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.
Friday, July 11, 2008
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
Monday, June 30, 2008
Val Tries Again to Write a 5th Anniversary Post
I never set out to become Val's guru, just to correct his mistakes in logic and lapses in democratic discourse. That was a formidable enough task and more than any other man would willingly undertake for nothing. Yet I find that my influence over him has overstepped the bounds of my expectations and now makes me somewhat uneasy. Everything that I write here about Babalú is interpreted by him as a hint of sorts and elicits from him an instant reaction. If I suggest that Val is likely to do something, he is quick to do the exact opposite. Were I of a Machiavellian cast of mind, I could control his every move through the old chesnut of reverse psychology. This trick, which even children seem to know nowadays, is perenially new to Val. If, for example, I suggest that Val is likely to write a long and pompous panegyric for Babalú's 5th anniversary, he instead posts one word: "Wow." When I observe that his minimalism proves that he just doesn't a give a damn anymore, he produces the tendentious flummery that I first predicted.
In my own post on "Babalú's Fifth Anniversary," I noted Val's love for the word "humble" and how he has managed to invest that word with tints of insincerity which are not much seen outside of Dickens. Well, naturally, he made sure to use "humble" prominently in his second commemorative post. In fact, he used it twice in the same sentence, which created an effect of insincerity which is worthy of a better writer: "[I] dont know how it happened, but this humble blog of humble origins grew, it seems, almost exponentially form [from] one day to the next." He uses "humble blog" once more before he is done with it. Well, it was a humble blog once before Val started describing it as a "humble blog." Too much humility is only hubris in disguise. When that word is trotted out nowadays it is usually pulling a wagon load of manure.
I have often kidded Val about the dead chickens and coconuts which he claims are deposited on his lawn every week, urging him not to regard them as politically-motivated when they could just as well indicate that his neighbors don't like him. Still, in the annals of Babalú the dead chickens and coconuts hold a symbolic place and Val again alludes to them as an old veteran might point to his battle scars. Well, actually, an old veteran wouldn't.
In my own post on "Babalú's Fifth Anniversary," I noted Val's love for the word "humble" and how he has managed to invest that word with tints of insincerity which are not much seen outside of Dickens. Well, naturally, he made sure to use "humble" prominently in his second commemorative post. In fact, he used it twice in the same sentence, which created an effect of insincerity which is worthy of a better writer: "[I] dont know how it happened, but this humble blog of humble origins grew, it seems, almost exponentially form [from] one day to the next." He uses "humble blog" once more before he is done with it. Well, it was a humble blog once before Val started describing it as a "humble blog." Too much humility is only hubris in disguise. When that word is trotted out nowadays it is usually pulling a wagon load of manure.
I have often kidded Val about the dead chickens and coconuts which he claims are deposited on his lawn every week, urging him not to regard them as politically-motivated when they could just as well indicate that his neighbors don't like him. Still, in the annals of Babalú the dead chickens and coconuts hold a symbolic place and Val again alludes to them as an old veteran might point to his battle scars. Well, actually, an old veteran wouldn't.
Here's another priceless sentence: "Im incredibly proud of this endeavor. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the extents the words posted herein would go to." The majesty of that sentence, which defies all attempts at parsing, must shine by its own black light.
And yet another gem of sophistry, more inscrutable than the last: "We have helped get the word out on the struggle and strife of Cuba's political and ideological prisoners and we have maybe opened some eyes or four." At least four eyes, we should hope.
In the comments section of this blog some have suggested that Val may have been referring to us when he mentions at length Babalú's "detractors." Since I have never called Val "a fascist, an evil bastard, a homophobe, a heartless so and so, an intransigent, anitquated [?] extremist terrorist, etc..." I am sure that he must have other detractors in mind. The things I have called Val he prefers not to mention because they would not be as easily dismissed as the strawmen that he cites.
One final observation: Val is not usually so atrocious a writer. He can only be inspired to these depths by some impetus of "humility."
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Are Cubans "Resentful" & "Unforgiving?" Carlos Alberto Montaner Thinks So
The future is unknown. The present lasts 24 hours. It is only the past which is always with us.
In his latest column in El Nuevo Herald ("El rencor y la historia," July 29), Carlos Alberto Montaner calls into question the wisdom of holding unto the past because he believes that doing so makes Cubans (and others) "resentful" and "unforgiving" of historical wrongs committed against them, which leaves them "aplastados por el pasado (crushed by the past)." Generalizations of this kind are always wrong, and though intended to show that the author is an incisive and impartial judge of history, what it really shows is that he is hypercritical and uninformed. The matter becomes even worse when Montaner maintains that Americans are mercifully free of such historical revanchism. Living in Spain, obviously, has not saved him from the yankofilia (Martí's word) which afflicts so many Cuban exiles here. I would not personally find anything offensive about an exaggerated opinion of this country if it were not always accompanied by the disposition to denigrate ours.
The specific case which Montaner cites as proof of Cuba's "cultura rencorosa" is our reaction to Spain's execution in 1871 of eight Cuban medical students during the height of the Ten Years' War. The eight Havana University students were falsely accused of desecrating the tomb of a pro-Spanish newspaper editor by scratching the glass plate on his crypt. Martí's best friend, Fermín Valdés Domínguez, also a medical student, proved that the glass plate had been scratched in the factory in Spain where it was manufactured and the dead man's own son confirmed it.
How did these "resentful" and "unforgiving" Cubans, men like Valdés Domínguez and Martí, react to this great injustice? As rational men would react: vindicating the memory of the dead by freeing their countrymen from the arbitrary authority that threatened the lives of all. Because revenge would not bring back the dead they were not interested in revenge. Because they could not hope to obtain justice from Spain, they did not seek it from Spain. They knew that only by ending Spanish tyranny in our country would justice prevail and they consecrated their lives to the great work of national redemption.
When Cuba achieved her independence no retribution was undertaken against those who had participated in the crime of November 21, 1871 or in crimes even more sanguinary committed by Spaniards against the Cuban people. Not a single Spaniard, and there were a million in Cuba at the time, was called to account for the murder of 300,000 Cuban civilians in campos de reconcentración during the war. Not a single Spaniard, not even former soldiers of the Crown (like Fidel's own father), was deported to Spain after the war. Not a single real of Spanish assets on the island was confiscated by the new Republic though Spain had confiscated the assets of all Cuban rebels and distributed them to its supporters. But that was not all: Spaniards were invited to immigrate to Cuba, whose population was depleted precisely because of their policy of extermination during the war. Over the life of the Cuban Republic (1902-1958), 1.2 million Spaniards settled in Cuba, which had a population of 3.8 million at the end of the Spanish-American War (1898). Cuba saved more than a half-million Spaniards, both Nationalists and Loyalists, from immolation in the Spanish Civil War.
Where, then, shall we find this "culture of resentment" which supposedly holds Cubans in its thrall? You are not going to believe this: in the fact that Cubans still "remember and commemorate with tears and fiery addresses that act of barbarity." Wow, we really are resentful, aren't we? 136 years after the execution of the medical students we still insist on remembering and commemorating their sacrifice! If Cubans were prone to bear grudges against Spaniards, as Montaner contends, there would be other and more recent reasons to do so.
Montaner contends also that Americans are not as resentful of historical wrongs as Cubans. Well, Americans have not really been the victims of many historical wrongs. They have inflicted historical wrongs on others but rarely had them inflicted on them. Montaner cites slavery, which was a self-inflicted wrong, and celebrates the fact that blacks have been able to transcend the fact that it was Democrats who supported slavery and Republicans who ended it. African-Americans may have switched party allegiances -- and parties do evolve over time, after all -- but they have not let go of their resentment about slavery and for many it still informs their conception of this country and of their place in it, Obama or no Obama.
Montaner does not compare slavery in Cuba to slavery in the U.S. and neither shall we. Instead, a better comparison of historical revanchism in both countries is the aftermath of their respective wars of independence. We have already seen that Cubans wreaked no vengeance on the Spanish or their local allies for their opposition to Cuba's independence. It was otherwise in the United States. At the conclusion of the American Revolution, colonists who had remained loyal to the king were deported en masse to Canada; their property was confiscated without compensation; many were tarred and feathered, others lynched and all forced on long marches where many thousands died of cold or starvation, including women and children. Before Americans practiced genocide on the Indians, they inflicted it on their own brothers.
Before 1959, there was no "cultura rencorosa" in Cuba. Not even in the wake of our bloodiest revolution (that would be the Revolution of 1933) did Cubans institutionalize barbarity in our country. No machadista was ever executed by the provisional government and the few that were imprisoned were released in 1936 when Congress approved a General Amnesty law. Three years for the wounds of a revolution to heal shows a remarkable political maturity as well as the total absence of the spirit of revanchism in our people. Cubans knew how to forgive those who had wronged them, whether foreigners or their own brothers.
Perhaps that is where we erred. We were always too prone to forgive and far to prone to forget, and this weakness, if it is a weakness, would one day be our undoing.
In his latest column in El Nuevo Herald ("El rencor y la historia," July 29), Carlos Alberto Montaner calls into question the wisdom of holding unto the past because he believes that doing so makes Cubans (and others) "resentful" and "unforgiving" of historical wrongs committed against them, which leaves them "aplastados por el pasado (crushed by the past)." Generalizations of this kind are always wrong, and though intended to show that the author is an incisive and impartial judge of history, what it really shows is that he is hypercritical and uninformed. The matter becomes even worse when Montaner maintains that Americans are mercifully free of such historical revanchism. Living in Spain, obviously, has not saved him from the yankofilia (Martí's word) which afflicts so many Cuban exiles here. I would not personally find anything offensive about an exaggerated opinion of this country if it were not always accompanied by the disposition to denigrate ours.
The specific case which Montaner cites as proof of Cuba's "cultura rencorosa" is our reaction to Spain's execution in 1871 of eight Cuban medical students during the height of the Ten Years' War. The eight Havana University students were falsely accused of desecrating the tomb of a pro-Spanish newspaper editor by scratching the glass plate on his crypt. Martí's best friend, Fermín Valdés Domínguez, also a medical student, proved that the glass plate had been scratched in the factory in Spain where it was manufactured and the dead man's own son confirmed it.
How did these "resentful" and "unforgiving" Cubans, men like Valdés Domínguez and Martí, react to this great injustice? As rational men would react: vindicating the memory of the dead by freeing their countrymen from the arbitrary authority that threatened the lives of all. Because revenge would not bring back the dead they were not interested in revenge. Because they could not hope to obtain justice from Spain, they did not seek it from Spain. They knew that only by ending Spanish tyranny in our country would justice prevail and they consecrated their lives to the great work of national redemption.
When Cuba achieved her independence no retribution was undertaken against those who had participated in the crime of November 21, 1871 or in crimes even more sanguinary committed by Spaniards against the Cuban people. Not a single Spaniard, and there were a million in Cuba at the time, was called to account for the murder of 300,000 Cuban civilians in campos de reconcentración during the war. Not a single Spaniard, not even former soldiers of the Crown (like Fidel's own father), was deported to Spain after the war. Not a single real of Spanish assets on the island was confiscated by the new Republic though Spain had confiscated the assets of all Cuban rebels and distributed them to its supporters. But that was not all: Spaniards were invited to immigrate to Cuba, whose population was depleted precisely because of their policy of extermination during the war. Over the life of the Cuban Republic (1902-1958), 1.2 million Spaniards settled in Cuba, which had a population of 3.8 million at the end of the Spanish-American War (1898). Cuba saved more than a half-million Spaniards, both Nationalists and Loyalists, from immolation in the Spanish Civil War.
Where, then, shall we find this "culture of resentment" which supposedly holds Cubans in its thrall? You are not going to believe this: in the fact that Cubans still "remember and commemorate with tears and fiery addresses that act of barbarity." Wow, we really are resentful, aren't we? 136 years after the execution of the medical students we still insist on remembering and commemorating their sacrifice! If Cubans were prone to bear grudges against Spaniards, as Montaner contends, there would be other and more recent reasons to do so.
Montaner contends also that Americans are not as resentful of historical wrongs as Cubans. Well, Americans have not really been the victims of many historical wrongs. They have inflicted historical wrongs on others but rarely had them inflicted on them. Montaner cites slavery, which was a self-inflicted wrong, and celebrates the fact that blacks have been able to transcend the fact that it was Democrats who supported slavery and Republicans who ended it. African-Americans may have switched party allegiances -- and parties do evolve over time, after all -- but they have not let go of their resentment about slavery and for many it still informs their conception of this country and of their place in it, Obama or no Obama.
Montaner does not compare slavery in Cuba to slavery in the U.S. and neither shall we. Instead, a better comparison of historical revanchism in both countries is the aftermath of their respective wars of independence. We have already seen that Cubans wreaked no vengeance on the Spanish or their local allies for their opposition to Cuba's independence. It was otherwise in the United States. At the conclusion of the American Revolution, colonists who had remained loyal to the king were deported en masse to Canada; their property was confiscated without compensation; many were tarred and feathered, others lynched and all forced on long marches where many thousands died of cold or starvation, including women and children. Before Americans practiced genocide on the Indians, they inflicted it on their own brothers.
Before 1959, there was no "cultura rencorosa" in Cuba. Not even in the wake of our bloodiest revolution (that would be the Revolution of 1933) did Cubans institutionalize barbarity in our country. No machadista was ever executed by the provisional government and the few that were imprisoned were released in 1936 when Congress approved a General Amnesty law. Three years for the wounds of a revolution to heal shows a remarkable political maturity as well as the total absence of the spirit of revanchism in our people. Cubans knew how to forgive those who had wronged them, whether foreigners or their own brothers.
Perhaps that is where we erred. We were always too prone to forgive and far to prone to forget, and this weakness, if it is a weakness, would one day be our undoing.
Babalú's Fifth Anniversary
Babalu's fifth anniversary deserved no better of its Founding Editor than a post with the single word: "Wow." Can there be a clearer definition of "I don't give a damn?"
Before Val became the Val that we all know today, with his pressure cooker and his rivers of blood, his suppression of dissent and of dissenters, his pomposity and self-absorption, there was another Val, a humble guy who set for himself a big mission, to "create an island on the net without a bearded dictator," dedicated to exposing Castro's misdeeds and defending his victims. He was not the first Cuban-American blogger. But his blog was the first serious and successful attempt to challenge the monopoly which leftists held over the Cuban debate on the blogosphere. Nor can it be denied that Babalú was a wellspring for other Cuban blogs, and Val himself, if we believe their testimonials, the inspiration for a spate of likeminded anti-Castro bloggers.
Somewhere along the road, however, the humble guy started using the word "humble" with much less sincerity. Whereas in the beginning he would debate any Castroite crackpot who wandered into his domain, he later became very picky about who commented on his threads and what was said there. He came to regard it as a personal affront if his commenters did not second his every opinion. Then he started to delete comments that did not and ban commenters who would not pay due obeisance to his monomania. To all his other laurels, Val added that of introducing the echo chamber to the Cuban-American blogosphere. There are those who consider Henry to be Val's Richelieu and blame his influence for all that went wrong at Babalú. I give Val more credit than that.
In any case, congratulations to Babalú, and, in particular, to its Founding Editor. I have spent a year trying to make you return to your better angels. What success I have had, if any, I will let others decide. It is an encouraging development that lately some modicum of free expression has returned to Babalú, though it is still likely to be met with the same abuse. The reason is that suppression of all dissent had turned Babalú into a ghost town, with miles of posts with nary a comment hitched to them.
Perhaps they have started to realize that diversity of opinion benefits both countries and blogs.
Let us at least hope so.
POSTSCRIPT:
Shocking. Of 16 commenters congratulating Val on Babalú's 5th Anniversary, only 8 are members of his "magnificent cadre of writers." The other 8 must have overlooked his "Wow" post. Time to thin the ranks?
Before Val became the Val that we all know today, with his pressure cooker and his rivers of blood, his suppression of dissent and of dissenters, his pomposity and self-absorption, there was another Val, a humble guy who set for himself a big mission, to "create an island on the net without a bearded dictator," dedicated to exposing Castro's misdeeds and defending his victims. He was not the first Cuban-American blogger. But his blog was the first serious and successful attempt to challenge the monopoly which leftists held over the Cuban debate on the blogosphere. Nor can it be denied that Babalú was a wellspring for other Cuban blogs, and Val himself, if we believe their testimonials, the inspiration for a spate of likeminded anti-Castro bloggers.
Somewhere along the road, however, the humble guy started using the word "humble" with much less sincerity. Whereas in the beginning he would debate any Castroite crackpot who wandered into his domain, he later became very picky about who commented on his threads and what was said there. He came to regard it as a personal affront if his commenters did not second his every opinion. Then he started to delete comments that did not and ban commenters who would not pay due obeisance to his monomania. To all his other laurels, Val added that of introducing the echo chamber to the Cuban-American blogosphere. There are those who consider Henry to be Val's Richelieu and blame his influence for all that went wrong at Babalú. I give Val more credit than that.
In any case, congratulations to Babalú, and, in particular, to its Founding Editor. I have spent a year trying to make you return to your better angels. What success I have had, if any, I will let others decide. It is an encouraging development that lately some modicum of free expression has returned to Babalú, though it is still likely to be met with the same abuse. The reason is that suppression of all dissent had turned Babalú into a ghost town, with miles of posts with nary a comment hitched to them.
Perhaps they have started to realize that diversity of opinion benefits both countries and blogs.
Let us at least hope so.
POSTSCRIPT:
Shocking. Of 16 commenters congratulating Val on Babalú's 5th Anniversary, only 8 are members of his "magnificent cadre of writers." The other 8 must have overlooked his "Wow" post. Time to thin the ranks?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Bigotry Against Anti-Castro Cuban Gays at Babalú
Pototo, Babalú's oldest (surviving) commenter, has booted himself because of what he perceives as a pro-gay bias there. He says that he refuses to "get in bed" with homosexuals to fight Castro, as if that were necessary or even desired by them. Defending gays from being pumelled by our enemies is not tantamount to offering them your ass for consolation.
Val and George reacted with surprising aplomb to pototo's announcement, respecting his opinion without endorsing it, which may not be what pototo expected (certainly it wasn't what I expected). George maintained that gays have a place in civil society, whether here or in Cuba; and Val insisted, rightly, that condemning the persecution of gays is not an endorsement of their lifestyle. Also challenging pototo in somewhat more forcible terms was one of Babalú's two resident gay commenters, Cangrejero de Caibarien, whose presence on the blog has significantly increased the level of tolerance there. It was not too long ago that "the guys" were hurling gay insults at non-gay dissenters. The presence of these two prolific gay commenters has put the sophomoric trio on their best behavior, which is a good thing because our enemy's first line of attack has always been to try to label anti-Castro Cubans as the very thing that we denounce. This takes the form of equating intemperate words with intemperate acts; frustration with repression; and personal prejudices with state-induced pogroms.
Frankly, Pons' cartoon did not merit such a reaction from pototo since Babalú reproduced it without comment, that is, without explicitly endorsing it. Nothing is more detrimental to the cause of Cuban freedom than to fight among ourselves about which group has been victimized more by the anti-Cuban Revolution. But we live in the U.S. where the game of victimhood is a national obsession and it could hardly be unexpected that some Cuban exiles would also become addicted to it.
But let me correct myself. One thing is more deleterious than parsing one another's pain: To suggest that the persecution of some may be justified or even commendable. Tyranny is odious whatever its guise or whomever its victims. Once we sanction the persecution of one group, we have sanctioned persecution itself. Then its application to other groups becomes subjective, and tyranny devolves from being an absolute evil to a partial evil, or a tolerable evil, or a necessary evil, or even an acceptable evil. Acceptable for others, of course. Man rarely clamors for evil to be a part of his life. Nothing can be more noxious to Christ's new commandment than establishing exceptions to the Golden Rule.
In the struggle against Communism in Cuba homosexuals have not evaded their duty or shown less courage in confronting the regime than has any other group. In fact, the only victory that Cubans have ever obtained against Castro's propaganda juggernaut is owed to them. The documentary Improper Conduct (1984), which exposed the regime's systematic persecution of gays as gays, forced the liberal media to admit for the first time (25 years after the fact) that human rights were violated in Cuba, and convinced the "small s" socialist countries in Europe that had hitherto regarded Castro's Stalinism as a more disciplined version of their welfare states, to condemn in international forums what they had never condemned before -- Castro's persecution of his own people. Homosexual were regarded then in the most condescending manner by liberals: not as political beings entitled to their natural rights as citizens but as sexual beings indifferent to politics whose persecution, therefore, was onerous because it was unnecessary.
Nevertheless, regardless of the prejudices which sustained it, the reaction against Castro's persecution of gays as depicted in Improper Conduct was universal and devastating in the extreme to the proggresive image of itself which the regime projected to the world at large. Even today it is still struggling to shed the image of intolerance that replaced it, but it has stuck for good and no amount of burnishing at home or abroad over 25 years has managed to unstick it, not even the appointment of Raúl's daughter as Communist Cuba's "Gay Czarina." The cancelled Gay Pride March has given a needed reality check to those who regard the promise of free sex-change operations (which has nothing to do with homosexuals) as yet another Raulian reform and happy omen for Cuba's indefinite future.
The damage to the regime's international reputation caused by its persecution of gays has contributed more to making Castro's Cuba a pariah state than has its placement by the U.S. on the State Department's List of Terrorist States, which has now became a joke with Bush's opportunistic removal of North Korea.
When anyone in Cuba, white or black, young or old, gay or straight, sane or Obama-supporter, raises his voice against the regime or puts his life on the line to protest it, the last thing that any exile should do is shout him down.
POSTSCRIPT:
Guajiro de Broward took over where pototo left off, accusing Cuban gays of being allied with Fidel Castro in a worldwide conspiracy to destroy Christianity. Giraldo, coming from the other end of political spectrum on this issue, concluded like pototo that he could no longer continue to contribute to Babalú:
This blog's homophobia gives [me] the creeps. ¡Qué asco! I'll never come back here. Comparing the gays to Stalin!!! Incredible! Babalú's readers, in general, are just a bunch of intransigent troglodytes. If this is the kind of people we'll have to deal [with] in a free Cuba, then why take the trouble to change anything?
Posted by: giraldo at June 28, 2008 04:30 AM
Val and George reacted with surprising aplomb to pototo's announcement, respecting his opinion without endorsing it, which may not be what pototo expected (certainly it wasn't what I expected). George maintained that gays have a place in civil society, whether here or in Cuba; and Val insisted, rightly, that condemning the persecution of gays is not an endorsement of their lifestyle. Also challenging pototo in somewhat more forcible terms was one of Babalú's two resident gay commenters, Cangrejero de Caibarien, whose presence on the blog has significantly increased the level of tolerance there. It was not too long ago that "the guys" were hurling gay insults at non-gay dissenters. The presence of these two prolific gay commenters has put the sophomoric trio on their best behavior, which is a good thing because our enemy's first line of attack has always been to try to label anti-Castro Cubans as the very thing that we denounce. This takes the form of equating intemperate words with intemperate acts; frustration with repression; and personal prejudices with state-induced pogroms.
Frankly, Pons' cartoon did not merit such a reaction from pototo since Babalú reproduced it without comment, that is, without explicitly endorsing it. Nothing is more detrimental to the cause of Cuban freedom than to fight among ourselves about which group has been victimized more by the anti-Cuban Revolution. But we live in the U.S. where the game of victimhood is a national obsession and it could hardly be unexpected that some Cuban exiles would also become addicted to it.
But let me correct myself. One thing is more deleterious than parsing one another's pain: To suggest that the persecution of some may be justified or even commendable. Tyranny is odious whatever its guise or whomever its victims. Once we sanction the persecution of one group, we have sanctioned persecution itself. Then its application to other groups becomes subjective, and tyranny devolves from being an absolute evil to a partial evil, or a tolerable evil, or a necessary evil, or even an acceptable evil. Acceptable for others, of course. Man rarely clamors for evil to be a part of his life. Nothing can be more noxious to Christ's new commandment than establishing exceptions to the Golden Rule.
In the struggle against Communism in Cuba homosexuals have not evaded their duty or shown less courage in confronting the regime than has any other group. In fact, the only victory that Cubans have ever obtained against Castro's propaganda juggernaut is owed to them. The documentary Improper Conduct (1984), which exposed the regime's systematic persecution of gays as gays, forced the liberal media to admit for the first time (25 years after the fact) that human rights were violated in Cuba, and convinced the "small s" socialist countries in Europe that had hitherto regarded Castro's Stalinism as a more disciplined version of their welfare states, to condemn in international forums what they had never condemned before -- Castro's persecution of his own people. Homosexual were regarded then in the most condescending manner by liberals: not as political beings entitled to their natural rights as citizens but as sexual beings indifferent to politics whose persecution, therefore, was onerous because it was unnecessary.
Nevertheless, regardless of the prejudices which sustained it, the reaction against Castro's persecution of gays as depicted in Improper Conduct was universal and devastating in the extreme to the proggresive image of itself which the regime projected to the world at large. Even today it is still struggling to shed the image of intolerance that replaced it, but it has stuck for good and no amount of burnishing at home or abroad over 25 years has managed to unstick it, not even the appointment of Raúl's daughter as Communist Cuba's "Gay Czarina." The cancelled Gay Pride March has given a needed reality check to those who regard the promise of free sex-change operations (which has nothing to do with homosexuals) as yet another Raulian reform and happy omen for Cuba's indefinite future.
The damage to the regime's international reputation caused by its persecution of gays has contributed more to making Castro's Cuba a pariah state than has its placement by the U.S. on the State Department's List of Terrorist States, which has now became a joke with Bush's opportunistic removal of North Korea.
When anyone in Cuba, white or black, young or old, gay or straight, sane or Obama-supporter, raises his voice against the regime or puts his life on the line to protest it, the last thing that any exile should do is shout him down.
POSTSCRIPT:
Guajiro de Broward took over where pototo left off, accusing Cuban gays of being allied with Fidel Castro in a worldwide conspiracy to destroy Christianity. Giraldo, coming from the other end of political spectrum on this issue, concluded like pototo that he could no longer continue to contribute to Babalú:
This blog's homophobia gives [me] the creeps. ¡Qué asco! I'll never come back here. Comparing the gays to Stalin!!! Incredible! Babalú's readers, in general, are just a bunch of intransigent troglodytes. If this is the kind of people we'll have to deal [with] in a free Cuba, then why take the trouble to change anything?
Posted by: giraldo at June 28, 2008 04:30 AM
In the liberal media being attacked from both sides of an issue is considered proof of objectivity. Of course, it is no such thing. It merely shows that one is playing both sides.
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