Is there anything that symbolizes the absurdity of US attitudes towards Cuba more than the fact that Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the Miami Marlins baseball team, was suspended by team owners for remarks he made about Fidel Castro? What did he say that was so outrageous? “I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but (he) is still there.” How horrifying! This is despite the fact that even pope Ratzo just had a friendly meeting with Castro and called for an end to the embargo. There goes the pope’s chance of ever being made manager for the Marlins.
US policy towards Cuba is nothing short of stupid and cruel, partly due to being held hostage by an aging group of reactionary Cuban exiles in Florida. For over 50 years, the US has maintained an embargo that has had the effect of creating immense hardship to the people of that island while denying Americans the right to travel there and to learn about that country. And of course, the shameful base Guantanamo is on the island too.
Cuban diplomats in Washington, DC and at the United Nations in New York cannot travel outside a 50-mile radius without first obtaining permission from the State Department, which is often denied. Just recently, two members of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington DC were denied permission to go to New York City to take part in a forum. What is the US afraid that they will do? Meanwhile US diplomats in countries that are not perceived as friendly expect to travel freely and speak with dissident groups in those countries.
Cuba does not pose even a semblance of a threat to the US. While it is not a democracy, it is nowhere close to the kinds of brutal murderous dictators that the US has supported in Central and South America over that same period.
The US does not seem to be able to tolerate the fact that despite all their efforts to overthrow and even kill him, Fidel Castro remained in power and outlasted the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. In retaliation the US is punishing the Cuban people by denying them the opportunity to trade with the world like any other nation.
The anti-Cuban sentiment in the US is absurd and the continuing embargo on that country needless and cruel and must come to an end.
Now if Guillen was manager of the Seattle Mariners or the Toronto Bluejays, this would barely register a blip in the news.
The anti-Cuban sentiment in the US is absurd and the continuing embargo on that country needless and cruel and must come to an end.
I agree, though it likely won’t end until after Fidel dies. Our government doesn’t want to look like they are giving him a victory. Yeah, I know, it’s petty.
Well, the joke’s on the Marlins. Guillen managed to turn around the White Sox, and took them to the series. Suspend a good manager because he’s “politically incorrect”? Anyone who hired Ozzie without knowing he’s ALWAYS politically incorrect hasn’t done their homework.
And I respect Fidel Castro, too. That doesn’t have to mean I agree with him.
I’ve said for many years the embargo was nothing but stupid sour grapes continued by senile old cold warriors. I also respect Fidel even if I disagree with his politics. He was certainly better than what he replaced.
I doubt that very few under 40 have any opinion on Cuba one way or another.
I guess they don’t have a first amendment in South Florida. Well I’m not sure it’s part of the USA anyway!
“The anti-Cuban sentiment in the US is absurd…”.
Likewise the anti-Iranian sentiment. US governments sure can carry irrational grudges for a long, long time.
In 2011, Orlando Bosch died a free man in Miami. This despite the fact that in 1976 he put a bomb on a Cuban airliner, murdering 73 people. Cuba wanted him extradited for trial, but the US harboured the mass murdering terrorist.
The Miami Cubans want to turn the clock back to 1958. It’s not going to happen. There’s even a song about it:
Unfortunately, Mr. Castro was not an improvement over Mr. Batista, except the former was a Soviet stooge while the latter was an American stooge.
I don’t know the context of the quote, but it didn’t even seem to provide any support for Fidel Castro as a person or for his policies, just respect for the fact that he had survived so long in spite of getting on the bad side of a rather powerful adversary. It’s the type of statement that a person could make about someone that they even personally disliked.
Either way, suspending him is pretty ridiculous. Plus, don’t sports kind of survive by encouraging players, coaches and such to say some shocking or abrasive things now and then?
I have long wondered if part of the reason for the continuing enmity toward Cuba didn’t stem from the fact that the anticommunists didn’t get to triumph over communism. They won but only by default.
Communist rule collapsed in Eastern Europe and mutated to capitalist autocratism in China with much of the same people remaining in power.
And here is Cuba, a country so small as to be of little import at the international level, on which they can vent their desire to crush communism so that this time there can be a loser.