el jueves 15 no fue un día cualquiera

Esta joya me la mandó hoy mi amigo Marco:

Hoy se publicó un artículo en el NYT sobre Cuba. Repugnantemente apologético como es de esperar del NYT. Terminé de revolverme el estómago cuando leí los comentarios, cuya abrumadora mayoría eran a favor de los Castro y el socialismo, aunque noté que los pocos comentarios que hay criticando el artículo y a Cuba son los que tienen más «Recommend» (así llama NYT a sus «Likes»). En fin que no pude contenerme y escribí esto, que tuve que dividir en 4 partes debido a las limitaciones de los comentarios en el NYT. El artículo está aquí:

Y esto es lo que yo escribí, por si no quieren ir a leerlo en el NYT:

Old Cuban here, I lived in Cuba all my life until I left for good in 1991, so I know a little what I’m talking about.  I’ve read several comments here that show a very sad lack of knowledge of what was and is the real situation of Cuba and the Cuba/US relationship. I’d like to dispel a few myths that are very widely dispersed and accepted as truth when they aren’t:

1-Please don’t confuse Cuban government with Cuban people. The Cuban government is an authoritarian family monarchy not very different from that in North Korea. The Castro brother’s family and the ones very close to them live in a secluded paradise full of every conceivable luxury, their sons and grandsons roam the world in their millionaire yachts, Mercedes, and Bentleys, enjoying the most capitalist life possible, owning properties and businesses and having hidden accounts in many fiscal heavens around the world. All that while in the name of socialism they prohibit the Cuban people from creating wealth and progress by themselves, because they know that economic independence brings about a certain degree of personal freedom that they are not willing to concede to anybody outside their elite. I am one of these Cubans who still remembers what the country looked like before the Castros, and believe me, Cuba was way better then than now.

Free public healthcare existed back then much better than now (because now the country has basically the same hospitals than back in 1959), the advances in medicine were there (remember for instance it was the Cuban Dr. Finlay who discovered the cause of yellow fever in the 1920s); in 1957 Cuba had more doctors per capita than the UK and more GDP per capita than Greece, Italy, Portugal or Spain; free public education existed all the way up to the University; Cuba had the largest middle class of all of Latin America in proportion, the 7th highest industrial workers salary and 8th highest farmer salaries in the world, 8-hour work journey, 1-month paid maternity leave, full gender equality, women voting rights, and a long list  of achievements were already a reality in Cuba since 1940 thanks to one of the most advanced Constitutions in the world. Enough of parroting Castro’s propaganda about what they’ve done in Cuba… other than impoverishing and enslaving their people and getting filthy rich with all the looted property, the Castros have done nothing. Everything that tourists go and admire in Cuba was built by Capitalism before the Castros seized power. These are not fabrications, you can go check the official statistics of the UN, google about the Constitution of 1940, check the records of immigration to Cuba before 1959, or simply take a look of what is left of Havana and other Cuban cities… even these ruins proclaim loud and clear that Cuba was a very prosperous country.

2- The embargo was put in place by the US, because the Castro government confiscated the legal property of many American citizens without compensation. It is a legal, not just a political issue. The US is defending the vulnerated rights of its citizens. Many people from other countries, and of course many Cubans, were also deprived of their properties without having ever seen any compensation. That was illegal and I don’t see why the thugs should be forgiven, all the more when they have been very vocal all these years about wanting to bring down the «imperialist» United States, when the much admired by some Che Guevara openly bragged about his plans of detonating a nuclear device in the heart of New York. The thugs that are now loudly complaining about the «blockade» as they call it, are the very same that loudly proclaimed «we don’t want them, we don’t need them». They are the same that instigated and trained terrorist guerrillas from all of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they have their hands stained with the blood of thousands if not millions of innocent victims… when they received from the Soviet Union more money than all the money given by the US to all of Europe during the Marshall Plan, they didn’t use that money to improve the living standards of the Cubans; they used it to foster their petty wars in Ethiopia, Angola and many other places. Cuba owes money to almost every country that has been naïve enough to trust the Cuban government.

Last but not least, it is also worth it to say that the embargo is geared only against the Cuban government, who broke the law with these confiscations; it does not block any private Cuban company or person from trading with the US. But the Cuban government does not allow any Cuban to engage in such activities, because «that is capitalism». So yes, the embargo exists, but it really is by the Cuban government to their own people. Also, it is good to know that the Cuban government can buy food, medicines and many other items in the US as long as it pays with cash… the Cuban government does not like that, because they don’t want to pay cash, they have destroyed the economy by their own incompetence and stubbornness, and all the money they can get, they stash away in their hidden personal accounts overseas. There is enough documentation and proof out there ready for whoever bothers searching a little. Also, even with the embargo, the US is still the 5th commercial partner of Cuba, all the chicken consumed in the island comes from the US… do you still think the embargo has anything to do with the disaster that Cuba has become? Removing the embargo will only benefit the narco-mafia elite that rules the country. It would be a slap in the face to Americans, Cubans and others who lost without compensation their properties in Cuba, and it would be giving oxygen to a corrupt regime that is on its last gasps while condemning the real Cuban people to more years of suffering.

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