With Cuba being more open in the past year than in a long time in it's history a steady agreed transit of visitors from both sides it might not be long before Cuban citizens can visit their relatives in the United States, before Cubans living in America weren't allowed go back onto the island.
But throughout 1980 a massive transit of Cuban citizens were shifted from Mariel Harbor near Havana straight to South Florida, this became known as the Mariel Boat lift and was soon to turn into an immigration nightmare!
After Castro agreed to let anyone who wanted to leave to do so, this followed when several Cubans attempted to gain entry into embassies particularly the Peruvian embassy and the Venezuela embassy.
Following an incident were 10,000 Cuban citizens crowded the compound grounds of the Peruvian embassy in Havana Castro stated that the port of Mariel would be opened to anyone wishing to leave Cuba, as long as they had someone to pick them up.
A total of 120,000 Cubans arrived in South Florida several forced into detention centers, it was later discovered that several of these people were forced over were as Castro had called them "undesirables, several of whom were dredges from his jails.
This was an interesting episode in Cuban and American relations and was a chance of openness thirty years ago which one could say was completely smeared with dishonesty and sneakiness by Castro.
Glenn Beck is a moron, proof of this can be seen in the "Real Story" section of his show.
This is usually the point where he takes a current news story, adds nothing to it but a few bad jokes and wild accusations, and then claims he is revealing some deep, dark truth to his viewer. He uses stupid, trite catchphrases like "cut and run" and "I'm a conservative but I happen to not be a Republican." Here it is put into work on the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara also known as 'Che the Revolutionary'.
I'll mention the "1,400 people on a log" bit later but first I'll analyze what truth of the matter this doofus is trying to put across, he starts by completely ignoring the background of the revolution and goes on to actually call his 40 year old dead subject a Stalinist era mass murder.
I'm not sure if he was referring there to the mere 300 or so people that were summarily executed (overseen by Che Guevara) following the revolution under a tribunal (since what was feared was that the mass oppressed Cuban people from the era of the Batista dictatorship would take matters into their own hands and murder them in the post revolution confusion).
This was when some 20,000 Cubans estimated to have been killed at the hands of Batista's accomplices, a survey at the time showing 93% public approval for the tribunal process, the newly empowered Cuban government along with Guevara concurred.
The Hugo Chavez reference made me cringe, maybe Beck should do some real journalism and look at the damage American imperialism has done to Latin America up until this day instead of spewing falsehoods on a dead man who was willing to do more for humanity than he could fathom.
A quote from a real man called Nelson Mandela relating to Che comes to my mind.
"Che Guevara is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom, we will always honor his memory."
Also comparing Che to Hitler doesn't make sense to me because I know who Adolf Hitler and Che Guevara were and the comparison that isn't there, but I suppose Beck's audience are people whose only understanding of history was that Hitler was just evil and therefore comparing Che Guevara to him must make Che just evil as well, anyone who believes their audience to be that gullible really doesn't deserve to have an audience.
For the sake of saving some time I will not go into any specific detail over the mass slaughter of Japanese civilians in the Pacific Theater in World War II a few years before Che the revolutionary came to being or the 3,000,000 Vietnamese that were murdered after his death, or the US support for the Contras in Nicaragua.
Now onto the retarded 1,400 people on a log trying to get to the United States I think he is referring to the handful of people over the past few years who have built home made rafts in an attempt to reach Florida, but there was never an instant where it was even over a hundred on a log as he put it yet alone so random number like 1,400 meaning that Glenn being the big blubbering moron he is obviously pulled this random and large number straight from his ass.
However there was one instance where over 125,000 Cubans arrived in South Florida in the Mariel boat lift in 1981, here is an interesting video on their impact when they arrived in America and were free!
The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959 saw the 82 man guerrilla force enter Havana and take it under socialist control, Cuba was now Castro's and he quickly made changes, preferably showing off his revolution in the United Nations befriending the Soviet Union and nationalizing the free market system the US set up in Cuba during the time of Batista, the new Cuban economy was made up primarily of sugar cane which was burned by saboteurs who supported the US internally in all provinces in Cuba.
It was the only real wealth they had and made the Castro government angry, yet he had most of the country behind him and some 250,000 ready troops to repel any invasion (set up after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion attempt).
After the Bay of Pig's invasion in which 1,500 Cuban exiles trained by the CIA attacked Cuba was foiled before they could reach Havana and they were then abandoned by their American backers, Castro thinking he was safe and that the west couldn't touch him without serious circumstance he decided to export his socialist revolution to other parts of Latin America, the US military in a threatening manner practiced a mock invasion of another Caribbean island using 40,000 joint marines.
This was a big threat to Castro and Cuban forces were readying for an invasion, however Castro one of the worlds biggest believers in communism decided to directly hit the problem at its source, the United States.
Several Cuban people and CIA agents in Cuba around 1962 have stated that the nuclear ballistic missiles that were sent under the Americans noses to Cuba were literally just parked there, right in the public's eye!
What was at stake during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 for the United States was the possibility of nearly all of its strategic bomber bases and several major cities such as Washington DC, New York City and Dallas which were right under the hammer, only a few cities such as Seattle were out of range.
Robert McNamara stated that in 1992 he had learned something he didn't know before, that was that Castro knew the nukes were there, I quote McNarama as saying exactly this:
"I asked him 3 questions. One- did you know there were nuclear warheads in Cuba? Two- would you have recommended to Khrushchev to use nuclear missiles in the event of an American invasion of Cuba? And three- what would have happened to Cuba? He said, "One- I knew the missiles were there. Two- I would not *have* recommended it, I *did* recommend it! And three- we would have been totally obliterated."
Yes, after the socialist revolution that turned Cuba into exactly what 82 man team had envisioned (Che Guevra another notable member), Castro was ready to sacrifice it all in the ultimate fight that would (in his mind) destroy or at least cripple the center of capitalistic imperialism that was threatening the way of life he saw fit for the world.
Cuba was the playground of the United States in the 1950's who recognized the dictator there (Batista) who didn't really care for the freedom of Cubans but instead on making business and turning Havana into the Las Vegas of Latin America.
That was until 1959 when Fidel Castro and his other revolutionaries led a revolution that overthrow Batista and made Cuba a Marxist state.
That was 50 years ago this year!
Cuba has been under direct economic embargo since 1960 by the United States having to pretty much survive on it's own after riding itself of all aspects of American imperialism that infected their country.
But even today it's a better country!
It has one of the best health care and education systems on the planet. The Literacy Campaign of 1960 reduced illiteracy to virtually zero in little over a year.
In just a year after overthrowing an American backed dictator the government begun focusing directly on it's people (now that's a government for the people), and since then Cuba has retained much better services for the people, high education and health care standards to this day prove just that.
The country still has several examples of old automobiles from the pre-revolutionary days of the 1950's that with a bit of care work fine after over fifty years, and they don't even bother importing any other or newer cars to this day, (except some Soviet made Ladas, Moskvitchs and Volgas which were for state use).
There is some optimism that things will change with Cuba with Obama's openness to continue strained relations, however using the Clinton Administration who in the 1990's only made some small concessions on food and medicines but then nevertheless reinforced the economic embargo as an example I wouldn't hold my breath!
