I have a question.....how was life under the rule of Fulgencio Batista??I heard owning Casinos was a golden opportunity back then....but oh wait....mostly casino owners where foreingners no?? that actually dint give a damn about Cubans.But hey....then again US relations where pretty good anyways....whit all that exploitation,drug trade,prostitution,organized crime,etc....everyone was pretty busy making money....and worring about their own personal little lives....nobody had time to think about human rights abuse and the poor.Anyways.... im just asking questions....

maggie's farm http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/
I write a lot on the latin situation and love reading your blog. I especially like the Cagastro term I would love to use it. Keep up the good work as more people are reading the blogs than the papers in America that don't consider writing about Latin news until there is a crisis.

What is happening with Luis Posada Carriles?

D,
I thought for a moment that you were refering to the dictatorship of cagastro, sorry!!!!
What you describe is what exist in Cuba nowadays. Very accurate description, you made a mistake, though... you misidentified the dictator!
Other than that, I won't even take time to set you straight, because at this point and time, you should have gotten history right. But if you keep on flunking this miserably, there's nothing that can be done. Go work on your grammar and spelling now that you're at it.

Opie,
Please feel free to use cagastro to refer to that beast anytime you needed. Just say in a footnote that you heard about it in Babalublog!

"D": you are a blithering idiot, and an unrepentant, castro-loving imbecile.

Do you know who was employed by those casinos? Hmm? Cubans, you moron. My grandfather was one of those and he made a very good living in the 30s and 40s doing it. And, speaking of prostitution, have you heard of the jineteras? Women in today's Cuba -- not Batista's -- who have to prostitute themselves to make ends meet?

Go and crawl back into the hole from where you slithered out of, you dolt.

There. That felt much better.

Well you know....if your grandfather was pretty happy i guess,knowing that is own country din't belong to him....but to US investors and the mafia.And prostitution has always been there anyways...and will stay for a long time...jineteras,putes,bitches,sharmuta's...what ever you might call them...world's oldest job...and you will usually find them at the exit of casino's.
Im not saying Castro is doing good right now.....he got corrupted like every single man whit power.If your ancestors got kicked out of the island because they where sympathizer's of Batista and US capital.....to sad for them.Happens everywhere...and sometimes its the communists that have to exile.You'l get to go back to your island someday...i personaly wish it to every "honest" Cuban.But remember not to get fucked over again....by foreigners.

Sorry for the "grammar and spelling"....but i think you all got the message.Thats the important part.

mr cagastro said on national TV (actually, international satellite broadcast through Cubavision International) that natural gas is way too expensive to cook with since apparently not even with doubled up minimum salarys the damned gas is affordable!

He wants to "give away to the people" Chinese electric stoves. I got word that he will also "give away" Chinese fridges and Chinese fans.

Why fans? Because you need them to thaw the ice in the freezers of those Chinese fridges (even with his fat wad of greenbacks, he is not generous enough to "give away" fridges equiped with no-frost freezers)

Just imagine the scene!!!! cagastro on national tv rambling about fridge maintenance (no Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance, this is cagastrism and the art of freezer thawing!!!)

Again, the Tyranosaurius Rex* has a special talent to make a fool of himself on a global broadcast.

Maybe D and his bunch are clapping madly, who knows.

*Tyranusaurius Cubensis Rex, Silvestris Nativitatus, vulgar name: cagastrosaurius.

D, as someone .... who enjoys writing .... I have to say .... that using .... ellipses to make .... your points .... doesn't work. Clean it up, please.

My grandfather Rogelio (1890-1977), rest his soul, was a Cuban patriot. He participated in the political process just like we do here in the USA. He was proud of his country and he did not hate the US for investing in it. He was friendly and grateful to America. He may not have liked the extent of its involvement, but nevertheless, he saw it as "the reality" of the situation: US investment meant jobs, same as it does today all over the world. Wasn't Cuba a veritable slave of the USSR because of the multi-billion dollar "stipend" it paid to Cuba? I don't see you mentioning that. You know why? Because the US is always the bad guy in the eyes of folks like you: biting the hand that feeds you.

The dense and obtuse (no offense) among still cling to that ideal of the self-sufficient, agrarian society that can fend off "colonialists" and "imperialists" and live life like the happy little ignorant brown folk that we are percieved as. That is bullshit. The Golden Rule is 'that he that has the gold makes the rules.' Until you come to terms with that precious little nugget of wisdom and embrace it you are doomed to a life of idiothood.

Also, D, just to educate you on Cuban history, foreigners didn't do this to us: WE DID IT TO OURSELVES. fidel was a home-grown dictator, just as Bastista was. Born and bred in Santiago de Cuba. He hated and envied America from a very young age. The Cuban people, in their ignorance, listened to fidel. He transferred that hatred and envy and was brought to power. Make no mistake, though, the US helped fidel as much as Batista, to its everlasting shame.

I would suggest you do something that may be alien to you: read some history. Not just one source, but many sources. Read Hugh Thomas, read Geyer, read Montaner, go to my website and read Miguel Angel Quevedo's suicide letter.

Maybe then you'll understand that the real tragedy of Cuba was that we could not leave well enough alone. "The trouble, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves."

D;

After you graduate from high school, y'know, after your ripped RATM and _Motorcycle Diaries_ seem, y'know, old 'n' stuff, maybe you could drop the 50 friggin' year old "Yanqui" rhetoric?

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
--- Pete Townsend

And both of 'em are locally grown!
--- Organic Dictators Co-Op

FORTY SIX fucking years of explaining Batista vs Castro . MAN it gets BORING

NO, wait it gets just plain moronic! Why doesn’t anyone compare the USA in 1958 to that of that today ?

Las Vegas WAS ruled by the mafia, NYC was ruled by the Mafia. Today The mafia rules NOTHING and no-one is writing billboards about it or taking credit for RIDDING the USA of the stronghold of the mafia. It was just a democratic process. The path of self learning every country takes.

South Africa had an apartheid but Batista's Cuba dint although they do have one now ....
Which way the progress went?
Do we applaud Castro for bringing apratheid to Cuba ?

Blacks USED to ride the back of the buses in the USA they don’t anymore.. did they need a Castro like dictator to pull that coup ? Nope DEMOCRACY took care of human injustices.

The same would have happened in Cuba.
As far as Cuba being controlled by “foreign” interests?
Foreign investments in a country is a “bad” thing?
Who owns Sony in the USA? Who owns BMW, Mercedes JVC, TOYOTA?
Only an idiot would frown at a country healthy and productive enough to attract foreign investments. And by the way the MONOPOLIES Castro is so fond of slamming were no where to be found in 1959 ! He has to go back to colonial times to come up with examples of latifundist colonialisms. But of course since your knowledge of Cuba only covers 46 years of thorough propaganda you are at an disadvantage as far as history goes. The Phone company was a CO OWNERSHIP of Cuban and USA investors. The gasoline refineries paid the BEST salaries and health benefits to CUBAN workers. Who gives a shit as to who owns what if the country benefits? Now were the big industries NOT represented at all by Cubans ?
Who owned, Bacardi ? Partagas ? Pilon ?
It is so asinine to keep this god damn game going. Let’s go back to whoever was in power in 1958 in Mexico and see how THAT country was doing.
And “D” who do you think owns the majority of the REAL substantial investments in Cuba in 2005? , Cubans? LOL !
The north shore of Cuba is owned by Spain the south coast by Italy and other European countries, but people like you seem to believe that the people of Cuba are an independently and fiscally autonomous.
The ONLY difference from Batista’s time (or any other president before) was that foreign investments were respected and guaranteed. Today if Castro feels that he made a bad deal with the Melia chain he will just blackmail the suckers into oblivion. Now if YOU consider THAT autonomy or good politics then you should indeed get a Castro effigy and bow down to the SUMO HIJO DE PUTA!
And the day Castro gets hung by his wrinkly gonads I DO hope that TONS of foreign investment comes in, OODLES of it, cause the country will be left with NOTHING ! Or they can just leave it as it is and have “travel to the past” tours.
Check this travel agency advert”
15 minutes from Miami and you will step back to a time where , wagons were pull by oxen, were houses were built out of mud and people’s teeth were mostly missing…. Quaint uh?

Whenever I heard "Batista" I yawn. Apparently whoever uses that argument to defend the cagastrosaurius is stuck in a retro sci-fi hellhole.
Whatabout all of us who came here as grown men and women well after the instauration of the tyranny? Or the young dissidents in Cuba?
That person who revels in mentioning Batista should read the 1940 Constitution, see the statistics for Cuba in 1958 and compare to what cagastro has achieved in 2005. Not even the sugar industry survived him!

D stands for Dummy, he doesn't realize that if Batista had had the support of everybody who went into exile and the support of everybody who was shot to death, as claimed, cagastro would had not been able to usurpate power. Therefore, cagastro impossed a regime of terror on the majority of Cubans. Anyway he wants to look at it!

Good smackdown, KC. Cripes, it's not a choice between Batista and barbudo. It's the bearded thug versus progress. Nothing is worse than the thug.

Leftists are clueless.

M y L -
For those of us who were little children during the Batista years, even WE think that the Batista years were saturated with unspeakable repression, anguish, hunger and human suffering.
I recently read a great article (Wish I had noted the source)
from an ex-Castrist who explains the reality of what the Castro vs. Batista was all about.
It was pretty much two political parties were one decided to use weapons, fear and destruction to go into power instead of a political campaign.
There was NO division of ideals in Cuba to the extend the cultists lead you to believe. There was NO repression during Batista years any more that any other country was repressed in the 1950s. (With the exception of the communist block of coursse)

These assholes FORGET that both the Socialist party and the Communist party backed Batista.
I read our OWN history and I am flabbergasted as to what mythological piece of Hollywood shit it has become during the 46 years of Cult fanaticism.

Speaking to my dad I asked him “So how bad REALLY was life in Cuba under Batista”
And he responded it became TERRIBLE.... after Castro began his acts of terrorism.
I didn’t know this but do you know that Castro would threaten Cuban citizens EVERY DAY (over the radio) ?

His tirades would include “if you go out tonight, to a movie or a restaurant be ready to get BLOWN up!
Now if YOU are Batista what would your reaction be? Specially knowing that the SUMO HIJO DE PUTA was un in La Sierra because YOU pardoned him !
Man ANYTHING that even smelled of Castrismo, July 26, etc should be burned to the ground.
How did the USA react after 9/11 ? That is how Batista reacted to Castro’s terrorism.
Were people tortured? Hell YEAH ! Were they shot and dumped in the gutter? Hell yeah! They were TERRORISTS for god’s sake’s. These motherfuckers were blowing restaurants, movie theaters, schools etc.
The FIRST PUBLICLY ADMITED AND CERTIFIED TERRORIST OF THE AMERICAS . FIDEL CASTRO
I think THAT says it all.