Discussion for article #231325
I enjoyed this article very much. The one thing Cubans who came to the US after the revolution so conveniently forget to mention is that yes, Che Guevara was a blood-thirsty guerrilla but what he did was also done by Batista.
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Miriam, Batista sympathizers held the wealth in the era of your grand parents. Now, let’s talk about brutal!
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Thanks for this article. My grandparents’ house was a couple hundred yards outside the Allied zone, in what was for 45 years East Germany. After reunification my feeling about both side of that border became even more complicated. It will be interesting to see how Cuba and Cuban expatriates navigate a somewhat similar situation.
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“But there will always be that complexity, loss, and challenge attached to this tiny island with a monumental role in politics, and in my life.”
If we look back to the roots and history of this country we will see your family’s story over and over again. The “exiles”, “immigrants”, “hopeful explorers” and many many others coming here have similar stories re: Ireland, England, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Haiti, China I think the list could go on and on around the world, all have sad stories and histories that make us cry. Should we then remain isolated and angry throughout the rest of human’s history here on earth or should we continue to look for ways to change the stories?
Our lives have all become ones of complexity, loss and challenge whether it is from political unrest in the many homelands around the world, or from the loss of homes, careers, retirement savings, and the security of knowing if we will be able to support ourselves or children in the next week, month or years I have lost the sense of living in a compassionate caring society governed by intelligent, wise and thinking politicians to be replaced by the same complexity, loss and challenges attached to this supposedly “exceptional” country that has been plunged into country ruled by greed, guns and all of the different gods in corporate religion.
I hope we don’t have to wait a half a century to see this country move into a better world.
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Of course, much of the “suffering and loss” was caused by those who’d grown rich due to links and membership to the Batista regime stealing the nation’s wealth and resources to bring it with them to the US, which is why the Cuban community is so much more wealthy than other immigrant groups. And then there’s the pain linked to the brutality and corruption of the Batista government, and whatever “import/export” meant in that context and what about it allowed the writer’s family to become so wealthy.
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I hate when headlines address me directly, especially when they don’t get it right. I’m not planning a vacation to Cube, I don’t want to take a vacation to Cuba, and I have no interest in telling you about it.
This kind of headline is facile, insulting and click-bait. It’s below TPM.
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"save a small amount he had in a U.S. bank account, which he used to buy the house in South Miami. "
Would that even be possible these days?
How small could it be?
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if people are still alive
Yo no vengo del barrio, pero, por lo menos, reconozco la diferencia entre la clase social de la autora de este articulo y las posiciones sociales de la mayoria de los inmigrantes latinos.
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Well, your loss. I really enjoyed visiting Cuba.
I’m not seeking to deny the need or desre that some folks have and may well be able to justify for feeling resentment towards la revolucion and the Castro brothers and their allies. I’m just saying that using that to maintain the otherwise avoidable isolation and impoverishment of 12 million ordinary Cubans doesn’t make a lick of sense.
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I had that vacation in Cuba, it was good, and I learned a lot more than what I gleaned from your story - heartfelt though it is.
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I’d love to visit Cuba some day, but I ‘liked’ kendyZdad’s comment. Like so many headlines at TPM these days this one seems intent on trolling TPM’s readers.
“…Not the beginning of normalcy, as President Obama has deemed it, more like the beginning of a different Cuba. It’s a Cuba that actually began so many years ago when my family and thousands more left, but has been frozen in time and memory for so many.”
The piece is poignant and I respectfully disagree but Barack Obama’s words actually do fit, in the same sense as an adage. Not unlike her sense, as in sense of time.
Perhaps her exuberance being tempered with abject caution is as a child of expatriates just about the only way to embrace this slow moving but advancing societal change.
What has been pointed to by others on this thread is that Batista, and those before him as the Cuban hierarchy, mainly evolved as (from) the Catalan (Spanish language purists) according to a couple of my friends who grew up here but emigrated as children like her parents from Cuba during the 1950’s turmoil…
(Generalizing a bit here) That these elements, over time, became the ruling class is not too different than Mexico where a few dozen surname’s (and Caucasian) families eventually acquired the power base of wealth.
After 60 years, trying to tie disparate equivalencies together now, the US backed and yes brutal Batista regime her parents and grandparents ostensibly long for as freeholders, along with an acquiescent pair of ex 50’s guerrillas who wrested control of a country in a time when the CIA was indeed, overturning other countries in the hemisphere to protect big business, is a new beginning as challenges go.
The Cuban people are not her parents generation and as they stand on the edge change.
The players are taking bets on the market share, Bergoglio and his predecessors to staunch the bleeding of Hispanics over to Evangelicals, Multinational(s) and Private corporations vying for every manner of money making ‘need’ in the name of modernity, Leisure, Professional Sports etc.
So yes, a return to normalcy, but to who’s?
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It’s a refreshing and interesting article in the wake of all the talking head “Does this reshape 2016!” nonsense and all the “cuban cigars!” derp I’m seeing on Twitter, but I agree. The headline is pretentious, and while likely not written by the author, does kind of make me assume that what I’m about to read is some condescending diatribe about cultural misunderstandings. Thankfully, it isn’t, but the headline doesn’t exactly set the tone quite right.
I thought the headline captured the gist of the article. People selfishly wishing they could visit a country frozen in time oblivious of the human costs involved.
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It captures the gist of the article. Resentment of that style of headline comes across as oversensitive.
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But that’s not what the article is about. That was just one small component of a much broader story of Miriam’s familial ties to Cuba and complex emotions over the recent policy shift. If you walked away after reading the article thinking it was about disgust over people who have visited Cuba for nostalgic reasons, then the headline has failed.
True. It’s a derail.
I did enjoy the article.
What you said was not an exact translation of what I said (which was directed AT the author). In fact it was not a translation at all, but it captured my sentiments exactly when I wrote my post.