Cuba for Dummies-Some Basic Facts

Diane Watson (D-CA)

This book is for you



Last week, Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA) gave a town hall in Los Angeles to her constituents. It was tightly controlled to weed out the opposition, and there was no video of the event. Thanks to KABC, however, there was an audio, which many of you have heard. I have already posted a blog on her talk, so I won't go into detail on that. Suffice to say that Diane Watson is a pea brain, which she proved when she started singing the praises of Fidel Castro. Of course, Watson is hardly the only one on the left who is enamored of Castro and his Cuba. There is a host of Hollywood types and university leftists who worship Castro as well as his junior dictator in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. So, without going into great details, let's review Cuba under Castro. I'll try to keep it basic for Ms Watson and you UC-Santa Cruz Community Studies majors.

Prior to Castro, Cuba was ruled by a cruel and corrupt dictator named Fulgencio Batista, who was a friend of the US and US business. On New Year's eve 1958-59, revolutionaries led by Castro and Che Guevara succeeded in toppling Batista, who fled to the Dominican Republic and eventually died in Spain. In addition, several thousand Cubans, mostly the educated, businessmen and Batista supporters also fled to the US, where they established the huge Cuban community in Miami. To this day, they are a conservative force that opposes any reconciliation with Cuba as long as Castro is in power.

Though not known at the time of the revolution, Castro eventually revealed himself to be a communist and established a close relationship with the USSR. He later sent his army off to participate in so-called "wars of liberation" in places like Angola.

Immediately after taking power, he rounded up his enemies. It was Che Guevara-the darling of the radical left to this day- who was put in charge of the court trials and the executions. The "trials' were summary events that lasted about 5 minutes and which resulted in quick executions of hundreds of prisoners.

Of course, then followed the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis under President Kennedy.

Since then, Castro has remained in power and outlived all the US presidents who came after him. He has established and maintained a communist system that allows no dissent. Over the years, thousands of Cubans have risked their lives to escape that island on make-shift boats or rafts. Many have died in the process. If you ask how many people have risked their lives to sail to Cuba, I can't answer that except to say none that I know of.

In spite of the US embargo, European nations have chosen to do business with Cuba and maintain diplomatic and economic ties. Cuba also enjoys a wave of European tourism. What many won't talk about is that many of the male tourists who go to Cuba do so to enjoy the pleasures of under-age prostitutes, part of Castro's tourist industry.

Yet, in spite of all that, Castro is still revered by nit-wits like Diane Watson. Why? Because he is an enemy of the US, that's why. That he is a dictator does not matter. That he and Che Guevara executed hundreds of political opponents without real due process does not matter. The teenage sex trade in Cuba does not matter. The fact that Cuba has free health care represents their excuse for making Cuba their role model. The fact that most Cubans are struggling to have three meals a day does not matter.

If he is an enemy of the US, that's good enough for dummies like Diane Watson.