Val the Abolitionist vs. Henry the Slaver

Babalú is not the old Babalú anymore. In any case, it is not consistently the old Babulú, not that consistency was ever its strong point. This is evident in the rift that has developed between Val Prieto and Henry Gómez over the smuggling of refugees.

As readers of this blog know (see links below), Henry has a full-blown fixation with exposing and prosecuting smugglers who rescue Castro's captives and bring them to freedom. He has admitted to contacting MSM journalists in the past to encourage them to cover this story. He doesn't believe that Cubans who are brought here by smugglers are real "refugees." He questions their "amateur" status and wants them excluded from the "benefits" of the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy. They can be harrassed, capsized and drowned like those who take to sea on improvised rafts, but should not be afforded asylum if they actually manage to evade the U.S. Coast Guard. As for the smugglers, who run the 21st century's equivalent of the Underground Railroad, Henry wants them to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law just as white southerners, in their day, clamored for the blood of the abolitionists.

In a post this morning, appropriately entitled "Finger Pointing," Val takes to task the "MSM concubines" for the sins of Henry Gomez. Specifically, he quotes an Associated Press story which blames Cuban exiles for financing the smuggling of Cuban refugees through Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The article also blames the U.S. policy of granting Cubans "automatic asylum" for fomenting the "illegal trade." And who is the source for this information? No, not Henry Gómez (this time), but Eduardo Medina Mora, the Mexican Attorney General. No words in any language signify corruption as do these three words: "Mexican Attorney General." It is the ne plus ultra of cynicism that Mexican politicians, whose epic raids over 80 years on the national wealth have driven tens of millions of their countrymen across the Rio Grande in search of a better life, actually have the nerve to complain because thousands of Cuban refugees use their territory as a conduit to asylum in the U.S.? If it were up to them, they would drive the entire Mexican populace across the border, leaving just enough workers to harvest the petro-dollars which should have made Mexico this hemisphere's wealthiest country, but which, instead, has made its presidents the world's richest oligarchs.

Val is right to rail against such hypocrisy. He should, however, have focused his ire on the Mexican politicos, not the Associated Press, which is merely doing their bidding as Henry wishes it would do his in the same cause. The greatest enemy of Cuban freedom among the "fraternal" Latin-American countries over the last 50 years has been the Mexican government. Call it revanchism by proxy. Too pusillaneous to confront the U.S. themselves, because that is where their ill-gotten wealth resides and where they hope some day to join it, they derive a vicarious satisfaction from Castro's tirades against the country that underwrites their predations. Since 1959, they have paid him billions in protection money, not, of course, so he would protect them from the U.S., but so that Castro would stay out of Mexico.

Henry Gomez, like the Mexico's Attorney General, blames Cuban exiles for financing the smugglers and the U.S. for enabling the "illegal trade" by granting "automatic asylum" to those whom they transport to freedom. Val now sees it another way: "See, it's either US policy's fault or, of course, the whipping-boy Cuban-American's fault that Cubans are being smuggled into the states via Mexico. It can't possibly be because the castro regime systematically violates Cuban's human rights, or because of the system of apartheid in Cuba, or because Cubans are basically slaves to the state in their own country, or because the castro regime prefers to have the Cuban family separated..."

At moments like this I feel that my head and the wall will eventually reach a happy accommodation.

Yes, it is Castro who is to blame. Castro and only Castro. Val has seen the light at last.

Will Henry?

Decide for yourself from his past fulminations on the subject:

One Man's Obsession: The Smugglers Who Risk All to Free Castro's Slaves
Angels Who Smuggle Men to Freedom
Alfonso Chardy is the New Oscar Corral
Fred Thompson: Cuban "Immigrants" Are Suitcase Bombers
Insanity, Homoeroticism and Xenophobia on "The Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour"
You Cannot Love Cuba and Hate Cubans
The Truth In Season


POSTSCRIPT:

Fantomas said...
deja eso... hay muchas noticias buenas... no te desvies
12/12/2007 4:04 AM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...

fantomas:

The good news around here is that Val Prieto, who, like you, is apparently subject to "kinder and gentler" spells, is no longer trying to cook Cubans in a pressure cooker, calling on them to shed rivers of blood, and even has good words to say about Spaniards (Catalans at least). Progress is being made. As for Henry, he is a lost cause.
12/12/2007 7:28 AM