Cuba

I am not sure how to title this question. So, I will just jump in here.

What does this crowd here, think about just dropping the embargo, vacating the 2004 excutive order and letting ALL Americans visit Cuba at will. Normalizing political relations with the island?

What brought this up... http://www.sarasotayachtclub.org/Sar...atta-1650.html

Last article I read had all the other countries in Latin American, even our openly avowed allies stating that the embargo was stupid and did not work, that we should go ahead and normalize is relations.
Thanks.. AM

caveat:
I did a search before I posted this for 'cuba'. I found mostly stuff on Gitmo, so I hope I am not restarting or anything an old debate.

[Pete]

Cuba wants to cash in on the tourist trade. Lots of jobs in it's service industry.

Will not help them much with sugar as the US shafts every sugar country in the carrib - as well as the American public - with it's sugar support of "Big Sugar".

I've got no big feeling one way or the other. Libs seem to find a way there to hug all the commies. The rest of us should be allowed to go see the sights.

[incarcerated]

If Van Jones is to be the first of many departures from the Administration, they are going to need a rich source of talent. They also believe that they need healthcare advisers and administrators. Cuba will suit them well as a temp service. Harvard can only provide so many qualified candidates, you know.

[exsquid]

Helms-Burton Act is a joke. The whole world except the US deals w/ Cuba. The embargo only hurts our businesses & is a tool for the Castro brothers to say, "look how evil the US is." The sooner we lift the embargo, the sooner we flood Cuba w/ rum soaked tourists to keep the regime busy.

x/S

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by armymom1228

What does this crowd here, think about just dropping the embargo, vacating the 2004 excutive order and letting ALL Americans visit Cuba at will. Normalizing political relations with the island?

I have always thought the best way to sink a dictator is to make him a capitalist.

Open up complete free trade and let the US Cuban population take anything home that will make Uncle Fidel and the rest of Cuba jealous.

Capitalism took the USSR down,, it has completely flipped Eastern EU, and it is taking China down.

It works,, pile on the refrigerators, color TV's, cell phones, and gas guzzling cars.

When you see Uncle Fidel waring Ralph Lauren POLO silk OD green BDU's,, we win..

And make a profit doing it...


My $00.0002

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

Capitalism took the USSR down,, it has completely flipped Eastern EU, and it is taking China down.

IMO, a winning argument for democratic capitalism can be made with one word: Costco.

But even then, Louis A. Pérez, Jr., would still find something to grouse about.

Source is here.

On San Juan Hill, U.S. glory meant Cuban humiliation

By Will Weissert
ASSOCIATED PRESS

9:04 p.m. October 25, 2008

SANTIAGO, Cuba – Forget the embargo. If you really want to know where U.S.-Cuba relations went wrong, head to San Juan Hill, site of the battle that decided the Spanish-American War.

On a series of ridges overlooking Cuba's second-largest city, American soldiers and volunteers – including Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders – fought alongside Cuban insurgents to beat the Spanish on July 1, 1898. Yet U.S. commanders then stopped armed Cubans from entering Santiago, fearing looting, and negotiated peace with Spain. The U.S. finally granted Cuba independence only after reserving the right to intervene militarily on the island at will.

“It's a sad moment in our history,” said Marta Hernandez, of Santiago's City Historian's office.

It's a historical disconnect that still rings true 110 years later – and helps explain why both countries couldn't even agree on emergency aid after the recent hurricanes Gustav and Ike wreaked havoc across the island.

Americans believe San Juan Hill ushered in the American century. The battle solidified Roosevelt as a can-do American president, an image repeatedly invoked by Republican candidate John McCain.

But Cuba's communist government claims it was yet another example of U.S. aggression in Latin America. The country balked last month at $6.3 million in unconditional hurricane relief, arguing instead that the U.S. should lift its 46-year-old trade and travel embargo.

It wasn't always this way. One of the largest San Juan Hill monuments, erected in 1927, trumpets the battle as a “brilliant exploit in which the blood of the brave and true Cuban Insurgent and that of the generous and noble American Soldier sealed a covenant of liberty and fraternity between two nations.”

On Feb. 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor while protecting American interests there, killing 267 American sailors and drawing the U.S. into a four-month war with Spain. About 15,000 soldiers and volunteers from Maj. Gen. William Shafter's Fifth U.S. Army Corps fought several battles for the high ground above Santiago, including San Juan Hill, closing off eastern access to the city. At least 205 Americans were killed and 376 wounded.

The most-famous American participant, Lt. Col. Roosevelt, resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy to join the volunteer Rough Riders. He led a much-celebrated charge up San Juan Hill that launched his political career.

But that covenant of liberty and fraternity quickly fell on hard times, as U.S. interventions helped saddle Cuba with a string of weak and corrupt governments. By the 1920s, U.S. companies controlled two-thirds of Cuban farmland, and America's prohibition era solidified the island's image as a hard-drinking, heavy-gambling den of sin just beyond Miami.

Then came Fidel Castro. After his bearded rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day 1959, Castro invoked the independence war and proclaimed that this time no foreign army would keep him out of any Cuban city. His brother Raul – who became Cuba's president in February – spent the next few weeks leading firing squads on San Juan Hill, executing Cubans who opposed the new government.

“When Fidel came down from the mountains he didn't go to Havana, he went to Santiago first,” said Alejandro Ferras, an 87-year-old who fought with the Castro brothers. “That was an answer to history. That was an answer to 1898.”

Since then, the Castros have peppered their speeches with reminders of how the “Yankees kept Cubans out of Santiago.” By 1962, Washington had imposed its trade and travel restrictions.

Many Cubans believe their country would eventually have won freedom from Spain without Washington's intervention.

“Americans don't have a clue what the Cubans are talking about and it's not because of malice,” said Louis Perez, a University of North Carolina history professor and author of books on Cuba. “They just have a version of history that they learned since elementary school about Teddy Roosevelt and San Juan Hill and how the Americans liberated Cuba.”

In Cuba, Roosevelt has been all-but forgotten. There's virtually no mention of him among the San Juan Hill monuments.

“Roosevelt. I know he was in Cuba, but nothing else,” said Mireya Cuadra, a caretaker at the park surrounding the hill. “Wasn't he president?”

Instead, Cubans remember Gen. Calixto Garcia and his Cuban troops, dozens of whom were killed supporting Americans forces.

A stroll on tidy stone paths through battleground monuments offers stunning views of the Sierra Maestra but also reveals how differently the two sides remember one battle: Americans wounded and killed are listed at the top of the hill, while the names of Cuban victims settle for the bottom, where plaques detail how belittled Garcia felt by U.S. arrogance.

Some U.S. academics say the communist government has rewritten Cuban history books that once taught that U.S. forces helped expedite the independence struggle. But Perez countered that the event continues to have an important impact on Cuban society, and that the Castros were products of – not the sources for – Cuban anger about San Juan Hill.

Today, a sculpture commissioned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts still stands over the battlefield, honoring volunteers from its 2nd and 9th Infantry regiments. Lists of Americans killed and wounded are everywhere.

The high ground has just a single statue honoring the unidentified Cuban or “Mambi” soldier. But at the hill's base, bronze and stone engravings contain excerpts of a July 17, 1898, letter Garcia wrote to Shafter, resigning after learning armed Cuban forces would be barred from Santiago.

“We are not a wild people who ignore the principles of civilized warfare,” Garcia wrote. “Like the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown, we respect our cause too deeply to disgrace it with barbarity and cowardice.”

Talk about backhanded compliments.

[Pete]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

.

But even then, Louis A. Pérez, Jr., would still find something to grouse about.......

"........The high ground has just a single statue honoring the unidentified Cuban or “Mambi” soldier. But at the hill's base, bronze and stone engravings contain excerpts of a July 17, 1898, letter Garcia wrote to Shafter, resigning after learning armed Cuban forces would be barred from Santiago........"

So I have to ask the stupid gringo question. "Hey butt head, if it was such a thorn in Cuba's side all these years how come you folks down there didn't put your own damn big monument on top of the hill?"

You would think somewhere between 1962 and 2009 they would have found the time to put up a real big one.

That whole article read like a little brother whispering to his friends - but hoping his brother didn't find out.

And I don't think history would have turned out all that different without the Maine. The next year or so would have been real bloody for the Cuban's and the Spanish soldiers. Spain would have used very harsh measures on the locals. The US would have been "forced" at some point to step in to stop the bloodshead.

And it's history could have been worse, if that is possible. If the Cubans had beat the Spanish who's to say that a brutal military dictatorship would not have developed?

Under that rule would it have developed to the point that the Island was worth taking in 1959?

[incarcerated]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/brea...y/1240952.html

Russia to modernize and train Cuban military

Posted on Saturday, 09.19.09
El Nuevo Herald
The chief of the Russian military's General Staff, visiting Cuba, says his country will help Havana modernize and train its military and that Moscow warships will visit Cuba soon, according to reports published Friday.

The visit by Gen. Nikolai Y. Makarov as well as the head of Russian military intelligence and other high-ranking officers has sparked broad speculation about a possible renewal of the once extremely close relations between Moscow and Havana's armed forces....

Originally Posted by incarcerated

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/brea...y/1240952.html

Russia to modernize and train Cuban military

Posted on Saturday, 09.19.09
El Nuevo Herald
The chief of the Russian military's General Staff, visiting Cuba, says his country will help Havana modernize and train its military and that Moscow warships will visit Cuba soon, according to reports published Friday.

The visit by Gen. Nikolai Y. Makarov as well as the head of Russian military intelligence and other high-ranking officers has sparked broad speculation about a possible renewal of the once extremely close relations between Moscow and Havana's armed forces....

Nothing new, the Castro brothers have been bosom budies with the Russians since The Revolution.

On another note, BHO, re-upped the embargo for yet another year.

[Dozer523]

Originally Posted by exsquid

Helms-Burton Act is a joke. The sooner we lift the embargo, the sooner we flood Cuba w/ rum soaked tourists to keep the regime busy.x/S

Is there a sign-up roster or a line forming? I'd be willing to do my part.

[Richard]

Doubt if it would take too long for the lads from Jersey and Vegas to reestablish themselves down there.

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

Originally Posted by Richard

Doubt if it would take too long for the lads from Jersey and Vegas to reestablish themselves down there.

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

Actually Cuba was run by the Trafficante family based out of Tampa and New Orleands.

Back in 1995 or 6 Florida Trend magazine ran an article about how Cuba had already been sold by the Cuban expats to pretty much the same guys that created the climate that allowed the revolution to happen in the first place.
Big Sugar, CocaCola, Trafficante Family.... will it ever happen. When Cuba is finaly opened up, I doubt it. Times have changed far to much in the Caribean basin and politics is vastly different from 1995 to now..

My guess is that it would be Latin or Russian gangs that would attempt to get in, they seem to have more control and more power at the moment.

Dozer, there is no signup list. I would not be surprised if Mel Martinez'; hand was not in this lastest reupping 'for a yr' of the embargo. He authored the 2004 executive order that effectively shut down us boaters from going around the embargo via using a foriegn national to pay our fees at the marinas and such. My understanding is that he will be retiring after his current term is over. I only pray that is so. I have never felt he served in the best interests of the State of Fla.. he is prime interests is to server the Cuban-American community, not the rest of us gringos. <----personal opinion based on opinion.