Val,

Who are you talking about? Did some high-profile individual on "our side" call us the "Miami Mafia?"
By the way, I would go one step further, it goes well beyond being "disingenuous and wrong," it's outright bigotry, slander and hate speech. But of course, Cuban Americans are the one group that it is politically correct to attack. And the horrible thing is that we get it from both sides. We get it from the right and we get it from the left.

Ray,

Worse than that, there's supposedly anti-castro people out there mimicking the same "mafia" line.

Val,

Key word: "supposedly"...

There is nothing wrong with disagreement amongst those who share a common cause. In fact, it is healthy to discuss matters. But when your "friends" begin using the rhetoric and tactics of the enemy, that is another thing altogether.

Sadly, some of the "friends" of the Cuba cause are more interested in self-promotion than the promotion of democracy on the island. In their quest to attain recognition, they are too willing to sacrifice their own if it helps them personally. They will attack and slander their own brothers and sisters.

It is a sad commentary and indicative of why Cuba seems no closer to freedom today than it was 49 years ago.

Part of the problem is that quite a few people want to have it both ways, play both sides of the street and be in good standing with both God and the devil. That approach always winds up breaking down sooner or later, because it's not tenable. Actually, it's irrational, but people keep trying to make it work anyway. At best, it's a sign of insecurity, though there are certainly worse reasons for it, like frank opportunism.

Personally, when tyrants like fidel and raul castro and their sycophants use the mafia term to describe those of us that work to fight their plague, hell, I take that as a badge of honor. If they must resort to ad hominem attacks it's because they have no other recourse. The truth pretty much stares everyone in the face, whether they chose to see it or not.

But it bothers me a great deal when those that are supposedly your peers, supposedly on your side, resort to using the exact same ad hominem attack. These "peers" can disagree with us in many ways, and in many ways can express those disagreements without debasing their own. But when they debase their own, they make themselves look ridiculous, and consequently take the rest of us along with them. Because, you know, how can we expect to topple a Goliath if we cant even respect the people fighting alongside us?

then, of course, there's the petty factor. Where those who dont give a rats ass about the cause cling on to these ad hominem attacks to denigrate us simply because they dont like us or what we believe in.

Case in point: There's already a local blogger and his sycophants making the argument that Im a hypocrite because I posted this while having had Miami Mafia tshirts printed up a few years ago to gather funds for the Cuba Nostalgia convention. His argumemnts and comments are pathetically petty and trifling - as expected from such a parochial mentality - but in essense, it's we who are stoking his lilliputian fires. And farbeit for someone like that to distinguish an act of defiance against an enemy from an insult from a peer.

Does that mean this blogger thinks that blacks who still use the word "nigger" are hypocrites because they don't like whites using it? I seriously doubt he would take such a position, which would seem to make him...a hypocrite.

Val,

What is most disturbing about the term is the fact that it's not used as a generalization to describe a few bad apples involved in shady business dealings or corrupt government deals. Rather, it is used to describe the exile community as a whole - as if it is somehow corrupt or wrong to fight for one's homeland and the dignity of its people. That's what infuriates me. It simply defies logic. As with everything else - it's OK to fight against South African apartheid but, should you do the same thing for the Cuban people, you're labeled a "mafioso."

Cuba Watch,

The thing is, I fully expect the castroites to use the terminology and, quite frankly it doesnt bother me. But when people who dont subscribe to the "fidel is the best" mentality use the term because they disgaree with us on something altogether different, man, that fucking bothers the hell out of me.

It's like this:

If you're uncompromisingly and unequivocally anti-Castro & Co., that may not get you much attention or "credit" even in the Cuban-American community, because you'd only be doing the expected, normative thing.

It would certainly not get you very far in the broader community at large, but rather the opposite. You'd be risking being dismissed or marginalized as "ultraconservative," "rabid," "intransigent hardliner" and so forth.

So what's an insecure, conflicted, ambitious and/or self-seeking type to do? How do you get to be "somebody" and in good standing with the fashionable establishment? We all know the answer.

It's always possible to buy a certain acceptance from a certain crowd for a certain price. Sadly, there are always those ready to "negotiate." Shit happens.