THE STATUES, THE BUSTS AND THE SMOKESCREENS.

                          

Since 1959 hundreds of thousand of fellow Cubans fled our native island escaping from chaos and dictatorship. They basically ended up in Miami and New Jersey. Most of them thought the new arrangement would be temporary, but as the truth sank in and days became weeks, months and years they started to realize it was more difficult than they had hoped. America was friendly except for a few racist episodes: yes there is racism beyond black and white, but its language was extremely hostile; how could one place the adjectives before the nouns?, they wondered. Castro and his thugs had robbed them of every penny and it was difficult to start from scratch. Then, the American government came up with a plan to overthrow the newly installed Junta and the Cuban immigrants were pivotal in that plot. It had to look like a civil war, no official American meddling. 

It was music to their ears; there was so much hatred and resentment among those whose dreams had been chattered and wealth been swindled. It was only fair after all to take back from the tyrant what he had stolen from the exiles.

A nine year old could have planned it better; not only was the military action clumsily orchestrated, but it was so loudly heralded that everybody knew when, where and how the invasion would take place. One could wonder if the whole thing had been sold to the enemy since the offset.

Our brethren had been assured that once they landed air support would be forthcoming; they were sure that the Kennedy administration would bomb the shit out of Castro and his barbudos hijos de puta. Suddenly, it all went south, no air support, the young president they had trusted so much washed his hands and left them stranded in the swamp; choice of death being a Cuban crocodile or a Czech machine gun, but death it was.

Then came the killing and the humiliation for those who survived, the public parade of defeat and the endless "me embarcaron".

As Cuban Americans do we have the option of demanding the immediate removal of all Kennedy's statues since he flagrantly betrayed us ?; the Brigade was not abandoned in 1800; it was served to a blood thirsty dictator on a silver platter less than sixty years ago.