On going rogue, coicidences and great minds thinking alike...

My dear friend Marta, from My Big Fat Cuban Family, frequently tells me that "great minds think alike". And so true is this that last night, between FB exchanges, we realized we are both reading the same book. Again.

This is the third time in a row. It happened with "Liberty and Tyranny". It happened with "The 5000 Years Leap". And it happened again. Trust me, I don't believe in coincidences.

This time it was Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue", which I picked up at my local library last night, on my way home from work.

And I even had people at the library parking lot asking me how I got in the top of the waiting list to request the book. Not that I had any backstage connection, you know. It was probably good timing and that they probably acquired more than one copy...

Yes. Strangers talking about a book from a hockey Mom that changed the paradigm in the presidential campaign, that is shaking the liberal skeleton of this nation, that has become the worse nightmare of the US wannabe-corrupt-radical-communist-at-heart president, and has stepped up to the plate for what feminism really is: woman's freedom to choose.

Last night at the dinner table, my father, recently arrived from Cuba, enthusiastically asked: "Did you buy Sarah Palin's book?". "No Dad, this is borrowed from the library, but as I always do, if I like it, I already have it in my shopping cart on Amazon, so I'll buy it."

I immediately grabbed the opportunity to explain him how the MSM has played such a dirty role since Palin became the VP nominee for McCain, and how the media have consistently "gang raped" her and her family in public, in an unprecedented fashion that this country never saw before, with no political candidate whatsoever. Shameful, we both agreed.

Then I stumbled upon this masterful piece from American Thinker "The wilding of Sarah Palin", posted at Babalu Blog: the symbolic political rape of Sarah Palin the Marxist, radical, corrupt and communist left of this country is conducting, on a daily basis, and with the green light from the White House.

I agree; now everything makes senses.
Palin's political rape make one thing clear: we are not dealing with naive, tree huggers, useful idiots leftists anymore.

They have all shown their true faces of radical Marxists that don't believe a crap of woman's rights if it doesn't fit their sicko agenda.

The only thing I wish is that she really knew how much we, women and Americans at large, need her in the future of this country - if there is any hope left to don't lose it forever.

It was this hope on her which brought me to HillBuzz, an interesting and out of the ordinary blog written by a group of gay men in Boystown, Chicago, faithful followers of Hillary Clinton, outraged by the way the Democratic Party dealt with her candidacy, staunch critics of The Messiah (Dr. Utopia), Democrats who supported McCain/Palin after Hillary was out, and yes, fellow supporters of Sarah Palin.

See? This is what scares the living hell out of these Marxists perpetrators that are trying to hunt Palin alive.

The woman is able to bring together people from all walks for life, with all sort of political views, putting aside our disagreements on specific issues to unite for under one higher goal: common sense and the simple difference between doing the right thing, or doing the wrong one.

BONUS: The extraordinary thank you letter the boys at HillBuzz wrote directly to former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush, on the days of the terrorist massacre at Fort Hood. Again, no matter the differences and disagreements, it is a simple fact of doing the right thing and being honorable.

One of the saddest parts of the last 50 years...

It's the story Willy Chirino narrates in this song. The song that always bring tears to my eyes and, inevitably, takes me back to the society where I grew up, where "the future ran away after jumping off the malecón"--heading North.



It is the tale of a lot of young Cuban women that have chosen prostitution in order to survive. I wouldn't dare to judge them, since only one can knows what circumstances in life can take you there.

But this song is the condensed version of the bizarre --but so real-- Cuban world that Amir Valle describes in his book "Jineteras" -which I have read and think it was very good.

Well, let me tell you; el cuartico sigue igualito. Nothing have changed, even though the tourism in the island is in shambles.

It's a heartbreaking reality that not everybody is willing to see. It's the cruel paradox of those that want to promote democracy for Cuba, one mojito at a time.

Quick update

I am still working in the re-design, working like crazy at my home that has been dubbed “The Cuban Consulate” over here and reading… three books at the same time –I know, that is kinds of nerdy of me, but I can’t help it.

“La Ficción Fidel“, by Zoé Valdés (review and sneak peak here, “Fleeced” -would you please, check out the book description? Thanks.- by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann and ”The Case Against Barack Obama“, by David Fredosso -second round here, because there was a endless waiting list in my local library to get this book- are all piling up in my nightstand and heaving on my bag every where I go.

Any doubts I still have gazillions of thing to learn?

La otra cara de la leyenda negra

O sea que, todo parece indicar que a Abel Santamaría los esbirros de Batista nunca le sacaron los ojos (o el ojo, pues ni su propia hermana estuvo muy segura cuando declaró ante el juez).

Le zumba el merequeté! (Tendrá eso algo que ver con el suicidio de la señora?; nada especulando un poco...)

Acabo de caer de la mata con el sneak-preview que el Profesor Antonio de la Cova da en su contestación, publicada en el blog de Emilio Ichikawa, a un artículo del periódico Trabajadores.

En "A Mano Limpia", el año pasado salieron a la luz muchos más detalles. Primera Parte. Segunda Parte. Tercera Parte. Cuarta Parte. Quinta Parte. Sexta Parte

Con razón en los libros de historia que me "tocaron" --después de quedar con el corazón arrugado ante tanto cuento detallado de tanta tortura-- nunca vi ninguna foto del pobre mártir sin ojos. A mí, por lo que veo, me tocó "la leyenda negra".

Hasta qué punto puedo saber qué tanta verdad hubo en la historia que me tocó aprender? Me pregunto dónde estarán las fotos originales que los militares tomaron de los muertos? Habrán desaparecido por relevelaban algunas inconvenient truths? La de la prueba de la parafina es, indiscutiblemente, una de las más poderosas.

Cada día que pasa, cada nuevo libro o documento que leo me lleva a pensar que la manipulación siempre estuvo al orden del día, con el único propósito de servir a sus intereses y de que los cleaning agents que usaban en nuestros cerebros fuesen siempre 100% efectivos.

No puedo hacer más que sumar otro título a mi lista de re-educación y ya lo he pedido en la biblioteca: "The Moncada Attack: birth of the Cuban Revolution". Creo que nunca es tarde para remendar las concepciones equivocadas, torcidas o siemplemente, demasiado ajustadas a los intereses de cualquier bando.

Hopes and history

In this radiography of Cuba's reality, Carlos Alberto Montaner explains the island's only two choices for the future: transition or disaster.

Let's hope we're going to witness the first one.
Let's hope...

Bonus: why rancor is killing a lot of societies out there and a quite interesting lesson of American history, with some party dirty laundry included.
Read it here.

Contra toda esperanza

Even though I know I’m running the risk to repeat myself, there is not other way to say that I’m still in shock, after finishing reading Armando Valladares' book, Contra toda esperanza.

His testimonies about the realities of the Isla de Pinos prison, las tapiadas de la cárcel de Boniato, La Cabaña, el Combinado del Este, at some point are strong enough to leave you speechless.

For me it’s still really hard to process all that information. Not because I don’t believe it, but because sometimes it's hard to believe the reality of the society I grew up in is such a cruel one. Unfortunately, that's the real one.

Now more than ever I feel that those men and women deserve our highest honors for daring to opposed castro’s scheme since day one, and for still being there, speaking up against the regimen.

I just wish I would have known earlier…(and there I go again, with my cantaleta about how robbed and fooled I feel for being born and raised in that “hombre nuevo” generation. What a crap!)

Anyway, through Valladares book, I found really amazing how a man can learn to dominate the fear trusting his strength to God. But, on top of all that, I discovered a love story. A love story that you don’t quite find often in this live of ours.

However, there is a reaction deep in mind that I’ve been noticing while reading this book and the others that I have included in my re-education program.

With “Against all hope” it’s been really stronger, because I still have some blurred memories in my mind of when the regimen broadcasted the footage of Valladares in the hospital (or jail, I can’t remember the details).

I was a kid, I think that in elementary school, but I do remember that the message was to let us know he was a liar and that he was just pretending to be unable to walk. Obviously, the regimen was portraying itself as being super fair and benevolent for providing him with medical care.

I wondered who this man was and why those footage were filmed with hidden cameras. They were in black and white (as our tv at home) and the images were pretty bad. Then, as usual with castro’s campaigns, everything vanished and there were no more words about him.

And there is also the reaction of thinking that I lived in Alamar, in a zone that is basically across the street form el Combinado del Este. It terrifies me to think how many horrors where taking place so close to my house, my entire family, my neighborhood.

It is also shocking to learn about the murders and tortures in La Cabaña, the place where I used to work while until a left Cuba. It’s a weird thing. A very weird feeling.

There you are, reading the description of the physical places in the book and, as an involuntary reflex, you are trying to map out in your mind where that place is, or if you were ever close to it while you were working in La Divina Pastora, totally clueless about all the blood that was shed between those ancient walls.

You read about the little bridge and the arms deposit and I can’t help to think in El Polvorín, that was a bar when I used to work there.

I read about the paredón and I can’t help to think if may be I was in that place, during that celebration when I was like 11 or 12 years old. It took place not in the side where the restaurants are, but in the side that back then only the military has access to it.

A group of outstanding students from my school –destacados, were invited to this military ceremony or parade. I don’t even remember exactly what it was for. It was in an open space inside the military part of the fortress, surrounded by ancient and thick walls. Far away in one side, there were things that now I supposed are las galeras. All that was being repaired to become a museum.

I was selected to read a proclamation at the beginning of the ceremony and everyone was pretty nervous, running here and there, speculating if fidel or raúl would arrive at the very last minute. (Man, we were so naïve back then!). I went up there and read it and when I turned to my side, there he was, raúl with su cara de curda. Go figure!

The ceremony ended, we (the kids) all were fed a very nice merienda and shipped back to our school. Borrón y cuenta nueva and everybody was very happy.

Those are the things that clogg my mind when I read these testimonies.

I’m glad that I now leave in a free society where I can read all the sides of any given story, and make my own conclusions. Sometimes is sad to see clearly how I was fooled and lied to, but I’m thankful to God, the Providence or whoever is up there for having opened my eyes about to the truth of the revolution after I graduated from high school.

I just wish I would have done it earlier; but again, someone up there is designing your path, and there is nothing that you can do to avoid it.

Just found you can download a condensed version of the book, in pdf, here. Now, a different though as a closing note: what a useless and hypocrite organization the UN is! –but that’s a topic for another post.

Cómo llegó la noche

Today is also coincidence's day.

While putting together some thoughts to post about my latest reading, "Cómo llegó la noche", by Huber Matos, I stompped with this interview Juan Gonzáles Febles did with him, for Cubanet.

And I've been amused, one more time, by his testimony. There is no way to tell you the things I've discovered reading his memoirs.

Amid people who say bad and good things about him --I still haven't met someone that, one way or the other, hasn't been fooled by the castro's machine... lucky those who opened their eyes one time and escaped alive to tell their stories-- after reading the book I was left with a feeling of having met someone consecuente con sus principios, con todas las de la ley.

As a young child, I lived in Camaguey. And, among some blurred memories from my surroundings and the people back there, I remember his name was pronounced as a whisper. I had no idea why or whom they were talking about. Now I know. Now I understand the whispering.

I don't know if this Cuba's re-education program is gonna make me any good, or if it's going to make it worse. But when you read stories like this, you reach a dimension where you really realize the evil and terror that Cuba has suffered for half a century. And how your family, your relatives, your friends and yourself have been just un grupo de peones en la mesa de ajedrez.

It is unavoidable, for a person like me, from the generation of "el hombre nuevo", the process of going back and re-examine everything you were taught, everything you were told, everything you've always heard.

It is also unavoidable the sense of being robbed. The feeling that a bunch of scumbags stole you entire life, twisting the reality you've know since you were born.

And it is a lesson. A cold turkey lesson of the prisons in Cuba, of the terror story of El Presidio Modelo, a macabre lesson of the evil that lies behind the royal pieces of the so called Cuban revolution.

This book is a must. And I am extremely glad to know that is been circulating in the island. People need to know. The Cuban people needs to read zillion of testimonies like this.

Para no perder la costumbre, I'm now reading "Against all hope", by Armando Valladares.

Las reinas de la noche in Havana

Those are the jineteras.
And jineteros for what matters.

And I just finished reading the most heartbreaking story about their daily lives in the worker's paradise. I'm talking about the book Jineteras, by Cuban writer Amir Valle.

I can't tell you enough times how heartbreaking some of the testimonies are. I can't tell you enough times what a such a piece hypocrite the communist dictatorship has been for half a century, trying to deny this fact of the Cuban society.

I did have to skip some parts, though.
I just couldn't stand the narrative of the chronological history of prostitution in Cuba, going as far back as the time of the taínos. They couldn't hook me up.

In general, I liked the book because through his interviews, Valle shows to the world some of the hidden truths of communist's Cuba.
Yeah, the perfect world, my a...

I would never dare to judge the people who had the courage to talk about them the way they did for the book. Since a very young age, I've decided I'm nobody to judge anybody else's actions; God knows what made them chose that path.
That's what I had in mind when I started reading.

However, the book also left me with some bitter taste and thoughts of an undecided author.
Let me explain you why.

I do not expect that all books about Cuba ought to be a rant against Castro in the most extremist terms. Actually, the mastery of an author is demonstrated when he can do so in a subtle style, IMHO.

But with Jineteras, several times I felt that, even when Valle was critizicing the system by exposing its dirty laundry, I perceived him as trying to apologize for doing so.

It might sound speculative, but it was like if he had some interest in Cuba that could be damaged if he dared to take a different position.

I felt, in some parts of the book, as if it was a sugar-coated exposé.

And, even when extremism is not a good position in life because in this world not everything is black and white, there are some instances when you have to be straight forward, y tirar con todos los cañones.

The issue calls for that kind of artillery.
And that power of fire is missing in key parts of this book.

But I am not disheartened. One more book down.
I keep on going in my own Cuba's re-education program.

FYI, I'm also reading "Unvanquished, Cuba's resistance to Fidel Castro", by Enrique Encinosa. And I've started a list. A list of the things I am discovering about the real story of the so called revolution.