Frank de Varona is a professor, author, and an activist for individual liberty. He has written and published over 20 books. Frank was recently a panel member for the March 8th event held in California and hosted by the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley and Human Events titled: Paying the Price. The panel featured five […]
Frank de Varona is a professor, author, and an activist for individual liberty. He has written and published over 20 books. Frank was recently a panel member for the March 8th event held in California and hosted by the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley and Human Events titled: Paying the Price. The panel featured five people from five different countries, who had suffered under totalitarian communism.
Frank was born in Cuba and was taken prisoner by Castro after taking part in the Bay of Pigs. He spent two years being tortured in Castro’s prisons before being released and making his way to the United States.
Each of the March 8th panel members will be publishing an essay on Human Events. Here is Frank’s submission which we welcome with both gratitude and humility.
Brent Hamachek, Managing Editor
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave one of the best definitions of the failure of socialism. He said the following: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
I was born in Camagüey, Cuba in 1943. My father was a respected cattleman who had a ranch of 3,630 acres. My mother was very active in many charities organizations. My parents taught my older brother, younger sister, and I great values. Our maternal grandparents lived with us in a large two-story house.
If you were an honest businessperson, banks granted you loans with no collateral. My father was an honest and hard-working cattleman in Camagüey, and he would get unlimited loans, only based on his word and signature. My father would sell or buy cattle from other honest cattlemen based on verbal transactions without writing contracts. Over the years, my father purchased cattle from the King Ranch in Texas and sent my brother and I to four summer camps and then to boarding schools in the United States. We came to Miami on vacation every year and purchased clothes and other items exchanging pesos to dollars on a one-to-one basis.
During my childhood, I would go alone or with other children everywhere without adult supervision in my hometown of Camagüey since there was little crime in the streets. I took a public bus for 5 cents to go to my Catholic school, Colegio Champagnat, or to the movies and rode my bicycle everywhere. Schools were safe and had no security guards even though people carried guns and rifles. There were no drugs like cocaine or heroin, or even marijuana, anywhere in Cuba in the 1950s. Looking back on my childhood, my friends and I truly lived in Camelot!
Our family ties to the United States were extraordinarily strong. One of our ancestors, Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, came as Lieutenant Governor of La Florida and Lieutenant General of the expedition of Hernando De Soto in 1539. Later, our ancestor who was the son of the Count of Feria, returned to Cuba. His son went on with De Soto's army and explored ten Southern states. Unlike, Hernando De Soto, he survived the expedition and returned to his father in Cuba.
My great aunt, Mercedes Cubria, came to live in the United States at the age of six. She joined the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) during World War II as a second lieutenant. Mercedes Cubria served in the Army with distinction during the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Cold War as an intelligence officer. She retired from the Army as a highly decorated Lieutenant Colonel.
Cuba in the 1950s was a prosperous nation under free-market capitalism
I grew up in Cuba during the 1950s, a nation that was among the most prosperous in Latin America under free-market capitalism. The Cuban peso had the same value as the dollar and there was no inflation. During this period, Cuba had a trade surplus and, for this reason, had no exchange control, unlike the rest of the Latin American nations.
One could go to a bank until 1958 and exchange unlimited pesos into dollars on a one-to-one basis. There was no black market to acquire dollars. In 1950, Cuba established a central bank. The banking system was soon after expanded with the creation of the Agricultural and Industrial Development Bank (BANFAIC). With these two banks and with the assistance of national and foreign banks all over the island, the credit system expanded, which was required for economic development and growth.
Cuba was one of the most advanced and successful countries in Latin America. Cuba’s capital, Havana, was a beautiful and dynamic city. The island was the largest producer and exporter of sugar in the world.
Cuba has many important minerals. Cuba’s nickel reserve ranked among the largest in the world. Cuba was the largest producer of chromite in the Americas, second in manganese, and fourth of copper. The island started to industrialize in the 1930s and 1940s. By 1958, there were many small factories, and most of the sugar mills were owned by Cubans. The island had a population of six million people.
Meat and meat products were produced prior to 1959 to provide for the nation and even export to Venezuela. Cubans consumed more meat per person than Americans in the United States. My father had a large cattle ranch in Camagüey and sold cattle and milk. Meat was inexpensive. The land in the island is fertile with abundant rivers and rainfall.
Many Spaniards and other Europeans moved to Cuba prior to 1959 in search of a better life and to establish businesses. There were many Americans who lived in Cuba during this time.
Cuba’s transportation system was the best developed in Latin America. Railroads connected the cities and were used to transport sugar to the ports. There were excellent domestic and international airports. In 1958, José Martí airport in Havana was one of the best in the Western Hemisphere. The city of Havana and other cities in the island had excellent harbor facilities, docks, and warehouses.
In 1958, Cuba held the first place in TV sets per capita followed by Venezuela, Argentina, and Mexico. There were 23 TV broadcasting stations in Cuba, and it was third in Latin America. In 1958 Cuba was the second country in the world to introduce color television. The following year the island had two television stations which broadcasted in color. The island had more radios per inhabitant (5.0) than any other Latin American country. Cuba held third place in Latin America in the number of radio stations with 160. Only Brazil and Mexico had more radio stations. The ratio of inhabitants per phone (28) was third, bested by Argentina and Uruguay.
In 1958, Cuba had 97 hospitals and 21,141 beds. The island was third in the ratio of dentists/patient (2,978). Cuba had the lowest mortality rate in all Latin America per 1,000 inhabitants (5.8) and the lowest infant mortality rate as well.
In 1958, Cuba had 13 universities and did not charge tuition for its public universities. Cuba was number one in devoting a larger percentage of its public spending to education (23%) in Latin America. There were many private schools and the private Catholic University of St. Thomas in Havana. There were few schools in the rural areas. Cuba’s capital, Havana, was a beautiful and dynamic city. In 1959 Havana had 358 theaters, the most for a city in the world, followed by New York and Paris.
On November 29, 2016, Hans Bader wrote an article titled “Castro Made Cuba Backward” that was published by CNSNews.com. Bader stated the following: “Castro made life much more primitive for the average Cuban. He took a country that was once a beacon of hope and prosperity in Latin America and impoverished it. People who claim Cuba was backward by international standards when Castro seized power in 1959 are either ignorant of history or trying to excuse Castro’s role in making it as backward as it is today.”
Bader explained the description of pre-Castro Cuba by using the words of the progressive economist Brad DeLong who stated the following: “The hideously depressing thing is that Cuba under Batista—Cuba in 1957—was a developed country. Cuba in 1957 had lower infant mortality than France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had doctors and nurses: as many doctors and nurses per capita as the Netherlands, and more than Britain or Finland…Thus, I don’t understand lefties who talk about the achievements of the Cuban Revolution saying that Communist Cuba had better health care, housing, and education.” But Cuba’s communist propaganda was repeated throughout the world by liberal media.
Bader reported that, according to Reason Magazine, Cuba in the late 1950s was quite advanced by world standards: “In 1959, Cuba had 128.6 doctors and dentists per 100,000 inhabitants, placing it 22nd globally—that is, ahead of France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland.” In fact, there were more doctors per capita in the island than in the United States. In 1958, there were many HMOs in Cuba where for 5 pesos a month a person had medical care, medicines, and hospitalization.
Medical doctors and nurses had modest salaries; thus, healthcare was less expensive than in the United States. Many private clinics and hospitals provided services for the poor. In infant mortality tables, Cuba ranked one of the best in the world, with 5.8 deaths per 100,000 babies, compared to 9.5 per 100,000 in the United States. In 1958, Cuba’s adult literacy rate was 80%, higher than that of its colonial grandfather in Spain, and the country possessed one of the most highly regarded university systems in the Western hemisphere.
By 1958, Cuba ranked fifth in the hemisphere in per capita income, third in life expectancy, second in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones, and first in the number of television sets per inhabitant. The literacy rate, 80%, was the fourth highest in Latin America. Of course, there was poverty in Cuba but much less than in other nations in Latin America.
Cuba’s income distribution compared favorably with that of other Latin American societies. A thriving middle class held the promise of prosperity and social mobility. The one weakness of the Cuban economy was the over dependency on sugar. From 1949 to 1958, approximately 30% of the GNP was generated by the sugar industry. Sugar accounted for 85% of the exports.
Jaime Suchlicki in his book, Cuba from Columbus to Castro and Beyond (2002), explained that in the 1950s, 75% of the Cuban imports came from the United States and 65% of the exports were to the United States. The U.S. gave the sugar exports from Cuba a large quota and preferential prices higher than the world price of sugar. Millions of Americans and individuals from other nations came to Cuba as tourists. The U.S. dollar and coins circulated in the island along with the Cuban currency.
As the revolution against President Fulgencio Batista intensified in the late 1950s everything changed for the worse. There were student strikes in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey, and other major cities. Bombs exploded and university students fought police officers especially in Havana. But even during this period, the economy did not deteriorate
Fidel Castro destroyed the economy of Cuba and his bloody regime started severe repression
The prosperous economy crashed when Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and imposed communism in the island. With communism came poverty, misery, and oppression and the establishment of a mass-murdering bloody regime. Cuba did not have the death penalty even for murder of the first degree. In January 1959, the communist rebels led by the assassin Raúl Castro came down from the Sierra Maestra and captured the city of Santiago de Cuba, a deliberate campaign of terror was started. Many people were shot without trials.
A few days later, the mass-murderer Ernesto Che Guevara was assigned to La Cabaña fortress in Havana. He shot hundreds of boys and men in the first months of the regime. Che opened a window from his office so that he could watch the daily firing squad killing patriots many, who yelled Long Live Christ the King! and Viva Cuba Libre! Many of the prisoners, before they were shot, had most of their blood taken by the regime to sell abroad.
On May 17, 1959, the first Agrarian Reform Law was passed confiscating ranches and farms larger than 3,300 acres with the fake promise of paying with government bonds. On June 28, 1960, Cuban bloody dictator Fidel Castro confiscated the American oil companies and its refineries. In the following months, all private properties were confiscated. By the end of 1960, all domestic and foreign property was stolen by the regime. Over $1 billion of properties from U.S. nationals and corporations were confiscated.
The upper and middle classes were wiped out. Many Cuban patriots began to plot and rebel against the totalitarian system. Many Cubans fought in the underground in the cities and others in the mountains. Eventually, they were defeated in part because of the immense military assistance provided by the Soviet Union to the tyrannical Cuban communist regime.
From 1959 to 2022, over 300,000 men, women, and children were sent to prison for many years and tens of thousands were shot without any due process of law. Two million went into exile, mostly to the United States. Thousands have died trying to cross the Straits of Florida in small boats and rafts.
My brother, several cousins, friends, and I, at age 17, tried to overthrow the bloody socialist regime in Cuba. We participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961. One of my cousins died at age 19 in a B-26 that was shot down. Sadly, we were defeated due to many mistakes made by the Kennedy administration. About 1,200 members of the Assault Brigade 2506 were captured and sent to prison, where we were severely tortured for two years until the Kennedy administration paid a ransom in baby food and medicine. We were released on December 24 and 25, 1962.
The Brigade prisoners of war were drinking water that had dead rats in it in the Castillo del Príncipe. I contracted dysentery and hepatitis with other prisoners. My brother Jorge and I were sent with 212 other prisoners to the worst prison in Cuba in the Isle of Pines. We were placed in a small room that had a capacity for 40 people. When everyone lied down, we look like sardines in a can. There was one toilet and two showers that were opened for 10 minutes at different hours and only a few were able to bathe. We had no soap, toilet paper, or tooth paste for seven months. The food was horrible, and I could not eat it. Often the guards poisoned the food and all of us had diarrhea. Frequently the guards came in to beat us and placed us naked against the wall. We had no visitors and were completely incommunicado.
When the October Missile Crisis came, the guards placed dynamite below our building and in the other circular prisons that kept over 5,000 political prisoners. We were told that if the Americans invaded Cuba, they would explode the dynamite. Those of us who might survive would be shot with machine guns. I was praying for an American invasion because I did not want to serve the 30-year sentence. A miracle happened and we were freed. I had lost 60 pounds and my weight was 120 pounds. Afterwards, in my opinion, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by orders of Fidel Castro, KGB rogue agents, and the Mafia for trying after the Bay of Pigs to assassinate Fidel Castro and topple his bloody regime.
Under communism, Cuba became a merciless totalitarian nation
For 63 years military and secret police of Cuba continued to assassinate, beat up, and arrest peaceful opponents and systematically suppressed the Cuban people’s legitimate aspirations for freedom, self-determination, and prosperity. Cuba became a center of terrorism and exported communism to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. The Cuban regime has intervened in many nations in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia and is a strong enemy of the United States.
The Cuban secret police and intelligence services were trained by East German secret police, the Stasi. To spy on and control the population, Committees for the Defense of the Revolution were created in every neighborhood in every city in the island. The leaders of these committees kept watching who entered a home in the neighborhood. These communist spies could enter any house at any time to inspect it. If a family member purchased food on the black market since the rationed food was insufficient, the head of the Committee reported him or her and they were sent to prison. The spies also demanded everyone to participate in night watches and attend communist rallies. They were responsible for distributing one pair of pants, one pair of shoes, one set of underwear, and other meager clothing articles a year. They demanded blood in their neighborhood which later Cuba sold abroad. The leaders of the Committees became tyrants who were feared by the people.
Men from age 18 could not leave the island and were forced to serve in the military. Older people who applied for a visa to America or another country were fired from their jobs and sent to rural areas to work in the field for several months. They lived under terrible conditions until they were able to leave.
Suchlicki pointed out that in February 1960, the regime created a Central Planning Board modeling Eastern European communist nations. Suchlicki stated that “The transformation of the prosperous private enterprise free market capitalism to a centralized state-control command economy resulted in chaos, inefficiency, and increased poverty and misery.” Currently, the standard of living in Cuba is one of the lowest in Latin America as it is also in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
By 1961, there were severe food shortages as private farms and cattle ranches were stolen from the owners. Regime officials were disorganized, incompetent, and did not know how to manage the confiscated properties. Cuba, for many years, and specially now, is having severe shortages of water, electricity, medicine, and food.
The infrastructure is crumbling all over Cuba. People are once again eating dogs and cats and desperately trying to leave the island. Severe food rationing started in 1961 and has continued until today. Cuba has depended on massive assistance from the Soviet Union until that nation disintegrated due its inefficient socialist economic system. Cuba entered for several years in, what was known as, a Special Period of immense food, water, and electricity shortages.
In 1961, the Cuban regime deported Catholic bishops, priests, and brothers. It confiscated all private and religious schools and universities. Students were taught communism in schools and were forced to participate in student communist groups. Students and their parents were told not to attend churches with the very few priest that were left in the island. If they did, it was recorded. Parents were forced to participate in the militias. If they refused, it was written in their record of their children as a negative. If these rules were violated, it was written in the record and the students would not be allowed to enter the universities. Castro stated that the universities were for the revolutionaries only.
After the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in January 1998, people were allowed to return to churches and synagogues. Prior to the Pope’s visit to the island, religious participation came with very serious social costs, such as not being able to enter a university, not being promoted at work, or being given a television or refrigerator. By that time many Cubans had no knowledge of the Bible and were atheists. Christmas and Easter Sunday were not celebrated. They had been taught that religion was the opium of the people, Slowly Cubans began going to Catholic and Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues. Many Cubans also practiced the Afro-Cuban santería cults.
To destroy the family unit, middle and high schools were built in the rural areas. These schools were called Escuelas del Campo. Young students had to work half a day cutting cane or planting
and picking crops. The other half day they went to school to be indoctrinated. Living conditions were very poor in these schools. Teachers or other students often had sex with young girls who frequently returned pregnant in the summer to their families. Many years later these schools were abandoned due to the great opposition by parents.
Many parents became desperate that their children will be indoctrinated or not allowed to leave Cuba. They sent their children alone to America assisted by the Catholic Church. It became the biggest exodus of children ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. From December 26, 1960, through October 22, 1962, 14,048 unaccompanied children between 6 and 18 years old left Cuba for the United States. This became known as Operation Peter Pan. Later the parents of these children joined them in America.
The Cuban regime treats its citizens as slaves. One of the biggest abuses is sending medical doctors, nurses, and dentists to many nations to enrich the regime. While some volunteer to participate in these “international missions,” many are forced to go. I have a young cousin who was a medical doctor in Camagüey. He was happily married with two young children. My cousin was working at his hospital when the secret police came to see him one morning and told him he will be leaving for Venezuela that evening for two years. My cousin said he did not want to go but he was forced to go. He was taken to his home to pack and was sent to Venezuela to a remote small town and given a room in the home of a communist family. He could not watch Venezuelan television because American channels were shown, only Cuban television. He worked long hours in a hospital with other Cuban doctors and nurses and a Cuban intelligence officer was assigned to monitor them.
On May 5, 2019, BBC News published an article titled “The Hidden World of the Doctors Cuba Send Oversees.” The BCC reported that Cuba sends thousands of its doctors to work around the world, earning the regime billions of dollars. Currently, more than 30,000 Cuban doctors work in 67 nations, most of them in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. When they arrive the host nation takes away their passports to prevent them from defecting.
The BCC article said that according to a report by Prisoners Defenders, a Spain-based NGO that campaigns for human rights in Cuba, these doctors on average receive between 10% and 25% of the salary paid by the host countries, with the rest being kept by the regime in Cuba. The report explained that some of the doctors have said housing and working conditions are terrible and often they posted to extremely dangerous places. Cuba also sends abroad engineers, musicians, dancers, sport trainers, and most of the salaries are kept by the regime.
Cuba is engaged in human trafficking which is prohibited by the corrupt United Nations and the United States. President George W. Bush created the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program where Cuban doctors sent abroad were given a visa to enter the United States. Over 6,000 doctors escaped from many countries. I met several of them in Miami. One doctor was assigned to East Timor and his passport was taken. He left without it and went to Australia. An American consulate issued him a passport and he was able to come to Miami.
The United States listed Cuba as a nation participating in human trafficking for several years. On July 27, 2015, President Barack Obama removed Cuba from the list. Later President Trump placed Cuba back on the list.
Cuban intelligence officers are assigned to factories or businesses to spy on the workers. They are constantly asking the workers if anyone has criticized the regime or Castro. Workers are very careful in saying anything critical of the regime for fear that the person that hears it might turn them in. However, currently the Cuban people are losing their fear and are openly voicing their discontent.
Rebellion in Cuba
On July 11, 2021, the people of Cuba took to the streets in cities from one end of the island to the other to demand peacefully for the most part an end to the bloody communist regime that has oppressed them for more than 62 years. The protesters marched screaming “Libertad, Libertad” meaning “Freedom, Freedom” down the streets of more than 32 cities. They also were saying “the people united cannot be defeated,” “down with communism,” “you are killing us with hunger”, and “we are not afraid.”
Thousands of Cuban Americans in the United States in Miami, Tampa, New York City, and other cities took to the streets to support those in Cuba demanding an end to the mass-murdering tyrannical communists dictatorship. In Miami, thousands gathered at Versailles Restaurant and the police was forced to shut down a large portion of SW 8 Street. Cubans in Spain and other nations came out to support those in Cuba denouncing the mass-murdering communist Cuban regime.
I went with my wife Haydee to La Carreta Restaurant in Miami to participate in the demonstrations in Miami-Dade County. I spoke using a microphone and sang the Cuban national anthem with about 200 hundred people. We then watched many cars and trucks carrying the flags of Cuba and Trump flags driving by. I carried the sign Patria y Vida, which means Fatherland and Life, that is carried by opponents of the bloody communist regime. The communist slogan is Patria o Muerte, which means Fatherland or Death. We kept listening and watching the events in Cuba all day and night. We saw videos from Cuba of stores being looted as there is no food and medicine in Cuba. Some attacked police cars by flipping them and by throwing stones at them.
The Chinese man-made Wuhan virus pandemic is killing many in the island. The hospitals have no water or medicines and there is a lack of electricity that results many blackouts all over Cuba. There is a collapsing infrastructure. Some cities have no water and houses are falling apart due to lack of materials.
The so-called President of Cuba Díaz Canel (elected by no one) gave a speech asking all the communists, police, Armed Forces, elite army units of the Brigade of Rapid Response, soldiers from the Ministry of the Interior, and intelligence service officers to shoot, beat up, and arrest those brave Cubans demanding an end to the communist regime. He ordered these communist thugs to take back the streets in the many cities in the island to stop the rebellion.
On July 11, 2021, the criminal Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the United Sates of provoking a social explosion in the island, after tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities all over the island. During a live television broadcast, the brutal Díaz-Canel stated the United States has implemented a “policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest in the country.” He said that the United States is responsible for inflicting economic misery in Cuba by imposing a commercial embargo. This is, of course, a great lie. The United States sells medicines and food to Cuba but wants to get paid since Cuba buys from other nations on credit and never pays them back.
The bloody Cuban president also stated that mercenaries hired by the United States intentionally manufactured the anti-government protests to destabilize Cuba. This was another lie. Díaz-Canel called for violence and severe repression against the people of Cuba who in great desperation took to the streets. He stated: “We call on all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to go out in the streets where these provocations will occur, from now on and in the next few days. And to face them in a decisive, firm, and courageous way.”
Cuban opponents of the bloody communist regime marched carrying a large sign saying “Abajo la Dictadura Patria y Vida” meaning Down with the Dictatorship and Fatherland and Life. The Miami Herald reported the following: “From the Malecón, Havana’s famous seawall near the old city, to small towns in Artemisa province and Palma Soriano, the second-largest city in Santiago de Cuba province, videos live-streamed on Facebook showed thousands of people walking and riding bikes and motorcycles along streets while chanting “Freedom!” “Down with Communism!” and “Patria y Vida” — Homeland and Life — which has become a battle cry among activists after a viral music video turned the revolutionary slogan “Homeland or Death” on its head.
During the day, protests erupted in several cities, including the island’s biggest — Havana, Santiago, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, and Holguín — but also in smaller towns like Palma Soriano, Cárdenas, Colón, Guira de Melena, Artemisa and others.” The Cuban Archive website reported the following: “Cities and towns are militarized and hundreds of elite troops as well as state agents in civilian clothing armed with clubs and bats patrol the streets and occupy parks and public areas. Pockets of demonstrators are tear gassed and many are attacked and/or taken into custody.
This wave of terror coincides with the anniversary of the massacre by the Cuban regime of 37 unarmed civilians, including 10 children, for attempting to escape Cuba in the tugboat 13 de Marzo on July 13, 1994. It is high time for governments, international organizations, and all individuals of good will to demand respect for all fundamental rights of the Cuban people and to hold the Cuban Communist dictatorship responsible for its long history of human rights’ abuses and crimes against humanity.
Republicans in the House and the Senate, including Senator Marco Rubio, expressed their support for the Cuban people and requested the Cuban regime not to repress the protesters. President Joe Biden expressed support for the demonstrators in their fight against a corrupt authoritarian regime.
Former President Donald J. Trump’s explained how the Cuban regime has oppressed the people in the past and is currently doing it. He said that Biden must stand up to the Communist regime. Trump explained how when Barack Obama visited Cuba, he went to a baseball game with bloody dictator Raúl Castro while opponents were being beaten and arrested. Barack and Michelle Obama and their two daughters shamefully did the wave with the mass-murderer Raúl Castro at a baseball game.
It is interesting that Biden did not mention that Cuba is a bloody communist regime not wanting to offend the many communists in the Democratic Party, including among others Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC and the Squad, and his Vice President Kamala Harris. Worse, the Biden administration ended some of the economic sanctions done by Trump against the communists in Venezuela. Cubans in the island shared many videos on July 11, 2021, showing demonstrators marching on foot, riding bikes, and motorcycles, shouting “Freedom!” “Down with Communism!” “We are not afraid!” A people united cannot be defeated!” The brave Cubans also shouted, “Patria y Vida,” translating to “Homeland and Life.”
The slogan comes from a song by a group of Cuban musicians abroad in 2021 that has been used as message of rebellion by opponents. Like in Hong Kong in another tweet, Cuban dissidents are seen flying an American flag. It interesting to note how the American flag is seen as a symbol of freedom.
On July 13, 2021, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal recommended the following: “Step one is not to return to the failed appeasement policy of Barack Obama that expanded U.S. travel and commerce with the island but achieved nothing in political or economic reform…The U.S. can tighten the financial squeeze and impose Magnitsky sanctions on Cuba’s human-rights violators. Helping protesters foil Cuba’s internet shutdown would be invaluable and a warning to Russia and China not to meddle by propping up the regime is warranted.
Sadly, the mass-murdering communist Cuban regime mobilized all its repressive forces and were able to stop the unprecedented rebellion in Cuba. Hundreds were killed in the streets of many cities including boys and thousands arrested. Unless the OAS, the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, and United States intervene by imposing punishing economic sanctions, declaring an economic embargo against Cuba, and breaking diplomatic relations with Cuba, the regime backed by China, Russia, and Iran will continue oppressing the people. Sadly, there is little hope that that will happen as most of these organizations are controlled by globalists of the New World Order. Making statements that Cuba should stop committing genocide against the Cuban people without punishing sanctions or other strong measures, will not stop the bloody regime in killing, injuring, and arresting as many brave Cubans as it wants. Currently, opponents of the regime are promoting a general strike to bring freedom in Cuba.
The Cuban Occupation Army in Venezuela
The Castro regime has an Occupation Army in Venezuela as well as intelligence agents to prop up the Nicolás Maduro dictatorship and its violent efforts to crush the legitimate demands for freedom and democracy of the Venezuelan people. Dictator Maduro follows orders from Cuban dictator Raúl Castro and is protected by over 400 Cuban soldier bodyguards. In my opinion Venezuela has virtually become a colony of Cuba.
The Cuban bloody regime led by the mass-murdering tyrant Fidel Castro helped the communist Hugo Chávez come to power in Venezuela. Immediately after, Venezuela began sending large amounts of free oil and providing other economic assistance to the island. However, communism brought chaos and immense poverty in Venezuela. Today Venezuela is bankrupt and is sending less and less free oil to Cuba.
Venezuela was the most prosperous nation in Latin America when it had a free-market capitalism system. When dictator Hugo Chávez took over and implanted communism, like Cuba, its economy collapse. People in Venezuela are starving, drinking polluted water, eating what they find in garbage cans, and dying from lack of medicines. Over four million people have left Venezuela creating immense problems for Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and other nations. As in Cuba, communism in Venezuela has brought death, misery, poverty, and lots of repression.
In a socialist economy, economic decisions are not left to free markets or decided by private entrepreneurs. Instead, the regime, which controls the resources of the economy, decides what, when, and how of the production of goods. Centralized planning is an absolute failure.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Two unknown Germans, Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848. These two authors are currently revered by communists in the world. The first sentence of their revolutionary book said that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
This doctrine of class struggle is the central idea of Marxism. According to Marx and Engels, the cause of the class struggle is the ownership of private property that gives power to certain people. Private property is an instrument of oppression since it allows a small number of people, who own property, to impose their will on those who do not have property.
Marx considered religion to be the “opium” of the people. He believed that capitalism was a corrupt system that brought misery and oppression and that the working class needed to destroy capitalism. Of course, this interpretation of history is not valid. Communists following Marx and Engels have killed at least 100 million people and sent to prison tens of millions.
No private property was allowed under the new Marxist society. Religion and family ties needed to be eradicated. Hostility towards religion, Judeo Christian values, morality, tradition, and the family unit are common to all communist and socialist regimes. Thus, communists in the United States today are attacking Christianity like never before by calling Christians racists, homophobes, sexists, and Islamophobics.
Communists from Black Lives Matter and Antifa vandalized religious buildings and destroyed statues of Catholic saints like Junípero Serra, Jesus, and Virgin Mary. They demanded the demolition of the statue of Saint Louis King of France in the center of the city of St. Louis, Missouri. They destroyed in riots in over 600 cities statues of our Founders, past presidents, Union and Confederate generals, and vandalized churches and synagogues. One church in Florida was burned. Cancel culture was supported by woke corporations that gave millions to these communist groups.
Cultural Marxism
The founder of Cultural Marxism was Antonio Gramsci who was born on January 22, 1891, and died on April 27, 1937. He was a founding member and leader of the Italian Communist Party and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime.
Gramsci was one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the 20th century, particularly in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the Prison Notebooks, stated that “socialism must overwhelm Christianity…Socialism will triumph by infiltrating schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. Sadly, this is exactly what is happening in America. In addition, many communists have been elected to Congress and as mayors of large cities such as Bill DeBlasio. The large unions in America are led by communists, such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with 1.1 million members and the AFL-CIO. America is clearly in danger.
The incredible ignorance of young students and adults on socialism
Gary Benoit, publisher, and editor of The New American magazine, wrote in the John Birch Society Bulletin of December 2019 about the fourth annual survey conducted in October 2019 on “U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism” by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The result of the survey was alarming. The survey found that 40% of Generation Z (ages 16-22) and 49% of the millennials (ages 23-38) have a favorable opinion of the term “socialism.”
Benoit explained three other findings in the survey: 64% percent of Generation Z and 70% of millennials are “somewhat likely” or “extremely likely” to vote for “a political candidate who identifies as a socialist.” Twenty-eight percent of Generation Z and 36% of millennials have a favorable opinion of the term “communism.” Twelve percent of Generation Z and 19% of millennials believe that The Communist Manifesto “better guarantees freedom of equality for all” than does the Declaration of Independence.
The reasons for this incredible ignorance about socialism and communism are that many secondary teachers and college professors of social studies are liberals, socialists, and some Marxists and the books that they use criticize the history of America and portray socialism and communism in a favorable light. One such book is Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States. When I was hired as an Associate Professor in the College of Education at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami to teach social studies, a professor recommended that I used Howard Zinn’s book in my classes. Of course, I did not use such a terrible book. Zinn said he was a communist and anarchist. I could not believe that such a book was being used at a state university to teach future secondary school social studies teachers. Like the communist Pre-K- 12th grade curriculum of Black Lives Matter and the New York Times 1619 Project, A People's History of the United States presents a distorted view of our history.
I found out that many of the Cuban Americans who taught at the College of Education at FIU were extreme radicals who visited Cuba every year invited by a communist foundation. They took our students there. I was invited to visit Cuba for a week and all expenses were covered. I declined since if I went to Cuba, I would be arrested and imprisoned since all my life I have been fighting the bloody communist regime in Cuba. One Cuban American professor who was hired when FIU opened was arrested by the FBI together with her FIU counselor wife for being Cuban spies and sent to prison.
Both national teachers unions, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teacher, are run by communists. These two unions are pushing the communist curricula of Critical Race Theory, BLM, and the New York Times 1619 Project to all government schools in the nation to indoctrinate students.
The damaging sex education curriculum and Drag Queen Reading Hour programs
Another effort by communists is to destroy morality and eliminate the Judeo-Christian values of our nation among young students. Democratic run states such as California, Washington, and New York have implemented Drag Queen Reading Hour programs for Pre-K students to brainwash them in accepting as normal men dressed in women’s clothing.
This diabolical and child abusing reading program started in San Francisco in 2015. Shamefully it was accepted by the American Library Association and has expanded across the United States and world-wide. In addition, the pornographic sex education curriculum of California, New York, and other states, despite the tens of thousands of Christians’ complaints, has been extraordinarily successful in confusing students as to their gender. California is implementing a communist ethnic studies curriculum.
A study done by the University of California revealed that 24% of the students aged 12 to 18 in the largest state in the nation are not happy with their gender. Another study done indicated that 17% of the students in the New York Public Schools-the largest school district in America with over one million students- do not like their gender. In some states we are graduating sexually confused Marxist students. As a nation America, thanks to these anti-God socialist educators, is heading to an abyss.
On February 1, 2020, Dr. Susan Berry wrote an article titled “Washington Democrats Push Mandatory LGBTQ-Focused Sex Ed for Kindergartners” that was published by Breitbart. Dr. Susan Berry explained that parents in the state of Washington are trying to stop a Democrat bill that would mandate LGBTQ-focused sex education for children, including kindergartners. Democrats in the State House are pushing House Bill 2184, a bill that would mandate “comprehensive sexual health education” by the year 2022.
Dr. Berry said that Informed Parents of Washington is an organization that describes itself as “a coalition of parents dedicated to fighting Comprehensive Sex Education in schools and legislation that imposes upon parental rights.” This group is warning parents about the dangers of the legislation.
In the proposed sex education, first graders would begin to learn about gender roles. Teachers are instructed to read My Princess Boy. This book, about a boy that wants to be a girl, is also read by drag queens during Drag Queen Reading Hour to Pre-K and Kindergarten students despite the protests by Christian parents.
In the Democrats’ proposal, sixth graders would learn “language … that seems less familiar – using the pronoun ‘they’ instead of ‘her’ or him,’ using gender neutral names in scenarios and role-plays and referring to ‘someone with a vulva’ vs. a girl or woman.” “This is intended to make the curriculum inclusive of all genders and gender identities,” states the proposal.
Monsignor Stuart Swetland wrote an article published in the National Catholic Register, where he stated that we are living in an age described as post Christian where the Judeo-Christian tradition is no longer generally accepted in our society. Monsignor Swetland said the following: “The loss of Christian vision is evident everywhere: There is rampant consumerism and materialism, self-centeredness, and individualism, relativism and nihilism. These false ideologies lead to numerous social pathologies: abortion, murder, euthanasia, suicide, drug addiction, despair, divorce, sexual abuse, disregard for the poor, crippling isolation, and disabling loneliness.”
Ten Reasons to Reject Socialism
On April 6, 2016, the Tradition, Family, and Property Student Action published an article on its website titled “Ten Reasons to Reject Socialism”. It serves as a summary why socialism needs to be rejected in any nation in the world. These are the reasons:
- Socialism and communism are the same ideology.
Communism is but an extreme form of socialism. From the ideological standpoint, there is no substantial difference between the two. In fact, the communist Soviet Union called itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922-1991) and communist China, Cuba and Vietnam define themselves as socialist nations.
- Socialism violates personal freedom.
Socialism seeks to eliminate “injustice” by transferring rights and responsibilities from individuals and families to the State. In the process, socialism creates injustice. It destroys true liberty: the freedom to decide all matters that lie within our own competence and to follow the course shown by our reason, within the laws of morality, including the dictates of justice and charity.
- Socialism violates human nature
Socialism is anti-natural. It destroys personal initiative–a fruit of our intellect and free will–and replaces it with State control. It tends to totalitarianism, with its government and police repression, wherever it is implemented.
- Socialism violates private property.
Socialism calls for “redistributing the wealth” by taking from the “rich” to give to the poor. It imposes taxes that punish those who have been able to take greater advantage of their productive talents, capacity to work or thrift. It uses taxation to promote economic and social egalitarianism, a goal that will be fully achieved, according to The Communist Manifesto, with the “abolition of private property.”
- Socialism opposes traditional marriage
Socialism sees no moral reason for people to restrict sex to marriage, that is, to an indissoluble union between a man and a woman. Furthermore, socialism undermines private property, which Friedrich Engels, founder of modern socialism and communism along with Karl Marx, saw as the foundation of traditional marriage
- Socialism opposes parental rights in education
Socialism has the State, and not parents, control the education of children. Almost from birth, children are to be handed over to public institutions, where they will be taught what the State wants, regardless of parental views. Evolution must be taught. School prayer must be forbidden.
- Socialism promotes radical equality
A supposed absolute equality among men is the fundamental assumption of socialism. Therefore, it sees any inequality as unjust. Private employers are quickly portrayed as “exploiters” whose profits really belong to their employees. Therefore, they rule out the system of wage earning.
- Socialism promotes atheism
Belief in God, who unlike us is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient, clashes head-on with the principle of absolute equality. Socialism therefore rejects the spiritual, claiming that only matter exists. God, the soul, and the next life are illusions according to socialism.
- Socialism promotes relativism
For socialism there are no absolute truths or revealed morals that establish standards of conduct that apply to everyone, everywhere, and always. Everything evolves, including right and wrong, good, and evil. There is no place for the Ten Commandments, neither in the private mind nor in the public square.
- Socialism mocks religion
According to Karl Marx, religion is “the opium of the people.” Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, agreed: “Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”
Will our Constitutional Republic Survive?
A crowd was waiting outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention were concluding in 1787. As Benjamin Franklin left the Hall, a woman called out, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
There are many communists who have infiltrated Congress, the federal government, schools and universities, the media, the unions, Hollywood, and most of the Democratic Party. Sadly, many multinational corporations and Big Tech want a communist one-world government under the United Nations to enslave humanity. China and these domestic traitors, in my opinion, stole the 2020 presidential elections.
These woke corporations, the Biden administration, and globalists of the New World Order are working with World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland to do a Great Reset of capitalism to bring a socialist/communist economy in the world. China is the leader of the WEF. On February 13, 2022, The Epoch Times reported that the World Economic Forum (WEF), a champion of the “Great Reset” economic initiative has endorsed the teaching of communist Critical Race Theory.
If Americans want to keep their Republic, respect for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be taught in schools, colleges, and universities. The preservation of the Constitution is the one thing standing between Americans and tyranny. America’s political establishment and government institutions are increasingly dysfunctional. Fewer and fewer politicians seem content to abide by the Constitutional restrictions on their governmental powers and activities.
President Reagan said “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.” He also stated “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
Americans are living in a time where they are seeing a profoundly serious assault by communists and the destructive majority of members of the Democratic Party, Deep State operatives, and globalists on our freedoms. These people are also helped by the complicit corrupt socialist mainstream media.
The corrupt Biden administration is allowing the intelligence agencies to spy of all of us, and the Justice Department has declared parents who are fighting against the teaching of CRT “domestic terrorists.” We live in a surveillance society, or worse, in a police state.
The Marxist Biden administration would like to abolish the Electoral College; unconstitutionally change the election laws; pack the Supreme Court with socialist judges; open our borders to the world; legalize all illegal immigrants; destroy the First and Second Amendment; give up our sovereignty to a world government under the United Nations dominated by the globalists of the New World Order; and reduce the Republican Party to a small minority party forever.
Democrats have a long history of cheating in elections. There are 17 Democratic controlled states and the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. where a person does not have to present any ID to vote. In many of these states non-citizens vote. Many states have attempted to enact Voters ID requirements for elections. These efforts were challenged in court by the corrupt Department of Justice and now radical and Marxist organizations many funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. There is also a major problem with the use of electronic voting machines that experts have testified in Congress can be altered with cyber-attacks. The worst one, in my opinion, is Dominion Voting Systems that was used in 30 states and Puerto Rico, as well as in 17 counties of Florida. It is important to return to paper ballots to ensure election integrity.
Judicial Watch is an outstanding organization that has been fighting for election integrity for many years. This organization has identified growing new threats to transparent and fair elections. They are as follows:
- Universal mail-in voting
- Ballot harvesting
- Opt-out automatic voter registration
- Abolition of voter ID requirements
- Abolition of voter residency requirements
- Same-day voter registration
- Out-of-precinct voting
- Abolition of the Electoral College
On October 10, 2019, Bruce Thornton wrote an article titled “Can We Keep Our Republic” that was published by Front Page Magazine.com. Thornton wrote that “Starting with Woodrow Wilson, and continuing through FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society programs, and Barack Obama’s further expansion of entitlement programs and take-over the health care industry, the country has been moving relentlessly toward more and more centralization of federal power, expansion of the federal regulatory regime, and encroachment on the freedom of states, civil society, families, and individuals.”
Thornton concluded his article by stating: “If the Democrats win…they will transform the United States from the exceptional Republic and indispensable champion of unalienable rights and freedom it is, to just another client of a supranational technocratic empire like the European Union—then Obama’s aim of fundamentally transforming America will have been achieved. And that will be the moment, after more than two centuries, we failed to keep our Republic.”
Sadly, the Democrats, in my opinion, stole the 2020 election, and we have a senile half demented Joe Biden as president. The Biden family, like the Bill and Hillary Clinton family, is a world-wide criminal syndicate that has taken money from China, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and other nations.
Conclusion
Communism is a totalitarian system completely at odds with individual liberty, freedom of opportunity, and free-market capitalism. Communism seeks to destroy the social and moral fabric of society and by its very nature is intolerant and hateful. Communism brings misery, hunger, death, oppression, and greater inequality. Communism undermines responsibility and encourages dependence. Once imposed, communism is almost impossible to undo.
Schools should be doing more to teach students America’s great heritage of liberty and to be proud to be an American. Many years ago, I taught a high school government and economics course that included a textbook called Democracy and Communism Theory and Action in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida.
Sadly, the teaching about socialism and communism was discarded in Florida for many years. Thus, many young people lack basic knowledge regarding the terrible command-and-control communist economy. America needs to teach about the superiority of the free-market capitalist economy over the command-and-control communist economy. And then hire teachers and college professors who are not socialists or communists.
We can fight against a communist takeover of America. There are 22 states that have a Republican governor and both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Republicans. These governors and their attorneys general are constantly suing the Biden administration over unconstitutional executive orders and mandates. Any illegal executive order or law enacted must be declared null and void, if they violate the Constitution. The great Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is mandating teaching about communism and banning CRT in all public schools in Florida.
Unlike most nations, America does not have national police. America has state troopers, county, and municipal police and sheriffs that do not obey orders from the federal government. The Second Amendment allows our citizens to own guns. There are well-armed militias all over America and none of these groups want to live under communism.
Communists in America want to take God and our freedom and liberty away. They want to destroy the Constitution and free-market economy. They want to divide and oppress Americans. They want to take our precious sovereignty and place America under a one-world government under the corrupt United Nations but controlled by globalists of the New World Order.
Patriotic Americans need to educate their children and grandchildren, as well as their friends, on the terrible consequences of communism. Americans need to better inform themselves on the evil nature communism by reading publications such as Humans Events, The Epoch Times, and the John Birch Society’s The New American magazine.
We must fight everyday so that the United States will never be a communist nation. Those of us who lived or fought against communism in our native countries will be on be on the front line of this struggle to save our Republic. With God’s help, America will never be a communist nation and will continue to be a beacon of freedom to the world and a shining city on the hill. But Americans must work extremely hard to help Republicans, who are supporters of free-market capitalism, to take the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2022 and the White House in 2024.
If patriots love the United States, they need to fight hard to preserve the greatest and most generous country on the face of the planet, the United States of America, with its religious liberty, Judeo Christian values, and constitutional Republic. Patriots need to say this will not happen on their watch. And this is a war that patriotic Americans shall win with the help of Almighty God!
