Word: fidels
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...times and the worst of times. At long last it was Raúl’s turn, as Cuba’s president, to preside over the anniversary that marked half a century at the country’s helm. Fifty years and eleven U.S. presidents ago, his brother Fidel and he led a ragtag rebel force to improbable victory in early January 1959. Yet, days before this event, it was also Raúl’s turn to preside over the session of the Cuban National Assembly to enact a new social security law—an act that...
...Long ago, Cuba’s excellent demographers had identified this demographic transition. Cuba’s population actually fell in 2006 and again in 2007 (while slightly rising in 2008) but the forecasts about the rapid aging predate these years. Why, then, was there no change sooner? Fidel Castro had the power to enact such a change but proved allergic to this and other reforms. It fell to Raúl Castro to have the guts to enact this change during his first year as president and to do so on the same year when the world economy collapsed, hitting...
...most of us, New Year's is a day for resolutions. But for Fidel Castro, it marked the culmination of a long-awaited revolution. Fifty years ago on Jan. 1, Castro's Communist revolution swept aside the hated Batista regime. The change was bad news for the U.S.; Castro's regime (and American attempts to eliminated it) prompted the Bay of Pigs debacle, closed off a beautiful country with a vibrant music culture, and - possibly worst of all - triggered a 46-year-old trade embargo that has deprived Americans of Cuba's most prized export: its vaunted cigars...
...thing to do in Latin America) and showed the U.S. that its worst Monroe Doctrine impulses (not to mention the Mafia that was overrunning Cuba then) could be thwarted. People buy Che Guevara T shirts for more than just the lefty chic. The Miami exiles (many of whom backed Fidel Castro before he went communist) deserve their props too, despite the Elian Gonzalez mess. Most were not corrupt oligarchs and gusanos (worms, as Fidel Castro called them) but industrious working- or middle-class men and women who helped build modern Miami. In December, the Miami Herald unveiled an online database...
...should begrudge respect for Cubans on either side of the straits - not those who died in prisons fighting Fulgencio Batista nor those who died on rafts escaping Fidel Castro. But after 50 years, it's time to stop reliving the Bay of Pigs...