The Props For the Show in Miami

   Just a few short days ago, the mother of the hunger striker who died last year while serving a prison sentence arrived in Miami with her son's ashes.  She shouted "Zapata vive" while holding her son's ashes in a wooden box to the crowd's delight.  There was something ironic though about her statement which accused the Castro brothers of  "brutally beating her son to death."  Was he not a hunger striker?  Did he not imagine that he might die?  Did he refuse to eat the food given to him by the "Castro brothers"?  Maybe she got carried away in the moment while being surrounded by members of the Cuban Democratic Directorate.  From Miami, she promises to "relentlessly fight for the Cuban people's right to freedom and democracy which my son so much dreamed of.”  She will fight, I imagine, just as the rest of the people in Miami "fight", with a detachment from the true hopes and desires of the people she decided to leave, just as the others in Miami.  She now represents nothing more than another voice in the already over the hill part of the "exile" community as its political power within the U.S. is on the decline.  These "fighters" have "fought" predominantly with the money of the American people and have managed to do nothing but discredit themselves in the Cuban people's eyes.  Their support for the policies which were intended to make Cubans' lives as difficult as possible has forfeited their claim of trying to help.  There is nobody on the island who appreciates these efforts and many of the more recent immigrants from Cuba don't support these "exile" leaders' policies either.  She has thrown herself onto the side of the most disgusting characters in this unfortunate unfinished story of US-Cuba relations/tensions.  This is a side that is being cornered due to the fact that their terrorist tactics, expensive government hand-outs are no longer as popular within the Washington political establishment.  Couple that with the fact that many Americans find it offensive that they too are victims of this policy and the oil industry among others are making alot of noise as they are itching to do business with Cuba.  She stated that she hopes to one day bring his ashes to rest in Cuba, which she took so much trouble to bring to Miami only to be used as a prop for the extremists in Miami.  Really?  Rest? Thanks mom.