Agustin Blazquez With the collaboration of Jaums Sutton.
NewsMax.com. Monday, Dec. 25, 2000
On December 31, 1958, just hours before Batista left Cuba, I watched a TV
show. Although I was just a youngster in a country town at the time, the
impression it made is still vivid in my mind.
It was a fairy tale starring a popular impressionist. Among the characters
he impersonated and poked fun at was dictator Batista. On this New Year's Eve
show, he chose a symbolic story where the last page was missing. It echoed the
feelings of those who wanted Batista out but didn't know what would happen next.
In spite of press restrictions temporarily imposed by Batista's dying
regime, broadcast and print media always managed to convey the news using clever
subterfuges. This TV show was a prime example. Everybody knew what the show was
all about, even a youngster like me.
This flow of creativity and ideas was possible because Batista never closed
any of the 6 TV networks, 270 radio stations, 58 daily newspapers and 126
magazines (all privately owned). Batista did not crush the multi-party system,
the civil society or the church, and the economy was booming.
The Cuban middle class overwhelmingly opposed Batista for interrupting the
democratic process and was pressing for a political, not an economic, change.
Cuba was a developing country enjoying the third highest standard of living
in Latin America. Cubans had a free public education system from kindergarten to
university and the best health care in Latin America and were way ahead in
social and labor laws. Certainly, they wanted none of those accomplishments
changed or eliminated.
But 41 years later, I see an enormous amount of misunderstanding about Cuba
before Castro and afterward. It creates a lot of animosity against the
approximately 2 million Cuban exiles worldwide.
They are often deemed the enemy and are scorned, although they are
pro-democracy.
Cubans, as well as people all over the world with first-hand experience
living under the boot of communist regimes, have similar experiences that almost
always result in an anticommunist stand. But most people have not experienced
it, cannot relate and have a tendency to dismiss the tragedy.
As in all communities, there are diversities of opinion but Cubans
overwhelmingly favor democracy. Yearning for freedom is the main reason for the
Cuban exodus (the biggest in the history of the Americas). Before Castro’s
revolution, Cubans were not leaving their country.
Cuban exile detractors, repeating Castro's distorted version of the past,
venture to say that Cubans are better off now and portray the past as a living
hell. That is far from reality.
Batista, a seven-year authoritarian dictator, had elections on November 3,
1958, and was going to step down at the inauguration of the new president. He
cannot be compared with Castro, who prevented the new president from taking
office and became a 41-year (and counting) totalitarian tyrant who has never had
elections.
Cuban writer Vicente Echerri eloquently put it this way: "to compare
these regimes is to compare a light flu with terminal cancer."
The devastating consequences of Castro affect not only Cuba, now in
economic, physical and moral ruin, but Central and South America through
Cuba-sponsored communist guerrillas. Surprisingly, Latinos often admire Castro,
probably without realizing how many people have been maimed, kidnapped and
killed as a result of his communist guerrilla warfare.
Castro has been actively promoting drug trafficking since the
Tri-Continental Conference held in Havana in January 1966. At that conference
(attended by worldwide communists, guerrillas and terrorists) the decision
called for the planned destabilization of the U.S. through such techniques as
the trafficking of drugs and the promotion of other criminal activities.
Has anybody in the Americas thought about the extraordinary number of people
killed and lives ruined by Castro's quiet war against the U.S.?
He also worked very hard to promote communism in Africa. In 1960, he sent "military
advisers" to Algeria and in 1964 troops to Zanzibar to help John Okello, a
violent trained-in-Cuba revolutionary, take over the government there.
In 1965, he sent troops to what is now Zaire. By the late 1970s, he had sent
troops to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. In 1985-86, Castro had about 35,000
troops in Angola. Surprisingly, many African-Americans admire Castro without
considering how many of their brothers have been maimed and killed by Castro's
troops fighting to impose communism.
I could go on and on with well-documented cases.
Cuban exiles are frustrated. When they warn about a tyrant who has committed
uncountable crimes against humanity (105,000 Cubans have lost their lives
because of Castro’s regime) and raise their voices favoring democracy, it
is not because they are "right-wing," "reactionaries," or "Miami
Mafia" (derogatory epithets created by Castro propaganda and repeated by
the U.S. media). Those are unfair labels.
Jews are not accused of such things for being against Hitler or Nazism. Just
as the Jews, Cuban exiles do not want these horrors to happen again. It is not
for a selfish reason, it is to save other humans from committing the same
mistake again.
The maligned Cuban exiles living in the U.S. for 41 years have plenty of
reasons to feel unhappy and depressed during these holidays.
Many Cuban Americans supported Clinton’s run for the presidency and
voted for him. But his weak and appeasement policies toward Castro –
allowing Castro to manipulate U.S. policy, like the Elián González
affair – has been a lethal blow for democracy in Cuba and is helping to
keep his tyranny in power.
But, returning to the beginning of my story, soon after 1959 Castro
prohibited impressionists to imitate and poke fun at him on the stage, radio,
television or the print media.
The one I saw on New Year's Eve 1958, Tito Hernández, went to exile
in the U.S. The strictest censorship ever was imposed on Cuba. Castro’s
cultivation of his greater-than-life image began for national and international
consumption.
And now, Christmastime 2000, as the new millennium approaches, I am reminded
that after 41 years, sadly, the last page of this tragic saga is still missing.
Augustin Blazquez is a documentary film producer.
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