Babalu Blog

While I'm Danish not Swedish I can try and give a shot at it tomorrow if no one beets me to it.

Hi Val Priete,

I just read the article on Cuba in DN and that led me to your blog.
Translation of the last part, about you:

"Val Priete came to Miami with his parents at age three. He's running babalublog.com, a lively debate forum around questions regarding Cuba. In principle, Priete is for a continuation of the embargo.
- But the US stand so alone. I wish that countries with their own experience with communism, such as Poland, Tcheckia and Hungary, would drive the Cuba question harder within EU. As it is now, you Europeans like Fidel because he gives the US his finger! And Castros oppression is softened in your eyes because Cubans are such happy and sensual people.
-But there is no difference between the oppression in Belarus, and the one in Cuba. We have better music (than Belarus), and for that we have to suffer, says Val Priete and hisses his eyebrows, as to mark the joke. But his eyes are serious."

The rest of the article, in short:
Exile Cubans ready for time after Castro (title).
Fidels Castros health may not be the best, but his soul is still present in the Cuban neighborhoods in Miami. A rather new view on Cuba after Castro is taking shape.
The Gonzales, who left Cuba in 1964, due to Castros oppression of religion. They lived in New York and moved to Cuba five yeras ago when they retired. Before they dreamt about returning to Cuba one day, but not anymore. However, they can never become "real" Americans, Daisy says. People here think too much about money.
Her husband says he does not believe in changes in Cuba even after Castro, since he has changed the mentality of Cubans and they don't know of any other Cuba than his.

In Calle Ocho, Mr Gomez who runs a cigar factory says that this area is more Havanna than Havanna herself. He makes "real" Cuban cigars, although the tobacco is grown in Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. - When Fidel dies I'm going to smoke a really nice one, he says.

However, the name of the game has changed during the many years after the revolution. Castro has survived, even after the fall of the Soviet Union. One Cuban intellectual says that " we are already living in the time after Castro, but the communistic Cuba still remains".
- Of course I'm hoping for a democratic change, but the question on who will lead Cuba is up to the Cubans, says CANF-leader Fransisco Hernandez, and he doesn't want to intervene in Cuban domestic policy.

Professor of sociology, Hugh Gladwin, says he can see a change in opinions among exile Cubans. Many of them want to help family in Cuba economically and does not favor a strict embargo. On the other side, the embargo has a very strong symbolic importance, to oppose Castro. To end it would mean a feeling of loss to both Washington and the exile Cubans.

I think it might be more correct to say that "Fidel Castro looms large over Miami" rather than "his soul is still present in the Cuban neighborhoods in Miami."

"Val" must be the Swedish word for "whale" because every computer-generated translation of this text calls you "Whale Priete."

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