While Fidel Castro recovers from intestinal surgery, the Republicubans in Miami are dancing in the streets. Scanning the CNN footage, this page was hard pressed to find anyone who resembled (i.e. was old enough) to be a Cuban exile. This crowd looked more like second or third generation gamberros who've seen Buena Vista Social Club a few too many times and believe the ancianos' right-wing fantasies of a pre-Castro paradise. For those of you scoring at home, this page has never been to Cuba, nor was this page alive in 1959. However, I still cast my doubts as to how much of a paradise a military dictatorship owned by the Mafia and United Sugar would be.
For most of the world, Fidel turning the shop over to his brother for a few weeks isn't exactly registering as long as Israel continues to sucker-punch Lebanon and pretend it's Iran. However, if one is watching CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News, Castro's operation is major news because of the concentration of Cuban Americans in Miami. If Sweden or Denmark had a Communist dictatorship whose leader was hospitalized, it's not like the cameras would be turned on jubilation in Minneapolis-St. Paul. If one thinks back to how the Republicubans inflamed the Elian Gonzalez case, we see that what international stories make the news in America depend on how they affect the noisiest ethnic voting blocs in the biggest swing states.
This page is not comfortable with people cheering for the ill health of an 80-year old man. By no means are Castro's hands clean, but he has built impressive education and health care systems: how else could he still be running the country at his age? Until Hugo Chavez showed up, Cuba was the only counterweight to American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Why are the Republicubans so jubilant when there are no guarantees that a post-Castro Cuba would be better? What exactly do people in Florida know about free and fair elections, or for that matter, human rights abuses in Cuba?
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