By John Bogert Staff Columnist
Posted: 06/11/2009 05:04:04 PM PDT
I want to see Cuba. I want to be on a Cuba Travel Services 737 to
Habana. I want to out-fly the ancient embargo. I want to bypass Mexico
and visit without subterfuge. I want the president to forever loosen
rules that will allow non-Cubans like me that direct-air-link dream.
You see, I love Cuba. Or the idea of Cuba. I grew up around Cubans and I
am willing to ignore the fact that Fidel Castro tried to kill me at a
time in my young life when I most wanted to visit the island that rose
from an amniotic sea not 140 miles from my bedroom door.
Cuba was far closer than Atlanta, so close I could see myself in dark
glasses and a guayabera shirt living the ring-a-ding-ding life over rum
and Coke, under the fragrant pall of a Partagas Serie D No. 4 cigar and
a savage sun.
I was going to do all this, I swore, the minute I ditched my stale
parents and my dull, dull life.
Then, Fidel and the Russians came within a finger's width of killing me
and everyone I knew with short-range tactical missiles.
Guess who was in charge of the Cuban nukes in 1962. A pair of scared
junior Russian officers and Fidel. A regular Little League team, they
were actually ready to launch. Better dead than capitalist, better all
the world's suckers get vaporized for the sake of a two-bit socialist
paradise.
And so it was when I grew up among the post-revolutionary displaced, the
Cubans who gave up everything to avoid all that reform. Too bad Fidel didn't
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stay in law practice after setting up shop in 1950. And too bad that the
story about him failing to make the Washington Senators baseball team
isn't true. But nice symmetry there. Future commie dumped by Senators.
Still, I listened to the tough old Cubans who loafed for hours in my
dad's gas station. I heard their laments. Why did Fulgencio Batista, who
actually captured Fidel during a raid on the Moncada Barracks in 1953,
not execute him? And what kind of idiot gives a man like that 15 years
and then lets him go after two?
Didn't Batista learn anything from the Mafia, whose casinos skinned the
rubes coming in on that night boat from Key West? Ninety miles to
Havana, a place where nobody knew your name.
Here's how it's supposed to work, they said: you kill a man who tries to
kill you.
Not that I wanted Fidel dead. I just wanted him to keep the Key West
ferry running. Only Fidel came back from a three-month exile in Mexico
City with a different plan.
Soon he's in the Sierra Maestra Mountains getting good press. The people
love him because he's promising things that he actually delivers, like
education and health care and, later, starvation.
Maybe we liked him too because in 1958 we pulled the rug out from under
Batista. And on Jan 1, 1959, Castro takes Havana just like in "Godfather
II," only without Fredo. And I'll admit to being excited as a kid by the
sight of a beatnik overthrowing a guy who dressed like a doorman.
It seemed cool. Only it wasn't, despite what some misguided hippies
thought a decade later when they journeyed down via Mexico to aid the
cause by laboring in the cane harvest. Without caring that Castro had
destroyed his island's native plant diversity with that ruinous crop.
And this was after he nearly killed the entire planet.
Naturally, confiscating $1.8 billion worth of U.S. assets didn't sit
well with the mob or the president. Then on April 14, 1961, he shoots
his mouth off for what should have been the last time. God knows, this
country supports tyrants just as long as they don't call themselves
Marxist-Leninists.
Fascist cie, commie no!
The very next day we bomb his airfields. Two days after that, 1,400
Cuban exiles, more tough guys, land at Playa Giron in the Bay of Pigs.
It's a disaster - Kennedy yanks the air cover, good men die. We look
like idiots.
Then it gets worse. In February 1962, we start the embargo. On Oct. 14,
a U-2 spots the missiles. Eight days later, JFK shows us the pictures.
Americans freak out. South Florida people freak out the most. Suddenly,
backyard fallout shelters don't look so dumb.
From the 22nd to 28th, all hell breaks loose in my neighborhood. A
fleet assembles just offshore, troops mass, tanks pass by under green
tarps. Worse, every kid in the Cuba-adjacent hot zone is haunted by
visions of missiles, fuel-exhausted, arcing out of that eternally blue sky.
Suddenly, it's over like a last-minute reprieve. The Ruskies pull their
missiles out of Cuba, we take ours out of Turkey and promise not to
invade ever again.
But there was no forgiving Fidel.
Officially, we hated the guy because we couldn't control him, because he
supplied troops to far-off wars and because he has thus far outlived 10
presidential administrations.
The CIA tried to kill him eight times, once with exploding cigars.
Then in 2005, Forbes claims that Castro is worth $550 million. The
dictator shoots back that he makes $30 a month, with tips. The next year
Forbes ups his net worth to $900 million.
But what good does this do him in a place where women with medical
degrees trade their bodies for the foreign currency needed to shop in
"special" stores that actually sell food?
If a man can pen a 600-page autobiography claiming that he never made a
mistake, then he probably wasn't bothered to hear that a rumor of his
imminent demise in 2007 caused Miami's huge Cuban community to reserve
the Orange Bowl for a Fidel Death Fest.
Some legacy. But now they have this plane, a plane I can't take, a plane
leaving from up the road just as a special boat once left from down
another road, for a place that I have never been.
I want to hear your comments. Connect with me at
john.bogert@dailybreeze.com.
JOHN BOGERT: Despite Castro, Cuba still retains its romantic aura - The
Daily Breeze (11 June 2009)
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_12572135
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