Bad day for the Cuban dictatorship at the United Nations

 “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” - Mohandas Gandhi

 

Yesterday, Cuba’s communist dictatorship in New York City at the United Nations demonstrated that one can win a vote, and still lose.

The United States, together with 18 other democracies, distanced themselves from the Cuban dictatorship and its falsehoods about the U.S. embargo. The total vote was 165 in favor of the resolution, seven against, 12 abstentions, and eight non votes. The dictatorship, and their allies tried to spin this non-binding resolution, a propaganda exercise, repeated annually since 1992, but this time was different.

It was a fiasco.

First, on October 28, 2025 Ambassador Mike Waltz, U.S. Representative to the United Nations factually and truthfully outlined the moral case for U.S. sanctions on the Cuban dictatorship, and rebutted the distortions, and lies circulated by Havana. Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister for the Cuban dictatorship, interrupted Ambassador Waltz’s address to the UN, but came away from the encounter small, and diminished. Watch it for yourself here.

Secondly, Havana has been denying their involvement in Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, but that is a lie that was called out yesteday by Ambassador Melnyk Andrii. Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations. His excellency explained that the reason for Ukraine’s vote against the resolution condemning the US embargo on Cuba was Havana’s complicity in Moscow’s recruitment of thousands of Cuban soldiers now fighting in Ukraine. You can watch his presentation below.

These are the reasons why Argentina, Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, Paraguay, and Ukraine joined with the United States to vote against the resolution. These are also the reasons why Albania, Bosnia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldavia, Morocco, and Romania abstained this time.

In addition there were eight countries that did not vote for whatever reason and they are: Bulgaria, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Madagascar, Myanmar, Naura, Syria, and Venezuela.

The so-called “high point” in these non-binding votes was in 2016 when both the United States, and Israel abstained, and no one voted against the resolution. The vote was 191 in favor, 0 against, and 2 abstentions. This was during the Obama thaw with Havana.

This time was different, but not only due to the vote itself, but also the debate, and the action that took place on the same day.

Today, while the World was focused on Havana’s non-binding propaganda exercise, Kyiv took concrete action in protest to Cuban soldiers waging war on Ukraine for Putin.

Ukraine closed its embassy in Havana and downgraded diplomatic ties with Cuba due to the high number of Cubans recruited to fight in Russia’s illegal war, announced Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha earlier today.

It was not a good day for Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez, and the dictatorship in Havana.

Today, Vaclav Havel’s maxim uttered in his important essay, The Power of the Powerless, was seen in action. “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

Truth and facts exposed the Cuban dictatorship before the international community, and left it shaken.

It was a bad day for the Cuban dictatorship, but a great day for Cuban dissidents, and for freedom in New York City.

Celia Cruz is the Queen of a Free Cuba

Learn why the Cuban dictatorship still fears her. #CeliaCruz100 

 

Celia Cruz was born a hundred years ago, and passed away 22 years ago in 2003. Her music continues to be censored in Cuba, and the Cuban dictatorship cannot tolerate a group of Cuban artists honoring her memory. 

The Cuban theater group El Público at Havana’s Fabrica de Arte Cubano (FAC) had planned a gala to celebrate the birth centennial of Celia Cruz on October 19, 2025, but it did not take place because it was censored by Cuban government agents.

What is it that the communists in Havana fear from this Black Cuban woman?

She was born on October 21, 1925 in the poorest section of the Santos Suárez neighborhood in Havana and lived in a small home with 13 relatives. Her mother, Catalina Alfonso, was a stay-at-home mom who looked after her vast extended family, while her father, Simon Cruz, worked as a railroad stoker. He monitored steam pressure, managed water levels, maintained the fire, and regulated steam-powered jets that distributed coal within the firebox of the locomotive engine.

She began singing as a child, and to compete on radio programs as a young woman. Cruz’s cousin Serafín entered her in a competition on the radio program La Hora del Té (Tea Time) in 1947. She received first prize, a meringue cake, for her performance of the tango “Nostalgia.”

Fifty two years later on April 30, 1999 in the Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería”, in which she sang and took part in a panel discussion with other artists: Ángela Carrasco, Lolita Flores, and Miguel Bosé. Celia briefly discussed the role her mom played in circumventing her dad’s objections to his daughter having a career in show business. “My father didn’t want me to be a singer or an artist. My mother told me, ‘Forget it, I’ll get it sorted out with him.’”

To appease her father, who was embarrassed that his daughter was involved in show business, Celia pursued her studies to become a teacher, but continued to compete in singing competitions. She recorded her first track in Venezuela in 1948.

FBI files, declassified in 2004, revealed that she had allegedly flirted with Cuban communists in the early 1950s. This was at the moment that Celia was a breakout star in all of Cuba having joined the Sonora Matancera Orchestra in August 1950.

Celia Cruz and the Sonora Matancera Orchestra

At the height of her popularity in Cuba, Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Miguel Angel Quevedo, a Cuban businessman, hired Celia Cruz to perform with a pianist in his home at the beginning of 1959. The most influential magazine in Cuba, Bohemia, which had backed the revolution, was owned by Quevedo. … On the night of the performance at Quevedo’s house, Celia was singing when all of a sudden the guests began to rush to the front door. Fidel Castro had arrived. She kept singing.

Celia was informed by Quevedo that Fidel was interested in meeting her. Celia said she was hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. Fidel would have to approach her if he wished to meet her. However, the commandant refrained from doing so.

On July 15, 1960, Celia Cruz was forced to leave Cuba because she refused to submit to the new dictator and wanted to carry on living as a free artist. But in 1962, when her mother was sick, she attempted to visit her, but Fidel Castro banned her from entering Cuba. The government once more prevented Celia from going to her mother’s funeral when she passed away. Her music was also censored in Cuba since she did not actively support the dictatorship.

In the same Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería, mentioned earlier she was repeatedly asked to reconcile with the Cuban dictatorship, “to open the door.”

Celia responded to them, “I’m not going to tell you she is above Cuba. But Catalina Alfonso [ her mom] is right next to Cuba, and for her I’m not the one who’s going to open the door. I’m not there, because they closed it to me. My mother died, and I couldn’t go and bury her because they didn’t want to let me in. Let that regime leave then, because it has to go. But should I go there? What you told me are pretty words but I won’t...”

Celia Cruz was punished by Fidel Castro for refusing to bend the knee, and for wanting to live in freedom on her own terms.

“I don’t want to go to a country where I can’t speak like I’m speaking to you now. They were the first to [distance] themselves. Now, since the dollars are so convenient for them, they send all those poor old people here.” …“[Cuba is] a farm, and he’s the owner.” … “There’s a book of Cuban music that couldn’t be released to the world if it didn’t feature Celia Cruz. And it didn’t, because I’m out. So they’re the most unjust and narrow-minded. Because Celia Cruz has to be included there, whether they like it or not, I am Cuba, period.”

The program ended with Celia Cruz responding to the Spanish actress and singer Lolita Flores with a sound bite to sum up her view of the Cuban government. “Let me tell you nicely: May the cancer that this country suffers from disappear.”

Celia Cruz is the “Queen of Salsa.” She was also called the “Queen of Cuba” but in reality she is the “Queen of a Free Cuba.” Celia still holds a symbolic position in Cuba that is a focus for national identity and unity. She is a synthesis both of the Afro-Spanish culture, the defense of human dignity, and resistance to tyranny throughout her own life. 

During the Summit of the Americas in 1994, she asked the leaders of the Americas, “Please, on behalf of my compatriots, I ask you not to help Fidel Castro any more so he can go away and leave us a Cuba free of communism.” She said that all the artists had been asked to refrain from expressing political messages, but she had engaged in an act of civil disobedience.

She was finally able to return to Cuba in 1990, but not on territory controlled by the Castro dictatorship, when she played a concert for Cuban employees who worked on the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base, and collected Cuban soil that would be entombed with her in 2003.

Even 22 years after her passing she remains a Cuban icon internationally, and her example, when shared with the Cuban populace at large, endangers the continuing rule of Cuba’s communist dictatorship.

This is why they still fear the Queen, and why the secret police continue to censor her memory and ban her music.

More on this important anniversary here. A Spanish version of this OpEd was published in Diario Las Americas earlier today.

A special Mass for Celia Cruz was held on October 21, 2025 at Our Lady of Charity (La Ermita de la Caridad) located at 3609 S Miami Ave, Miami, FL.  Video of the entire occasion is available in thee original Spanish on YouTube.  

Note to His Admirers: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, and his ideas are toxic.

"I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.

 

Guevara executed for trying to overthrow Bolivian govt on October 9, 1967

Che Guevara was captured during a guerrilla fight to topple the Bolivian government and create a communist dictatorship, similar to what he did in Cuba, and was executed in Bolivia 58 years ago today.

Unfortunately, his ideas did not die with him.

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented in iconic images. This is the case of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his toxic philosophy of political action that others seek to emulate.  He embraced hatred and dehumanization of the other as the means to carry out what he thought necessary actions.

“Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.”

Guevara's claim to fame was his collaboration with Fidel and Raul Castro in establishing a totalitarian communist dictatorship in Cuba using violent tactics, including terrorism, and then attempting to expand this model throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

His efforts failed while he lived.  

The Castro brothers executed tens of thousands of Cubans, locked up hundreds of thousands of Cubans, built a police state, with the assistance of the KGB, the East German Stasi, former Nazis, and imposed revolutionary terror to consolidate power.

Credible and conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cuban nationals ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace. 

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964

Che Guevara, speaking to the United Nations on December 11, 1964, did not mince words: "We must express here something that is a well-known truth and that we have constantly asserted before the entire world: executions? Yes, we have executed individuals; we are currently executing others, and we will continue to do so as long as required. We know what the outcome of a losing struggle would be, and the worms must know what the outcome is today in Cuba." 

In addition to the Hellscape in the Middle East, Ernesto "Che" Guevara laid the groundwork for much of the additional misery in Latin America today.

Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

Guevara meets Mao Ze Dong in November 1960.

Mao Ze Dong caused the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese people in his communist project through famine and mass executions.  He is the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century, and someone Guevara stayed allied to, even after the Castro regime cooled relations with Beijing siding with Moscow.

 

Weeks after the world came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, Che Guevara was disappointed in Moscow’s loss of nerve in launching a first strike, and argued that Cubans were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice in a nuclear conflagration to end Capitalism.

“Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice. We have demonstrated our firm stand, our own position, our decision to fight, even if alone, against all dangers and against the atomic menace of Yankee imperialism.”

The Argentine went further declaring in November 1962 his continued willingness to engage in a nuclear holocaust to achieve the communist utopia which Guevara called “liberation”.

“We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims. In the struggle to death between two systems we cannot think of anything but the final victory of socialism or its relapse as a consequence of the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression.”

Guevara explained it more succinctly to London’s Daily Worker in 1962 after the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he also rejected the possibility of peaceful co-existence.

“If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish a peaceful coexistence.”

Ernesto Guevara was executed  summarily on October 9, 1967 in La Higuera, Bolivia after he and his band of guerrillas were captured trying to overthrow the legitimate government there and install a Castro style dictatorship. His legacy at the time was already one of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, his ideas are still toxic, and need to be buried along with him. For example, the barbarism visited upon the Israeli people by Hamas and Hezbollah, on October 7th and October 8, 2023 respectively, both receiving support from the Cuban dictatorship, demonstrates how the idea of resistance Guevara promoted remain an obstacle to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Che's so-called "achievement" with the Castro brothers was to replace an authoritarian dictatorship with a totalitarian communist one, all while claiming to be restoring democracy and the 1940 Constitution in Cuba.

The motorcycle diaries do not make up for this bloody legacy that for 66 years and counting continues to rob Cubans of their freedom, and spread totalitarian dictatorship to Nicaragua, and Venezuela, negatively impacting tens of millions of lives.

 

International Day of Nonviolence: Mohandas Gandhi born 156 years ago today on October 2, 1869

"Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi

 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, 156 years ago today, and his legacy continues to be passionately debated in India. The Economic Times, based in India, in 2021 published an editorial titled "Continuing relevance of Mohandas Gandhi" that highlights the challenges to Gandhian nonviolence today in his home country. 

“Gandhi is remembered for Ahimsa, non-violence. However, Gandhi’s Ahimsa was not passive acceptance of violence, but its active resistance by the force of moral purpose and mobilization of public opinion. Today, we have elected representatives who venerate Gandhi’s assassin, but few supporters who follow his example of opposing violence.”

This debate is not limited to India. The September 29, 2019 story in NPR "Gandhi Is 'An Object Of Intense Debate': A Biographer Reflects On The Indian Leader" contrasts the debate around Gandhi with how the Chinese don't debate Mao Zedong, or the Vietnamese don't debate Ho Chi Minh or the Pakistanis don't debate Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of debate is that China and Vietnam are totalitarian dictatorships where such debate is forbidden, and Pakistan has been divided between periods of democratic and military rule in questioning the founder could prove unhealthy. India on the other hand has been a democracy through out its period of independence.

Gandhi liberated an entire subcontinent from imperial rule without firing a shot. The United Nations, beginning in 2007, has designated his birthday, October 2nd, as the International Day of Nonviolence. Nevertheless,  he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized by the Nobel Committee as the "Missing Laureate."

In 2009 the United Nations released a one-dollar postal stamp of Mohandas Gandhi to commemorate his 140th birth anniversary. The stamp was designed by Miami-based artist Ferdie Pacheco.

 

He wasn't a rich man. He never held formal political office. He wasn't a saint or divine figure. He was just a man. An attorney who had taken a vow of poverty and celibacy. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.   

 

Gandhi transformed himself into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. An important theoretical result of his South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. 

 

Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”

He was the antithesis of Mao Zedong who took power and killed tens of millions to impose his political ideology on the Chinese. Marxist-Leninists view "truth" as something malleable and in the service of achieving power. 

Gandhi's explicit rejection of Marxist class struggle as hateful, his embrace of truth and love,
 and his critique that socialists and communists did nothing to solve problems are powerful:

The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will. I shall bring about economic equality through non-violence, by converting people to my point of view by harnessing the forces of love as against hatred. I will not wait till I have converted the whole society to my view but will straight away make a beginning with myself. It goes without saying that I cannot hope to bring about economic equality of my conception, if I am the owner of fifty motor-cars or even of ten bighas of land. For that I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor.

Gandhi's description of the nature of a regime that sought to use violence to crush capitalism offers an excellent description of what has taken place in Marxist Leninist states that promised paradise but delivered the opposite:

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. [...] It can be easily demonstrated that destruction of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of the worker and as no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.

This explains in large part the hostility from communists to Mohandas Gandhi's social political agenda, and many on the Left who share the Marxist belief in class struggle.

Gandhi's approach is reflected in what is considered his greatest act of nonviolence, the 1930 Salt March, in which he wrote two letters to his British adversary in India, Viceroy Lord Irwin, who he addressed as a friend in which he outlined both his grievances, and the act of civil disobedience he planned to carry out.

The contrast between those who advocate class struggle and those who advocate nonviolent resistance could not be more stark.

The heirs of Mao Zedong, who were inspired by his violent revolutionary tradition generated great suffering: Ernesto "Che"Guevara in Cuba,  the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Black Panther Party in the United States and Shining Path guerillas in Peru are but just four of many bloody examples.

Contrast these with the heirs of Mohandas Gandhi, who were inspired by his non-violent resistance to injustice and the good they achieved:  Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States,  Steve Biko in South Africa, Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Pakistan, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Cuba, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Lech Walesa in Poland, and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines are but just seven of many inspirational examples.

Mohandas Gandhi changed political protests and empowered millions with Satyagraha and the use of strategic nonviolence to battle powerful and violent regimes and great injustices in an effective manner that frustrates those who want to preserve or change the status quo using violence.

Today, as we witness Cubans nonviolently defying the communist dictatorship in Cuba, the legacy of Gandhi continues to shake the foundations of tyrannies around the world.

Nonviolent resistance does not mean the absence of violence. It is a courageous decision to challenge the oppressors using nonviolent means. Telling the truth and resisting a violent adversary with nonviolent means is not without risk, but it has a greater chance of success than violent resistance. Oswaldo Payá spoke truth to power on July 20, 2012, denouncing the fraudulent change of the dictatorship and offering a vision of real change in Cuba.

"The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and the opposition do not kill, sabotage or exclude, everyone knows that. Our motto is Liberty and Life. We do not want power for ourselves; we want peace and civil rights for all, because where there are no rights there is no justice. We seek only the power of the people, popular sovereignty, as Martin Luther King did, remember? Power to the people!... We denounce institutionalized corruption. Those who have power declare us enemies and do not compete with the opposition but rather sentence it, stigmatize it and annihilate it." ... "The peaceful, logical and fair solution that can lead to change and genuine dialogue is to recognize these rights. Enough of reactionary justifications that say that the people are not ready, that they do not want change. Do you think that fifty-four years without freedom and without rights are not enough? Others say that the people do not want rights, what an insult! Others may say that many Cubans want this government. I do not believe it, but in any case no Cuban can decide what they want in this environment. With these laws and with this system, Cubans cannot choose who they want to govern them, what system to have. We demand rights for all, without hatred or offense, with justice. Everyone knows that not even the National People's Assembly can decide freely, it also receives orders. This will change only when they are elected by the people, only then will they obey the people. That is our demand. We continue to call on all Cubans, no matter how they think or where they come from, to be part of the solution and the changes. Only the people can do that. Why say no to our rights? Why elitism? Philosophies and theologies? What oppresses us is fear, intolerance and the determination of a group to maintain absolute power. Let us abandon pretense! Let us take the path of the people, which is the path of democracy."

This vision is still relevant today, and the price Payá had to pay for speaking the truth to power and acting accordingly cost him his life and Harold Cepero two days later, on July 22, 2012, when both were murdered by agents of the Cuban dictatorship. They were killed because with their truth telling and their non-violent resistance they threatened the continuity of the dictatorship.

Nonviolence and it's culture of life is a force more powerful, and it offers an alternative to war that threatens humanity's existence with its culture of death.