Year of exodus, hurricane, and show trials
These are the top 12 monthly blog entries of the year arranged in chronological order. George Santayana understood the importance of remembering the past in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
70 Years of Dictatorship in Cuba: 63 Years of Castro and 7 Years of Batista
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| #TheyAreContinuity |
Cuba has suffered under seventy years of dictatorship. Cuban democracy was ended by Fulgencio Batista on March 10, 1952, the last democratic president, Carlos Prio, and his first lady went into exile, and over the next seven years, a corrupt and authoritarian dictatorship ruled Cuba, becoming increasingly unpopular.
The refusal of Batista to nonviolently give up power through a process of dialogue opened the path for Fidel and Raul Castro to violently seize it, and put an end to a half century of democratic governments. Cuba's official motto was changed from Homeland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad) to Homeland or Death, We Shall Triumph (¡Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!).
Music video by Cuban singer Descemer Bueno, ft Maykel Castillo Pérez (El Osorbo) and Isabella Castillo shows Cuba's history of repression
Let us no longer shout "Homeland and Death" but "Homeland and Life" - Patria y Vida (2021)
Cuban singer Descemer Bueno premiered this week the song "Tears of Blood" [Lagrimas de Sangre], a denunciation of the totalitarian system in Cuba, that features prisoner of conscience Maykel Castillo Pérez (El Osorbo), and Isabella Castillo. An image of jailed Cuban journalist, Esteban Lázaro Rodríguez López appears in the music video. He was forcibly exiled a day after the video's release.
Video is directed and edited by Ernesto García and with photography by Sisy Gómez and Erick Delgado. The video that accompanies the song brings together images of the nonviolent demonstrations of 11J, repressive actions by the dictatorship over the past 63 years, Operation Pedro Pan, and the exodus of Cubans who fled to the sea to escape the Island in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, and the 1994 rafter crisis.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Berlin 1936 and Beijing 2022: Legitimizing genocidal totalitarian regimes through sports is a profound immorality with bad outcomes
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."- George Santayana
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| Legitimizing genocidal totalitarian regimes through sports is immoral and leads to bad outcomes |
The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing were a human rights disaster for China with scenes of Tibetan demonstrators gunned down by Chinese soldiers.
14 years later, and the world has suffered over 5.6 million deaths due to COVID-19, and the Chinese Communist dictatorship of Xi Jinping bears responsibility. The Chinese government did not reveal for weeks what it knew about COVID-19, allowing it to spread into a worldwide pandemic. The Frontline Documentary "China's COVID Secrets" is required viewing to understand what happened.
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Twelve years ago on February 23, 2010 prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on hunger strike in Cuba
"Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]" - Orlando Zapata Tamayo, letter smuggled out April of 2004*
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| Orlando Zapata Tamayo May 15, 1967 - February 23, 2010 |
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his 1861 book, The House of the Dead that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." What does this say about the Cuban government that has barred the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting Cuba's prisons for decades?
Many Cubans have died over the past 63 years suffering cruel treatment at the hands of communist prison officials in the Castro dictatorship.
Tomorrow marks the death of one more. His name was Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a human rights defender who was unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and was tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit. He is a victim of Cuban communism.
[ Full blog entry ]
Wednesday, March 9, 2022
70 Years without Democracy in Cuba: 7 Years of authoritarianism with Batista and 63+ Years of totalitarianism with the Castros
From bad (authoritarian dictatorship) to worse (totalitarian dictatorship)
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| #TheyAreContinuity #TheyAreDictators ( #SomosContinuidad #SonDictadores) |
Democracy ended in Cuba seventy years ago on March 10, 1952. It was ended by General Fulgencio Batista who carried out a military coup against the legitimately elected democratic government. The last democratically elected president, Carlos Prio, and his first lady went into exile, and over the next seven years, an authoritarian dictatorship ruled Cuba, becoming increasingly unpopular.
[ Full blog entry ]
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Project Varela at 20: Christian Liberation Movement invites us today to West Dade Regional Library to remember when thousands of Cubans risked all for a free Cuba.
We do not forget, we do not betray our principles and values, we are consistent, without fanfare, with serene courage, with generosity, without hatred but without fear: Long live the Varela Project !!! - Regis Iglesias Ramirez, May 10, 2021 over Twitter
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| Oswaldo Payá, Antonio Diaz, and Regis Iglesias walk to turn in petitions |
Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, in his 1999 novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting observed that "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Memory provides context to unfolding events today, and helps to render informed judgements.
Twenty years ago on May 10, 2002, carrying 11,020 signed petitions in support of the Varela Project, the Christian Liberation Movement's Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and Regis Iglesias Ramirez delivered them to the Cuban National Assembly.
The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign.
[ Full blog entry ]
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
#OTD: 50 years ago today student leader Pedro Luis Boitel who fought against the Batista and Castro dictatorships died on hunger strike
Martyred
student leader Pedro Luis Boitel fought by Fidel Castro's side to bring
an end to the Batista dictatorship and restore Cuban democracy. However,
as Castro came to impose a communist regime, the student leader became a
liability.
Pedro Luis Boitel was born in Cuba to a family of modest means of French origin.
He studied at the University of Havana while working as a radio
technician. He was also a poet. Opposing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, he joined the
July 26 movement led by Fidel Castro. The majority of the movement's
members, like Pedro Luis, were anti-communists.
Once Batista left for exile and
Fidel Castro took control, the anti-communist members of the July 26
movement became an obstacle to absolute power. Following the revolution,
Boitel returned to University, where his fellow students nominated him to run
for the presidency of the Federation of University Students in 1960. Fidel
Castro personally intervened to remove him from the presidency. Pedro
Luis Boitel refused to betray the Federation of University Students. He sought to maintain academic freedom and autonomy. This made Pedro Luis an obstacle to the emerging communist regime.
[ Full blog entry ]
Sunday, June 5, 2022
#Tiananmen33: Remembering the Tank Men
"Seeking government accountability for the massacre in accordance with the law is our legitimate right. For 33 years, we have been pursuing the three demands of “truth, compensation, and accountability” in a peaceful and rational manner, calling for a dialogue with the government through the legal process to resolve the issues related to the June Fourth massacre." - Tiananmen Mothers, June 1, 2022
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| Nonviolent moment: Tank Men face off in Beijing on June 5, 1989 |
On June 5, 1989 in Beijing, following the Chinese Communist Party's massive and bloody crackdown on thousands of Chinese students and workers on June 3rd and 4th after six weeks of protests that began in Tiananmen Square and spread across 400 cities in China something remarkable happened in the midst of all the horror and terror.
A man risked all to protest what had taken place. Wearing a white t-shirt, black trousers, and carrying what appeared to be a shopping bag he walked out on the north edge of Tiananmen Square, along Chang'an Avenue and faced down a column of Type-59 tanks.
[ Full blog entry ]
Monday, July 4, 2022
#TwelveMonths after the #11J protests in #Cuba: A reflection and call to action
Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the truth shall make you free". Bishop Agustín Román, December 16, 2006
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| Cubans march under a banner declaring "Down with dictatorship" and "Patria y Vida" |
Tens of thousands of Cubans marched in over 50 cities and towns in the island nation
beginning on July 11, 2021 and were met with threats, violence, mass
arrests, and deadly force that brought these nationwide protests to an
end on July 13, 2021, , but sporadic protests continue in Cuba despite the regime's efforts to shut them all down. In one week, a year will have passed.
How did it begin?
A protester from San Antonio de los Baños told BBC Mundo that the initial protest was organized on Saturday[July 10, 2021] through social networks for Sunday [July 11, 2021] at 11:30 AM (local time). Reuters on August 9th reported in more detail on the social network used, and its background confirming the initial reporting by the BBC. On Sunday July 11, 2021 in the late morning hundreds of Cubans took to the streets of San Antonio de los Baños and were soon joined by thousands more.
[ Full blog entry ]
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
July 13th now has a double significance for victims of communism in China and Cuba
Free Chinese and free Cubans share a common day to mourn their victims of communism.
Tragically, Chinese are mourning Chinese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights defender Liu Xiaobo who died five years ago on July 13, 2017 at the First Hospital of China Medical University, in Shenyang, China after being unjustly imprisoned from December 8, 2008 until his untimely death nearly 10 years later.
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
Black Ribbon Day 2022: The Hitler-Stalin Pact that started WW2 which communists want to erase.
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera
Eighty three years ago on August 23, 1939 the world learned that Communist Russia and Nazi Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It was named after their respective foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop.
[ Full blog entry ]
Sunday, October 9, 2022
Note to His Admirers: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead and his ideas remain 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.
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| Che Guevara executed for trying to overthrow Bolivian govt on Oct 9, 1967 |
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 the role he played alongside Fidel and Raul Castro in installing a totalitarian communist dictatorship using violent means, including terrorism, in Cuba then attempting to spread this model using violent means to Africa and Latin America. His efforts failed.
[ Full blog entry ]
Honorable mentions
Saturday, June 11, 2022
Open Letter to the People's Summit
Parallel to the Summit of the Americas held in L.A (June 8-10)
Dear People's Summit organizers and participants,
This open letter does not address the charges leveled in your political platform or in your final declaration
against the United States. The U.S. government can fend for itself, and
I am not here to represent it. In the spirit of dialogue I am
responding to a number of statements, and await your concrete response,
and hope that this does not degenerate into ad hominem attacks.
However, you raise a number of claims and then omit pressing challenges in this hemisphere to values and objectives that you claim to share that are caused by others.
[ Full blog entry ]
Call for solidarity with protesters in Iran. Please share hashtags: #MahsaAmini #ZhinaAmini #IranProtests
Morality police in Iran beat Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, to death for not complying with Tehran's hijab regulations. She was arrested on September 13, 2022 badly beaten, left in a coma, and died on September 16th.
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| Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by morality police in Iran. |
Mass protests have erupted in Iran, but the Iranian regime has shutdown the internet and is now carrying out massacres against demonstrators.
Furthermore the mistake of replacing short wave radio transmissions of uncensored news with reliance on internet broadcasts is once again revealed to be a mistake, as it was in Egypt during the Arab Spring.
The last time this happened was in 2019, and the Mullahs killed 1,500 people, and I had not heard about it when it happened. The images of nonviolent protests slow to a trickle but some continue to emerge, along with reports of the price paid by protesters for their courageous dissent. Their censorship was successful that time, but let us do our part to prevent them from getting away with it again.
Please share the videos below, and use their hashtags. [ Full blog entry ]
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