sure if its compulsory. Like nothing is compulsory in Cuba - but you know you have to agree to it. Unless they have a medical certificate regarding asthma or something like that. But otherwise they do have to go. it's part of their learning experience.

Vik: Is there a state-run prostitution business in Cuba?

Ninoska: No, there is no state run prostitution business. It's not true. What is happening is that a lot of kids, once they go away from control of their parents - and its very troubling for Cuban families - there's a lot of prostitution in the country.  A lot of young girls maybe 12 , 13 are prostituting themselves.  And there's a lot of concern about this that some tourists come from Europe to look for these girls. There's no state run prostitution, but the state sponsors it in the sense that they promote it in the tourism industry. There are arrangements that the foreigners can bring a girl to a hotel. The police participate.  It's not state-run  - but obviously the state looks the other way.

Conclusion

Eduardo: So, it is the same M.O., it is the same tired M.O., they've come up with nothing new. The only thing new is that in this country there is a certain elements who feel that everything is so well in the bounds of powers and they are so well-guarded and oh, well, that happened in the little Banana republic, just south of us, but that would never happen here and there's a lot of denial. There's a lot of denial and maybe justifiably so but in our case, you know, we lost one country already and we'll be damned if we lose another one.

...The only embargo that is worth even speaking of is the embargo that the Castro regime has on its own people to keep them broke and poor and needy so that they can't revolt and they can't express their own political freedom and human rights.

Postscript

According to the State Department:

Cuba, with a population of 11 million, is a totalitarian state led by a president, Fidel Castro, whose regime controls all aspects of life through the Communist Party (CP) and its affiliated mass organizations, the government bureaucracy, and the state security apparatus. Although civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces, the Ministry of Interior is the principal instrument of state security and control, and officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which are led by the president's brother, have occupied most key positions in the ministry during the past 15 years.

The government's human rights record remained poor, and the government continued to commit numerous, serious abuses. At least 333 Cuban political prisoners and detainees were held at year's end. The following human rights problems were reported:

• denial of citizens' rights to change their government
• beatings and abuse of detainees and prisoners, including human rights activists, carried out with impunity
• transfers of mentally healthy prisoners to psychiatric facilities for political reasons
• frequent harassment of political opponents by government-recruited mobs
• extremely harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including denial of medical care
• arbitrary arrest and detention of human rights advocates and members of independent professional organizations
• denial of fair trial, particularly to political prisoners
• interference with privacy, including pervasive monitoring of private communications
• severe limitations on freedom of speech and press
• denial of peaceful assembly and association
• restrictions on freedom of movement, including selective denial of exit permits to thousands of citizens
• refusal to recognize domestic human rights groups or to permit them to function legally
• domestic violence, underage prostitution, and sex tourism
• discrimination against persons of African descent
• severe restrictions on worker rights, including the right to form independent unions

Enter Your Comments Here: