Darth Castro
I want to thank songuacassal for inviting me to blog on Cuban-American Pundits. I'm not worthy of being called a pundit but I've got a few novel ideas and some of the neurons still fire in my brain (amazing, considering I went to the University of Florida where I killed a lot of brain cells). So I'm glad to be here. When I'm not posting here you can catch some of my musings at my site trenblindado.com. So here goes...
I was born in Philadelphia and I have always considered myself a red, white and blue American. But living in Miami the last 28 years has made me appreciate my Cuban heritage greatly. I’ve always been interested in history and as I’ve learned more about my family’s history I felt an urge to write about it and thus I created the aforementioned web site. I read a lot of material in order to properly frame the story that I wanted to tell, and that has only served to whet my appetite.
One of the books that really helped me to understand the mood and mentality of Cubans in 1958 was The Winds of December by John Dorschner and Roberto Fabricio. Although it’s a very well documented history text, it’s written in the style of novel with character development and such thus making it very readable. Just like a good novel, you begin to root for certain characters. After a while, I began to turn each page with dread because I know exactly how the story ends. It’s an unstoppable march towards repression, firing squads, executions, 20-year prison sentences and misery. Reading the book reminds me of watching Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. You know Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader but you keep hoping he doesn’t. Fidel Castro is not Anakin Skywalker but there are some similarities.
The Cuban people put so much faith in Castro and he failed them by choosing “the dark side” for his personal aggrandizement. Anakin Skywalker was seduced by the dark side but Fidel Castro’s evil intentions preceded his rise to power by many years. The Bogotazo, the assassinations at the University of Havana, the attack at the Moncada Barracks… These were the premeditated acts of an already evil man.
Darth Vader and the Chancellor (later Emperor) come to power by creating a false war against a false enemy. How many times have we heard Castro refer to the imperialist Yankees, his favorite bogeymen? It was a false premise in 1958 and it’s a false premise today.
Like Vader, Castro’s regime is alive only because it’s on a form of heinous life support. Instead of artificial limbs, breathing machines and protective armor, Castro breathes only with the cash he gets from sex tourism, drug trafficking, and the sale of oil that he gets from his evil apprentice Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
But as we know the Star Wars saga doesn’t end with Episode 3. And so Castro’s story doesn’t end here either. Darth Vader was eventually redeemed when his son, Luke, makes him see the light. He kills the emperor and saves the universe from a destiny of doom and evil, before finally dying. Castro won’t be so lucky; nobody is going to try to save his soul. One day soon, the world will be rid of Fidel Castro and in Cuba and the force will once again be in balance. Perhaps the one semi-redeeming act Fidel Castro could give the Cuban people is to put a .45 to his head and squeeze the trigger.
May the force be with you.
1 comment:
I fully agree with you, Castro's evil was inbred and it could be actually some kind of psychological infirmity(no, that DOES NOT excuse it) Through history we have seen this megalomaniac type, surface darkly "shine" for a bit and the vanish in their self produced black holes. Ted Bundy would’ve been a GREAT dictator. Luckily for some country he was born in the USA.
Castro had everything going for him in the 50s. He was young, handsome, tall and WHITE. And let’s face it Cubans of higher society were a bit miffed at the fact that a man of color was running the country.
He was wrong when he quoted Hitler and said “History will absolve me" History has actually conspired with him.
Castro was to Cubans a savior, a consummate liar and demagogue in a country that loves oratory. What other country do we know where the FATHER of the country is a poet who died on his FIRST battle?
The proof of his evil Machiavellian powers is his convincing the 5 or 6 different groups that actually fought Batista (independent from each other) that they should form a "united front" when entering La Habana. The main reason it took Castro 6 days to get to La Habana was due to negotiations with members of the La Habana underground, which did NOT trust him. The Members of the “Directorio estudiantil iuniversitario” did not trust him
But his bullshit came accompanied by a few men that Los Habaneros trusted like Camilo Cienfuegos and Huber Matos.
Castro also took advantage of a totally useless army. Cuba had been at total peace since WWII (when Hitler was told Cuba had declared war on Germany, he walked to the map, torn off the spot where Cuba was, thru it in the garbage and continued the previous conversation).
The soldiers in Cuba were FAT and well paid. They didn’t join the armed forces to fight, they did because Batista being a soldier thought that by giving the soldiers the BEST of everything he would win loyalty. Unfortunately history has shown that a volunteer army works better than a drafted one. The Cuban army did not want to fight they wanted to sit in Columbia and play pool.
So on their very first scrimmages in the heat and humidity of La Sierra most of the “casquitos” just threw the arms down (or gave them to the “barbudos”) and went back home.
Also, as naïve and ill prepared as the army was , the police force (specially in La Habana , was BRUTAL and hated the way the army was handling things.
For each fuck up the Batista army had, the Habana police would kill by the dozen.
This brought the “revolution” right into the homes of Habaneros who couldn’t care less about Castro before , but NOW it was touching them close.
Daily Castro would threaten the Habaneros that his “troops” would bomb this and that hotel theater or night club. So many an innocent Habanero died under the hands of Castro-terrorism. The day after the Batista Pilice wnet out and another 15 people would be dead. In fact MORE people died in La Habana from terrorism and police brutality that did in the WHOLE lifespan of the revolution.
Between the Batista government and Castro forces a grand total of 150 people died. HELL OF A CIVIL WAR!
The fact was that Castro’s entry into world politics was just a series of chances, coincidences, treason and plain laziness on the part of MANY people.
I urge you to visit www.trenblindado.com and read how one of the most talked about battles of the “revolution” actually took place. The version given in that page *I* personally can corroborate because most of the participants in that charade were neighbors of my family in Marianao, and we all were at the foot of “Ciudad Militar”
You could go back in history to roman times to see how through threats, cowardice, betrayal, assassination, greed and demagogy a ruler can rise and impose total control of a country. Caligula’s reign comes to mind.
The Hitler comparison so obvious that hardly bears repeating.
But the paramount reason of Castro’s criminal failure has always been his primary and self-delusional “destiny”. As he puts it in a letter to his secretary on June 5 1958 where Castro declares than immediately after taking over Cuba he would wage his real war against the USA and THAT would be his final destiny.
A man whose ultimate goal is the destruction of another country can never, will never be able to govern HIS country.
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