Posted by
Billy email MADBillyD@aol.com on Friday, December 26, 2008 3:30:35 PM
In the palace of a fallen dictator, the grade-school kids in their red Communist Pioneer bandanas are getting their mandatory introduction to the glories of the revolution. (Cuba's revolution turns 50, an aging Castro's grip is softer at edges, unyielding at heart)
Clattering from one display case to the next, they gaze wide-eyed at an antique gun, a fighter's bloodied shirt, the engine of a downed U.S. spy plane. Moving on, they stare at the yacht named Granma that carried Fidel Castro back from exile to launch his guerrilla war, and the combat boots his brother-successor wore as a ponytailed 27-year-old rebel.
The palace of Fulgencio Batista, the ruler whom Castro overthrew, is now the Museum of the Revolution, and these 6- and 7-year-olds are the heirs to a communist government about to turn 50 — a system that may be softening at the edges but appears determined to crush any threat to its grip on power, lest it crumble like its one-time godfather, the Soviet Union.
Since Castro declared victory on New Year's Day, 1959, the day after Batista fled the country, his rule has prevailed through 10 U.S. presidents, the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, a world-shaking missile crisis, the U.S. embargo, the Soviet collapse and the onslaught of globalization. Now 82, he is ailing and out of sight but still the head of the Communist Party of Cuba. Raul Castro, his successor as president, is taking baby steps toward change and vowing to fend off any challenge to his brother's legacy.
Dissidents have a new way to reach the outside world — blogging. Yoani Sanchez, 33, gets her message out by dressing like a tourist and slipping into a hotel with Web access for foreigners. She works quickly at a computer terminal and gets out before someone notices her.
In a posting this month, Sanchez noted that the government, which used to send gays to labor camps, now accepts homosexuality. So why not political opposition? she asked. "Why does the adjective 'counterrevolutionary' continue to be used for those who think differently?"
(Lets all keep hoping and praying the nation of Cuba is changed soon and the government is replaced with one which will allow her people the freedoms we enjoy here in the West.)
