MaT,
May I play the devil's advocate in this situation? I believe that the post at Babalú was not meant to desecrate the flag but as a form of satire/irony. The poster had no idea that it would offend so many, especially those of a certain age and above ~ due to our life experiences and beliefs. My question is: What if after Angel Garzon's comment to Babalú which I have lauded and found to be very much in step, Babalú would have taken the flag down. They could have simply stated that it was not meant to offend in any way, but because of the mere idea that anyone could take it that way they were removing it.
Would this have been the end of the issue?
PS - I am NOT trying to add fuel to fire, quite the contrary.
7/14/2008 3:29 PM
Although ignorance is not an excuse it is certainly one that the Babalunians could plead in all honesty not only as regards the desecration of the Cuban flag but any other issue relating to Cuba on which they choose to deliver themselves of an opinion. George Moneo could well have inserted Eduardo's Sarmiento's cartoon in Babalú as "The New Cuban Flag" without the slightest inkling that it constituted a profanation of the Cuban flag. Indeed, I will go so far as to accept that if George had known or somebody else had told him that the caricature, whatever its social commentary, was first and foremost an insult to the Cuban flag, that he would have resisted the urge to seem "cosmopolitan" at the expense of proferring an insult to our flag. If George had known the provenance of the cartoon he would also have been loathe to publish it. The fact that it is the work of one of Castro's caricaturists would surely have sounded an alarm for him. But, of course, he reproduced the offensive cartoon without knowing the artist or the artist's agenda. This is because his knowledge of Cuban history and the quehacer cubano (Cuban reality) is limited by the fact that he does not speak Spanish and has never set foot in Cuba in his life. On one level, of course, such an interest in his Cuban roots is commendable. It is not so commendable, however, for him to opine on Cuban affairs when he refuses to learn our language which is the portal to our history and culture. The greatest service that George can do for our country, as well as the greatest favor that he can do for himself, is to learn Spanish. I do not think that it is beyond him even now. I am sure that if he had taken the trouble to do so over the last 50 odd years he would surely have avoided this and other embarrassing situations.
But once the offensive cartoon was published and its real character pointed out to him and all the Babalunians, what was Babalú's reaction? Well, it was not the reaction of a true patriot who might have given offense unintentionally to our flag but would never persist in his error once it was pointed out to him much less deny the offense by confirming it. It is interesting that George was joined in what now amounted to a defense of the desecration of the Cuban flag by Val, Alberto and Claudia: a Cuban who left the island at age three; another, dubbed "El Americanito," because he was not born there; and a third who is not Cuban. Again, I consider it commendable on all their parts, and especially Claudia's, that they feel Cuban. But that really isn't enough. In fact, it much too little if you intend to dictate to Cubans "of a certain age" and "with life experiences and beliefs" formed in Cuba how they should react to the desecration of our country's most sacred symbol. It may just be that their "Cuban radar" is not what it should be. They do not see the irreverence because they have never worshipped at our temple; they cannot understand the offense because it does not touch them personally. I do not doubt that they would be quick to perceive and denounce any desecration of the American flag. This is, after all, their country. Cuba is a country of interest to them. Of course, it is not the same thing.
If Babalú had taken down the desecration I would have been surprised and pleased. It would have represented an encouraging step towards genuine cubanidad. Instead, Val deleted the entire discussion on the flag desecration, which contained Marc Másferrer and Angel Garzón's devastating and unanswerable critiques. This I consider to be a further disrespect of those whose judgment and patriotic sensibilities are keener than theirs. It is, however, in keeping with Babalú's traditional response to dissent of any kind.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Controversial Cartoons in the New Yorker and Babalú Compared
On the cover of the New Yorker this week is a caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office which depicts him in Indonesian Muslim garb and her in Marxist guerrilla chic toting an AK 47. On the wall over the fireplace hangs a painting of Osama Bin Laden, and in the fireplace itself burns an American flag. If the New Yorker had placed Raúl Castro's picture over the mantel instead of Osama's or found some other way to insert him in the scene (perhaps trying to insert Obama), the cartoon would have been a graphic condensation of my own thought on the Manchurian couple. Of course, we know that artist Barry Blitt intended the cartoon as a lampoon of people like me, that is, clear-thinking people. But his efforts backfired because he got too close to the truth and violated the #1 rule at the New Yorker: "Cartoons Must Not Be Funny."
The cartoon has been denounced by both the Obama and McCain camps. It would also have been denounced by Val Prieto at another time for its depiction of flag burning, but the well-known yankófilo is currently involved in his own controversy concerning Babalú's desecration of the Cuban flag, which necessitated that he maintain a prudent silence on the issue. Instead, water carrier Alberto de la Cruz copied a snippet from a Politico commentary on the cartoon, and the shameless George Moneo, who had published Sarmiento's desecration of the Cuban flag, provided another snippet. Cruz's take was that the liberals are their own worst enemies, which observation will also apply very well to the Babalunians themselves.
Does the depiction in art of a flag burning constitute a desecration of the flag? If the flag itself were on fire, singed or otherwise mutilated, then the answer would be yes. In Blitt's cartoon, however, the Stars and Stripes sits phoenix-like upon the flames, untouched by them. This could be interpreted as a refutation of flag-burning as well.
There is no ambiguity, however, about Sarmiento's desecration of the Cuban flag, or Babalú's enthusiastic endorsement of it as some kind of metaphor for our present reality. Sarmiento has sliced the star on the Cuban flag in two and serrated the blue stripes to resemble ocean waves; the half of the star that remains on the red triangle now looks like two severed legs and the other half cast adrift on the blue "waves" like a boat. If Blitt had altered the elements of the American flag, emptied the field of stars and replaced them with a swastika, or kept the stars but changed the blue field to black, or, as Marc Másferrer suggested in the deleted Babalú thread, enclosed the stars in barbed wire, Blitt's depiction of the American flag would be as offensive as Sarmiento's. In Blitt's cartoon, the layout of the U.S. flag is unaltered; in Sarmiento's it is reconfigured in such a manner as to suggest that Cuban refugees have turned their backs on their flag by fleeing from the Castro tyranny, confounding the tyranny with our country. Sarmiento, a cartoonist for a Communist publication in Cuba, no doubt wished to convey the impression that exiles had repudiated their country by fleeing the tyranny. Such a message would be entirely consonant with the regime's own propaganda. In endorsing both the desecration of our flag and the message of the cartoon, Babalú has not only committed a crime of lesè-majesté but sided with the oppressors of our country in condemning the exile community for following the example of Martí and Maceo.
Babalú's obstinate refusal to disassociate itself from Sarmiento's Castroite cartoon, its "unpublishing" of critical comments about the desecration but wilful refusal to "unpublish" the desecration itself, shows that it shares the totalitarian mindset of its putative enemies and their contempt for our national symbols as well.
The cartoon has been denounced by both the Obama and McCain camps. It would also have been denounced by Val Prieto at another time for its depiction of flag burning, but the well-known yankófilo is currently involved in his own controversy concerning Babalú's desecration of the Cuban flag, which necessitated that he maintain a prudent silence on the issue. Instead, water carrier Alberto de la Cruz copied a snippet from a Politico commentary on the cartoon, and the shameless George Moneo, who had published Sarmiento's desecration of the Cuban flag, provided another snippet. Cruz's take was that the liberals are their own worst enemies, which observation will also apply very well to the Babalunians themselves.
Does the depiction in art of a flag burning constitute a desecration of the flag? If the flag itself were on fire, singed or otherwise mutilated, then the answer would be yes. In Blitt's cartoon, however, the Stars and Stripes sits phoenix-like upon the flames, untouched by them. This could be interpreted as a refutation of flag-burning as well.
There is no ambiguity, however, about Sarmiento's desecration of the Cuban flag, or Babalú's enthusiastic endorsement of it as some kind of metaphor for our present reality. Sarmiento has sliced the star on the Cuban flag in two and serrated the blue stripes to resemble ocean waves; the half of the star that remains on the red triangle now looks like two severed legs and the other half cast adrift on the blue "waves" like a boat. If Blitt had altered the elements of the American flag, emptied the field of stars and replaced them with a swastika, or kept the stars but changed the blue field to black, or, as Marc Másferrer suggested in the deleted Babalú thread, enclosed the stars in barbed wire, Blitt's depiction of the American flag would be as offensive as Sarmiento's. In Blitt's cartoon, the layout of the U.S. flag is unaltered; in Sarmiento's it is reconfigured in such a manner as to suggest that Cuban refugees have turned their backs on their flag by fleeing from the Castro tyranny, confounding the tyranny with our country. Sarmiento, a cartoonist for a Communist publication in Cuba, no doubt wished to convey the impression that exiles had repudiated their country by fleeing the tyranny. Such a message would be entirely consonant with the regime's own propaganda. In endorsing both the desecration of our flag and the message of the cartoon, Babalú has not only committed a crime of lesè-majesté but sided with the oppressors of our country in condemning the exile community for following the example of Martí and Maceo.
Babalú's obstinate refusal to disassociate itself from Sarmiento's Castroite cartoon, its "unpublishing" of critical comments about the desecration but wilful refusal to "unpublish" the desecration itself, shows that it shares the totalitarian mindset of its putative enemies and their contempt for our national symbols as well.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Eliezer Aronowsky's Tribute to the Cuban Flag
Despite their merit and relevance, there are names that elude history's attention. In the case of Eliezer Aronowsky (1910-?) we are at a loss to explain why. Aronowsky, who immigrated to Cuba before the Holocaust, was our most prominent Jewish poet. He authored two books of poetry in Yiddish entitled Kuba: Lider un Poemes (Cuban Cantos) and Tropisch Licht (Tropical Light). Several of his poems were translated into Spanish by Andrés Piedra-Bueno, who also published a translation of Aronowsky's epic poem Maceo [Habana, Cuba: Ediciones Bené Berith Maimónides, 1950]. He was also a regular contributor to the Habaner Lebn, a Yiddish daily newspaper that was published in Cuba from 1932 to 1960.
Eliezer Aronowsky's greatest claim to fame, however, is as the author of the first book about and denunciation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was published in Cuba in 1939 (In kontsentratsye-lager Bukhenvald: pedzenlekhe ibelebungenfun Samuel Hilovitsh. Havana: Havaner lebn, 1939).
While perusing a copy of the Cuban-Jewish magazine Genesis (May 1950) dedicated to the centenary of the Cuban flag, I found the following poem by Aronowsky entitled "To the Cuban Flag," translated by Piedra-Bueno. Unfortunately, the original Yiddish version was not included.
What facts I could gather about him were obtained from bibliographies of Jewish poets or Holocaust writers. Not even the year of his death or place of birth is known. The few facts that we do know about him are enough, though, to attest to his love for his adopted country and his vision and courage as one of the world's first denouncers of the Holocaust.
A la Bandera Cubana
Blanca, como el fulgor del claro día;
azul, como el hechizo de la noche;
roja, como la hoguera del crepúsculo,
y tu estrella de plata, flor de flores.
Cifra de libertad, hace cien años
que ondeas sobre muchos corazones.
La roca es gris, pero tu suelo es verde;
y a esa esperanza virginal respondes...
Por ti, todas las razas se congregan
y en tu corona sus brillantes ponen,
porque la libertad que representas
es un brazo en firme para todos los hombres...
Fuiste borbada en la sangre heroica
al conjuro marcial de épicos sones,
tal como el bayamés que escribió el himno
y que murió por él, en recio bronce
Como en el río se refleja el cielo,
en tu cielo de amor brillan dos soles
-- Martí y Maceo --, que la patria alumbran
en una eternidad de resplandores...
Aunque las sombras rieguen sus semillas
en el surco ideal del horizonte,
por ti el pueblo se encuentra y levanta
y las cadenas coloniales rompe...
Por ti, la tierra su cristal desata
en musicales cauces y en inefables voces...
Al besarte dos mares, es como si Dios mismo
te besara, bandera, en beso de fulgores...
Eliezer Aronowsky
Traducción de Andrés de Piedra-Buena
I have highlighted the third stanza because it voices a sentiment which was widely felt by immigrants to our country for whom Morro Castle represented life and freedom no less than the Statue of Liberty did for Emma Lazarus. Before 1959, Cuba was a nation of immigrants, having received, proportionally, more immigrants in the years between 1920 and 1958 than its neighbor to the North. A third of Cuba's population of 6.6 million in 1958 were immigrants or first generation Cubans. These included refugees from Tsarist and Soviet Russia, the Republican and Nationalist sides in the Spanish Civil War, and Nazi Germany and the captive countries.
Fidel Castro forced many of these immigrants to leave Cuba after he had robbed them of their life's work, and now their descendents, newly reclaimed by Spain, will depart their country for the land of their ancestors, to begin new lives as citizens of a foreign country. Though this new disposition will mean freedom for millions of our countrymen, it will rob our country of the people that it needs for its reconstruction after Communism. This, too, is Castro's legacy to our country. With the hemisphere's lowest birth rate and one of the world's highest rates of abortion and suicide, and, now, the probable immigration of 3-4 million Cubans, the question may well be asked, how long before our country is wholly depopulated?
At moments when we despair about the fate of country, and the last 50 years are a rosary strung with those moments, it is good to refresh our souls with the poetry of those whose faith in our country's future was boundless because so did her horizons seem then. In Aronowsky's ode we see the great importance that our national symbols and heroes had for Cuba's immigrants. As these were for them the most accessible expressions of their new sense of national identity and patriotic fervor, so, too, should our national symbols represent for us today in the diaspora our firmest anchor to our country and most sacred reliquary of our love for it.
The desecration of our most important national symbol, which would once have seemed inconceivable, has became no more than a joke to Babalú's anti-Cuban "patriots." Those who obsessed so much about the symbolism of "Che" t-shirts could not see that tearing in half the star on Cuba's flag or serrating its stripes was an act of desecration.
One cannot love Cuba and hate her people.
One cannot love Cuba and insult her flag.
Eliezer Aronowsky's greatest claim to fame, however, is as the author of the first book about and denunciation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was published in Cuba in 1939 (In kontsentratsye-lager Bukhenvald: pedzenlekhe ibelebungenfun Samuel Hilovitsh. Havana: Havaner lebn, 1939).
While perusing a copy of the Cuban-Jewish magazine Genesis (May 1950) dedicated to the centenary of the Cuban flag, I found the following poem by Aronowsky entitled "To the Cuban Flag," translated by Piedra-Bueno. Unfortunately, the original Yiddish version was not included.
What facts I could gather about him were obtained from bibliographies of Jewish poets or Holocaust writers. Not even the year of his death or place of birth is known. The few facts that we do know about him are enough, though, to attest to his love for his adopted country and his vision and courage as one of the world's first denouncers of the Holocaust.
A la Bandera Cubana
Blanca, como el fulgor del claro día;
azul, como el hechizo de la noche;
roja, como la hoguera del crepúsculo,
y tu estrella de plata, flor de flores.
Cifra de libertad, hace cien años
que ondeas sobre muchos corazones.
La roca es gris, pero tu suelo es verde;
y a esa esperanza virginal respondes...
Por ti, todas las razas se congregan
y en tu corona sus brillantes ponen,
porque la libertad que representas
es un brazo en firme para todos los hombres...
Fuiste borbada en la sangre heroica
al conjuro marcial de épicos sones,
tal como el bayamés que escribió el himno
y que murió por él, en recio bronce
Como en el río se refleja el cielo,
en tu cielo de amor brillan dos soles
-- Martí y Maceo --, que la patria alumbran
en una eternidad de resplandores...
Aunque las sombras rieguen sus semillas
en el surco ideal del horizonte,
por ti el pueblo se encuentra y levanta
y las cadenas coloniales rompe...
Por ti, la tierra su cristal desata
en musicales cauces y en inefables voces...
Al besarte dos mares, es como si Dios mismo
te besara, bandera, en beso de fulgores...
Eliezer Aronowsky
Traducción de Andrés de Piedra-Buena
I have highlighted the third stanza because it voices a sentiment which was widely felt by immigrants to our country for whom Morro Castle represented life and freedom no less than the Statue of Liberty did for Emma Lazarus. Before 1959, Cuba was a nation of immigrants, having received, proportionally, more immigrants in the years between 1920 and 1958 than its neighbor to the North. A third of Cuba's population of 6.6 million in 1958 were immigrants or first generation Cubans. These included refugees from Tsarist and Soviet Russia, the Republican and Nationalist sides in the Spanish Civil War, and Nazi Germany and the captive countries.
Fidel Castro forced many of these immigrants to leave Cuba after he had robbed them of their life's work, and now their descendents, newly reclaimed by Spain, will depart their country for the land of their ancestors, to begin new lives as citizens of a foreign country. Though this new disposition will mean freedom for millions of our countrymen, it will rob our country of the people that it needs for its reconstruction after Communism. This, too, is Castro's legacy to our country. With the hemisphere's lowest birth rate and one of the world's highest rates of abortion and suicide, and, now, the probable immigration of 3-4 million Cubans, the question may well be asked, how long before our country is wholly depopulated?
At moments when we despair about the fate of country, and the last 50 years are a rosary strung with those moments, it is good to refresh our souls with the poetry of those whose faith in our country's future was boundless because so did her horizons seem then. In Aronowsky's ode we see the great importance that our national symbols and heroes had for Cuba's immigrants. As these were for them the most accessible expressions of their new sense of national identity and patriotic fervor, so, too, should our national symbols represent for us today in the diaspora our firmest anchor to our country and most sacred reliquary of our love for it.
The desecration of our most important national symbol, which would once have seemed inconceivable, has became no more than a joke to Babalú's anti-Cuban "patriots." Those who obsessed so much about the symbolism of "Che" t-shirts could not see that tearing in half the star on Cuba's flag or serrating its stripes was an act of desecration.
One cannot love Cuba and hate her people.
One cannot love Cuba and insult her flag.
Babalú's Deletes All Comments on "The New Cuban Flag"
Everything else can be fought except human nature; that is immutable. Therefore, it was not even in question whether Val would allow a free debate to proceed at Babalú concerning George Moneo's reproduction of Eduardo Sarmiento's offensive cacicature of the Cuban flag. Everybody who participated in that discussion knew that at some point it would be abruptly interrupted and censored. Well, it never was a free discussion to begin with, since only a fraction of the comments submitted were actually published; but skewered as it was in their favor, their vigilance could not be 24/7, so it was inevitable that a critical comment or two would penetrate their cordon sanitaire in the wee hours of the morning. It would have been too conspicuous to delete just those comments; they have done that, of course, in the past, with utter shamelessness, but the controversy regarding Babalú's desecration of the Cuban flag had shone the spotlight on it and made such selective censorship too risky a proposition. So Val decided, instead, to delete the entire thread and close discussion on "The New Cuban Flag," which, ironically, has been accorded more respect than the old at Babalú. The only thing that Val did not eliminate, however, was the Sarmiento's desecration of the Cuban flag.
Given Val's abundant love for his adopted country, which truly knows no bounds and encompasses even support for the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, it is inconceivable that he would treat the U.S. flag in the same manner that the Cuban flag has been treated at Babalú. This is part of the "American-Cuban" mentality that pervades Babalú and colors all its thinking on Cuba and especially its treatment of Cubans on the island and newcomers from Cuba, who, of late, have become both the enemy within and the enemy without rather than Castro and his henchmen. The only exception which Val makes is for individual political prisoners. The rest of the Cuban people he regards as collaborators of the regime who can only redeem themselves by shedding rivers of blood or by submitting to be rendered in a pressure cooker (Val's similes, not mine).
When so little concern is shown for Cubans as human beings should we expect Babalú to respect the symbols of the Cuban nation? Of course not. Its desecration of the Cuban flag is in keeping with its devaluing of all things Cuban, not least Cuban lives.
The RCAB, from its inception, has provided a refuge for both Babalú's deleted comments and its banned commenters. So here, for the record, incomplete and altered as it has been, is the deleted thread from Moneo's post "The New Cuban Flag:"
July 09, 2008
The new Cuban flag
(H/T Gabriel D.)
Posted by George Moneo at July 9, 2008 02:59 PM
Comments
Sad, but dead on!
Posted by: jluix at July 9, 2008 04:05 PM
Hay una polémica en el tapete: Resulta que en Babalú aparecía una imagen de la bandera cubana modificada en alusión al Exodo y "Review of Cuban Blogs" publica un post indignado.
Si bien es cierto que yo no utilisaría la bandera en esa forma para ilustrar ninguna idea por justa que fuera, creo que la intención de Moneo obviamente no fue ofender a la bandera ni a los cubanos. Para mi no pasa de ser irreverencia.
Tomado de "Blogs sobre Cuba": (http://blogssobrecuba.blogspot.com)
Posted by: Al Godar at July 9, 2008 09:57 PM
Al, I am leaving this comment solely as a clarification so that all the screeching voices can shut up: the image was given to me by a recent Cuban exile who thought it was the perfect metaphor for the situation in Cuba: 'even the star is taking to the sea to leave Cuba.'
An image that needs an explanation has not done its job. This one, however, should be self-explanatory. Maybe all of the "outrage" directed at this -- an image that captures the reality of Cuba today -- can be redirected to the Obama campaign lady who had che superimposed on the Cuban flag. The nattering negativists didn't raise one little objection to that. And to me, che's picture on the flag is a desecration. My two cents.
Posted by: George L. Moneo at July 9, 2008 10:33 PM
I think the design is inspired.
Posted by: Paco at July 9, 2008 10:44 PM
I laughed out loud. It's perfect.
Posted by: Zhangliqun at July 10, 2008 01:10 AM
George, perhaps you did not have any derogatory intention when you posted this desecration of my Cuba's National Flag. No one is perfect, all of us humans err at one time or another. I urge you to do the right thing, take the correct action(s) and prevent further potential damage to your reputation and that of Babalu Blog, I'd suggest that you take down the graphic, apologize with utmost sincerity and prepare yourself for what may come your way. I do not always agree with you, I detest your propensity to the profane, but you are an educated man with many principles with which I agree. I reiterate, I do not believe that you had any negative intentions in mind or heart, nevertheless, please take it down. Thanks.
Posted by: Angel Garzón at July 10, 2008 01:45 AM
My intent when I posted the image was -- and is -- as clear as gin: the image is a metaphor for the condition Cuba is in today. Period. This is nothing more than a cheap and manipulative attempt to drum up hysteria and controversy where none exists. If you or your friends are too obtuse to get the message, so be it. The image stays and my message now is the same as was when I posted it.
Angel, we live in America. I still have the right to post this, just as much as you have the right to disagree with me posting it. You have a lot of crust to think you can come here and tell me what to write or post, demanding an apology for some manufactured offense. Our blog has a variety of opinions, some more pointed than others, but we consistently, unambiguously and unashamedly disseminate a pro-America, anti-castro, anti-communist message here. If that message, or how we deliver it, bothers you that much, go elsewhere. I certainly won't shed any tears.
Posted by: George L. Moneo at July 10, 2008 07:15 AM
People actually complained about the flag... Dumb asses I tell ya, all of them... Where were these asses when the puta in Texas had Che on the Cuban flag?
Posted by: readytoshoot at July 10, 2008 08:54 AM
I immediately grasped the message of the flag and thought it was GREAT! But then again, I'm not one of those "ban the flag burners" kind of people I guess :)
Sorry Al, but you sound a little bit nuts to me. This can in no way be seen as desecration of the cuban flag. It SHOULD be the national flag of communist cuba though.
Posted by: Cangrejero de Caibarién at July 10, 2008 09:49 AM
MI BANDERA
Al volver de distante ribera,
con el alma enlutada, y sombria
afanoso busque mi bandera
Y otra he visto ademas de la mia!
Donde esta mi bandera cubana.
La bandera mas bella que existe?
Desde el buque la vi esta mañana,
y no he visto una cosa más triste!...
Con la fe de las almas austeras
hoy sostengo con honda energia
que no deben flotar dos banderas
donde basta con una: La mía!
En los campos que hoy son un osario
vio a los bravos batiéndose juntos,
y ella ha sido el honroso sudario
de los pobres guerreros difuntos.
Orgullosa lucio en la pelea,
sin pueril y romántico alarde:
Al cubano que en ella no crea
se le debe azotar por cobarde!
En el fondo de obscuras prisiones
no escucho ni la queja mas leve,
y sus huellas en otras regiones
son letreros de luz en la nieve...
No la veis? Mi bandera es aquella
que no ha sido jamás mercenaria,
y en la cual resplandece una estrella
con más luz, cuanto más solitaria.
Del destierro en el alma la traje
entre tantos recuerdos dispersos
y he sabido rendirle homenaje
al hacerla flotar en mis versos.
Aunque lánguida y triste tremola,
mi ambición es que el sol con su lumbre
la ilumine a ella sola - A ella sola! -
en el llano, en el mar y en la cumbre.
Si deshecha en menudos pedazos
llega a ser mi bandera algun día...
Nuestros muertos alzando los brazos
la sabran defender todavía...
Bonifacio Byrnes
Posted by: Vic at July 10, 2008 11:14 AM
Gracias, Vic. I hadnt read that in a long time.
I think it's important to note that no one is calling for a new cuban flag nor that tis be it. This is an artist's statement of what can only be called the reality of Cuba.
Posted by: Val Prieto at July 10, 2008 03:34 PM
An additional part of that reality is that if Cubans are stopped on the open seas, they get sent back to Cuba — thanks to wet-foot, dry-foot, America's contribution to the continuing torture of the Cuban people.
How American of us. Maybe we can add barbed wire to the Stars and Stripes to reflect that reality.
Posted by: Marc R. Masferrer at July 10, 2008 03:45 PM
My intent when I posted the image was -- and is -- as clear as gin: the image is a metaphor for the condition Cuba is in today. Period.
I was and I am very well aware of the metaphorical nature of the graphic and what it purportedly represents. You must be aware that there are many subjects, not the least of which is national pride and its representation by national symbols, that are considered "off limits" or beyond the realm of the common, certainly you are aware that even a small flag represents a nation and its people, you must know that any violation(s) or desecration(s) of such symbol(s) in any way, shape or form may and have caused nations to declare wars against one another, it is due to these reasons that national flags are only desecrated when provocation for war is the intention of the perpetrators, or when disdain and hatred of the nation and the people that a national flag represents is at the heart of the insulting violators. You get offended every time you see any representation of Che Guevara, yet the desecration of the national symbol of Cuba and its people does not seem to bother you in the least. Certainly there are many other alternatives that could have been employed to convey the message that you purport to have tried to convey It is common practice to place a disclaimer within any given presentation, whichever its nature, to clarify the intention(s) of the author(s) for anyone who may possibly take offense at whatever such presentation is intended to represent, but such escape clause is not customarily applied to national flags.
This is nothing more than a cheap and manipulative attempt to drum up hysteria and controversy where none exists. If you or your friends are too obtuse to get the message, so be it. The image stays and my message now is the same as was when I posted it.
There is no manipulation whatsoever at the heart of this issue, there is however, a serious affront to the national symbol of my native Cuba and to all Cubans, whether in Cuba, or anywhere else in the world. You seem to prefer to use contemptuous innuendo to attack me for having warned you as to the potentially negative consequences of your act of desecration, so be it, shoot the messenger and by all means, do not take the time to understand the message. Tthat appears to be more the norm than the exception with you. Your own words prove you guilty of your crime, you refuse to do what you should do for the good of the cause of democracy in Cuba, you choose to give the tyranny in power in Cuba another propaganda tool to use against all freedom loving Cubans and our friends and allies throughout the world, you choose to insult all Cubans whom you apparently believe are beneath you, especially our brothers and sisters within the island prison who suffer daily at the hands of the tyranny and most if not all of the recent arrivals, you coincidentally allege that it is one of those recently arrived Cubans who is the original author of the graphic, I doubt the veracity of such allegation, but there is a clear pattern of superiority complex to your statements, the members of the tyranny in Cuba suffer from the same affliction. You sir are an affront to Cuba and to all of us Cubans, you sir are a shameful example of what takes place when people allow bad influences from unpatriotic citizens of another nation to permeate their once proud national identity, you sir have been negatively influenced by those who posses no compunction whatsoever about using their own flag for underwear, placing a national symbol in the nether regions of their human anatomy. You sir, should immediately cease and desist from insulting the nation, the symbols, the nationals, the expatriates and anything and everything that represents our beloved Cuba.
Angel, we live in America. I still have the right to post this, just as much as you have the right to disagree with me posting it. You have a lot of crust to think you can come here and tell me what to write or post, demanding an apology for some manufactured offense. Our blog has a variety of opinions, some more pointed than others, but we consistently, unambiguously and unashamedly disseminate a pro-America, anti-castro, anti-communist message here. If that message, or how we deliver it, bothers you that much, go elsewhere. I certainly won't shed any tears.
No George, we live in the United States of America, from the furthest, northernmost reaches of Canada's territory to the furthermost reaches of Chile's and Argentina's territories and all other nations of America in between, we live in America, all of those nations citizens and residents live in America George, not the Illusion that you call America, another bad influence that you have assimilated from misinformed and misguided citizens of the U.S.A. You DO NOT have the right to desecrate the national symbol of Cuba and the Cubans it represents, living and dead. I did not tell you what you have the right to write or post, or what you do not have the right to write or post, I advised you as to the potentially damaging consequences of your act of desecration would be for your personal reputation, as well as, for the reputation of Babalu Blog, certainly you must be aware that there are consequences to our actions and words, freedom of speech allows any idiot to falsely yell "fire" at a theatre but with consequences for the perpetrator. You seem to lack or not want to avail yourself of logic, common sense and linear thought process. Your Blog (your own words, I was under the impression that it was Valentin Prieto's Blog) used to have a variety of opinions, mostly from commentators, most of whom have been banished and banned from commenting in the most outrageous displays of profanity laden derogatory disrespect and affront to all modicums of civility, so much for believing in the democratic and civil process. What you claim to be the core of the message that Babalu purports to disseminate, curiously does not indicate pro-Cuba and/or pro-Cuban, I guess all the claims to supporting and advocating for the cause of a free, democratic and civil Cuban republic, as well as, the claims of support for the Cuban people are not included, or perhaps your impression of what makes a true Cuban is nothing but a reflection of what you see every time you look in the mirror, if that is the case, I will unequivocally state that I want no part or parcel of that image that purportedly would represent what you apparently believe makes a real or ideal Cuban, I prefer to stay as I am, a true Cuban among the multitudes of Cubans, with all of our different characteristics that serve all of us so well to enrich our culture and civil pride. To finalize my statement, I would like to offer you this tip, when you offer others with whom you disagree to go elsewhere, you are too late already, the echo chamber that Babalu has become speaks for itself. Enough said.
Posted by: Angel Garzón at July 10, 2008 05:22 PM
***
When Val deleted this entire thread, he offered the following explanation, which, like all justifications of censorship, explains nothing but his own censorious mindset:
Update (Val): I have unpublished the comments related to this post. I simply will not allow such shallow, petty and disingenuously feigned insult bs commentary to go on here unchecked. The image above is an artist's statement on what he or she perceives to be the reality of today's Cuba and that's that. There is no desecration going on, no calls for a new Cuban flag, no intended or implied insult to the national symbol.
If you feel insulted by the image above, then you should, as it speaks volumes as to the truth about Cuba. Moreover, what should truly insult those of us that love Cuba and her symbolic flag is to see the likes of communists, socialists and fidelistas like the castros and their supporters waving her around for almost fifty years, shielding their idealistic ugliness behind her beauty.
Given Val's abundant love for his adopted country, which truly knows no bounds and encompasses even support for the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, it is inconceivable that he would treat the U.S. flag in the same manner that the Cuban flag has been treated at Babalú. This is part of the "American-Cuban" mentality that pervades Babalú and colors all its thinking on Cuba and especially its treatment of Cubans on the island and newcomers from Cuba, who, of late, have become both the enemy within and the enemy without rather than Castro and his henchmen. The only exception which Val makes is for individual political prisoners. The rest of the Cuban people he regards as collaborators of the regime who can only redeem themselves by shedding rivers of blood or by submitting to be rendered in a pressure cooker (Val's similes, not mine).
When so little concern is shown for Cubans as human beings should we expect Babalú to respect the symbols of the Cuban nation? Of course not. Its desecration of the Cuban flag is in keeping with its devaluing of all things Cuban, not least Cuban lives.
The RCAB, from its inception, has provided a refuge for both Babalú's deleted comments and its banned commenters. So here, for the record, incomplete and altered as it has been, is the deleted thread from Moneo's post "The New Cuban Flag:"
July 09, 2008
The new Cuban flag
(H/T Gabriel D.)
Posted by George Moneo at July 9, 2008 02:59 PM
Comments
Sad, but dead on!
Posted by: jluix at July 9, 2008 04:05 PM
Hay una polémica en el tapete: Resulta que en Babalú aparecía una imagen de la bandera cubana modificada en alusión al Exodo y "Review of Cuban Blogs" publica un post indignado.
Si bien es cierto que yo no utilisaría la bandera en esa forma para ilustrar ninguna idea por justa que fuera, creo que la intención de Moneo obviamente no fue ofender a la bandera ni a los cubanos. Para mi no pasa de ser irreverencia.
Tomado de "Blogs sobre Cuba": (http://blogssobrecuba.blogspot.com)
Posted by: Al Godar at July 9, 2008 09:57 PM
Al, I am leaving this comment solely as a clarification so that all the screeching voices can shut up: the image was given to me by a recent Cuban exile who thought it was the perfect metaphor for the situation in Cuba: 'even the star is taking to the sea to leave Cuba.'
An image that needs an explanation has not done its job. This one, however, should be self-explanatory. Maybe all of the "outrage" directed at this -- an image that captures the reality of Cuba today -- can be redirected to the Obama campaign lady who had che superimposed on the Cuban flag. The nattering negativists didn't raise one little objection to that. And to me, che's picture on the flag is a desecration. My two cents.
Posted by: George L. Moneo at July 9, 2008 10:33 PM
I think the design is inspired.
Posted by: Paco at July 9, 2008 10:44 PM
I laughed out loud. It's perfect.
Posted by: Zhangliqun at July 10, 2008 01:10 AM
George, perhaps you did not have any derogatory intention when you posted this desecration of my Cuba's National Flag. No one is perfect, all of us humans err at one time or another. I urge you to do the right thing, take the correct action(s) and prevent further potential damage to your reputation and that of Babalu Blog, I'd suggest that you take down the graphic, apologize with utmost sincerity and prepare yourself for what may come your way. I do not always agree with you, I detest your propensity to the profane, but you are an educated man with many principles with which I agree. I reiterate, I do not believe that you had any negative intentions in mind or heart, nevertheless, please take it down. Thanks.
Posted by: Angel Garzón at July 10, 2008 01:45 AM
My intent when I posted the image was -- and is -- as clear as gin: the image is a metaphor for the condition Cuba is in today. Period. This is nothing more than a cheap and manipulative attempt to drum up hysteria and controversy where none exists. If you or your friends are too obtuse to get the message, so be it. The image stays and my message now is the same as was when I posted it.
Angel, we live in America. I still have the right to post this, just as much as you have the right to disagree with me posting it. You have a lot of crust to think you can come here and tell me what to write or post, demanding an apology for some manufactured offense. Our blog has a variety of opinions, some more pointed than others, but we consistently, unambiguously and unashamedly disseminate a pro-America, anti-castro, anti-communist message here. If that message, or how we deliver it, bothers you that much, go elsewhere. I certainly won't shed any tears.
Posted by: George L. Moneo at July 10, 2008 07:15 AM
People actually complained about the flag... Dumb asses I tell ya, all of them... Where were these asses when the puta in Texas had Che on the Cuban flag?
Posted by: readytoshoot at July 10, 2008 08:54 AM
I immediately grasped the message of the flag and thought it was GREAT! But then again, I'm not one of those "ban the flag burners" kind of people I guess :)
Sorry Al, but you sound a little bit nuts to me. This can in no way be seen as desecration of the cuban flag. It SHOULD be the national flag of communist cuba though.
Posted by: Cangrejero de Caibarién at July 10, 2008 09:49 AM
MI BANDERA
Al volver de distante ribera,
con el alma enlutada, y sombria
afanoso busque mi bandera
Y otra he visto ademas de la mia!
Donde esta mi bandera cubana.
La bandera mas bella que existe?
Desde el buque la vi esta mañana,
y no he visto una cosa más triste!...
Con la fe de las almas austeras
hoy sostengo con honda energia
que no deben flotar dos banderas
donde basta con una: La mía!
En los campos que hoy son un osario
vio a los bravos batiéndose juntos,
y ella ha sido el honroso sudario
de los pobres guerreros difuntos.
Orgullosa lucio en la pelea,
sin pueril y romántico alarde:
Al cubano que en ella no crea
se le debe azotar por cobarde!
En el fondo de obscuras prisiones
no escucho ni la queja mas leve,
y sus huellas en otras regiones
son letreros de luz en la nieve...
No la veis? Mi bandera es aquella
que no ha sido jamás mercenaria,
y en la cual resplandece una estrella
con más luz, cuanto más solitaria.
Del destierro en el alma la traje
entre tantos recuerdos dispersos
y he sabido rendirle homenaje
al hacerla flotar en mis versos.
Aunque lánguida y triste tremola,
mi ambición es que el sol con su lumbre
la ilumine a ella sola - A ella sola! -
en el llano, en el mar y en la cumbre.
Si deshecha en menudos pedazos
llega a ser mi bandera algun día...
Nuestros muertos alzando los brazos
la sabran defender todavía...
Bonifacio Byrnes
Posted by: Vic at July 10, 2008 11:14 AM
Gracias, Vic. I hadnt read that in a long time.
I think it's important to note that no one is calling for a new cuban flag nor that tis be it. This is an artist's statement of what can only be called the reality of Cuba.
Posted by: Val Prieto at July 10, 2008 03:34 PM
An additional part of that reality is that if Cubans are stopped on the open seas, they get sent back to Cuba — thanks to wet-foot, dry-foot, America's contribution to the continuing torture of the Cuban people.
How American of us. Maybe we can add barbed wire to the Stars and Stripes to reflect that reality.
Posted by: Marc R. Masferrer at July 10, 2008 03:45 PM
My intent when I posted the image was -- and is -- as clear as gin: the image is a metaphor for the condition Cuba is in today. Period.
I was and I am very well aware of the metaphorical nature of the graphic and what it purportedly represents. You must be aware that there are many subjects, not the least of which is national pride and its representation by national symbols, that are considered "off limits" or beyond the realm of the common, certainly you are aware that even a small flag represents a nation and its people, you must know that any violation(s) or desecration(s) of such symbol(s) in any way, shape or form may and have caused nations to declare wars against one another, it is due to these reasons that national flags are only desecrated when provocation for war is the intention of the perpetrators, or when disdain and hatred of the nation and the people that a national flag represents is at the heart of the insulting violators. You get offended every time you see any representation of Che Guevara, yet the desecration of the national symbol of Cuba and its people does not seem to bother you in the least. Certainly there are many other alternatives that could have been employed to convey the message that you purport to have tried to convey It is common practice to place a disclaimer within any given presentation, whichever its nature, to clarify the intention(s) of the author(s) for anyone who may possibly take offense at whatever such presentation is intended to represent, but such escape clause is not customarily applied to national flags.
This is nothing more than a cheap and manipulative attempt to drum up hysteria and controversy where none exists. If you or your friends are too obtuse to get the message, so be it. The image stays and my message now is the same as was when I posted it.
There is no manipulation whatsoever at the heart of this issue, there is however, a serious affront to the national symbol of my native Cuba and to all Cubans, whether in Cuba, or anywhere else in the world. You seem to prefer to use contemptuous innuendo to attack me for having warned you as to the potentially negative consequences of your act of desecration, so be it, shoot the messenger and by all means, do not take the time to understand the message. Tthat appears to be more the norm than the exception with you. Your own words prove you guilty of your crime, you refuse to do what you should do for the good of the cause of democracy in Cuba, you choose to give the tyranny in power in Cuba another propaganda tool to use against all freedom loving Cubans and our friends and allies throughout the world, you choose to insult all Cubans whom you apparently believe are beneath you, especially our brothers and sisters within the island prison who suffer daily at the hands of the tyranny and most if not all of the recent arrivals, you coincidentally allege that it is one of those recently arrived Cubans who is the original author of the graphic, I doubt the veracity of such allegation, but there is a clear pattern of superiority complex to your statements, the members of the tyranny in Cuba suffer from the same affliction. You sir are an affront to Cuba and to all of us Cubans, you sir are a shameful example of what takes place when people allow bad influences from unpatriotic citizens of another nation to permeate their once proud national identity, you sir have been negatively influenced by those who posses no compunction whatsoever about using their own flag for underwear, placing a national symbol in the nether regions of their human anatomy. You sir, should immediately cease and desist from insulting the nation, the symbols, the nationals, the expatriates and anything and everything that represents our beloved Cuba.
Angel, we live in America. I still have the right to post this, just as much as you have the right to disagree with me posting it. You have a lot of crust to think you can come here and tell me what to write or post, demanding an apology for some manufactured offense. Our blog has a variety of opinions, some more pointed than others, but we consistently, unambiguously and unashamedly disseminate a pro-America, anti-castro, anti-communist message here. If that message, or how we deliver it, bothers you that much, go elsewhere. I certainly won't shed any tears.
No George, we live in the United States of America, from the furthest, northernmost reaches of Canada's territory to the furthermost reaches of Chile's and Argentina's territories and all other nations of America in between, we live in America, all of those nations citizens and residents live in America George, not the Illusion that you call America, another bad influence that you have assimilated from misinformed and misguided citizens of the U.S.A. You DO NOT have the right to desecrate the national symbol of Cuba and the Cubans it represents, living and dead. I did not tell you what you have the right to write or post, or what you do not have the right to write or post, I advised you as to the potentially damaging consequences of your act of desecration would be for your personal reputation, as well as, for the reputation of Babalu Blog, certainly you must be aware that there are consequences to our actions and words, freedom of speech allows any idiot to falsely yell "fire" at a theatre but with consequences for the perpetrator. You seem to lack or not want to avail yourself of logic, common sense and linear thought process. Your Blog (your own words, I was under the impression that it was Valentin Prieto's Blog) used to have a variety of opinions, mostly from commentators, most of whom have been banished and banned from commenting in the most outrageous displays of profanity laden derogatory disrespect and affront to all modicums of civility, so much for believing in the democratic and civil process. What you claim to be the core of the message that Babalu purports to disseminate, curiously does not indicate pro-Cuba and/or pro-Cuban, I guess all the claims to supporting and advocating for the cause of a free, democratic and civil Cuban republic, as well as, the claims of support for the Cuban people are not included, or perhaps your impression of what makes a true Cuban is nothing but a reflection of what you see every time you look in the mirror, if that is the case, I will unequivocally state that I want no part or parcel of that image that purportedly would represent what you apparently believe makes a real or ideal Cuban, I prefer to stay as I am, a true Cuban among the multitudes of Cubans, with all of our different characteristics that serve all of us so well to enrich our culture and civil pride. To finalize my statement, I would like to offer you this tip, when you offer others with whom you disagree to go elsewhere, you are too late already, the echo chamber that Babalu has become speaks for itself. Enough said.
Posted by: Angel Garzón at July 10, 2008 05:22 PM
When Val deleted this entire thread, he offered the following explanation, which, like all justifications of censorship, explains nothing but his own censorious mindset:
Update (Val): I have unpublished the comments related to this post. I simply will not allow such shallow, petty and disingenuously feigned insult bs commentary to go on here unchecked. The image above is an artist's statement on what he or she perceives to be the reality of today's Cuba and that's that. There is no desecration going on, no calls for a new Cuban flag, no intended or implied insult to the national symbol.
If you feel insulted by the image above, then you should, as it speaks volumes as to the truth about Cuba. Moreover, what should truly insult those of us that love Cuba and her symbolic flag is to see the likes of communists, socialists and fidelistas like the castros and their supporters waving her around for almost fifty years, shielding their idealistic ugliness behind her beauty.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Babalú Makes a Present to Me of Its Readers
Another few hundred more readers today, I suppose. Maybe less, because it is a Friday. For reasons unknown to me, Val Prieto has decided to share his readers with me yet again. It is a generous gesture, no doubt, far more effective than actually linking this blog because it focuses the attention of all its readers upon it. Googling my name, which is mentioned half a dozen times in yesterday's post dedicated to me, brought them forthwith to RCAB, where they remained because the discussion was far more interesting here than at Babalú (as usual). I didn't even bother to refute Val's "Chicken Post," because, really, there is nothing to refute in a joke; or, rather, the only refutation of a joke is a better joke (seek link below).
When this blog was first founded the Babalunians set up several parody sites, which Val even announced on Babalú. That's how this blog actually took off. If their purpose was to isolate me then bringing these sites to their readers' attention was the worst possible way to do it because it only served to whet their interest in the original. My own reaction was to link all those parody blogs and quote the few funny passages in them, which I am glad I did because otherwise there would be no record of their earliest "sincerest form of flattery" since the Babalunians eventually tired of publicizing my blog and closed down all their homage blogs.
The sudden and unexpected revival of their efforts on behalf of this blog yesterday was no doubt intended to allay attention from George's desecration of the Cuban flag and Val's refusal to disclaim the desecration. Of course, anyone looking at "The New Cuban Flag," as George dubbed it, could not fail to grasp the obvious even if he had no idea of the Rules Governing the Use of the Cuban Flag (1950), which I quoted in the previous thread. Marc Másferrer brilliantly made that point when he observed that cutting the star on the Cuban flag in half and casting one-half adrift on wavy blue stripes to illustrate the plight of Cuban refugees under the "Dry Foot/Wet Foot" policy is no different from enclosing the field of stars on the U.S. flag in barbed wire to signify the same thing. Everybody ignored Marc's comment because there was no way to answer it except by endorsing the desecration of the "Stars and Stripes" as well, or by asserting that it is permissible to desecrate the Cuban flag but not the U.S. flag.
Well, they have not had enough. Today Henry reprises the subject with a new post that harks back to yesterday's post. Well, if I am the most interesting subject at Babalú these days, I can hardly complain.
Welcome, again, new readers from Babalú. I know that you, like those who came here before you, will make RCAB your new blog home.
When this blog was first founded the Babalunians set up several parody sites, which Val even announced on Babalú. That's how this blog actually took off. If their purpose was to isolate me then bringing these sites to their readers' attention was the worst possible way to do it because it only served to whet their interest in the original. My own reaction was to link all those parody blogs and quote the few funny passages in them, which I am glad I did because otherwise there would be no record of their earliest "sincerest form of flattery" since the Babalunians eventually tired of publicizing my blog and closed down all their homage blogs.
The sudden and unexpected revival of their efforts on behalf of this blog yesterday was no doubt intended to allay attention from George's desecration of the Cuban flag and Val's refusal to disclaim the desecration. Of course, anyone looking at "The New Cuban Flag," as George dubbed it, could not fail to grasp the obvious even if he had no idea of the Rules Governing the Use of the Cuban Flag (1950), which I quoted in the previous thread. Marc Másferrer brilliantly made that point when he observed that cutting the star on the Cuban flag in half and casting one-half adrift on wavy blue stripes to illustrate the plight of Cuban refugees under the "Dry Foot/Wet Foot" policy is no different from enclosing the field of stars on the U.S. flag in barbed wire to signify the same thing. Everybody ignored Marc's comment because there was no way to answer it except by endorsing the desecration of the "Stars and Stripes" as well, or by asserting that it is permissible to desecrate the Cuban flag but not the U.S. flag.
Well, they have not had enough. Today Henry reprises the subject with a new post that harks back to yesterday's post. Well, if I am the most interesting subject at Babalú these days, I can hardly complain.
Welcome, again, new readers from Babalú. I know that you, like those who came here before you, will make RCAB your new blog home.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Babalú's New Flag
It was a busy night and a busy morning for Val Prieto. His inbox is bulging with e-mails from readers and fellow bloggers indignant at George Moneo's desecration of the Cuban flag yesterday on Babalú. The satellites and even some of the "magnificent cadres" have expressed their disapproval and urged him to take down the offensive caricature. For once, however, Val has taken a stand against censorship. The hateful pastiche of the Cuban flag will stand. "The New Cuban Flag," as George dubbed it, is now Babalú's flag and Val will go down with his ship defending it.
So, Babalunians, stand at attention and salute your new flag, which expresses the contempt and hatred which Val & Co. feel for Cuba and the Cuban people.
So, Babalunians, stand at attention and salute your new flag, which expresses the contempt and hatred which Val & Co. feel for Cuba and the Cuban people.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Cuban Flag Desecrated at Babalú
Now I have seen it all.
If I were to close this blog tomorrow, I would not miss one damn thing.
You can bring down the curtain.
They have reached bottom.
The Cuban flag has been desecrated at Babalú.
The flag for which Martí and Maceo and ten thousand times seventy martyrs shed their generous blood, the hallowed emblem of our nationality and independence, has been made the occasion of a humorless joke by one who knows nothing of her glorious history or of the respect which is owed her by all Cubans.
I will not reproduce the offensive caricature of our flag or even describe what it is that they have done to her. Instead, I will quote our National Poet's immortal tribute:
To the Cuban Flag
Beautiful, gallant, victorious
And beyond the tyrant's hand,
Thou art the banner most glorious
And the ideal of my land...
When thy colors float on high,
Eternal dream of Martí,
Such pride do I feel in me,
I would have heaven reply
Whether thou prolong the sky
Or the sky surges from thee!
A la bandera cubana
Gallarda, hermosa, triunfal,
tras de múltiples afrentas,
de la patria representas
el romántico ideal...
Cuando agitas tu cendal
-sueño eterno de Martí-
tal emoción siento en mi,
que indago al celeste velo
si en ti se prolonga el cielo
o el cielo surge de ti...!
By Agustín Acosta (1886-1979)
Translated by Manuel A. Tellechea
POSTSCRIPT:
The flag is not a bulletin board.
It is not a pattern to be cut.
It is not a canvas to be painted upon.
The flag is us.
Just as no man would tolerate becoming a bulletin board, a pattern to be cut or a canvas to be painted upon, no man should ever allow the flag to be desecrated in such a manner.
If the flag cannot claim at least as much respect as we expect of each other, then it is only a piece of cloth.
Those who treat it as a piece of cloth have renounced allegiance to the nation and to the people that it represents; or, perhaps, they have never felt such allegiance at all.
If I were to close this blog tomorrow, I would not miss one damn thing.
You can bring down the curtain.
They have reached bottom.
The Cuban flag has been desecrated at Babalú.
The flag for which Martí and Maceo and ten thousand times seventy martyrs shed their generous blood, the hallowed emblem of our nationality and independence, has been made the occasion of a humorless joke by one who knows nothing of her glorious history or of the respect which is owed her by all Cubans.
I will not reproduce the offensive caricature of our flag or even describe what it is that they have done to her. Instead, I will quote our National Poet's immortal tribute:
To the Cuban Flag
Beautiful, gallant, victorious
And beyond the tyrant's hand,
Thou art the banner most glorious
And the ideal of my land...
When thy colors float on high,
Eternal dream of Martí,
Such pride do I feel in me,
I would have heaven reply
Whether thou prolong the sky
Or the sky surges from thee!
A la bandera cubana
Gallarda, hermosa, triunfal,
tras de múltiples afrentas,
de la patria representas
el romántico ideal...
Cuando agitas tu cendal
-sueño eterno de Martí-
tal emoción siento en mi,
que indago al celeste velo
si en ti se prolonga el cielo
o el cielo surge de ti...!
By Agustín Acosta (1886-1979)
Translated by Manuel A. Tellechea
POSTSCRIPT:
The flag is not a bulletin board.
It is not a pattern to be cut.
It is not a canvas to be painted upon.
The flag is us.
Just as no man would tolerate becoming a bulletin board, a pattern to be cut or a canvas to be painted upon, no man should ever allow the flag to be desecrated in such a manner.
If the flag cannot claim at least as much respect as we expect of each other, then it is only a piece of cloth.
Those who treat it as a piece of cloth have renounced allegiance to the nation and to the people that it represents; or, perhaps, they have never felt such allegiance at all.
Spain's New "Law of Return" Lambasted in Racist Cartoon in "Granma"
Here it is, as published in Granma, official organ of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party: the graphic reaction of the Castro regime to Spain's new "Law of Return" which grants Spanish citizenship to the foreign-born descendents of Spaniards who emigrated to Cuba (and other countries) in the first half of the 20th century. This includes Fidel Castro's own children, of course, and nearly half of Cuba's population. In total, more than 1.2 Spaniards crossed the Atlantic in search of a better life in Spain's former colony. Most prospered in their adopted country and grew roots there until Castro robbed them of the fruits of their hard work and literally deracinated their lives. Many returned to Spain with only the clothes on their backs and 40 or 50 additional years to start their lives anew, or, rather, to end them as best as they could; but most remained in Cuba because their children and grandchildren had been born and raised there and they did not want to be separated from them in their old age.In the 1990s, when most of the original emigrants were dead, the Spanish government negotiated on their behalf and without their consent a settlement of their claims for confiscated properties. The aggregate of Spanish assets in Cuba before 1959, consisting mostly of small businesses but large ones as well, far exceeded the $6 billion which the U.S. claims is owed to its citizens. Yet the Spanish government settled the claims of its nationals for $50 million (of which Castro didn't pay a cent). In effect, it transferred Spanish properties worth billions to Castro and robbed its own citizens for a second time.
Perhaps this belated "Law of Return" is a way for the Spanish government to make amends to those it wronged, or, rather, to their descendents. Spain did that before in 1924 when it promulgated the world's first "Law of Return" which benefitted the descendents of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. That law, intended as a symbolic gesture, saved 600,000 lives during the Holocaust. Spain's scions in the Americas at least did not have to wait 400 years to obtain some measure of justice.
The new law poses a dilemma for the regime: it means fewer mouths to feed but also fewer hands to work Castro's island-wide plantation, and, of course, the humiliation of being repudiated publicly by yet another mass exodus representing yet another generation of discontented Cubans. In such circumstances there is only one card which the regime can still play: the race card. It did so during the Mariel boatlift and this cartoon indicates that it is prepared to do so again.
The cartoon itself is obviously intended for Spanish consumption and plays on the xenophobic racism which is enjoying a revival not only in Spain but throughout Europe. The implication is that a great number (in the cartoon, all) of Spain's newly-minted citizens by way of Cuba will be black. No doubt a great many will be: Spaniards themselves saw to that by mixing freely with the island's inhabitants. That, of course, is the glory of Spain: its colonists assimilated native populations, as opposed to Anglo-Saxons who tended to decimate them.
Granma's caricature of blacks could not be more grotesque or instructive. Obviously, blacks are "the other" in Castro's Cuba, and it must really puzzle the island's political commissars, who segregate Cuban blacks in non-autonomous ghettos which they are not allowed to leave, why Spaniards would wish to import what they themselves regard as Cuba's "Black Problem." Notice, also, that most of those on line waiting to emigrate in the cartoon are male except for an old woman and child. The message to Spaniards is that they should not expect the mulatas that they love but only black males, which most of them do not love as well.
The caption in the cartoon is intended for internal consumption and can be interpreted in at least two ways. It could refer to the irony that Europeans, who abducted by force the black ancestors of Cuban mulattos, are now naturalizing and repatriating them based on their white ancestry. Or it could be trying to imply that before the Revolution only those who were compelled or expelled by the Spanish authorities ever immigrated to Cuba, and to remember that the authorities that once booted their ancestors could boot them, too.
The message that the cartoon actually conveys, besides the rampant racism, is that the regime continues to be afraid of its own people and resents mightily any government that would "smuggle" its to hostages to freedom by resorting to legal "sleight of hand." The "Law of Return" is Spain's version of the Cuban Adjustment Act exept that to take advantage of it Cubans don't have to risk their lives at sea. Freedom is now just an Iberia flight away.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
An Observation from Sr. Cohiba
"As noted weeks ago, it's less painful to undergo electroshock treatment than it is to argue with a liberal." -- Señor Cohiba, "A Video for My Liberal Counterparts," Babalú, July 7, 2008
OK, Mike, if you say so.
OK, Mike, if you say so.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Tío Val Cuenta Cuentos (Uncle Val's Tales)
What would Val ever do without the workmen whom he employs on a regular basis in the expansion of Villa Valentina? Not since Sara Winchester, heiress to the riflemaker, was told by a spiritualist that she would die if construction ever ceased on her mansion, has anyone built so many staircases that lead nowhere, so many rooms without doors and doors without rooms. Those who know of the dead chickens and coconuts left on Val's front lawn might suspect that he's under the same compunction as the old dowager, but I know the real reason for Val's building boom. It is his fascination with newcomers from Cuba.
Val is their scourge and they are his muse. He has devoted several several posts to Cuban construction workers and their vicissitudes in this country. He detests them, of course, even more than he does Cubans on the island who have not escaped his pressure cooker, using them as props to illustrate what he considers the defective character of Cubans raised on the island after the Castro takeover.
In a previous vignette Val wrote about one recent refugee who was saving his money so that he could visit his parents in Cuba and "get laid right and left." Apparently, the moralistic society that the newcomer encountered in Miami did not provide a sexual outlet for him. Val, who believes that Cubans on the island should forgo sex and employ that energy in overthrowing Castro, blasted the newcomer for his presumption and ordered him from the extraterritorial bastion of cubanidad which is the Prieto house. The man, supposedly, called Val a "gusano" in retaliation. I hope Val got an "A" in his creative writing class for that story.
He is deserving of an "A+" for his latest composition. This time around Val created a seemingly sympathetic newcomer and then proceeded to demonize him till he had reduced him even beneath the level of the Cuban who wanted to exercise his culpable libido. This other Cuban wanted nothing more than to bring his wife and children here. He was working at two jobs 16 hours a day to make that happen. Still, it was not enough to raise the $5000 which the "coyote" who had brought him to this country demanded of him in addition to the $5000 which he had already paid him in Cuba. Now, it seems more than a little odd, to say the least, that this industrious young man was able to amass the first $5000 in Cuba but could not raise the second $5000 here. But don't let us interrupt Val's story with such unfictional objections.
The "coyote" had first demanded the additional $5000 when the Cuban was about to board the boat for his journey here, and reappeared, outside the Krome Detention Center, when he was released, threatening to kill him, his family in Miami and his family in Cuba unless he immediately produced the money. When the newcomer objected that he did not have the money on him, the "coyote," who had a heart of gold, gave him two months to raise the money. I guess it was two months because after 2 months the newcomer surely would have become wise to the fact that this is a nation of laws.
His uncle, who owned a construction company in Miami, provided him with one of his two jobs. One would have thought that "the kid," as Val calls him, would have confided his predicament to his uncle and tried to borrow the money from him. After all, his uncle and his uncle's family, here and in Cuba, had also been threatened with death by the "coyote" and the uncle might perhaps be interested in knowing it. But "the kid" said nothing. He proceeded to raise the sum on his own by stealing money from his uncle, tools from his other employer as well jewelry from one of the homes where he worked installing tiles.
Now "the kid" is in prison, the uncle about to lose his contracting license and his other employer without the means of production. And, yes, the lady whose "antique and inherited jewels" were stolen is none too happy either. All, presumably, have pressed charges against him because "the kid" is now in jail. When Val met "the kid" two months ago all was well with him. Now his life is in shambles. Another case of a lightening investigation and arrest by the Miami Dade Police Department. If the Prosecutors' Office and the judge work as deliberately Val should be announcing within the next week that he's been sent to prison for life.
What we find most amazing (or should that he fantastical?) about this story is that Val describes "the kid" as "honest, noble, erudite and smart." Granted, being called "erudite and smart" by Val Prieto is hardly the most trustworthy of recommendations. Still, one would have to be the dumbest and most irredeemable of idiots to have acted in the manner which Val attributes to "the kid."
In case you haven't noticed already this is a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, or, to put it more broadly, the unworthiness of arrivistes to enjoy freedom in the United States and the venality of those who make such freedom possible for them.
Babalú's editors and commenters replied to Val's "Coyote" post in the spirit of charity which we have come to expect from them when addressing the subject of Castro's victims. Ventanita, the cloistered contributing writer, broke her silence long enough to lament the fact that the "coyote" won't be punished also. Henry followed, reminding everybody that he has long been opposed to Cubans fleeing to this country, well, leastwise to "scumbags" bringing them here. The 19th century abolitionists were also called "scumbags" and worse by the Southern slaveholders. There is no record, however, that any freed slave ever referred to them in that way. Leave it to Henry to find a new way to bring dishonor to the Cuban exile community. George, for his part, lamented, not very convincingly, the prospect that Val's fictional character "risks deportation back to Cuba." Perhaps that will be a future chapter in Val's opus: "The Prodigal Returns and Regrets He Ever Left."
Other commenters were less empathic than Babalú great-hearted cadres. J2Tharome, making his debut at Babalú, got to the heart (or heartlessness) of the matter with little prodding from the oldhands: it's not the newcomers; it's not the smugglers; it's not the Miami relatives that are to blame for this "tragedy" but the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy! Cut their sea legs and they won't be getting in trouble when they land here because they won't be here for long.
Then Cangrejero de Caibarien, Babalú's resident defender of gay rights, who last week took pototo to task for questioning the morality of gays, proceeded to impugn the morals of the whole Cuban nation:
"Sadly, this is also the result of nearly 50 years of castrocommunism in Cuba. The general morality of the population has sunk to depths few of you would recognize or accept if you had ventured back to the island recently. Trust me, it hurts me to say this, but the years of lying, stealing, and the "doble cara" turn you into a scumbag. The symptoms are evident in the way people carry themselves on the street, how they talk, and ultimately, how they act. I am telling you, I think we are better off getting rid of wet foot/dry foot altogether and going back to individual asylum hearings. Sadly, Cuba is producing mostly trash these days."
Finally, longtime contributor lori, to add credence to Val's fictional tale, volunteered that she knows of another case similar to this one where the newcomer committed suicide to save his family from being killed in Cuba. Now, how exactly would killing himself save his family? By killing himself wouln't he be passing his burden on to them? Wouldn't they be hounded for the money and threatened with death if they didn't produce it? Lori's story makes no more sense than Val's.
For any of this to be true, the prisons and morgues in Miami would have to be filled with the victims of these homicidal "coyotes." In Cuba, too, the stories would eventually emerge of entire families massacred by the "coyotes." What better propaganda could there be against the Cuban Adjustment Act? Yet, oddly, the Communists are apparently involved in a vast conspiracy of silence to cover up those deaths. But why?
Outside of Val's imagination there is no evidence for any of this. What evidence does abound is that the newcomers are just as hardworking, committed and honest as previous generations of Cuban exiles. It is well to remember that the same canards were once levelled at the marielitos. They silenced their critics by achieving the same success in this country as other Cubans. So, too, will this latest group of freedom-seekers unless Val and his ilk succeed in pushing them back into the ocean.
Also of interest
How to Stop the Wanton Killing of Cubans on the High Seas
Val the Abolitionist vs. Henry the Slaver
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
You Cannot Love Cuba and Hate Cubans
The Truth In Season
Val is their scourge and they are his muse. He has devoted several several posts to Cuban construction workers and their vicissitudes in this country. He detests them, of course, even more than he does Cubans on the island who have not escaped his pressure cooker, using them as props to illustrate what he considers the defective character of Cubans raised on the island after the Castro takeover.
In a previous vignette Val wrote about one recent refugee who was saving his money so that he could visit his parents in Cuba and "get laid right and left." Apparently, the moralistic society that the newcomer encountered in Miami did not provide a sexual outlet for him. Val, who believes that Cubans on the island should forgo sex and employ that energy in overthrowing Castro, blasted the newcomer for his presumption and ordered him from the extraterritorial bastion of cubanidad which is the Prieto house. The man, supposedly, called Val a "gusano" in retaliation. I hope Val got an "A" in his creative writing class for that story.
He is deserving of an "A+" for his latest composition. This time around Val created a seemingly sympathetic newcomer and then proceeded to demonize him till he had reduced him even beneath the level of the Cuban who wanted to exercise his culpable libido. This other Cuban wanted nothing more than to bring his wife and children here. He was working at two jobs 16 hours a day to make that happen. Still, it was not enough to raise the $5000 which the "coyote" who had brought him to this country demanded of him in addition to the $5000 which he had already paid him in Cuba. Now, it seems more than a little odd, to say the least, that this industrious young man was able to amass the first $5000 in Cuba but could not raise the second $5000 here. But don't let us interrupt Val's story with such unfictional objections.
The "coyote" had first demanded the additional $5000 when the Cuban was about to board the boat for his journey here, and reappeared, outside the Krome Detention Center, when he was released, threatening to kill him, his family in Miami and his family in Cuba unless he immediately produced the money. When the newcomer objected that he did not have the money on him, the "coyote," who had a heart of gold, gave him two months to raise the money. I guess it was two months because after 2 months the newcomer surely would have become wise to the fact that this is a nation of laws.
His uncle, who owned a construction company in Miami, provided him with one of his two jobs. One would have thought that "the kid," as Val calls him, would have confided his predicament to his uncle and tried to borrow the money from him. After all, his uncle and his uncle's family, here and in Cuba, had also been threatened with death by the "coyote" and the uncle might perhaps be interested in knowing it. But "the kid" said nothing. He proceeded to raise the sum on his own by stealing money from his uncle, tools from his other employer as well jewelry from one of the homes where he worked installing tiles.
Now "the kid" is in prison, the uncle about to lose his contracting license and his other employer without the means of production. And, yes, the lady whose "antique and inherited jewels" were stolen is none too happy either. All, presumably, have pressed charges against him because "the kid" is now in jail. When Val met "the kid" two months ago all was well with him. Now his life is in shambles. Another case of a lightening investigation and arrest by the Miami Dade Police Department. If the Prosecutors' Office and the judge work as deliberately Val should be announcing within the next week that he's been sent to prison for life.
What we find most amazing (or should that he fantastical?) about this story is that Val describes "the kid" as "honest, noble, erudite and smart." Granted, being called "erudite and smart" by Val Prieto is hardly the most trustworthy of recommendations. Still, one would have to be the dumbest and most irredeemable of idiots to have acted in the manner which Val attributes to "the kid."
In case you haven't noticed already this is a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, or, to put it more broadly, the unworthiness of arrivistes to enjoy freedom in the United States and the venality of those who make such freedom possible for them.
Babalú's editors and commenters replied to Val's "Coyote" post in the spirit of charity which we have come to expect from them when addressing the subject of Castro's victims. Ventanita, the cloistered contributing writer, broke her silence long enough to lament the fact that the "coyote" won't be punished also. Henry followed, reminding everybody that he has long been opposed to Cubans fleeing to this country, well, leastwise to "scumbags" bringing them here. The 19th century abolitionists were also called "scumbags" and worse by the Southern slaveholders. There is no record, however, that any freed slave ever referred to them in that way. Leave it to Henry to find a new way to bring dishonor to the Cuban exile community. George, for his part, lamented, not very convincingly, the prospect that Val's fictional character "risks deportation back to Cuba." Perhaps that will be a future chapter in Val's opus: "The Prodigal Returns and Regrets He Ever Left."
Other commenters were less empathic than Babalú great-hearted cadres. J2Tharome, making his debut at Babalú, got to the heart (or heartlessness) of the matter with little prodding from the oldhands: it's not the newcomers; it's not the smugglers; it's not the Miami relatives that are to blame for this "tragedy" but the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy! Cut their sea legs and they won't be getting in trouble when they land here because they won't be here for long.
Then Cangrejero de Caibarien, Babalú's resident defender of gay rights, who last week took pototo to task for questioning the morality of gays, proceeded to impugn the morals of the whole Cuban nation:
"Sadly, this is also the result of nearly 50 years of castrocommunism in Cuba. The general morality of the population has sunk to depths few of you would recognize or accept if you had ventured back to the island recently. Trust me, it hurts me to say this, but the years of lying, stealing, and the "doble cara" turn you into a scumbag. The symptoms are evident in the way people carry themselves on the street, how they talk, and ultimately, how they act. I am telling you, I think we are better off getting rid of wet foot/dry foot altogether and going back to individual asylum hearings. Sadly, Cuba is producing mostly trash these days."
Finally, longtime contributor lori, to add credence to Val's fictional tale, volunteered that she knows of another case similar to this one where the newcomer committed suicide to save his family from being killed in Cuba. Now, how exactly would killing himself save his family? By killing himself wouln't he be passing his burden on to them? Wouldn't they be hounded for the money and threatened with death if they didn't produce it? Lori's story makes no more sense than Val's.
For any of this to be true, the prisons and morgues in Miami would have to be filled with the victims of these homicidal "coyotes." In Cuba, too, the stories would eventually emerge of entire families massacred by the "coyotes." What better propaganda could there be against the Cuban Adjustment Act? Yet, oddly, the Communists are apparently involved in a vast conspiracy of silence to cover up those deaths. But why?
Outside of Val's imagination there is no evidence for any of this. What evidence does abound is that the newcomers are just as hardworking, committed and honest as previous generations of Cuban exiles. It is well to remember that the same canards were once levelled at the marielitos. They silenced their critics by achieving the same success in this country as other Cubans. So, too, will this latest group of freedom-seekers unless Val and his ilk succeed in pushing them back into the ocean.
Also of interest
How to Stop the Wanton Killing of Cubans on the High Seas
Val the Abolitionist vs. Henry the Slaver
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
You Cannot Love Cuba and Hate Cubans
The Truth In Season
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Jesse Helms (1921-2008), R.I.P.
A great American and steadfast friend of the Cuban people is dead.
There are so few opportunities to use that phrase nowadays and when the occasion presents itself it is almost always to pay tribute to a deceased ally.
So it is this time.
Jesse Helms' commitment to the cause of Cuban freedom was sincere and profound, and his contribution to its realization may prove the greatest made by any American of his generation. He has bequeathed to all Cubans a powerful weapon with which to defeat the appeasers and accommodationists who wish to surrender unconditionally to Castro. Under the Helms-Burton Law the United States cannot recognize any future Cuban government which includes Fidel or Raúl Castro. How prescient of Senator Helms to include Raúl in the original legislation and how tragic if he had not!
Jesse Helms stood with us when few would. Some day the shame of those who forsook us will be the greater because there were men like Jesse Helms who did not.
There are so few opportunities to use that phrase nowadays and when the occasion presents itself it is almost always to pay tribute to a deceased ally.
So it is this time.
Jesse Helms' commitment to the cause of Cuban freedom was sincere and profound, and his contribution to its realization may prove the greatest made by any American of his generation. He has bequeathed to all Cubans a powerful weapon with which to defeat the appeasers and accommodationists who wish to surrender unconditionally to Castro. Under the Helms-Burton Law the United States cannot recognize any future Cuban government which includes Fidel or Raúl Castro. How prescient of Senator Helms to include Raúl in the original legislation and how tragic if he had not!
Jesse Helms stood with us when few would. Some day the shame of those who forsook us will be the greater because there were men like Jesse Helms who did not.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Thomas Jefferson: "All Men Are Created Equal" Was Never a "Self-Evident" Truth To Him
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
"The negroes' own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, [is] as uniformly [manifest] as is the preference of the orangutan for the black women over those of his own species.
"I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781
I have never held Jefferson in any special regard. He was more of a stylist than a thinker, and a vigorous style can sometimes overshadow deficiencies of the intellect. Here we see a powerful example of Jefferson's disingenuousness. I could have quoted many more: the deleted paragraph from the Declaration of Independence where he blames George III for "forcing slavery" on Americans. Someone must have reminded Jefferson, who never freed his own slaves, that King George had abolished slavery in England in 1772. Or I could have reproduced excerpts from an 1815 letter to his overseer, Jeremiah Goodman, where Jefferson explains at length how slaves should be mated (he had more than casual experience in that department himself). Whatever else the "Sage of Monticello" was, he was the precursor of the "science" of eugenics, which would be brought to its illogical conclusion by another grand theorist in the 20th century.
There is no question that when Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" he meant all white men because he did not consider black men to belong to the human species, or, as he puts it, to "the department of man." To him "blacks were a "different species" or a sub-species "inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind." He even has his doubts that blacks are a race and has the "suspicion" that they are a mutation of a race.
Enslaved blacks, the only ones with whom he had any acquaintance, seemed to him to recognize the superiority of whites over blacks and preferred their company as "the orangutan preferred black women over those of his own species." Well, you won't find those immortal words chiselled in marble over his statue at the Jefferson Monument. You can still find at Monticello, however, the cabinet which Jefferson caused to be built over his bed where he hid his mulatto concubine, Sally Hemmings, the half-sister of his late wife. At age 13 she became the maid of Jefferson's younger daughters (her biological nieces) and Jefferson's bedmate. She bore him five children whom Jefferson freed when they turned 21 (the only ones of his hundreds of slaves that he did free). Of course, he could have sold them down the river, as was the usual practice in his neck of the woods, or even made the girls his mistresses in substitution of their mother. That he did not may have had something to do with the fact that his affaire with Sally was exposed in the newspapers many years before and he wanted to be spared the further shame upon his name of having his own offspring sold at public auction after his death as his other slaves were in the largest such sale in Virginia history up to that time.
What he did with his own children, however, was not otherwise commendable. Although infinitely concerned about the education of his other daughters (he had no sons by his wife), of his nephews and grandchildren, and even of his friends' sons, he did not bother to teach his progeny by Sally Hemmings how to read or write. The last thing that he would have wanted would have been for them to become conspicuous in the world. Yet when they were allowed to leave his plantation three of them moved to other states where they passed as white. But, of course, they could never be whites in their father's eyes. In fact, he scarcely viewed them as human.
So, on this July 4th, when Americans celebrate the universal application of the Declaration of Independence's once meaningless assertion that "All men are created equal," let them remember, also, that Jefferson would not have approved.
PROLOGUE:
Subsequent to the publication of this post, the blog Miami & Beyond was deleted, and with it the exchange between Babalú's Sr. Cohiba and me, which was alluded to in the "Comments" section. Here it is for those who might be interested:
Srcohiba said...
The series was well done and thanks to DVR I was able to watch it. But you really have to read McCullough's book. The book is fantastic and after my reading it, forced me to read more about our founding fathers.
You should read His Majesty George Washington. One of the best Washington bio's out there which shows his real true greatness and shows that even all these centuries later, he was still the Greatest President of the United States. Washington had absolute power as Commander of the Army and he gave it up at the end of the war. After 2 terms as President, he could have had the office for life, but he let it go and set the model.
Washington was the only leader in world history -- the only revolutionary to have absolute power who relinquished it voluntarily. Not the same can be said for Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, and castro.
I also suggest you read Chernow's Hamilton and Isacson's Franklin.
Apr 23, 2008 6:22:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
John Adams and his son were the only U.S. presidents in the first 50 years of the republic not to own slaves. If nothing else could be said on his behalf that alone would have been enough: He was not a hypocrite.
Apr 23, 2008 6:23:00 AM
Alex said...
I'm reading the book now. The series is pretty faithful to the book, which is another plus.
Apr 23, 2008 6:48:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
My only critique was that it condensed too much. I understand they were limited on time and could not make it another 6 hours. But a lot happened in his presidency and his greatest achievement was the mission to France which prevented war even though it cost him the election.
it was glossed over. Most folks who have not read the book would realize the significance of what he did.
Manny, Washington was not a hypocrite. Many of his slaves were dower slaves. He abhored the practice and would have loved to free them but by law at the time, he was prevented. He never seperate families and perhaps another example of his greatness was his will. His will demanded that none of the slaves would be sold or seperated and that upon the death of Martha, all the slaves were freed and given money to be educated. The ones that were too old were to be given money so that they could be taken care of for life.
Washington who was the wealthiest American of his day, loathed privilege and divided his entire estate equally among all his heirs so as to force them to fend for themselves.
Also, both Adams were from the North where slavery had already been abolished. Most of the Presidents we had were all from the South which sadly ran on a slave based economy.
Apr 23, 2008 7:19:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr Cohiba:
No one was ever prevented from freeing his slaves in colonial times and many did. Washington, of course, owned slaves in his own name. So called "dower slaves" (that is, those inherited by his wife) also belonged to him. In fact, women had no rights either pre-1776 or post 1776. It was Washington, not Martha, who decided the fate of their slaves.
There was a law in Pennsylvania that any slave who remained in the state for longer than 6 months was considered emancipated. While residing in Philadelphia as president, Washington had his slave cook periodically sent back to Virginia in order to circumvent that law.
Why don't you read a book about Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. You know, the father of our country. He freed his slaves immediately upon declaring Cuba's independence from Spain and so did all the other rich landowners who followed him.
Apr 23, 2008 8:37:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
Manny you are incorrect.
GW had no right to free dower slaves until after the death of Martha where he freed all the slaves. Remember in those days property rights were the same feudal rights from Britain.
Remember the time we're talking about ...1799.
Comparing to de Cespedes is a lousy analogy. The republic did not come about until the late 1860's, well after the US Civil War.
It took the deaths of hundreds of thousands of americans to free the slaves here in the US as that odious practice was ingrained in the South. the founders chose to ignore it and leave others to deal with it. Ironically, Britain had allowed slavery by this time.
Apr 23, 2008 10:28:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr Cohiba:
George predeceased Martha.
Washington certainly had the right to sell the "dower slaves" and did.
Women had no property rights in 1799 that superceded their husbands' rights over them and their property. Yes, it was like feudal times.
Céspedes and the Cuban Founding Fathers understood what their American counterparts never did: that it is incongruous to fight for your freedom while holding other men enslaved.
Apr 23, 2008 11:24:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
Manuel, you don't understand the concept of dower. GW did not have the authority to sell any dower property while Martha was alive. He did not have fee simple title to the property upon marriage to Martha. Under the common law at that time, only upon Martha's death could he have had fee simple title. The dower slaves were the property of Martha's first husband's estate (The Custus Estate).
Here's a copy of the will where again you will see that while it was GW's desire to emancipate them, he was prohibited by law.
Why don't you take a course in property law and then talk to me.
Apr 23, 2008 12:46:00 PM
Srcohiba said...
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/will/text.html
here's the link
Apr 23, 2008 12:48:00 PM
Rick said...
Heh.
He's choking on it, Senor. For once I approve of your approach.
.
Apr 23, 2008 4:31:00 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr. Cohiba:
1). Did George Washington own slaves in his own name?
Yes, of course he did. You do not refute that point which by itself makes my argument.
2). Did Martha's slaves work on George's plantation?
Of course they did, so George profitted by their labor directly no less than Martha did.
3). Could George have freed Martha's slaves?
Of course. He could have requested that it be done upon her death or he could have purchased the slaves outright himself from the entailment and freed them while still alive.
George Washington was the "Father of His Country" and the
master of his slaves.
Shall we have this discussion about Thomas Jefferson? It would prove even more interesting.
Apr 23, 2008 6:18:00 PM
Srcohiba said...
Again, you have no idea what you're talking about Manny. Notwithstanding the fact you have no clue about dower under 18th century english common law, if you would have read any legit bio of GW, you would have learned that GW despised slavery. First, it cost too much money to maintain and because of sick or older slaves, they were not cost efficient. Unlike others, GW refused to split up families. His plantation could have been more profitable if he could have eliminated slave labor altogether.
Again, what he did in his will, showed courage because it was not what one would have expected a Virginian planter to do. He not only willed that all his slaves be freed, but that they educated and taken care of for life.
Jefferson's slave ownership and his not freeing him was a stain on an otherwise brilliant contribution he made to the USA and the world. It's easy for a know it all like you to condemn him from your position in the 21st century.
Abe Lincoln was willing to keep slavery in the then existing southern states if it meant preserving the union. The South started the civil war and even then, the elimination of slavery was not on Lincoln's mind. Again, if you read American History rather than the Marxist revisionist historians that condemn all of the American founding fathers, you'd have learned that it was upon a promise Lincoln made to God re: a military victory that he would free the slaves; which he did with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
I honestly don't understand why you have such a bug up your ass regarding the US Founding Fathers. But we wouldn't have the Constitution but for James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. We would have never made it as a nation if not for George Washington who was the greatest revolutionary in world history.
Last time I checked my history books, it was the Spanish that killed native americans and brought slavery to America and used the inquisition to murder the Jews.
So chill out and read some history from some legit historians.
Apr 23, 2008 7:56:00 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr. Cohiba:
More undigested legal gibberish signifying nothing. The facts are very simple: George Washington was a slaveholder, not merely through his wife but in his own right and name. That is an historical fact which no amount of dissimulation can erase. You ignore it because you cannot deny it. Your only mitigation is that he was a good master to his slaves, and personally, did not like slavery. (Sounds like the argument that Castro's apologists make on his behalf, doesn't it?).
This is like saying that a wife beater loves his wife and is personally opposed to wifebeating, but, nevertheless, practices what in theory he opposes.
Men's actions define them. That their supposed sympathies may be at odds with their actions only makes their actions all the more reprehensible. Knowing the difference between right and wrong is not an excuse for doing the wrong thing.
Slavery was as wrong in the 18th century as it is in the 21st, and there were men then, such as Adams (father and son), who opposed it.
While defending the icons of American history, you have no scrupples whatever about resurrecting the Black Legend to defame your own people.
The Inquisition was not unique to Spain. There was also an English Inquisition, which, incidentally, killed more people than its Spanish counterpart.
The extermination of the indigenous population of the Americas was never Spanish policy. In fact, Spaniards, unlike the English, mixed with the native population to such an extent that in most countries of Latin America they are completely melded.
In the enlightened 19th century -- four centuries removed from the Spanish Conquest -- the U.S. government did make the extermination of the native population its official policy.
But, as far as you are concerned, slavery and genocide are alike excusable if practiced by Americans.
Apr 23, 2008 9:12:00 PM
alex said...
Manuel, you contradict yourself here:
"Of course. He could have requested that it be done upon her death or he could have purchased the slaves outright himself from the entailment and freed them while still alive."
He died before her, so he could hardly free them after her death. Besides, if he owned them already by marriage as you assert -since Martha could not own property- then it's absurd to purchase them again from himself.
Céspedes had the advantage of almost 100 years of foresight since the American revolution. You conveniently leave off that he was a rich landowner who benefited from slave labor for decades before he freed them in 1868.
More importantly, you forget to mention that Céspedes freed his slaves with the intention of having them join him as his army. It wasn't just from the good of his heart. He understood that in order to muster the necessary men to fight the Spaniards, they needed the slaves from the plantations on their side. A war needs cannon fodder.
Every time you judge historic figures by contemporary standards it's a ridiculous argument. Ever found any laws you don't agree with but have to comply? You always say exiles can't invade Cuba because US law prohibits it. Well, there you go.
Apr 24, 2008 6:05:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Alex:
It was Sr Cohiba who said that Washington was legally prevented from freeing Martha's slaves in her lifetime. I countered that if that were the case, then he could have purchased them himself from the entailment and freed them, or at least requested in his will that Martha and her heirs do so. He did not not.
But all this is a smokescreen anyway. Even if George were prevented from freeing Martha's slaves he certainly was never prevented from freeing his own.
Why didn't he? From the mammy who weaned him to the slaves who prepared him for burial, George Washington was served by slaves all his life.
He knew that slavery was wrong, as Sr Cohiba asserts; but right or wrong he refused to place his slaves' dignity as men above his own creature comforts.
So what, if according to Sr. Cohiba, he was good to his slaves and provided for their education (health care, maybe?). He was still more a tyrant to them than George III was ever to him.
While a good master is certainly preferable to a bad master, no man would wish to be a slave to either.
As for Céspedes, he understood that he could not be both slavemaster and liberator. He freed his slaves when he declared Cuba's independence but did not compel them to follow him into battle, but most did. That is, perhaps, the greatest testament to him.
Cuban exiles did not make the laws of this country. Its Founding Fathers did. Domestic slavery was sanctioned by the Constitution and Washington himself urged, in his farewell address, neutrality in the face of foreign evil.
Apr 24, 2008 6:56:00 AM
Alex said...
In your comment of 8:37 you said:
"So called "dower slaves" (that is, those inherited by his wife) also belonged to him. In fact, women had no rights either pre-1776 or post 1776. It was Washington, not Martha, who decided the fate of their slaves."
You are asserting that Washington owned all the slaves because Martha could not own property (which is true, Martha's slaves were owned by her male relatives which dowed them to George). Washington couldn't purchase slaves he already owned. Hence your contradiction.
Céspedes was 49 years old when he freed his slaves. He had enjoyed the "creature comforts" and riches slavery afforded him since birth.
Apr 24, 2008 7:07:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
"But all this is a smokescreen anyway. Even if George were prevented from freeing Martha's slaves he certainly was never prevented from freeing his own."
if he had freed his slaves (which he inherited by the way) then he'd have to split up families.
Again Manny, I don't know why you have a bug up your ass about the american founding fathers. I would expect that from a pro marxist revisionist historian, but not from you.
Slavery was the most odious badge in the history of the new world. In the USA and in Latin American and the Caribbean.
You argue out of your bum rather than through historical references. I'm willing to bet the farm Manny that if you had been born in the South in the early 18th century to southern planters you'd have no qualms about owning slaves.
If you read Washington and Jefferson's writings, they loathed the practice. But the economy of the south was so entrenched with Slave Labor that it in a way bound their hands. Looking backwards from the 21st century was can easily say that they should have done the moral thing and freed them. It's easy to look back at time but it's not realistic.
All of the founders new that slavery was going to be the undoing of the nation. They chose to let future generations deal with it rather than kill the compromise regarding the passage of the Constitution.
Not everyone is a saint.
Instead of speaking out of your bum, why don't you read Gordon Wood's Revolutionary Characters and perhaps you may learn something.
Say what you will about the American founding fathers, but we've managed to have free elections for over 200 years and despite civil wars and world wars and 9/11 our constitution still stands. Can't say the same for what's happened in Latin America and in Cuba. But then again, it's the American's fault, right Manny?
Apr 24, 2008 7:51:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Alex:
Although I did not admit Sr Cohiba's point (i.e. that Washington couldn't free Martha's slaves because they were entailed to her first husband's estate), I did show how Washington could indeed have freed Martha's slaves even if such an entailment had existed (by buying them from the entailed estate and freeing them himself).
The point is that Céspedes did free his slaves on the eve of revolution. Washington did not. Doing so meant ruin for Céspedes and the other planters who followed him. Washington, Jefferson and the rest would do anything for the cause of freedom except impoverish themselves by granting men of a different hue the freedom that they claimed for themselves.
Apr 24, 2008 8:14:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr Cohiba:
"Bug up your ass" (2X)
"Argue out of your bum"
What is it with you today?
Is it now a requirement upon joining "Babalú's magnificent cadre of writers" to lower yourself to Val's level? If so, you are succeeding even beyond my expectations.
Yes, the U.S. has had a great many free elections over 200 years and some as well that were not so free: "Free elections" without the participation of non-property holders; African-Americans (nominally until 1865); women (until 1920); and American Indians (until 1923). "Free elections" with the suspension of habeas corpus (Lincoln); "free elections" where the candidate who received the most popular votes did not win; "free" elections like those that brought to power Rutherford B. Hayes, John F. Kennedy and, yes, George W. Bush in 2000.
As for U.S. complicity in the destruction of Cuba, I guess that U.S. intervention, The Treaty of Paris (1898), the Platt Amendment and the imposition of Fidel Castro had nothing to do with our current woes?
Cohiba, you are what Martí called a yankófilo, a Cuban who admires excessively the United States and is blind to the virtues of his own countrymen.
A perfect fit for Babalú.
Apr 24, 2008 8:38:00 AM
"The negroes' own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, [is] as uniformly [manifest] as is the preference of the orangutan for the black women over those of his own species.
"I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781
I have never held Jefferson in any special regard. He was more of a stylist than a thinker, and a vigorous style can sometimes overshadow deficiencies of the intellect. Here we see a powerful example of Jefferson's disingenuousness. I could have quoted many more: the deleted paragraph from the Declaration of Independence where he blames George III for "forcing slavery" on Americans. Someone must have reminded Jefferson, who never freed his own slaves, that King George had abolished slavery in England in 1772. Or I could have reproduced excerpts from an 1815 letter to his overseer, Jeremiah Goodman, where Jefferson explains at length how slaves should be mated (he had more than casual experience in that department himself). Whatever else the "Sage of Monticello" was, he was the precursor of the "science" of eugenics, which would be brought to its illogical conclusion by another grand theorist in the 20th century.
There is no question that when Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" he meant all white men because he did not consider black men to belong to the human species, or, as he puts it, to "the department of man." To him "blacks were a "different species" or a sub-species "inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind." He even has his doubts that blacks are a race and has the "suspicion" that they are a mutation of a race.
Enslaved blacks, the only ones with whom he had any acquaintance, seemed to him to recognize the superiority of whites over blacks and preferred their company as "the orangutan preferred black women over those of his own species." Well, you won't find those immortal words chiselled in marble over his statue at the Jefferson Monument. You can still find at Monticello, however, the cabinet which Jefferson caused to be built over his bed where he hid his mulatto concubine, Sally Hemmings, the half-sister of his late wife. At age 13 she became the maid of Jefferson's younger daughters (her biological nieces) and Jefferson's bedmate. She bore him five children whom Jefferson freed when they turned 21 (the only ones of his hundreds of slaves that he did free). Of course, he could have sold them down the river, as was the usual practice in his neck of the woods, or even made the girls his mistresses in substitution of their mother. That he did not may have had something to do with the fact that his affaire with Sally was exposed in the newspapers many years before and he wanted to be spared the further shame upon his name of having his own offspring sold at public auction after his death as his other slaves were in the largest such sale in Virginia history up to that time.
What he did with his own children, however, was not otherwise commendable. Although infinitely concerned about the education of his other daughters (he had no sons by his wife), of his nephews and grandchildren, and even of his friends' sons, he did not bother to teach his progeny by Sally Hemmings how to read or write. The last thing that he would have wanted would have been for them to become conspicuous in the world. Yet when they were allowed to leave his plantation three of them moved to other states where they passed as white. But, of course, they could never be whites in their father's eyes. In fact, he scarcely viewed them as human.
So, on this July 4th, when Americans celebrate the universal application of the Declaration of Independence's once meaningless assertion that "All men are created equal," let them remember, also, that Jefferson would not have approved.
PROLOGUE:
Subsequent to the publication of this post, the blog Miami & Beyond was deleted, and with it the exchange between Babalú's Sr. Cohiba and me, which was alluded to in the "Comments" section. Here it is for those who might be interested:
Srcohiba said...
The series was well done and thanks to DVR I was able to watch it. But you really have to read McCullough's book. The book is fantastic and after my reading it, forced me to read more about our founding fathers.
You should read His Majesty George Washington. One of the best Washington bio's out there which shows his real true greatness and shows that even all these centuries later, he was still the Greatest President of the United States. Washington had absolute power as Commander of the Army and he gave it up at the end of the war. After 2 terms as President, he could have had the office for life, but he let it go and set the model.
Washington was the only leader in world history -- the only revolutionary to have absolute power who relinquished it voluntarily. Not the same can be said for Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, and castro.
I also suggest you read Chernow's Hamilton and Isacson's Franklin.
Apr 23, 2008 6:22:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
John Adams and his son were the only U.S. presidents in the first 50 years of the republic not to own slaves. If nothing else could be said on his behalf that alone would have been enough: He was not a hypocrite.
Apr 23, 2008 6:23:00 AM
Alex said...
I'm reading the book now. The series is pretty faithful to the book, which is another plus.
Apr 23, 2008 6:48:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
My only critique was that it condensed too much. I understand they were limited on time and could not make it another 6 hours. But a lot happened in his presidency and his greatest achievement was the mission to France which prevented war even though it cost him the election.
it was glossed over. Most folks who have not read the book would realize the significance of what he did.
Manny, Washington was not a hypocrite. Many of his slaves were dower slaves. He abhored the practice and would have loved to free them but by law at the time, he was prevented. He never seperate families and perhaps another example of his greatness was his will. His will demanded that none of the slaves would be sold or seperated and that upon the death of Martha, all the slaves were freed and given money to be educated. The ones that were too old were to be given money so that they could be taken care of for life.
Washington who was the wealthiest American of his day, loathed privilege and divided his entire estate equally among all his heirs so as to force them to fend for themselves.
Also, both Adams were from the North where slavery had already been abolished. Most of the Presidents we had were all from the South which sadly ran on a slave based economy.
Apr 23, 2008 7:19:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr Cohiba:
No one was ever prevented from freeing his slaves in colonial times and many did. Washington, of course, owned slaves in his own name. So called "dower slaves" (that is, those inherited by his wife) also belonged to him. In fact, women had no rights either pre-1776 or post 1776. It was Washington, not Martha, who decided the fate of their slaves.
There was a law in Pennsylvania that any slave who remained in the state for longer than 6 months was considered emancipated. While residing in Philadelphia as president, Washington had his slave cook periodically sent back to Virginia in order to circumvent that law.
Why don't you read a book about Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. You know, the father of our country. He freed his slaves immediately upon declaring Cuba's independence from Spain and so did all the other rich landowners who followed him.
Apr 23, 2008 8:37:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
Manny you are incorrect.
GW had no right to free dower slaves until after the death of Martha where he freed all the slaves. Remember in those days property rights were the same feudal rights from Britain.
Remember the time we're talking about ...1799.
Comparing to de Cespedes is a lousy analogy. The republic did not come about until the late 1860's, well after the US Civil War.
It took the deaths of hundreds of thousands of americans to free the slaves here in the US as that odious practice was ingrained in the South. the founders chose to ignore it and leave others to deal with it. Ironically, Britain had allowed slavery by this time.
Apr 23, 2008 10:28:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr Cohiba:
George predeceased Martha.
Washington certainly had the right to sell the "dower slaves" and did.
Women had no property rights in 1799 that superceded their husbands' rights over them and their property. Yes, it was like feudal times.
Céspedes and the Cuban Founding Fathers understood what their American counterparts never did: that it is incongruous to fight for your freedom while holding other men enslaved.
Apr 23, 2008 11:24:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
Manuel, you don't understand the concept of dower. GW did not have the authority to sell any dower property while Martha was alive. He did not have fee simple title to the property upon marriage to Martha. Under the common law at that time, only upon Martha's death could he have had fee simple title. The dower slaves were the property of Martha's first husband's estate (The Custus Estate).
Here's a copy of the will where again you will see that while it was GW's desire to emancipate them, he was prohibited by law.
Why don't you take a course in property law and then talk to me.
Apr 23, 2008 12:46:00 PM
Srcohiba said...
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/will/text.html
here's the link
Apr 23, 2008 12:48:00 PM
Rick said...
Heh.
He's choking on it, Senor. For once I approve of your approach.
.
Apr 23, 2008 4:31:00 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr. Cohiba:
1). Did George Washington own slaves in his own name?
Yes, of course he did. You do not refute that point which by itself makes my argument.
2). Did Martha's slaves work on George's plantation?
Of course they did, so George profitted by their labor directly no less than Martha did.
3). Could George have freed Martha's slaves?
Of course. He could have requested that it be done upon her death or he could have purchased the slaves outright himself from the entailment and freed them while still alive.
George Washington was the "Father of His Country" and the
master of his slaves.
Shall we have this discussion about Thomas Jefferson? It would prove even more interesting.
Apr 23, 2008 6:18:00 PM
Srcohiba said...
Again, you have no idea what you're talking about Manny. Notwithstanding the fact you have no clue about dower under 18th century english common law, if you would have read any legit bio of GW, you would have learned that GW despised slavery. First, it cost too much money to maintain and because of sick or older slaves, they were not cost efficient. Unlike others, GW refused to split up families. His plantation could have been more profitable if he could have eliminated slave labor altogether.
Again, what he did in his will, showed courage because it was not what one would have expected a Virginian planter to do. He not only willed that all his slaves be freed, but that they educated and taken care of for life.
Jefferson's slave ownership and his not freeing him was a stain on an otherwise brilliant contribution he made to the USA and the world. It's easy for a know it all like you to condemn him from your position in the 21st century.
Abe Lincoln was willing to keep slavery in the then existing southern states if it meant preserving the union. The South started the civil war and even then, the elimination of slavery was not on Lincoln's mind. Again, if you read American History rather than the Marxist revisionist historians that condemn all of the American founding fathers, you'd have learned that it was upon a promise Lincoln made to God re: a military victory that he would free the slaves; which he did with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
I honestly don't understand why you have such a bug up your ass regarding the US Founding Fathers. But we wouldn't have the Constitution but for James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. We would have never made it as a nation if not for George Washington who was the greatest revolutionary in world history.
Last time I checked my history books, it was the Spanish that killed native americans and brought slavery to America and used the inquisition to murder the Jews.
So chill out and read some history from some legit historians.
Apr 23, 2008 7:56:00 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr. Cohiba:
More undigested legal gibberish signifying nothing. The facts are very simple: George Washington was a slaveholder, not merely through his wife but in his own right and name. That is an historical fact which no amount of dissimulation can erase. You ignore it because you cannot deny it. Your only mitigation is that he was a good master to his slaves, and personally, did not like slavery. (Sounds like the argument that Castro's apologists make on his behalf, doesn't it?).
This is like saying that a wife beater loves his wife and is personally opposed to wifebeating, but, nevertheless, practices what in theory he opposes.
Men's actions define them. That their supposed sympathies may be at odds with their actions only makes their actions all the more reprehensible. Knowing the difference between right and wrong is not an excuse for doing the wrong thing.
Slavery was as wrong in the 18th century as it is in the 21st, and there were men then, such as Adams (father and son), who opposed it.
While defending the icons of American history, you have no scrupples whatever about resurrecting the Black Legend to defame your own people.
The Inquisition was not unique to Spain. There was also an English Inquisition, which, incidentally, killed more people than its Spanish counterpart.
The extermination of the indigenous population of the Americas was never Spanish policy. In fact, Spaniards, unlike the English, mixed with the native population to such an extent that in most countries of Latin America they are completely melded.
In the enlightened 19th century -- four centuries removed from the Spanish Conquest -- the U.S. government did make the extermination of the native population its official policy.
But, as far as you are concerned, slavery and genocide are alike excusable if practiced by Americans.
Apr 23, 2008 9:12:00 PM
alex said...
Manuel, you contradict yourself here:
"Of course. He could have requested that it be done upon her death or he could have purchased the slaves outright himself from the entailment and freed them while still alive."
He died before her, so he could hardly free them after her death. Besides, if he owned them already by marriage as you assert -since Martha could not own property- then it's absurd to purchase them again from himself.
Céspedes had the advantage of almost 100 years of foresight since the American revolution. You conveniently leave off that he was a rich landowner who benefited from slave labor for decades before he freed them in 1868.
More importantly, you forget to mention that Céspedes freed his slaves with the intention of having them join him as his army. It wasn't just from the good of his heart. He understood that in order to muster the necessary men to fight the Spaniards, they needed the slaves from the plantations on their side. A war needs cannon fodder.
Every time you judge historic figures by contemporary standards it's a ridiculous argument. Ever found any laws you don't agree with but have to comply? You always say exiles can't invade Cuba because US law prohibits it. Well, there you go.
Apr 24, 2008 6:05:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Alex:
It was Sr Cohiba who said that Washington was legally prevented from freeing Martha's slaves in her lifetime. I countered that if that were the case, then he could have purchased them himself from the entailment and freed them, or at least requested in his will that Martha and her heirs do so. He did not not.
But all this is a smokescreen anyway. Even if George were prevented from freeing Martha's slaves he certainly was never prevented from freeing his own.
Why didn't he? From the mammy who weaned him to the slaves who prepared him for burial, George Washington was served by slaves all his life.
He knew that slavery was wrong, as Sr Cohiba asserts; but right or wrong he refused to place his slaves' dignity as men above his own creature comforts.
So what, if according to Sr. Cohiba, he was good to his slaves and provided for their education (health care, maybe?). He was still more a tyrant to them than George III was ever to him.
While a good master is certainly preferable to a bad master, no man would wish to be a slave to either.
As for Céspedes, he understood that he could not be both slavemaster and liberator. He freed his slaves when he declared Cuba's independence but did not compel them to follow him into battle, but most did. That is, perhaps, the greatest testament to him.
Cuban exiles did not make the laws of this country. Its Founding Fathers did. Domestic slavery was sanctioned by the Constitution and Washington himself urged, in his farewell address, neutrality in the face of foreign evil.
Apr 24, 2008 6:56:00 AM
Alex said...
In your comment of 8:37 you said:
"So called "dower slaves" (that is, those inherited by his wife) also belonged to him. In fact, women had no rights either pre-1776 or post 1776. It was Washington, not Martha, who decided the fate of their slaves."
You are asserting that Washington owned all the slaves because Martha could not own property (which is true, Martha's slaves were owned by her male relatives which dowed them to George). Washington couldn't purchase slaves he already owned. Hence your contradiction.
Céspedes was 49 years old when he freed his slaves. He had enjoyed the "creature comforts" and riches slavery afforded him since birth.
Apr 24, 2008 7:07:00 AM
Srcohiba said...
"But all this is a smokescreen anyway. Even if George were prevented from freeing Martha's slaves he certainly was never prevented from freeing his own."
if he had freed his slaves (which he inherited by the way) then he'd have to split up families.
Again Manny, I don't know why you have a bug up your ass about the american founding fathers. I would expect that from a pro marxist revisionist historian, but not from you.
Slavery was the most odious badge in the history of the new world. In the USA and in Latin American and the Caribbean.
You argue out of your bum rather than through historical references. I'm willing to bet the farm Manny that if you had been born in the South in the early 18th century to southern planters you'd have no qualms about owning slaves.
If you read Washington and Jefferson's writings, they loathed the practice. But the economy of the south was so entrenched with Slave Labor that it in a way bound their hands. Looking backwards from the 21st century was can easily say that they should have done the moral thing and freed them. It's easy to look back at time but it's not realistic.
All of the founders new that slavery was going to be the undoing of the nation. They chose to let future generations deal with it rather than kill the compromise regarding the passage of the Constitution.
Not everyone is a saint.
Instead of speaking out of your bum, why don't you read Gordon Wood's Revolutionary Characters and perhaps you may learn something.
Say what you will about the American founding fathers, but we've managed to have free elections for over 200 years and despite civil wars and world wars and 9/11 our constitution still stands. Can't say the same for what's happened in Latin America and in Cuba. But then again, it's the American's fault, right Manny?
Apr 24, 2008 7:51:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Alex:
Although I did not admit Sr Cohiba's point (i.e. that Washington couldn't free Martha's slaves because they were entailed to her first husband's estate), I did show how Washington could indeed have freed Martha's slaves even if such an entailment had existed (by buying them from the entailed estate and freeing them himself).
The point is that Céspedes did free his slaves on the eve of revolution. Washington did not. Doing so meant ruin for Céspedes and the other planters who followed him. Washington, Jefferson and the rest would do anything for the cause of freedom except impoverish themselves by granting men of a different hue the freedom that they claimed for themselves.
Apr 24, 2008 8:14:00 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Sr Cohiba:
"Bug up your ass" (2X)
"Argue out of your bum"
What is it with you today?
Is it now a requirement upon joining "Babalú's magnificent cadre of writers" to lower yourself to Val's level? If so, you are succeeding even beyond my expectations.
Yes, the U.S. has had a great many free elections over 200 years and some as well that were not so free: "Free elections" without the participation of non-property holders; African-Americans (nominally until 1865); women (until 1920); and American Indians (until 1923). "Free elections" with the suspension of habeas corpus (Lincoln); "free elections" where the candidate who received the most popular votes did not win; "free" elections like those that brought to power Rutherford B. Hayes, John F. Kennedy and, yes, George W. Bush in 2000.
As for U.S. complicity in the destruction of Cuba, I guess that U.S. intervention, The Treaty of Paris (1898), the Platt Amendment and the imposition of Fidel Castro had nothing to do with our current woes?
Cohiba, you are what Martí called a yankófilo, a Cuban who admires excessively the United States and is blind to the virtues of his own countrymen.
A perfect fit for Babalú.
Apr 24, 2008 8:38:00 AM
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Babaloo's Waterloos: The Old Stand Bys
These are not new questions. Val has posed them all 100 times, at least, in different ways, because he knows that they will strike a chord with his readers when nothing else does. The questions are intended to sow division and distrust among Cubans, to pit the newcomer against the longtime exile, and to blame all Cubans for what Castro and his henchmen have done to our country. The old stand bys, the tried and untrue bromides.
This time around Val added a dash of alliteration to the poisonous mix. The "Topic for Tuesday' was "The Cuban people's worst enemy is the Cuban people." It was presented without qualifiers and Val himself subscribed to his own proposition in the "Comments." We did not and devoted a post of our own to explaining how truly disingenuous that statement was.
The next day it was "A Wednesday Wondering." This time, not wishing to be identified with his own proposition, Val posed it as a "True or False" question: "When it comes to Cubans there are too many chiefs and not enough [I]ndians." Is this supposed to be a bad thing? The desire to excel and to lead is berated in no one except Cubans. Most people are content to be followers. If Cubans desire to be leaders, what is wrong with that? If it is by their merits and with the consent of others then there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If, however, one man takes onto himself absolute power and governs arbitrarily and against the wishes of the people, as Castro and his clique have done for 50 years, then it is a dictatorial impulse for which the dictator should be blamed not his hapless people. The implication of this proposition is that every Cuban is a Fidel Castro in utero. No greater injustice could be committed or greater libel published against the Cuban people.
Today Val posited A Thursday Thought: "All Cubans are political asylees, regardless of whether they come solely for economic purposes. Sí o no?" Another misleading and tendentious question because no Cuban came to this country solely for economic reasons and no Cuban came to this country without at least some economic reasons, whether they came on January 1, 1959 or yesterday. We all political exiles and all economic exiles.
Cuban haters attract Cuban haters and the threads to these posts bear that out. Babalú is now the most notorious anti-Cuban blog in the Cuban-American blogosphere. What formerly was restrained is now in the open for all to see. No attempt is made to veil their hate and no excuse proferred for it. Vitriol flows in their veins in torrents, and so, in their opinion, should the blood of Cubans on the island to expunge the crime of 1959. Except that Cubans living on the island today are not guilty of the crime of 1959. 70% were not even alive then. They are the real victims of Castroism, not their contemporaries who were spared the horrors of Communism and now have the gall to blame its victims for not surrendering their lives so that some day they might be able to vacation in a country to which they owe no allegiance and for whose people they have only the greatest contempt.
This time around Val added a dash of alliteration to the poisonous mix. The "Topic for Tuesday' was "The Cuban people's worst enemy is the Cuban people." It was presented without qualifiers and Val himself subscribed to his own proposition in the "Comments." We did not and devoted a post of our own to explaining how truly disingenuous that statement was.
The next day it was "A Wednesday Wondering." This time, not wishing to be identified with his own proposition, Val posed it as a "True or False" question: "When it comes to Cubans there are too many chiefs and not enough [I]ndians." Is this supposed to be a bad thing? The desire to excel and to lead is berated in no one except Cubans. Most people are content to be followers. If Cubans desire to be leaders, what is wrong with that? If it is by their merits and with the consent of others then there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If, however, one man takes onto himself absolute power and governs arbitrarily and against the wishes of the people, as Castro and his clique have done for 50 years, then it is a dictatorial impulse for which the dictator should be blamed not his hapless people. The implication of this proposition is that every Cuban is a Fidel Castro in utero. No greater injustice could be committed or greater libel published against the Cuban people.
Today Val posited A Thursday Thought: "All Cubans are political asylees, regardless of whether they come solely for economic purposes. Sí o no?" Another misleading and tendentious question because no Cuban came to this country solely for economic reasons and no Cuban came to this country without at least some economic reasons, whether they came on January 1, 1959 or yesterday. We all political exiles and all economic exiles.
Cuban haters attract Cuban haters and the threads to these posts bear that out. Babalú is now the most notorious anti-Cuban blog in the Cuban-American blogosphere. What formerly was restrained is now in the open for all to see. No attempt is made to veil their hate and no excuse proferred for it. Vitriol flows in their veins in torrents, and so, in their opinion, should the blood of Cubans on the island to expunge the crime of 1959. Except that Cubans living on the island today are not guilty of the crime of 1959. 70% were not even alive then. They are the real victims of Castroism, not their contemporaries who were spared the horrors of Communism and now have the gall to blame its victims for not surrendering their lives so that some day they might be able to vacation in a country to which they owe no allegiance and for whose people they have only the greatest contempt.
Notable & Emasculating: Cubans Are "Cowards"
"What about the Romanians, who finally had enough of Ceausescu and overthrew their version of castro? What about the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, who fought against the SS and the Wermacht? They gave the world the example of how not to be a victim. They may have died but at least they died with dignity and not being herded into a shower stall to be gassed with Zyklon B. These were real men. The Jewish women who fought in 1943 had more balls than I am seeing today in Cuba. -- George L. Moneo, "A Topic for Tuesday (comment), Babalú, July 1, 2008.
Since his ouster from Babalú and subsequent rehabilitation, George Moneo follows Val Prieto's directives with more than canine devotion. Here he is seen buttressing Val's argument that "Cubans are their own worst enemies" by comparing them unfavorably to the Romanians who rose against Ceausescu and the Jews who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto. We should be grateful, I suppose, that he limited himself to these examples. He could have cited thousands of other cases of heroic resistance to tyranny in immemorial history and used those to belittle Cubans as well. At the same time, of course, George would have had to ignore the many signal examples of courage and sacrifice that the Cuban people have given the world in these last 50 years and throughout their history in order to be able to brand them as "cowards."
The two comparisons which he does allow himself are more than enough to show that he is not only ignorant of Cuban history but does not understand the real transcendence of the other cases.
1
The overthrow of Ceausescu did not happen in a vacuum. It would not have happened in 1956, 1968 or 1980 when the Soviet Union was at the height of its power. The implosion of Communism in the Soviet Union was the catalyst that led to the overthrow of Ceausescu. Without that impetus a mummified Ceausescu would be lying in state in his mausoleum on Revolution Square, in Bucharest, and his son Nico, an even more despicable version of Kim Jung Il, would still be raping women at state banquets except from the head of the table.
For Cuba, the fall of the Soviet Union, though catastrophic in its economic consequences, did not challenge the political structure because its survival did not depend on the Soviet brigade stationed in Cuba for 30 years. Castro relied instead on the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact, which has never been abrogated and which the U.S. upholds to this day, not to protect itself from Russia (successor to the treaty obligations of the old Soviet Union), but to maintain "stability" in Cuba.
In Fidel Castro the U.S. believes that it has found a reliable ally in its war against the Cuban people. So long as Castro can stifle the Cuban people's aspirations to be free and maintain absolute control over his subjects, avoiding such disruptions of comity as Mariel, the U.S. will continue to act as the guarantor of Communism in Cuba, as it has done since 1962; and American presidents will continue to blather and fulminate about "Cuba Libre" while maintaining in place all pacts, agreements, and policies intended to assure Castro's continued subjugation of the Cuban people.
I have never discounted the possibility that outside factors could achieve or hasten the overthrow of Castro as was the case with Ceausescu. The United States, however, is not going the way of the Soviet Union, and it is this country which installed Castro in power and has maintained him there since 1962 by what amounts to a contractual obligation.
If George expects that outside factors will as in Romania hasten Cuba's freedom, then he must be hoping for a convulsion in this country comparable to that which rocked the Soviet Union in 1989 and precipitated the collapse of Ceausescu and the other Eastern European satraps.
2
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a great moment in the history of the human spirit, and the Jewish people have provided many such moments in the history of mankind. But its glory lies in the fact that it was a exception, not the norm. 750 Jews participated in the uprising. 6-11 million Jews were killed in the Nazi gas ovens without ever having had the opportunity to fight for their lives as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto did. No one but the grossest and most insensitive of men would dare suggest that the Jews who did not fight the Nazis because they had no means to fight them "did not die with dignity" and are therefore less deserving of honor than those who did. So, too, is it offensive to allege that Cubans, who have upheld freedom's torch since the time of Yara (and before), are lacking the moral fortitude or spiritual greatness to challenge their own henchmen.
Why, then, aren't the Cubans who fought at the Bay of Pigs, Escambray and in a thousand actions, known and unknown, against the Castro regime since 1959, allowed to represent, as they undoubtedly do, the heroism and resistance of the Cuban people, as the Jewish defenders of the Warsaw Ghetto represent, and rightly so, the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people?
What does George mean when he writes that "[t]he Jewish women who fought in 1943 had more balls than I am seeing today in Cuba?" Those heroic Jewish women have their counterparts in Cuba in both men and women. Can anything be more despicable than to use one set of tyranny's victims to attack another? Frankly, when a man goes around questioning other men's balls he had better have more than the usual equipment himself. If he needs to use the metaphorical "balls" of women to accuse other men of cowardice, then one may suppose that his own are not suitable for that purpose.
The history of the Cuban people is told in centuries and the history of the Jewish people in millennia. This is a very important distinction to consider. Between Masada and the Warsaw Ghetto there is a distance of 1,870 years. The 50 years that Cubans have waited for their freedom is but a season in the history of the Jewish people. I doubt very much whether the mal that afflicts our country will last the thousand years of the proverb.
What is needed now is for the Cuban people not to shed their blood merely to sate the bloodlust of their detractors. Cubans don't need more martyrs; it is the one thing the Revolution has produced in quantity. What they do require is the means to make their resistance effectual. Until the United States decides that a free Cuba is in its best interests it will see to it that Cubans are denied those means. The recent arbitrary admission of North Korea (!) to the family of civilized nations shows that the U.S. can accept any degree of human degradation so long as the degraders do not cross certain propietary lines, or having crossed them have the prudence to effect a timely and beneficial retreat. The Castro regime knows the generous limits that the U.S. has granted it and will always fall exactly short of provoking its ire, which, for us, means a marriage of convenience between the two countries which must be dissolved before the great heroism of Cubans is rewarded with a proportionate measure of freedom.
Since his ouster from Babalú and subsequent rehabilitation, George Moneo follows Val Prieto's directives with more than canine devotion. Here he is seen buttressing Val's argument that "Cubans are their own worst enemies" by comparing them unfavorably to the Romanians who rose against Ceausescu and the Jews who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto. We should be grateful, I suppose, that he limited himself to these examples. He could have cited thousands of other cases of heroic resistance to tyranny in immemorial history and used those to belittle Cubans as well. At the same time, of course, George would have had to ignore the many signal examples of courage and sacrifice that the Cuban people have given the world in these last 50 years and throughout their history in order to be able to brand them as "cowards."
The two comparisons which he does allow himself are more than enough to show that he is not only ignorant of Cuban history but does not understand the real transcendence of the other cases.
The overthrow of Ceausescu did not happen in a vacuum. It would not have happened in 1956, 1968 or 1980 when the Soviet Union was at the height of its power. The implosion of Communism in the Soviet Union was the catalyst that led to the overthrow of Ceausescu. Without that impetus a mummified Ceausescu would be lying in state in his mausoleum on Revolution Square, in Bucharest, and his son Nico, an even more despicable version of Kim Jung Il, would still be raping women at state banquets except from the head of the table.
For Cuba, the fall of the Soviet Union, though catastrophic in its economic consequences, did not challenge the political structure because its survival did not depend on the Soviet brigade stationed in Cuba for 30 years. Castro relied instead on the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact, which has never been abrogated and which the U.S. upholds to this day, not to protect itself from Russia (successor to the treaty obligations of the old Soviet Union), but to maintain "stability" in Cuba.
In Fidel Castro the U.S. believes that it has found a reliable ally in its war against the Cuban people. So long as Castro can stifle the Cuban people's aspirations to be free and maintain absolute control over his subjects, avoiding such disruptions of comity as Mariel, the U.S. will continue to act as the guarantor of Communism in Cuba, as it has done since 1962; and American presidents will continue to blather and fulminate about "Cuba Libre" while maintaining in place all pacts, agreements, and policies intended to assure Castro's continued subjugation of the Cuban people.
I have never discounted the possibility that outside factors could achieve or hasten the overthrow of Castro as was the case with Ceausescu. The United States, however, is not going the way of the Soviet Union, and it is this country which installed Castro in power and has maintained him there since 1962 by what amounts to a contractual obligation.
If George expects that outside factors will as in Romania hasten Cuba's freedom, then he must be hoping for a convulsion in this country comparable to that which rocked the Soviet Union in 1989 and precipitated the collapse of Ceausescu and the other Eastern European satraps.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a great moment in the history of the human spirit, and the Jewish people have provided many such moments in the history of mankind. But its glory lies in the fact that it was a exception, not the norm. 750 Jews participated in the uprising. 6-11 million Jews were killed in the Nazi gas ovens without ever having had the opportunity to fight for their lives as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto did. No one but the grossest and most insensitive of men would dare suggest that the Jews who did not fight the Nazis because they had no means to fight them "did not die with dignity" and are therefore less deserving of honor than those who did. So, too, is it offensive to allege that Cubans, who have upheld freedom's torch since the time of Yara (and before), are lacking the moral fortitude or spiritual greatness to challenge their own henchmen.
Why, then, aren't the Cubans who fought at the Bay of Pigs, Escambray and in a thousand actions, known and unknown, against the Castro regime since 1959, allowed to represent, as they undoubtedly do, the heroism and resistance of the Cuban people, as the Jewish defenders of the Warsaw Ghetto represent, and rightly so, the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people?
What does George mean when he writes that "[t]he Jewish women who fought in 1943 had more balls than I am seeing today in Cuba?" Those heroic Jewish women have their counterparts in Cuba in both men and women. Can anything be more despicable than to use one set of tyranny's victims to attack another? Frankly, when a man goes around questioning other men's balls he had better have more than the usual equipment himself. If he needs to use the metaphorical "balls" of women to accuse other men of cowardice, then one may suppose that his own are not suitable for that purpose.
The history of the Cuban people is told in centuries and the history of the Jewish people in millennia. This is a very important distinction to consider. Between Masada and the Warsaw Ghetto there is a distance of 1,870 years. The 50 years that Cubans have waited for their freedom is but a season in the history of the Jewish people. I doubt very much whether the mal that afflicts our country will last the thousand years of the proverb.
What is needed now is for the Cuban people not to shed their blood merely to sate the bloodlust of their detractors. Cubans don't need more martyrs; it is the one thing the Revolution has produced in quantity. What they do require is the means to make their resistance effectual. Until the United States decides that a free Cuba is in its best interests it will see to it that Cubans are denied those means. The recent arbitrary admission of North Korea (!) to the family of civilized nations shows that the U.S. can accept any degree of human degradation so long as the degraders do not cross certain propietary lines, or having crossed them have the prudence to effect a timely and beneficial retreat. The Castro regime knows the generous limits that the U.S. has granted it and will always fall exactly short of provoking its ire, which, for us, means a marriage of convenience between the two countries which must be dissolved before the great heroism of Cubans is rewarded with a proportionate measure of freedom.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The Real Enemies of the Cuban People
"The Cuban people's worst enemy is the Cuban people."
Val has submitted this proposition to debate at Babalú. In the "Comments" he makes it clear that he personally subscribes to it, which is tantamount to asserting that slaves are to blame for slavery. This notion, odious as it may sound to us today, was one of the principal arguments used to justify slavery throughout its history. Slavery was a curse because the slave himself was said to be cursed. Of course it was not the slave who had forged his destiny, that is, forged his own chains. Nor, as history would show, were slaves reconciled to their chains but shed them gladly the moment that the entire weight of the state was not directed to keeping them in chains.
The worst enemy of the Cuban people is their slavemaster, Fidel Castro.
Val is so detached from the Cuban reality and so embittered against his countrymen that he is constitutionally incapable of seeing them as victims of the same tyrant who caused his own family to flee to this country.
He begrudges Cubans the scant food that they eat, the rags that they wear and even whatever pleasure they are still able to wring from life despite Fidel Castro, including laughter and sex (see link below). Their natural condition, the only one acceptable to Val, is a collective and continuous hemorrhage that should last as long as communism lasts or as long as the Cuban people last. Then, freed from one or the other (it makes no difference to him), he can realize his dream of returning to his native Bayamo and finding the tree against which he used to pee as a 3-year old and the other landmarks of his childhood. What is a little blood or torrents of blood compared to the realization of that cherished hope? Cruel and ungenerous have the Cuban people been to deny him all these years the opportunity to relive (relief?) la edad de la peseta which he missed out on.
The Cuban people are not responsible for the destruction of our country. They did not opt for national suicide in 1959; they did not tie the noose around their own necks. It was, first and foremost, the United States which delivered us to the scaffold and made it impossible for us to escape as a nation its decree of annihilation. Others, principally the Soviet Union, but also Western Europe, the Eastern bloc, China, Venezuela, and every other country that ever extended a subsidy or credit line to Castro, enabled the henchmen, unharried by any external forces, to practice their foul deeds on the writhing body of our country as a fulltime occupation.
Cubans are not their own worst enemy. The entire world has conspired against our liberty and abetted our enslavement. The world is the enemy.
And, of course, people like Val who exculpate all others in order to blame the victims.
No Food, No Freedom and No Sex Equals Freedom for Cubans, Says Val
Val has submitted this proposition to debate at Babalú. In the "Comments" he makes it clear that he personally subscribes to it, which is tantamount to asserting that slaves are to blame for slavery. This notion, odious as it may sound to us today, was one of the principal arguments used to justify slavery throughout its history. Slavery was a curse because the slave himself was said to be cursed. Of course it was not the slave who had forged his destiny, that is, forged his own chains. Nor, as history would show, were slaves reconciled to their chains but shed them gladly the moment that the entire weight of the state was not directed to keeping them in chains.
The worst enemy of the Cuban people is their slavemaster, Fidel Castro.
Val is so detached from the Cuban reality and so embittered against his countrymen that he is constitutionally incapable of seeing them as victims of the same tyrant who caused his own family to flee to this country.
He begrudges Cubans the scant food that they eat, the rags that they wear and even whatever pleasure they are still able to wring from life despite Fidel Castro, including laughter and sex (see link below). Their natural condition, the only one acceptable to Val, is a collective and continuous hemorrhage that should last as long as communism lasts or as long as the Cuban people last. Then, freed from one or the other (it makes no difference to him), he can realize his dream of returning to his native Bayamo and finding the tree against which he used to pee as a 3-year old and the other landmarks of his childhood. What is a little blood or torrents of blood compared to the realization of that cherished hope? Cruel and ungenerous have the Cuban people been to deny him all these years the opportunity to relive (relief?) la edad de la peseta which he missed out on.
The Cuban people are not responsible for the destruction of our country. They did not opt for national suicide in 1959; they did not tie the noose around their own necks. It was, first and foremost, the United States which delivered us to the scaffold and made it impossible for us to escape as a nation its decree of annihilation. Others, principally the Soviet Union, but also Western Europe, the Eastern bloc, China, Venezuela, and every other country that ever extended a subsidy or credit line to Castro, enabled the henchmen, unharried by any external forces, to practice their foul deeds on the writhing body of our country as a fulltime occupation.
Cubans are not their own worst enemy. The entire world has conspired against our liberty and abetted our enslavement. The world is the enemy.
And, of course, people like Val who exculpate all others in order to blame the victims.
No Food, No Freedom and No Sex Equals Freedom for Cubans, Says Val
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