10-31-2002, 05:32 PM
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#15
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Guest
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Quote:
Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
Actually, it seems to me that the reason we deal with Cuba differently is Castro. During the cold war, the rise of a communist regime in North America was a slap in the face as far as the US was concerned - don't forget the Monroe Doctrine. The US set up a revolution in Cuba, and then Kennedy bailed at the last minute, leaving all the revolutionaries without promised support and with an angry homicidal despot ready to jail or kill them all (which is why all the Cubans I know will vote Republican until the day the earth stops spinning). Surprisingly enough, I think the some of the best cliffs-notes version accounts of this can be found in the movies Godfather II and Nixon.
Two weeks ago I aced a Midterm that dealt extensively with the Monroe Doctrine and that period in American history. GF II had some intersting tidbits in it about Cuba, and Scarface too. I really liked Al Pacino in that. err it was Pacino right? Its been a while.
To this day, Castro is on most every US President's pet peeve list. So, we don't allow Cubans to stay when they reach land because we like the Cubans so much as because the government hates Castro. This has gone on since the wave of immigrants swelled in the early 80s when Castro opened the prisons and tossed political prisoners, rapists and murderer, and refugees all at the port of Miami in one big dump. (See the opening minutes of the movie Scarface for actual news footage of this.)
When Castro came to power, everything was nationalized. My grandparent-in-law, for instance, owned a business and a nice home they had worked hard to build after immigrating from Spain. They even had a few servants. Castro came - they fled for their lives (anyone with money had to get out or face possible death or incarceration because Castro wanted all their property). Now they get to live out their golden years crammed in a retirement high-rise in a really bad part of Miami. *grumble grumble*
I know a lot of Cubans, and the stories I could tell... You just don't understand the impetus to get out of a bad place until you've met someone who faced 100+ miles of shark-infested waters on a TIRE to get to the states.
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Yep, you can get some of the same stories from people that the state department has relocated here from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria and oh so many places where the governments are not so friendly.
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