278. Castro

When I was in 7th grade, in Room 120 at Durrett High School, one of the first "big" papers I had to write was on Latin America. I wrote for pages and pages on the various governments up and down the land we call America, including a special section on Cuba. This was in 1972 or 1973, not so far removed from Castro's takeover of the government there just shortly before I was born 12 years earlier. Little did I know that many of the governments on which I had written were merely puppets of either the United States or the Soviet Union, or both.

Long-time readers will know that I've mentioned Cuba in previous posts, asking questions about the whereabouts of a statue of Jose Marti, a former leader of the island nation, whose statue once stood in Shively Park, but is there no more.

For the past 12 years, I have had the pleasure of a friendship with a Cuban refugee, one who I met shortly after his arrival here in the states aboard a raft, upon which he and two others had left the Castro regime. Put on a plane by the Catholic Refugee Services in southern Florida, he ended up in Louisville - loo-ese vee-ye - as he pronounced it at the time, thinking he was in Saint Louis, or sahn-loo-eee.

Since 1999, he has rented a little four room cottage from me, one in Camp Taylor in which I had lived for the previous twelve years, and there he remains today, through two or three girlfriends, one wife, three or four jobs, and a slew of friends.

He had often spoken of his Homeland, one he has not seen for over thirteen years, where his brothers and sisters, mother and grandmother, and his daughter, now a young lady of about 17 years old, remain, all hopeful that someday their family may be reunited.

My friend and his family are just one of many, many families in a like situation, all awaiting for the day that relations between Cuba and the United States are once again warm and friendly, as they were in the very beginning of Castro's reign of now fifty years.

The first step, a very small one, came in 2006 when Fidel Castro yielded over some of his power to his younger brother Raul, who is said to be just as ruthless at times as his older sibling. Another much larger step was taken today when Fidel announced, via the internet, he was stepping aside, ending his fifty year rule.

It will take many many more changes before relations between here and there will ever be anything close to normal. But, as with all journeys of a thousand miles, there is always that first important step.

For the sake of my friend and his family, and those of all the Cubans I've come to know, and all those I will never know, I am hopeful Castro's stepping down is the first step in the right direction.

Cuba Libre.

Here is a quote from Jose Marti, the former leader.

"One revolution is still necessary: the one that will not end with the rule of its leader. It will be the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceable individuals, who will become soldiers for once so that neither they nor anyone else will ever have to be a soldier again."