Guevara's and Castro's drive to overthrow existing governments in Latin America led to the rise of Augusto Pinochet

 "Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

Fidel Castro and Augusto Pinochet meet in Chile

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's drive to overthrow existing governments in Latin America, combined with Fidel Castro's support for terrorist groups in Chile led to unease in Chile that resulted in Augusto Pinochet's successful coup against Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.

Che Guevara was an admirer of Mao Zedong and his formulation of guerilla warfare is adapted from the Chinese leader. Che published influential manuals Guerrilla Warfare (1961) and Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (1963), which were based on his own experiences and partly chairman Mao Zedong's writings. Guevara stated that revolution in Latin America must come through insurgent forces developed in rural areas with peasant support. His international legacy of glorifying violence through an erroneous analysis of guerilla warfare, based on his experiences with the Batista army, which was too incompetent and corrupt to fight, and applying Zedong’s writings on the subject led to bloodbaths in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chiapas, Congo, Angola and decades of military dictatorship and political violence. 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara meets Mao Zedong in China in 1960

Guevara in his 1967 Message to the Tricontinental, an international gathering of guerilla and terrorist groups from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, described the kind of struggle  to be expanded and carried out in Latin America to overthrow the existing governments:

"We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move." 

Guevara’s call to total war led to the rise of new military juntas in countries that had not known them before in their history: Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, and Uruguay all had their first military juntas after the Castro regime began to export guerillas and Guevara's ideology. Other countries such as Chile, who had known a military junta between 1924 and 1931, in reaction to communist threats in 1973 embraced Augusto Pinochet who remained in power for seventeen years thanks to the continued terrorism carried out by agents and groups funded and backed by Fidel Castro. 

With the exception of Nicaragua Che Guevara’s prescription for revolution in Latin America led to a generation of right wing military dictatorships and harsh repression. In Nicaragua it led to a Marxist dictatorship, civil war and harsh repression. 

In Ireland the Irish Republican Army holds up Guevara as a hero and exemplar. No one should be surprised when some of his admirers in Ireland planted a 600 pound bomb to advance their revolutionary agenda. They were just following the Argentine revolutionary's instructions.

Guevara and Chairman Mao dining together in 1960

COVID-19 Shatters Cuba's Potemkin Village: Political pilgrims disillusioned with Castroism's failings

Castro regime's malign treatment of tourists continues.

Tourists trying to get out of Cuba before they can no longer return home.

COVID-19 may finally achieve what dengue, cholera, zika, and hurricanes could not, the shattering of Cuba's Potemkin village. Chilean and Mexican tourists are loudly protesting their conditions in Cuba. Carolina Cox, a prominent Chilean social influencer took to social media to denounce the conditions there and called on the Chilean government to get her home, before she erased her social media posts and presence. One would imagine that a retraction or alteration will be forthcoming in Orwellian fashion. She blames the "blockade" for the lack of internet access, but probably never heard of Alan Gross, who spent five years in a Cuban prison for trying to provide uncensored internet access to a Jewish community in Cuba.

This is a translation of what Carolina Cox said in the above video, and is worth reviewing before continuing to read this blog post.

"Hello, I am one of the 290 Chileans stranded in Cuba. Here in this "hotel" there are 60 people and they are in a center of infectious disease. Foreigners are constantly going in and out, there are plagues of mice. It is not a hotel that was open but they made it available now so that we could be here. ”

“You have to pay for this on your own, which is not cheap, it costs between 25 and 30,000 pesos a day for each one of us. In the case of the Argentine embassy they are covering accommodation and everything for us nothing.”

"Every day counts, we still do not have a flight number and if we do not insist it is likely that we could stay here so I ask for help please. We are also trying not to catch it and that nothing happens to us, because if any of us has coronavirus we are not going to return to our country."

“It is super distressing to be in such a moment in another country and in a country that also lacks soap and toilet paper. We have accounts blocked by the blockade that Cuba has, connecting to the internet is very difficult. ”

"The cards don't work for us. Please, please help us share this video. There are people who need medicine. Their are children, elderly and families. We demand a return plane, that the Government do something, that Copa, AeroMexico, Latam Airliners return us to our country. ”

This is not what they were promised.

Reuters reported on March 11, 2020 the Castro regime's claim that the first COVID-19 victims were "four Italian tourists who were staying at a hostel in the southern town of Trinidad after arriving at Havana airport on Monday had presented respiratory symptoms and were taken to a hospital on Tuesday." They tested positive for the coronavirus the following day.

Panama's Ministry of Health, a day earlier, on March 10th had reported that two Panamanians, ages 55 and 29 who visited Cuba had tested positive for the coronavirus when they returned home. Denying the presence of Wuhan virus in Cuba had become untenable.

This wasn't the Castro regime's first rodeo. The dictatorship has a long history of attracting tourists to the island under circumstances in which their safety was compromised.  Tourists traveled to the island during outbreaks of dengue, cholera, zika and now the Wuhan virus (SARS-CoV-2). But it wasn't always disease, other natural disasters were disregarded.

In September 2017 when Hurricane Irma, a deadly category five storm with 180 mile per hour winds was bearing down on Cuba and a hurricane watch already issued, tourists were still being flown into the island by British and Canadian travel agencies.The British travel agency "Thomas Cook defended itself saying the company followed the Cuban government's emergency instructions to the letter," BBC News reported.

Cayo Coco suffered the full impact of Hurricane Irma and was destroyed by the storm. They were flying tourists into Cuba to Cayo Coco a day prior to the storm's arrival, as reported by The Independent (United Kingdom).CBC News (Toronto) reported that Canadian tour operator Sunwing had elderly tourists flying into Cuba 24 hours before the Hurricane smashed into Cuba, forcing them to flee for their lives.

Returning to the current Wuhan virus (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak one should also take into account the false claims that Cuba had developed a cure. Nicolas Maduro on March 11th tweeted how Cuba's interferon had saved 3,500 lives in China.

Castro's military run tourism company, Havanatour, continued to pitch Cuba as a travel destination and posted a tweet on March 13, 2020 claiming that Coronavirus does not replicate at high temperatures and that the island is now 29-32 degrees Celsius.

On March 14, 2020 the general director of marketing of the Ministry of Tourism, Bárbara Cruz, indicated that Cuba had a strong health care system with which the regime would be able to attend to all the inhabitants and tourists who wish to visit Cuba, with the condition of abiding by preventive measures.

Steve Sweeney, writing for the MorningStar for Peace and Socialism on March 15, 2020 made the following claim:

"So far it is known that one of the drugs manufactured by Cuba, Interferon alfa-2b, has managed to effectively cure more than 1,500 patients from the coronavirus and is one of 30 drugs chosen by the Chinese National Health Commission to combat respiratory disease."

The left wing press claims Cuba has a cure for the coronavirus, but the reality is that Interferon alfa-2b is not a cure, and has not even been confirmed to be a treatment for COVID-19.

Chilenos en atrapados en Cuba, fuera de los resorts, comienza a vivir el drama que viven los Cubanos a diario.pic.twitter.com/eU5GX7AXMw

— Elías Parada ✪ (@Elias_Parada_S) March 29, 2020

The testimony of the left wing Chileans and Mexicans stuck in Cuba and their descriptions of what they are experiencing: lack of water, soap, basic hygiene, lack of medicines, and inability to communicate by phone or internet demonstrates the crude reality that exists in Cuba that does not correspond with the images and statements provided by Cuban officials.

Mexicano simpatizante de la dictadura comunistas de Cuba se queda varado en el aeropuerto de La Havana y le pide a gritos al capitalismo que le rescate.pic.twitter.com/QaHUQQ7rlY

— Christian Camacho (@ccamacho88) March 26, 2020

Word of warning to these youth, you are no longer in Chile or Mexico.  Freedom of speech does not exist in Cuba, and there are consequences for making the dictatorship look bad.  

It is also important to recall that on March 29, 1997 a soldier of the Castro regime using an AK-47 gunned down a Danish student, who was studying Spanish at the University of Havana. He had crossed to the wrong side of the street, and a soldier fired a warning shot, but the official explanation was that the gun jammed and fired several rounds killing the young man. His name was Joachim Løvschall and he was just 27  years old.

Joachim Løvschall: December 7, 1970 - March 29, 1997

Remembering the lessons of 1939 and 1989: Resistance not appeasement to totalitarian thugs

Today we too find ourselves in the midst of a dramatic conflict between the "culture of death" and the "culture of life".  - Saint John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995

Statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky taken down in Warsaw

Europe offers a cautionary example to the world of what happens when the good appease tyrants rather than oppose them.  In the 1930s Western Democrats sought to appease Hitler's Third Reich to avoid war and ended up with the destruction of Europe in World War II. Fifty years later, Western Democrats following decades vigilance and resistance, the communist regimes of the Soviet empire peacefully imploded.
  
Despite this moment of celebration, Pope John Paul II raised the warning in 1995 that there was a dramatic conflict between the cultures of life and death. This warning had also applied in 1939, and caught many by surprise when two ideologies that at first glance appeared to be opponents became allies.

On August 23, 1939 the Hitler-Stalin Pact (formal name the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) was signed that publicly proclaimed a non-aggression treaty, but had secret protocols that divided up Central Europe and partitioned Poland. This so-called "non-aggression pact" had sparked Word War 2 on September 1, 1939. On September 22, 1939 a joint Nazi–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk was held to celebrate the successful invasion and conquest of Poland. This war ended six years and one day later on September 2, 1945.  An estimated 15 million soldiers died on the battlefield, and 45 million civilians were killed in the conflict. In a speech delivered on August 1, 1940 Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov,  celebrated this alliance.

"A radical change for the better in the relations between the Soviet Union and Germany found its expression in the non-aggression pact signed last August. These new, good relations between the USSR and Germany have been tested in practice in connection with events in former Poland, and their strength has been sufficiently proved."

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany continued to collaborate and assist each other in a bilateral pact through the summer of 1941.  In October - November 1940 they held talks and negotiated terms and spheres of influence to have the Soviet Union join the Axis powers in a four power pact. This would have meant that Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union would all work together to overthrow Western Democracies and divide up the world.  However, their inability to reach on accommodation on the division of Europe led to a deterioration of relations in 1941, and Hitler's invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 ended their alliance. 

Talks on dividing up the world between Nazi and Soviet spheres held in 1940

This was not the first time Nazis and Communists would collaborate nor would it be the last.  This history calls for a deeper reflection on the two ideologies and their commonalities, which are found in the "culture of death" they both embraced.

World War II escalated the culture of death to levels not seen before in human history and culminated in the creation of atomic bombs that threaten continued human existence, and the depravity of the Holocaust. It also ended with the Soviet Union occupying half of Europe and imposing communist regimes on captive nations.

Thankfully the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe from communist control was finally achieved relatively non-violently between 1989 and 1991. Democrats were nonviolent while communists killed opposition members and created martyrs.

Over the next few weeks many in the world will be celebrating this triumph of the culture of life over the culture of death that took place between 1989 and culminated on Christmas day in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

 What was achieved 30 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of normal human relationships.  In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the collapse of the communist regime:

A democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

In Poland on the same day, people applauded in Warsaw as a 49 foot statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka, the first Soviet's secret police that would eventually be replaced by the KGB, was taken down. It had been in downtown Warsaw since 1945. Poland had elected its first non-communist government since WW2 in September of 1989.

Despite the claims of Francis Fukuyama that history had ended and democracy had won the reality is that resistance to these evil ideologies and other variants that arise must continue. The German city of Dresden declared a "Nazi emergency" on November 1, 2019 citing a resurgence of the toxic ideology. 

Communism did not disappear with the Soviet Union. In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Brazilian leader Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) was established with the goal “to reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.” The FSP is a communist network comprised of over 100 left wing political parties, various social movements, and guerrilla terrorist organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Chilean Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).

Both Communist and Nazi networks continue to operate worldwide, but the communists can still rely on state actors such as Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Mainland China for additional support to the existing networks.  During the Cold War, the Soviets provided support to the Neo-Nazis in West Germany in an effort to disrupt the democracy there.

What began as a strike on rising prices at the metro turned violent

Communists in Chile channeled discontent over a fare increase in the Metro there into a coordinated series of violent protests that destroyed in short order 80 of the 136 metro stations had been damaged with eleven completely destroyed. This began with a protest of the fare increase that led to jumping the turnstiles and escalated to coordinated acts of destruction and violence that has caused over 300 million dollars in damage and over twenty dead in riots and looting.

80 of 136 metro stations have been damaged in Chile with a cost of $300 million

We are now witnessing an attempt in New York City to repeat this "revolutionary" moment. Teen Vogue has published an article favoring the violence in Chile as a challenge to inequality while ignoring that poverty has been steadily declining in the South American nation over the past thirty years, and inequality has also been declining over the past ten. The objective is to destroy a successful economic model that has lifted many out of poverty and with proper reforms could achieve even more.

The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States on October 15, 2019 sounded the warning:

The strategy of destabilization of democracy through the financing of political and social movements has distorted political dynamics in the Americas. For years, the Venezuelan dictatorship, with the support of the Cuban dictatorship, institutionalized sophisticated co-optation, repression, destabilization and media propaganda structures in the region. For example, the financing of the Venezuelan dictatorship to political campaigns has been one of the effective ways to increase capacities to generate conflict. The crisis in Ecuador is an expression of the distortions that the Venezuelan and Cuban dictatorships have installed in the political systems of the hemisphere. However, what recent events have also shown is that the intentional and systematic strategy of the two dictatorships to destabilize democracies is no longer as effective as in the past.

This warning should not just be heeded by Latin American policy makers but also by their counterparts in the United States.  The refrain, "that it cannot happen here," is one that I have heard over the years from Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Bolivians, and Mexicans. It is a foolish sentiment. It can happen anywhere. Complacency and lack of vigilance are the greatest threats to liberty. British statesman Edmund Burke understood that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Metro cars destroyed in Chile

We witnessed in 1989 what can be achieved when the good associate to resist evil, and what happened in 1939 when the good sought to appease evil and the terrible price paid afterwards to contain and defeat it.

Now is the time to defend the culture of life that is found in the defense of human dignity and rights. While opposing those who seek to subjugate and destroy free nations and peoples.

Copying the existing healthcare system in Cuba in the United States would lead to more deaths

Don't buy the hype or the lies.

Cholera patients in Cuba (CNN)

Nicholas Kristof's January 18, 2019 OpEd in The New York Times, "Why Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba" is an irresponsible work of fiction that reproduces false statistics provided by the Cuban dictatorship to justify its 60 year old dictatorship.This is but the latest chapter in a long romance with the Cuban dictatorship by the Gray Lady.

Kristof cites the questions about Cuban government statistics and dismisses them by citing that the World Health Organization and the United Nations have praised the Cuban health care system. He fails to mention that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is being sued for conspiring "with the Cuban government to collect millions of dollars by unlawfully trafficking Cuban doctors to Brazil." (PAHO is the Regional Office for the Americas for the World Health Organization [WHO], and is recognized internationally as a part of the United Nations system.) According to a November 29, 2018 article by Frances Robles, in The New York Times, PAHO "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." 

The Cuban doctors were also separated from their families. The Castro regime feared that if they went to work abroad with their families, the doctors would be less likely to return to Cuba.

Kristof is trying to make the case for a "free, universal health care system", but a question arises: Why look at Cuba's with its questionable data and repressive dictatorship? There are other Latin American countries with universal healthcare such as Costa Rica, and Chile. Their infant mortality rates are good, but not better than the United States. Although, Chile's is almost equal to the U.S. Incidentally, if you believe Cuba's infant mortality rate numbers, than a lecture needs to be made to Canada, because America's neighbor to the North also has a higher infant mortality rate then Cuba's (despite Canada having a free, universal health care system.)  The World Bank 2017 infant mortality rates for the following countries are: Canada (5), Chile (6), Costa Rica (8), the United States (6), and Cuba (4).

Not mentioned by Kristof is the study by economist Roberto Gonzalez at the University of Chapel Hill who provides an analysis that explains in detail how the numbers are fudged. The actual estimate of the IMR in Cuba has a median estimate of 9.04 and a range that begins at 5.79 and extends up to 11.16. There is a policy in Cuba to do away with problem pregnancies, which is also a factor for the IMR rate in Cuba and the high rates of abortions. According to sources used by Kristof the IMR in the United States is 5.9.  

However one should take a serious look at the Cuban healthcare system overall.

The real deal on Cuban healthcare

Public health

New Scientist reported on January 8, 2019 in an exclusive report that "thousands of Zika virus cases went unreported in Cuba in 2017, according to an analysis of data on travelers to the Caribbean island. Veiling them may have led to many other cases that year." The Cuban government has also failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat. Founded in 1956, New Scientist is the world’s most popular weekly science and technology magazine.

In 1997 when a Dengue epidemic broke out in Cuba the dictatorship tried to cover it up. When a courageous doctor spoke out he was locked up on June 25, 1997 and later sentenced to 8 years in prison. Amnesty International recognized Dr. Desi Mendoza Rivero as a prisoner of conscience. He was released from prison under condition he go into exile in December of 1998. The regime eventually had to recognize that there had been a dengue epidemic.   

Three of the victims of exposure and hypothermia at Mazorra in 2010

 On January 15, 2010 The New York Times reported the confirmed deaths of at least 20 mental patients at the Psychiatric Hospital in Cuba, known as Mazorra, due to "criminal negligence by a government characterized by its general inefficiency," a day later the Cuban government confirmed that 26 patients had died due to “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 38 degrees.”

The 2012 cholera outbreak in Cuba offered another opportunity to see how the Cuban public health system operates. The well being of Cubans is not the first item on their agenda. This was demonstrated in it's response. News of the outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of the island, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to the reporting of the outlawed independent press in the island. Calixto Martinez, the independent Cuban journalist who broke the story was jailed.  The state controlled media did not confirm the outbreak until days later on July 3, 2012. The BBC reported on July 7, 2012 that a patient had been diagnosed with Cholera in Havana. The dictatorship stated that it had it under control and on August 28, 2012 said the outbreak was over. A year later on August 22, 2013 Reuters reported that "Cuba was"still struggling with outbreaks in various provinces.

In July 2013 an Italian tourist returned from Cuba with severe renal failure due to Cholera. New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana during the summer of 2013 and was billed $4,700 from the government hospital. A total of 12 tourists have been identified who have contracted cholera in Cuba.  

Cuba's two tiered and politicized healthcare system

Cuba has a two tiered health care system one tier for the nomenklatura and foreign tourists with hard currency that offers care with modern equipment and fully stocked pharmacies, then there is a second tier which is for the rest  with broken down equipment, run down buildings and rooms, scarce supplies, a lack of hygiene, the denial of certain services and lengthy wait times. Healthcare professionals are poorly paid and lack food.

On December 28, 2017 the Spanish news service EFE reported that the Castro regime had dismantled a network of medical officials and workers who'd adulterated a medicine for children made at the laboratories of the state-owned drug company BioCubaFarma. They replaced the active substance methylphenidate with a placebo substance in the manufacture of the drug marketed as "Ritalin." The active substance was sold on the black market. Nevertheless, The Miami Herald had an article touting the importance of importing drugs from Cuba on December 14th.

The statistics and numbers that the international community has access to with relation to the Cuban healthcare system have been manipulated by the dictatorship. Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist, in Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 describes how her idealistic preconceptions were dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' she observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights. 

The importance of public health transparency
 Sherri L. Porcelain is an adjunct professor who has taught Global Public Health in World Affairs at the University of Miami for more than 30 years. She wrote an important analysis titled U.S. & Cuba: A Question of Indifference? I could not find this article on the ICCAS web site, found it initially at Professor Suchlicki's Cuba Studies Institute, but it is no longer online. This is troubling and what Dr. Porcelain's analysis reveals is disturbing.

"Investment in the health of people includes protecting human rights. This means allowing the health community to speak out and not to be jailed for releasing information about a dengue epidemic considered a state secret, or not sharing timely data on a cholera outbreak until laboratory confirmation of travelers returning from Cuba arrive home with a surprising diagnosis. This causes me to reflect upon my personal interviews where the remaining vigor of public health actions in Cuba exists to fight vector and water borne diseases. Sadly, however, health professionals are directed to euphemistically use the vague terms of febrile illness in place of dengue and gastrointestinal upset for cholera, in contradiction to promoting public health transparency."

Let us hope that this myth of the Castro regime being a health care super power be debunked before any more foreign patients or tourists are negatively impacted or that policy makers in other countries seek to follow Nicholas Kristof's advice and copy the disastrous system in the island. 

Copying the existing healthcare system in Cuba in the United States would lead to more deaths of both infants and adults, but we would never hear about it, because the bureaucracy would cover it up with inflated numbers of how great the healthcare system is. Dissatisfied patients and family members would fear retaliation if they questioned their health outcomes.

Obama - Kerry Foreign Policy Legacy: Chickens coming home to roost in Venezuela

The downward spiral continues in Venezuela

Dictator Maduro with his puppet court in Venezuela

  Venezuela has been a dictatorship for sometime under the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan judiciary has not been an independent body for years meaning that the rule of law has long been absent.

Therefore the decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court to strip the powers of the Venezuelan National Assembly and repeal the immunity of its members while further expanding the powers of the executive should come as no surprise. Venezuelan democrats have been under fire for years. Many, like Leopoldo Lopez, have been unjustly imprisoned.

 Nor is the continuing downward spiral into greater misery for Venezuelans a surprise because it is the natural outcome of "21st Century Socialism" which bears a striking resemblance to 20th Century Communism.

Dictator Nicolas Maduro and Secretary of State John Kerry

We are witnessing in the tragic developments in Venezuela the fruits of Secretary of State John Kerry's diplomatic strategy in that South American country.  It was Secretary Kerry who said on August 20, 2015 that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." This implied that the U.S. was on board with Maduro continuing in power in Venezuela while trying to find ways to stabilize the country.

Embracing Chavez in 2009 and Castro in 2014 did not help Demoracy in Venezuela

President Obama early on in his presidency began his outreach to the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez and the Cuban regime of the Castro brothers.

Hopefully this approach will change with the new administration in the White House and there is reason for hope as democracies in the Americas have finally spoken up to express their alarm with the course of action take by the Maduro regime. Let us pray that this will not be another case of too little, too late.

Paying homage and giving thanks to Patricio Aylwin Azócar

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

Patricio Aylwin Azócar with Vaclav Havel in 2004 in Prague, Czech Republic

Patricio Aylwin Azócar passed away on  April 19, 2016 in his beloved Santiago, Chile. Don Patricio presided over the unification of the democratic opposition in Chile, the No Campaign, and the democratic transition following 17 years of military rule under Augusto Pinochet.

We would have to be grateful to him for that example alone, but free Cubans owe him for much more. President Patricio Aylwin met with pro-democracy Cubans over the years in Santiago, Chile at his private home and freely gave his advice, but he did more.

Rosa Maria Paya meets with Patricio Aylwin Azócar at his home (2013)

 In 2004 Don Patricio was a founding member of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba. The former Chilean president traveled to the Czech Republic at age 85 to spend three days with other Latin American and European leaders in an act of solidarity with a free Cuba that will long be remembered. At the time of his passing Orlando Gutierrez of the Cuban Democratic Directorate remembered President Aylwin's role. We also know that the best way to honor his memory of solidarity is through following his example.

Patricio Aylwin, Luis Alberto Lacalle, Petr Pithart, Philip Dimitrov, Luis Alberto Monge, José María Aznar, Václav Havel, Mart Laar close the meeting of former presidents and prime ministers at the ICDC Summit.

Free Cubans are grateful, and today in Santiago, Chile when members of the Christian Democrat Organization of America gathered to pay homage and pray for Patricio Aylwin Azócar at the Frei family mausoleum, where he is being temporarily laid to rest, the above episode was remembered and given thanks for by the representative of the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

On May 27, 2016 ODCA laid flowers to Ex-presidents Eduardo Frei & Patricio Aylwin.

The Christian Democrat Organization of America held its 21st Congress in Santiago, Chile from May 25 -27, 2016.

Patricio Aylwin Azócar (1918 - 2016): Chilean Statesman who presided over Democratic transition

"Mr. Aylwin was one of the great Latin American statesmen of our time. His struggle for democracy, social justice and human rights will remain an inspiration for the region and the world." -  Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations, April 16, 2016 

President Patricio Aylwin Azócar

Today, Patricio Aylwin Azócar, a great democrat, passed away. He presided over the restoration of democracy in Chile following 17 years of dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet in a nonviolent transition. He was president of Chile from 1990 until 1994. The Chile of today is a testament to his democratic legacy.


Patricio Aylwin Azócar was a Christian Democrat who rejected both the Marxism of Allende and the Militarism of Pinochet. He charted a middle path that avoided hatred, violence and embraced all Chileans as fellow citizens. Christian Democrats the world over are mourning his passing and honoring his memory.

I was honored to meet President Aylwin at his home on two occasions and engage him in conversation. First as a student in January of 2003 and the second time as a pro-democracy activist in 2010. It was a great honor to meet him and I mourn his passing and offer my prayers for him, his family and friends.

President Aylwin's diagnosis of what ails democracy remains relevant today and should be reflected upon. 

"[O]rdinary men and women may often feel unmotivated to exert their citizenship, either because they cannot tell the difference between the different alternatives, or because they have lost faith in the political classes, or because they feel that the really important issues are not in their power to decide."

Solidarity with Free Cubans: Chilean Democrat experiences repression first hand in Cuba

Berta Soler (Left),  Felipe Kast (center), Antonio Rodiles (Right)

This past Sunday in Havana a Chilean member of parliament marched together with the Ladies in White and other free Cubans in a nonviolent demand for the release of all political prisoners. Like the Cubans he accompanied this free Chilean was beaten up and arrested without warning. He was one of the 60 detained in Havana that day. His name is Felipe Kast and he offered the following description of what took place:

"There was no dialogue, the shock group of approximately 100 people simply arrived in vehicles, in buses, and I was knocked to the ground, handcuffed and taken to another place without being able to explain or learning any reason for it."

 Although, Felipe Kast is a conservative and on the right of the political spectrum in Chile that does not determine the posture taken with regards to Cuba. Back in 2002 Joaquín Lavín of the ultra-right wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI in Spanish) met with Fidel Castro for ten hours praising the regime's health care system but did not have time to meet with Cuban dissidents.

Meanwhile the Chilean Christian Democrats who are on the center left and in coalition with the socialists have had a consistent policy in defense of human rights in Cuba both in and out of power supporting dissidents and human rights resolutions taking the dictatorship to task for its dismal record.

This demonstrates that respect for human rights is non-partisan and one must pay attention not only to what is said but more importantly to what is done. This past Sunday, Felipe Kast stood in solidarity with human rights defenders in Cuba and received the same treatment that Cuban democrats suffer at the hands of the Cuban state security services.

Felipe Kast marching with Ladies in White on September 6, 2015 in Cuba

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and his invitation and challenge to Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

 Remembering the human rights giant Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Regis Iglesias Ramírez, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Antonio Díaz Sánchez,

On July 11, 2014 former Cuban prisoner of conscience and Christian Liberation Movement spokesman Regis Iglesias Ramírez over twitter quoted his late mentor Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas: "...a few miles from our sea wall the tugboat 13 de Marzo was criminally sunk. Yes, a vessel..." and posted a link to an article the martyred Cuban opposition leader had written in on May 31, 2000 titled "Moral Hemiplegia and Savage Communism."

The article was a response to Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and other foreigners including Gladys Marín, of the Chilean Communist Party, who had publicly expressed that the resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission that recognized human rights violations in Cuba was unjust. In his response the Nobel Prize nominee offered an overview of the human rights situation on the island and contrasted knowledge of the missing in Argentina compared with that of the victims of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre stating:

"I feel particular respect for the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who are a living testimony of one of the most ruthless horrors committed in our continent. Their voices are a summons to all; no one can be oblivious or neutral to their just demand. But with the same respect I have to say that for many Cubans it was sad contrast to hear how your president was unaware of our reality. I don't think I am mistaken in saying that Ms. Carlotto is unaware that just a few meters from the podium where she participated begins the sea, and a few miles from our sea wall the tugboat 13 de Marzo was criminally sunk. Yes, a vessel where several dozen fleeing men, women and children were chased and caught by government vessels. After being stopped and surrendered, they started to attack and mow down the people with very powerful jets of water. Jets of water tore children from their mothers' arms; they asked for mercy, but it did not stop this genocidal and sadistic orgy. Two dozen children and another two dozen adults perished. There they are, they are not missing - we all know where they are - accusing from the bottom of the sea, in front of our Morro Castle, their murderers and the government that placed them in the category of "heroes" the authors of this deliberate and premeditated genocide."

The article concludes with two paragraphs: the next to last paragraph challenging the Argentine human rights defender and pacifist to a public debate on the human rights situation in Cuba:

What would now be just would be that you, Mr. Esquivel accept our invitation to a public debate, before the national media (if they authorize it) and foreign, to discuss human rights issues in Latin America, reminding you that Cubans are also Latin American and humans. I also invite to participate the other members of the round table I mentioned in this text, and other Cubans of the nonviolent opposition and human rights defenders.

And in the last paragraph issuing Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the others an open invitation to visit his home:

"In any case, my invitation is open to visit me in my house whenever they want, without conditions. They will be received as friends and fellow human rights defenders. Apologies for availing myself of this article to invite you, for me it was impossible to know where you are staying and how to get it to you."

It is a remarkable document that demonstrates knowledge in the area of human rights in the region, firmness in first principles and at the same time an openness to dialogue and engage with those who have a difference of opinion.

Regis Iglesias Ramírez and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

 July 22, 2014 marks two years since Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante were killed under circumstances that have yet to be cleared up. Next Tuesday at 6:45pm at the Salon Varela located at 3609 South Miami Ave Miami, FL there will be two video presentations followed by a Mass at 8:00pm.