Our friend Henry Gomez has started Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty (BUCL), a worthwhile campaign to pressure Spain to stop being one of Castro’s principal enablers.
This campaign seems like a very good idea. Arguments about US policy toward Cuba tend to be complex and abstract. But the issues here are simple and concrete. Spanish government and business cooperate with the Cuban regime in maintaining a system where ordinary Cubans are treated almost like slaves, serving foreign tourists while being allowed to keep mere pennies of each dollar they earn. Of course ordinary Cubans are also forbidden to visit as guests the resorts that foreigners visit. This is an evil system, emblematic of the brutality and corruption of the Castro regime, and the people in free countries who support it and benefit from it deserve to have their collective faces publicly rubbed in its evils.
Why Spain? WRT Cuba, other countries’ policies are as bad (the Czech Republic is a notable exception). But Spain’s relationship with Cuba is particularly intimate, and indeed has more than a whiff of imperial condescension about it — a fact that Henry’s campaign exploits.
Check out Henry’s site for more info.
Robert’s comments are also worth reading.
Babalu has more on BUCL, and on this weekend’s Cuba Nostalgia convention, which has become an important annual Babalu event.
I hadn’t realised – and I don’t want to do too much – if any – reading about it, that Spain was supporting Cuba. Why would they do that? Why are they backing a loser? For the same reason they changed their vote in their presidential election, when threatened with islamic extremists?
Is British taxpayer money, in that big, murky, swirly, corrupt, EU revenue pool, going to support oppression in Cuba?
This has been going on for some time, Verity. In fact, I am not sure it started with Zapatero. It is simply the usual European reaction of supporting anyone the US opposes. The answer to your question is almost certainly.