Word: fidelitys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They can start by acknowledging that after 50 years of communist revolution in Cuba and counter-revolution from the U.S., both sides can claim only partial victories. Washington and Miami's Cuban exiles can say they kept the U.S. trade embargo against Havana intact. Yet they failed to dislodge Fidel Castro and his government and instead succeeded in alienating the rest of the hemisphere. Congratulations! The Castro regime can say it stood up to a half-century of yanqui aggression while proving that quality universal education and health care are doable. But the price - a basket-case economy...
...days later, Soderbergh and his star, Benicio Del Toro, presented Che at the Havana Film Festival. The authorities had warned they would not allow the picture to be shown if it was critical of Fidel Castro, and they found nothing objectionable. (One scene included in the original Cannes Film Festival version of Che, showing Castro the commandante in an ambiguous light, was apparently cut.) "The Cuban public gave its endorsement with a strong ovation," reported Granma, the island's official Communist Party newspaper, which hedged its bets by observing that the Castro character (played by Demian Bichir) lacked "charisma...
...critics, of course, fear that if he's allowed indefinite re-election, he'll simply morph into another Fidel Castro. Despite - or because of - the Cuban leader's longevity in power (or the record of other would-be rulers-for-life), Latin Americans look askance at lifetime presidencies. That's why even voters next door in Colombia look set to deny their remarkably popular conservative President, Alvaro Uribe, a third term when his second expires in 2010. Chávez does have an authoritarian streak and is indeed a gushing admirer of Castro, and with the legislature and judiciary firmly...
...there will be difficult times with its neighbor to the north. Even before the murderous enticement of Washington's wet-foot, dry-foot policy that rewards Cubans who survive the trip across the waters with citizenship (while denying many visa requests made through proper channels in Havana)--even before Fidel Castro--relationships have been uneasy between Cuba and the U.S., which essentially colonized the island after Spain left in 1898. There was the U.S. administrator who in the early 1900s announced plans to "whiten" the population. And the 1901 Platt Amendment, which helped carve the U.S. Naval Base at Guant?...
...there's still a state militancy that could bring blood to the Malecón. But the new generation of Cubans both here and abroad are of a milder bent, with gentler aspirations. A cabdriver I met launched into a familiar refrain: most of his family fled to Tampa when Fidel Castro stole their lands. So was he--or his family in Florida--waiting to take the land back, to evict those who live there now? "No," he said, "we're all tired of thinking about fighting." His younger relatives in Florida have forgotten to be angry. More and more Cubans...