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It was a meeting to discuss expanded relations with Cuba (despite Vice President Biden's position against it) yet the accounts sound as though those who attended had met Joe Jonas and not one of the most brutal dictators in world history.
"It was almost like listening to an old friend,” Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D) said of Fidel Castro after he and several other members of the Congressional Black Caucus traveled to Havana to meet the dictator. The legislators were wowed by Castro's famous parlor trick of knowing all about them, like their names and districts, knowledge he obtained after being prepped.
“In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor," Rush continued, without any trace of irony.
Er, what about Castro's actual survivors? Myriam Marquez notes:
"If only the group had met with even one prisoner of conscience or one of the wives, mothers, daughters or sisters of the 75 independent journalists, librarians and human-rights advocates imprisoned in Cuba's ''Black Spring'' of 2003. They would have easily spotted the Ladies in White in Havana on Palm Sunday, walking in protest to raise awareness about their men's harsh sentences for daring to think outside the communist box of limitations.
[...]
The black U.S. lawmakers' concerns weren't for the 300-plus Cuban prisoners of conscience listed by Amnesty International or the hundreds of dissidents working from their homes under the watch of a totalitarian regime. Or the lack of civil rights in a country with a majority black and mixed-race population ruled by an overwhelmingly white gerontocracy."
Karen at Pondering Penguin notes the irony of a group that champions civil rights lavishing praise onto a leader who ignores rights for his own people:
I thought a main concern of the Caucus was human rights. There are none in Cuba. Fidel is fond of imprisoning critics and killing them at whim. There is no religious freedom - Cubans are not allowed to even have a religious book, whether a Bible or other, to even be out in the open in their own private home. It is an imprisonable offense.
The group sang the praises of Fidel and Raul because they "let" them worship on Palm Sunday. Interesting. Too bad the ordinary Cuban has no such freedom.
If the goal is to gain support for repealing the embargo on Cuba, speaking of racist murderer in glowing terms isn't the best bet. Ignoring the mound of dead bodies that Castro climbed to ascend to his catbird seat insults the victims, their families, and those who still struggle within the country.
"How can we help President Obama,?" Castro asked the CBC.
Here’s an idea. The old buzzard could dismantle the real concentration camp on Cuba … that part of the island that is not Guantanamo … and die.
Marquez says in a separate piece:
Let’s not forget why Bush imposed a tougher U.S. policy: Cuba’s Black Spring, when the regime arrested 75 independent librarians, journalists and human-rights activists and handed most of them 20-year sentences. The regime’s response to three black Cubans trying to take a ferry out of Havana Harbor was to kill them by firing squad. Case closed.
It seems many think that freedom and personal liberty are exclusively western ideals.
The embargo hasn't worked and Castro proved that his style of government has failed miserably regardless of it. However, Castro has been successful in one thing: his public relations campaign to portray Cuba as the victim of the big bad United States. It's pretty simple, really: stop killing your people and we'll ease up. People have demanded that our government make concessions for Cuba but yet have required that the Cuban government make little, if any, concessions of their own.
I see the argument for lifting the restrictions - but not because I want to play nice with the Cuban government. Once people get a taste of liberty they hunger for more. Plant the seeds now and a revolution blooms later. Freedom begets power.
However, I could care less about improving our image to the world with a <fingers> goodwill gesture</fingers> of easing restrictions. Why should the Cubans not ease their restrictions? Oh, let's throw confetti: their people can posses cellphones now. Rush said that he found Castro to be warm and inviting and Mrs. Castro to be hospitable. To American legislators whom they're playing like fiddles, yes. Towards the people that protest against them, like Eugenio de Sosa Chabau, well, define "hospitable." Castro's security services tortured de Sosa Chabau by
