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.
Cuba
American Criminals in Cuba
Kesher Talk links to an IHT article about American fugitives who are sheltered by the Cuban regime.
(via Tatyana)
(Cross posted at 26th Parallel.)
Trafficking in Stolen Goods
It would be nice if Americans who knowingly profited from the communists’ looting of Cuban households would be prosecuted.
The Allende Myth, by Vladimir Dorta
My friend Val Dorta originally published this outstanding historical essay on his blog in 2003. With the death of Augusto Pinochet, much attention is again being given to the Allende period, the military coup and the dictatorship that followed. I wanted to link again to Val’s essay but, unfortunately, his blog is no longer online. However, Val has graciously allowed me to republish his essay here, and I am honored to do so. – Jonathan
UPDATE: Google’s cached version of Val’s original post, with comments. (Thanks to the commenter who provided this link.)
UPDATE 2 (12/28/2014): The Google-cached version has disappeared from the Web, but Val’s original post is available via archive.org here.
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The Allende Myth
Vladimir Dorta
07/21/2003
The failed and tragic attempt by Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity at creating socialism in Chile in 1970-1973 has become a myth for the world left, presented as the possibility of a peaceful and democratic transition to socialism that was destroyed only because the almighty CIA acted as master puppeteer of the Chilean reaction. The myth reinforces itself; while the Cold War context is never mentioned, neither is the fact that the CIA’s workings are well documented whereas the Cuban and Soviet interventions are still mostly unknown. The Allende myth may be good for keeping the socialist faith alive, but it evidently contradicts the historical facts.
While Augusto Pinochet’s brutal post-coup repression and terrorism cannot be justified, it is essential to explain what led him and the Chilean armed forces to the fateful coup d’état, outside of the fantasy that had him bursting onto the democratic Chilean political scene on September 11, 1973 with readymade CIA orders to stop a beautiful, pacific and liberating socialist dream. For I have no doubts that if the Chilean Marxist experiment had ended in civil war, as it appeared to most observers at the time, it would have been an even greater tragedy or, had it ended as the totalitarian society it pointed to, it would have lasted much longer and would have brought Chileans much more suffering than Pinochet’s ugly but temporary dictatorship.
“Fidel Castro Has Yet To Face Justice”
My friend Robert reminds us, in his own words and the words of an American journalist whose father Castro murdered, about the enormous human costs of the Cuban dictatorship.
Worth reading in full.