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Let Cuba Live
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Cuban annexation currents in the US Congress

by Manuel E Yepe, translation by W. T. Whitney Jr.

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=133658 (Spanish)

Yepe's article, translated by Tom Whitney, touches upon collaboration between power elites of both countries over two centuries . U.S. annexation of Cuba was in the air as U.S. slave owning interests and sugar barons in Cuba sought to maintain slavery in both countries. Cuban emigration to the United States figures in. As recalled recently by Cuban Parliament president Ricardo Alarcon, 100,000 people from Havana alone left Cuba in 1869 for haven in the United States. They were fleeing Cuba's First War for Independence, fought by freed slaves. Alarcon noted that in 1958, prior to the Revolution, Cuba was second in Latin America only to Mexico in sending people north. Now Cuba has fallen to eighth place. He condemned the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Law of 1966 under which all Cubans leaving the island after 1959, and only Cubans, gain U. S. welcome. Both observers portray manipulation of migration and of resident Cubans as serving imperial designs Thanks to Judy Robbins of Sedgwick, Maine for bringing Yepe's article to our attention.

The fact that a few more than a million and a half Cubans in the United States (not all have the right to vote) have two senators and four representatives in the Congress in Washington is remarkable. That's a greater proportion than that claimed by Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the United States. Those people, through their incomparably greater numbers and through the colonial status that is their lot, ought to have expanded representation.

The Cubans have greater representation in Congress than people living in the states of Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Utah, Rhode Island, Maine, Hawaii, and New Mexico.

Just like the urge for independence, annexationism in Cuba also had roots in the Cubans' disenchantment with Spanish colonialism. Both currents vied with the reformist way of thinking aspiring merely to ease the colonial yoke. While the rest of Spain's provinces in the America gained independence, dutiful Cuba stayed true to its reputation as the "always faithful," together with Puerto Rico.

In common with economic elites that moved to North America in the 1960's, Cuban annexationists who did the same in the 19th Century were taking issue with the independence ideas of Cuban revolutionaries.

Hundreds of Batista tyranny functionaries, lacking all decency, arrived in Miami in 1959 with their suitcases filled with dollars stolen from the public treasury. Hundreds of military oppressors, torturers, and assassins also fled, their hands bloodied. They eluded criminal justice, and, of course, rejected any thought of social justice. These two groups gave rise to what would become Miami's Cuban Mafia which, under the administrations of eleven White House occupants, has loomed over U.S. – Cuban relations for more than a half century.

These crooks combined vast criminal experience with CIA training for terrorist and military missions against Cuba to impose gangster control methods over the whole Cuban immigrant population in Florida. The power they gained over voting in elections was added to their economic power derived from ill-gotten gains. Now, the two parties handing out electoral offices in the United States compete to take advantage of that political power.

U.S. hegemony, threatened by the decision of revolutionary leaders to take real power in Cuba on behalf of people's interests and their strategic and urgent demands, opted for violence to take back control of the island. Toward that end, those trained oppressors prepared by Pentagon advisors during the Batista tyranny turned out to be more useful than the bourgeoisie who were demanding the United States return large landholdings to them, along with businesses nationalized by the revolution.

But the failures of violent plots, one after the other, persuaded extreme U.S. rightwing elements, especially during Bush presidencies, father and son, to opt for empowering right wing Cuban extremists in Southern Florida. Behind the scenes, they provided them with disproportionate political representation.

Most Cuban American politicians – descendents, many of them, of once powerful Cuban political figures or of repressive Batista police agents – began their political careers while Washington was carrying out violent assaults on Cuba. The attackers were CIA-armed extremist groups and other spy and subversion gangs, in Miami and New Jersey principally.

Cuban-American congresspersons and politically powerful leaders in the Cuban community still give priority to the line that rejects contact with Cuba. In the base community, however, one already detects big changes not reported in the corporate media.

A recent letter writing fracas between Hillary Clinton and Lleana Ros-Lethenien suggests that the latter, a 'Batista – inclined' congresswoman, is more hostile to the interests of Cuban immigrants than the U.S. Secretary of State.

I believe that annexationist thought does not really characterize the whole population of Cubans who left for the United States, then or now. Relatively few of them have been inclined to satisfy their own ambitions by taking advantage of U. S. appetites regarding Cuba and renouncing their Cuban identity. Jose Marti originally and Fidel Castro a little more than half a century ago, were successful in promoting a movement based on independence ideology and struggle among Cuban immigrants in the United States. The roots are still there, despite campaigns of hate and lies.

August 8, 2011