Sometimes readers ask what they can do help us spread the word about the Cuban tragedy. The answer is simple. They can stay informed of what’s going on in Cuba by reading this blog, and the many great ones in the sidebar blogroll. Once informed, you can spread the word. When you come into contact with interested people, you can let them know what the real scoop is about Cuba. But one of the best ways is to write letters to the editors of your local newspapers. Newspapers almost routinely run editorials and opinion columns condemning the embargo and the U.S. policy toward Cuba. Occasionally they will permit a rebuttal from a reader. Today I found an excellent reply to a recent campaign against the embargo that has been mounted by the Orlando Sentinel. I will post it here in its entirety. It’s so good that you need to read the whole thing:
Replace ‘invisible embargo’ with real one on Cuba
Manuel J. Coto | Special to the Sentinel
November 7, 2007
After two calls for ending the embargo against Cuba — first from a Sentinel columnist and then a guest column — the Editorial Board capped it off with a third sounding of the horn. In an editorial, you call for Fidel Castro’s “inclusion” in the international community.
Here’s what I find interesting: You explain, perhaps inadvertently, the reasons why an embargo — a real embargo — would be a brilliant and effective strategy against Castro’s brutal regime.
The Editorial Board proclaims that the embargo hasn’t hurt Castro and enforcement remains a “hypocritical joke.” Why hasn’t it hurt him? Because it has never truly existed.
And let me be clear: It’s not just our $543 million in back-door farm subsidies that have kept Castro afloat. An equal share of the blame for the “invisible embargo” goes to the exile community — my community — for funding the government through remittances to families on the island.
But that raises a broader question: Where do all those dollars we send to our families end up? In the hands of Cuba’s ruling elite and the military bourgeoisie, which were previously funded by the Soviets and now are funded by Venezuelan oil. Also funded by Spanish hotel corporations, Italian investors — the list goes on.
That list, by the way, is the entire “international community.” You have expended three columns worth of type and energy to trumpet that Castro be included in something he’s already a part of.
And yet Cubans are summarily thrown in jail if they collect books in their home, if they become journalists with opinions, if they speak up. They are beaten by “rapid-response brigades.” They live in constant fear. For a complete list of this and other abuses, I’ll refer you to Amnesty International, which you also mention.
You are correct when you say the embargo provides Castro with a convenient boogeyman. But I would ask this: If the embargo were lifted, would we suddenly stop being the boogeyman? Is Hugo Chavez going to stop funding Castro and embrace us, too? Would Fidel’s regime, or its remnants, “like us better?”
I doubt that. The United Nations exists because of our generous funding — and our Manhattan real estate — and we have been its most reliable boogeyman, on bigger issues than Cuba, for decades.
Ah, but we must appease the “international community.” As your guest columnist Paolo Spadoni (humorously placed under the heading “Other Views”) decreed, President Bush must create a policy that is “more in line with the rest of the world.”
Why? Aren’t we entitled to our own position? The Editorial Board proposes that we demand Castro “ease up on dissidents and address human-rights violations.” Then, a column boldly asserts that “this issue should be nonnegotiable.”
Sounds like Bush’s position to me. Why can’t the United States make the same demands the U.N. has made in the past — improvement on human rights — from a position of superiority and strength?
I know what you’re going to say: The hard line hasn’t worked. Well, guess what — neither has the soft line. Your guest columnist mentions that “several European and Latin American governments” have voted for U.N. resolutions criticizing the human-rights situation in Cuba.
And yet, nothing. I suppose the soft line has worked about as well as it has worked on China.
But since you’re in the business of printing “other views,” here’s what I’d like to see: something historic. A true embargo, backed by the same outrage reserved for other brutal regimes in our collective past — a policy more in line with how the world handled, say, apartheid in South Africa or Augusto Pinochet’s Chile or Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
One of the commentaries grudgingly mentioned that President Bush is the leader of the Free World. And, yes, our next president will hold the same power. Let’s ask the “community” to rally behind its leader, no matter what he (or she) demands of Cuba.
Now that would be historic.
Manuel J. Coto, M.D., a native of Cuba, practices in Orlando.
You can see and hear Dr. Coto give additional commentary about the embargo by clicking here. He is the one one on the right.
You’ve got it tied up in a nutshell doctor!
Excellent! All we need now is about 1 million exiles and our friends to do likewise until we drive the murderous thieves from Cuba…
One million exiles or better yet one Cuban General who finally decides to put his country above his own stolen wealth. Just three bullets would make for a great start.
Half a dozen bullets at least. fidel, raul, alarcon, perez roque, darth ramirez, and one more for that odious Randy Alonso.