01/14/12 - NNHS Newsletter

By Nick Diaz

I mentioned in Tuesday’s edition of this discourse how a good number of natural-born Americans are unaware of the nationality-based differences among “Hispanics.” In addition, many well-meaning Americans have little or no idea what events have been taking place in Cuba and the rest of Latin America in the past 50 years.

Author Nick Diaz in Havana, Cuba, 1957. (Courtesy Photo)

All of this, however, is a minor irritation when compared to the painful torture that comes when those of us who are Cuban exiles meet Americans, Canadians, Australians and Europeans who admire the Castro brothers and their so-called Revolution. They lecture us about the achievements of that murderous, soul-crushing regime from which we fled.

Again, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to confront this general lack of awareness, which almost always includes hostility toward me, personally. Those who praise the Revolution tend to see me and all other Cuban exiles as “oppressors,” who were justly driven out – “selfish bastards” who simply didn’t want to share their possessions with the poor.

The guiding principle undergirding such prejudice has been identified as ”Social Justice,” a loose concept that refers to the redistribution of wealth in Third World countries, which are all imagined as being equally corrupt and poor and as peopled by non-whites.

An ailing Fidel (circa 2010) and advocate Hollywood director Oliver Stone.

This misguided concept of “justice” is itself derived from a host of other prejudices, including that which I like to call the “Mussolini Principle” – to the assumption that underdeveloped or inferior nations need strong leaders and draconian measures in order to function properly.

So, just as Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was constantly praised in Europe and North America for making the trains run on time in unruly, darker-skinned Italy, so are Fidel Castro and his henchmen praised for “finally” bringing health care and education to the even unrulier and darker-skinned Cuban people.

The chief assumption behind that praise, of course, is that such people are essentially different, and inherently incapable of enjoying the same kinds of rights and freedoms as more advanced light-skinned Europeans and Americans.

Cuban born actress Maria Conchita Alonso recently challenged actor Sean Penn on his pro-Castro activism. She answered his off-color description of her, calling him "a Communist a******!"

Another wrong assumption that guides such thinking is that Cuba was a Third World country before Fidel came along and “improved” it.

The real truth is just the opposite: On many accounts, Cuba was on par or ahead of many European countries in 1958 and ahead of most other Latin American nations. Nothing proves this more convincingly than the fact that between 1900 and 1958, more than one million Europeans immigrated to Cuba seeking a better life. Between 1959 and today, more than two million Cubans have fled the island, while no one, from anywhere, has migrated to Cuba.

Cuban refugees trying to make shore and asylum before US Coast Guard captures them.

I remember the noticeable number of Chinese people in Cuba, many of whom migrated to the island in the 1930’s. Other migrants included Eastern European Jews, Swedes, Germans, and Spaniards. After both world wars, migration to Cuba increased in earnest.

Twelve years ago, at a parent-teacher conference, the father of one of my students introduced himself as Cuban. “Cuban?” With a surname like “Kapelina?” I learned his family emigrated from Yugoslavia to Cuba in the late 1940s; chased out of Croatia by Marshal Tito, then chased out of Cuba by Fidel Castro. Sadly, some people seem to be chronic refugees.

THIS GLORIFICATION OF CASTROLANDIA is pervasive; oddly enough, the higher one goes in the American social scale, the more one is likely to encounter it.

It is absolutely impossible to escape this in my profession. Most people involved in American education, at all levels – though bright and well educated – are predisposed to champion the “Mussolini Principle” unflinchingly and unquestioningly when it comes to Cuba and Latin America in general.

Cuban refugee Dr. Carlos Eire of Yale was dis-invited to speak at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Take the case of Dr. Carlos Eire, author of “Waiting for Snow in Havana” (Ed: banned in Cuba), and “Waiting to Die in Miami.” Some years ago the University of Wisconsin revoked a previously made speaking invitation to Dr. Eire, who is Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.

The University of Wisconsin had offered the engagement earlier because – as the dis-invitation email put it – Dr. Eire would represent “the unjust oppression of the Cuban people by the exile community.”

Among the many ways in which we Cuban exiles encounter such prejudice and blatant ignorance, none is more constantly irritating than that of seeing the face of Che Guevara emblazoned on T-shirts and all sorts of merchandise.

Castro's chief executioner Ernesto (Che) Guevara, idolized by the Left as freedom fighter, is popular T-shirt image.

Che was Castrolandia’s chief executioner, the very embodiment of ruthless slaughter, the exact opposite of the idealistic hero so many people take him to be. Yet, I and other Cuban exiles constantly run into these bitter reminders of the world’s foolishness, and of the prejudices which allow falsehoods to endure and eventually become myths.

The depth and breadth of such ignorance is staggering and very troubling to me and other exiles, who personally experienced the evils of Castrolandia. I believe the whole world, and not just for Cuban exiles like me, is in trouble when falsehoods become accepted as historical fact and psychopaths like Che Guevara are turned into saints and pop icons, for then we are all one step closer to George Orwell’s “1984,” –or already in it.

AFTERWORD

EVEN AS A CHILD IN MY NATIVE LAND, I remember having the desire to come to the United States of America, not as a temporary tourist, but on an extended basis.

Nick Diaz 2012

I was eager to experience everything, not just something in particular. The United States projected itself into my consciousness through its films, television shows, comics, and toys. It was the “real” world, where nearly everything important took place.

In my early childhood years, up to 1959, I was aware of the fact that the U.S. was more stable than Cuba; there was no cretin like Fulgencio Batista running the country; and no need for violent revolution north of the Florida Straits.

After President Batista left and Fidel made everything worse, the USA began to look even better to me. As repression increased under Fidel in 1960 and as his policies drove Cuba into the Stone Age – economically, intellectually, and technologically – the U.S. became even more of a Utopia in my eyes. So, of course, I longed to go, not just experience it, but live in it at least for a while.

Little did I know then that, more than a half-century later, I was destined to live here for the rest of my life. Looking back, it couldn’t have turned out any better. Life in the USA has been good.

Natural-born Americans, please love and appreciate our country the way it deserves to be loved and appreciated.–©Nick Diaz 2012; and www.thecovertletter.com .

# # #

(Nick Diaz was born and reared in Havana, Cuba. He is a mathematics teacher at St. John Regional Catholic School in Frederick, Md. A graduate of the University of Dayton (Ohio), Mr. Diaz was retired in 2003 after 30 years with Frederick County (Md.) Public Schools. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Frederick Community College, for which he served as chairman in 2011. He and his wife Marianne reside near Middletown, Md.)

This appeared in its original form Jan. 10, 2011 at www.thetentacle.com and is used with permission of the author and The Octopus, LLC.

The Covert Letter is indebted to Mr. Diaz for his insightful series and we trust it meets our goal to offer ”Anecdote, Fact and Essay.” You may contact Mr. Diaz at Gssuzukiguy2004@yahoo.com