I will be going to Cuba again sometime in May as well.

Good luck with your trip, and best wishes to you and yours for 2009.

Thanks for your comment. I’ll try to answer each part of it separately:

Now I am almost 30 and I would very much like to go. I never made the trip before b/c I wanted to respect my parents wishes, but I don’t agree with them on everything.

What are your parent’s wishes? That you never get to see their homeland? It would be out of line for me to tell you that you should go, but as someone who visits Cuba regularly, I can say that it’s one of those places that cannot be easily understood by anyone who hasn’t been there. I guarantee that the Cuba you read about in Miami is not the same Island that exists just a few miles from you.

I don’t think its fair that you want to put the blame of the Iraqi War on the Cuban dissidents in Florida, they didn’t put Bush into power on their own you know.

Well, considering how the last two elections went, they pretty much did - I just never understood why Cuban-Americans were so supportive of the Bush regime in - including blogging for Republicans when there’s no news about Cuba - while almost all other Latin Americans I meet (including Cubans on the Island) tend to be far more centrist or leftist, talking more about social justice, land distribution, and human rights.

I for one am Cuban American and believe its time to lift t the Embargo, however, I do believe Castro has committed several Human Rights violations throughout his dictatorship

I think it’s too easy to walk the mainstream media line and accuse the Cuban government of abuse. If there was a rebellion movement to bring down the US government, don’t you think that they would be met with force and imprisonement as well? Asides from that, hasn’t the Bush regime also committed several Human Rights violations?

a government that executes its people

But that’s just the thing - there haven’t really been any political executions. It’s all come from just one community telling each other what they want to hear, until every one accepts it as fact. There has been one execution since 2001 - and that was instigated by the US. How many executions have taken place in the US since 2001? How many people - not just “Americans” - have died at the hands of US oppression, wars, and economic policies? Guantanamo? Extraordinary rendition? Abu Ghraib? Cuba is not a perfect place, but as a nation, it has done more to make the world a better place than the US has.

If you think someone’s a bastard, fine. If you want to believe what you’ve been taught to believe, that’s your choice. Nothing I or anyone else say will change how you feel. But one day, if you’re interested in learning the truth about Cuba for yourself, you’ll need to go there.

Don’t worry about the extremists. We have a saying here in Cuba that’s something like “behind the apparent facade of an extremist lies an opportunist”. They live off the conflict while we suffer the conflict. And if we suffer we have to talk about it, at least.

I guess I am one of those you lost contact with, we’ve distanced ourselves a bit, perhaps due to the whirlpool we live in everyday life. But I am glad to have you back, at least through this blog that I always liked so much.

Saludos y un abrazo afectuoso de un amigo desde La Habana.

Ernesto

s.