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Yesterday's Cuba |
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A PARADISE OR AN INFERNO? |
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To the reactionary Cubans of Miami, especially Batista
sympathizers, their spawn and the small but powerful repressive
bourgeoisie of those times, the Cuba of yesterday was a paradise.
Therefore it is not uncommon to see documentaries eulogizing yesterday's
Cuba. Two such documentaries come to mind. One such
documentary is a movie produced by the Cuban exile, entitled, "yesterdays
Cuba". "Cuba of yesterday was the Pearl of the Antilles", were the
words said by the Cuban-American announcer, while scenes of daughters of
upper class families were shown with their expensive gowns and their silk
gloves readying to attend a debutantes ball, while scenes of beauty
contests were presented, while the excellent hospitals and schools were
shown. All throughout the documentary the announcer voice showed how
he was overjoyed with the marvels of yesterdays Cuba.
In another documentary - this one in English - geared toward the
American public - and shown on Public television entitled,
"Sweet Havana Dreams", we are shown the marvels and the good life in
Cuba. "Dear, don't you remember when you broke your arm playing
tennis", reminisce an elderly Miami woman to her husband in this
documentary. This documentary like the previous gave the message:
yesterday's Cuba was wonderful. How could it be otherwise to the small oligarchy that had it all?
they educated their children in the best private and Catholic schools,
they danced in balls with their expensive gowns, they had private doctors
to look after them, they had because of their wealth and political
influence private rooms in hospitals, they made profitable accommodations
with crooked politicians, they bought elections, they made pacts with
crooked American politicians without caring about the negative impacts
these pacts would have on their compatriots and the nation as whole.
Life was marvelous for an elite class whose men who exploited and often
sexually abused maids - threatening to fire them if they were not granted
sexual favors, an elite class whose men often enticed young daughters of
farmers to Havana to keep them on as lovers or as worse prostitutes. Yesterday's Cuba was a hell hole full of vices, corruption and
decadence, a decrepit society governed by a small group of corrupt
individuals totally allied to the Americans and their interests. There were the hotels and the casinos pay rolled by the US Mafia and
their gangsters. There was Batista and his lackeys in the government
opening each day the door to this corrupt element, providing
incentives in terms of political and economic favors, so as they could
carry out their filthy businesses. As in the film Godfather II, when
Jewish mobster Hyman Roth (Myer Lansky in real life), referring to
Batista, confided in Michael Corleone, "What we have here is a dream come
true, for the first time we have a government who is willing to work with
us." Is this film far removed from the realities of yesterday's Cuba?
Not really, for at that time there was a hierarchy in charge of vices and
corruption, each day investing more in their dirty businesses.
Mafiosos like Italian-American Traficante and Jewish gangster Myer Lansky
were already owners of some of the hotels in Cuba, hotels like the Capri
and the Nacional. It should be added that they owned the high-class
prostitutes that roamed around these hotels and the casinos. While this corrupt element operated freely in Cuba, delinquency, the
use of marihuana and cocaine increased daily, this was true specially
among youth. This was the case of Tito Camaño, a young 16 year old,
which at this age had already been in a few reform schools, for robbery
and the sales and use of marihuana and cocaine. This poor soul after
immigrating to the US in the beginning of the 60's taking the same road
landed in jail. His life became centered around jail as he was
constantly in and out of jail. This continued until he landed in a
Texas jail; he disappeared in a Texas jail. This poor soul a product
of the Cuba of yesterday was this writer's uncle. Amidst poverty, unemployment, low level of scholastic achievement where
59.1% of Cuban women had a third grade education level and where only 3.6%
graduated secondary school prostitution was a flourishing industry.
Havana had a few neighborhoods inhabited exclusively by prostitutes and
their pimps. Of the areas who was doted with prostitutes the largest
and the best known was the neighborhood known as Barrio Colon. This
neighborhood was approximately the size of Hoboken New Jersey; One
square mile full of prostitutes and their pimps. I remember as a
child, barely 7 years old, passing through this neighborhood seeing the
prostitutes in the portals half naked eyeing and wooing passerby, as well
as seeing, drunk US marines touching these "ladies." It should be added that outside Havana, in the small towns near the US
Naval Base in Guantanamo, prostitution, decadence and corruption was
rampant. Given the extreme poverty that existed in those towns,
children and women were at the services of the corrupt marines.
These pigs were not only content with the prostitutes as they often raped
women of the area. It is important to note that similar things has
occurred in Vieques as well as other places around the world where the
savage Yankee marine has been stationed. The US marines are a bad
plague. Esperanza, an elderly woman in Havana recalls well her
growing up near the US base in Guantanamo. She referring to the US
marines as vulgar scum remembers at the age of seven walking with her
mother hand in hand and seeing in a few occasions a marine opening his
zipper and holding his penis in his hands - never caring that an innocent
child was witnessing this. Other images of yesterday's Cuba were described to me by Alfonso, a
Cuban born in Santiago de Cuba (south east of the island), now living in
New Jersey. He had left the island because as he couldn't live under
Communism. When asked him about what he meant, he told me a very
interesting story: "Look Juan, I grew up in Batista's Cuba.
Growing up in my small town I grew up environment full of vices. As
a child I grew up among card games - for money - dice games and rooster
fights; I even drank rum as a kid. In those times we were going
through extreme misery, there we no schools, no doctors - we had to go to
hell to see a doctor. As an adolescent I became accustomed to many
vices, to having a good time and prostitutes. I couldn't live under
the Socialist system because this was not allowed; I was often sought by
the authorities for my illegal activities. I recognize that Fidel
has done a lot for our small town; he constructed many things, schools,
hospitals, etc. I also recognize that these people (exiles) are
bunch of liars and a piece of shit." When people speak to me about yesterday's Cuba I see the Acosta family,
a young couple living, sleeping and crying in a Havana park; a family
expecting a child, living on the streets because they were thrown out for
not paying the rent. It is important to note that in yesterday's
Cuba, if you didn’t pay the rent the police would come and threw all your
belongings into the street. This shameful act by the way does not
occur in today's revolutionary Cuba. For those who are not convinced of how rotten yesterday's Cuba was or
think that movies such as The Godfather II or Havana which portray Cuba as
a miserable corrupt hell as being just fiction developed in Hollywood, I
refer you to a description of yesterday's Cuba from the book "The Good
Neighbor" by George Black: "In the 1950's, Cuba was Ernest Hemingway and Errol Flynn and George
Raft; it was young honeymooners on the fabled Varadero Beach, and corrupt
New Jersey mobsters using their casinos profits to build strings of luxury
hotels.... Havana appealed to... and to another kind of tourist who was
fleeing the conformity of that era and could find anything in Havana from
narcotics and striptease joints to gay bars and child prostitution...Cuba
was what it had always been: a forbidden, slightly overripe fruit, an
offshore refuge where you could do anything that was considered illegal or
immoral at home."
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