The editorial section today in the Miami Herald, once again blessed us with a gem of an opinion. This time the opinion was offered by one of the writers/ editors at the Miami paper, Fabiola Santiago. She goes on about the Mass held this past Sunday in Havana by Cardinal Jaime Ortega and how he included prayers for the health of Hugo Chavez and his recovery after removing a cancerous tumor.
I'm not going to comment on people's religious beliefs. To each his own. I really couldn't care less about if or what religion a person decides to follow. But I will say that the suggestion made by Fabiola Santiago, that "Sometimes, as happened Sunday in Havana, that prayer reaches our ears in Miami and rattles our faith, breaks our hearts." if hearts are broken because of a prayer for someone's health to be bettered is heartbreaking to some in Miami, it is a reminder of the lack of respect for humanity that some in Miami's right wing Cuban community show. These twisted individuals who feel that giving the key to Hialeah to the air plane bomber, Luis Posada Carriles, is a good thing, somehow feel that praying for the health of Venezuela's president is offensive and heart breaking.
These right wing, anti-Cuban people are not in the least concerned about the well being of the people of Venezuela. They really couldn't care less about the leadership of Venezuela or any other country as long as they would lend a hand at isolating the Cuban people. But since Hugo Chavez decided that solidarity with the Cuban people would be his country's path, he is now an enemy of the powerful anti-Castro elite in South Florida.
She finds it cynical that such a mass would take place on the island based on the idea that decades ago "all but prohibited religious worship". Even if this were the case then, it isn't now and religious worship does take place, so much so that the Pope will be visiting Cuba later this month. As opposed to opening her mind and accepting the way things are now, she traps herself by the outdated logic prevalent in those that search for ways to rationalize the United States' policy of trying to isolate Cuba. Countless errors have been made in Cuba since 1959, just as mistakes are made by every government in the world, but there has been nothing more harmful to the Cuban people than the laws supported by the extremist in Miami. They have been willing to find any mechanism possible to attempt to cause as many hardships for ordinary Cubans over the past five decades, ironically professing their love for those same victims of their policies.
"Sometimes a prayer sounds less like a prayer and more like a political move." This is how Fabiola Santiago describes the prayers offered for Chavez. Yet she imagines that if the Pope were to decide to visit the so-called dissidents, the ones who have countless connections with the anti-Cuba group in Miami and U.S. government officials, that it wouldn't be a "political move" meant to please the spectators in South Florida. Political is the description offered by Mrs. Santiago of Cuba's government as a "ruthless dictatorship" who, according to her and others in Miami, causes the suffering of the Cuban people. She fails to recognize even once the effects that the embargo and all of the corresponding laws have on the "suffering" Cuban people. Under what she describes as a ruthless dictatorship, the Cuban people go to sleep every night peacefully knowing that not one child on the island goes without a place to call home. Under the "ruthless dictatorship", health care is a right, not a commodity, which all people have including the actors/dissidents who receive their financial support from groups who are openly enemies of the system which guarantees that right. Under the "ruthless dictatorship", people can study as long as they'd like, free of charge, because the "ruthless dictatorship" puts an enormous emphasis on education and, like health care, doesn't view education as a commodity.
Just to be clear, the definition of ruthless is having or showing no pity or compassion for others. The tens of thousands of Cuban doctors who have gone to the farthest corners of the earth on international missions can be considered functionaries of some sort of the "ruthless dictatorship". The children who suffered from health problems from the meltdown at Chernobyl and were saved and offered free care by Cuba's medical system may find it interesting that some folks consider the Cuban government ruthless.
To me, ruthless is a term better used to describe those who fatten themselves up thanks to the inability to fight the gluttonous urge to indulge on the foods so plentiful in countries not blockaded by more powerful ones, while they point to the fact that such food choices aren't readily available on the island, choosing to conveniently ignore one of the reasons for the situation, their own policies. Ruthless is a man with half of a chin, who walks freely in Hialeah although he helped mastermind the blowing up of a civilian airliner and says that he sleeps like a baby. Ruthless are those who are willing to intentionally separate families, by outlawing travel to Cuba.
But then again, ruthless is nothing more than a term used by Fabiola Santiago to describe something that she doesn't like. She can use it however she wants to, but too many people understand the true meaning of the word to find sympathy for the people she speaks for, the extremists in Miami.
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