Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Last Protest (Part 1)

The news of the turn out on February 24, 2007, was somewhat disappointing to Marta Flores. Flores, the nicknamed "Queen of the Night" on Radio Mambi, described last Saturday's protest with some disappointment, especially the lack of attendance of young Cuban-Americans. I agree with her description, I was there.

Several Cuban exile organizations gathered at the Jose Marti Park this past Saturday to call for the release of Cuban patriots in US prisons, such as Luis Posada Carriles. This protest is a repetition of the demonstration that occurred on January 19, 2007, at the Bay of Pigs Memorial on Calle Ocho. That event made headlines when counter-protesters where attacked by members of Vigilia Mambisa and their president Miguel Saavedra, all of whom were captured on video and photographed initiating the fight.

This time, some of the same exile groups came out on what turned out to be a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and the bright blue, cloudless sky presented no premonitions of hostilities. As I drove to Jose Marti Park, I had my radio tuned to Radio Mambi and listened to the 12 o'clock news program. By that time, Radio Mambi was already reporting a high turn out for the demonstration. According to El Nuevo Herald, about 500 protesters made the time to come out that day.

Once there, I noticed many other people, couples and families simply enjoying the weather, playing at the park, taking their pictures with the famous Miami River. I also happened to notice a boy scout troop had assembled nearby and were visiting the river front. Nevertheless, this wasn't any other Saturday for the gathered Cuban exiles.

Protesters calling for the release of their Cuban patriots shouted into a megaphone, making their demands to the crowd and the US government. Some, from as far away as Los Angeles, called for their immediate release, while others called for continued struggle. One made it clear to all who listened that the struggle is already underway to liberate Cuba. Never mind the obstacles that they have encountered all these years, one shouted out, they have plans ready for the eventual overthrow of the Cuban government. He assured everyone that many exile groups have their plans ready, and that they are waiting for the right moment.

[Photo by Ariel Remos of Diario Las Americas]

[Part 2]

1 comment:

brickbradford said...

nuevoaccion.com has the pictures of the professional agitators, not very young, who claim to be Bolivarianos, meaning they're liars. They went to the Cuban Exiles demonstrations to agitate and provoke so they could pass for victims. How do you think the 26th of July Movement managed to fool the Cuban Middle Class? By lying and misrepresenting themselves as peaceful, democracy loving, rosary-wearing peasants who meant no harm to anyone. Now the same kinds of people, the liars, spies, agitators, and professional communists paid by Cuban and Venezuelan money, create uproars in Miami by trying to rub in the noses of victims into more communistic shit. Who do you think were the terrorists in Cuba? The Castros assaulted not the Moncada Headquarters near Santiago, but the infirmary in the army headquarters where they proceeded to shoot defenseless and sick soldiers. Then the Castros ran scared and tried to hide. I even know a man, a doctor, who hid some of them thinking he was doing a favor to the return to democracy in Cuba after Batista, and that by helping terrorist (without realizing Castro simply was a terrorist gangster who carried guns to class at the University of Miami and never studied worth crap) he was helping Cuba. The Castros used nighttime bombs, threw chains at electrical lines and made entire towns and cities go into darkness so their followers could throw Molotov cocktails at houses of innocent people who had nothing to do with Batista. Isn't that terrorism? They're experts at it. And you people who now twist the facts about Posada Carriles and others who have fought Castro as Marti and Maceo fought the Spaniards, as Maximo Gomez and Agramonte and Cespedes fought Spain, are a bunch of sickos with money in your pockets destined to seed hatred, divisiveness, and crap wherever you go, all in the name of your own self-importance and selfish desire to amount to something in the eyes of crappy gangsters who rule from Cuba and now Venezuela. You guys sicken me with your distortions. Those of us who were in Cuba, who saw what happened to the revolution (betrayed), who saw how the Castros shot their own friends and fellow revolutionaries who were not commmunists, know what happened and you know we know, and that we're here to open the eyes of the world to the cruelty of your crimes, and the viciousness of your lies and misrepresentations. If you were really interested in bettering the world you live in, in improving the living conditions of Cubans in Cuba, you would open up and tell the world, confirm to the world, the enormity of the barbaric human right violations of the Castros and their pandilleros so that their crimes will be punished sooner than later. Fidel is done with. He's full of feces. He's old, senile, a literally idiotic, scared old man who literally dropped dead in Argentina when a newspaperman asked him a simple question. You could see the cowardly fear in Castro's eyes as he ran to the stairs surrounded by his goons. He couldn't even utter defiance to the journalist. His voice was trembling with fear. That is what he has always been, a cowardly bully, only now he at least knows he is weak and decrepit and that he can't even tell lies about how great a baseball pitcher he once was. All that is myth. What was true is how he shot a friend outside the University of Havana, and how he participated in El Bogotazo (another terrorist act), and how he even shot friends of his in Mexico while preparing the Gramma expedition to Cuba in 1956. Castro, my beloved idiots, is a murderer, a gangster, a liar, and totally incapable of keeping his word, negotiating anything in good faith. Castro is your master, and you are all going to hell with him.