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A Dispatch from Havana
An eyewitness report on the Castro regime and his people
February 15, 2006
Cuba has been resting on the nose bridge of Uncle Sam a carcinogenic wart for over four decades since Fidel Castro overthrew the corrupt regime of the former army sergeant named Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
For the every President of the United States, Fidel has been an irritating eyesore sitting on their nose and a blatant revolutionary that impedes and obstruct the interests of the American Empire in the western hemisphere where the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny have been two major pillars of the US foreign policy.
Historically, the United States has been biding its time from early 1800 on to subdue, seize, and annex Cuba by any means…Uncle Sam offered Spain to buy Cuba with $100million in 1848, $120million in 1954, and President William McKinley tried to resolve the explosion of the USS battleship Maine by offering to purchase Cuba for $300million, all the propositions were rejected by the Spaniards.
When all the tactics failed to acquire Cuba with money, Uncle Sam finally resorted to the military intervention by provoking the Spanish-American War, annexing Puerto Rico, Guam, and Philippines while Cuba was placed under US military occupation.
After Cuba became an independent republic in 1902, a revolt broke out against the corrupt regime that led to a US military intervention in 1906, and Uncle Sam again in 1912 and 1917, invaded Cuba to ensure the steady flow of sugar during WWI.
During this period, Cuba was forced to accept the Platt Amendment that guaranteed the US occupation of Guantanamo Bay where the infamous detention camp for the Muslim terrorists have been built in order to avoid the judicial boundary of the US constitution.
The last US military intervention in the Bay of Pigs in 1961 was a total fiasco for the Kennedy Administration, but Uncle Sam never desists up until now to try to overthrow the Castro regime for one minute, applying vigorously “the Trading with the Enemy Act” and “the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992” that prohibit US companies or their overseas subsidiaries from providing services to Cuban individuals or companies.
Cubans call these measures “a blockade” rather than the economic “embargo”, because the US limits Cuban trade with other countries besides the US.
In recent incidence, when the Cuban officials met with the representatives of the US oil companies at the Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City last week, the US Treasury Department warned the company that owns the Sheraton that they were violating federal laws against trading with Cuba by allowing the meeting to take place in their hotel.
In response to the warning, the Hotel told the Cuban delegates to leave and the meeting was moved to a hotel not owned by an American company.
In other words, the US embargo goes beyond against the sovereignty of other country, Mexico in this case, regulating and penalizing economic activities of other countries to the detriment of the jurisdiction of other sovereign states.
In addition, the US citizens are prohibited to spend their money in the Cuban soil, instantly unable them to travel to Cuba unless they have permission from the Treasury Department.
On top of these oppressions and economic blockade, the unremitting US propaganda against the Castro regime has made the ordinary people impossible to understand the Cuban society objectively.
As I have educated myself through the “immersion journalism” touring Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao, and Manila a few years ago, I have decided to travel to Cuba in order to observe them with my own eyes and contact with the Cuban Joe Blows mano-a-mano to feel their minds and hearts.
Day 1: The Pep Rally in the seaside boulevard Malecon
When I arrived in the Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport in the small hours late January, it was bustling with travelers from various Latin countries carrying heavy baggage seeking
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