The Longest Romance

by Humberto Fontova

  For the above crime, and in a secret trial, Castro’s judicial apparatchiks gave Valladares a 30-year prison sentence. Before, during and after this trial the Castro regime jailed tens of thousands of political prisoners for crimes similar to that of Valladares. For planting bombs in public places—and during an open trial crammed with international observers—an independent judiciary gave the same sentence, 30 years, to Nelson Mandela. The segregationist regime of South Africa was often suspended from the UN for its human-rights violations. Castro’s regime, on the other hand, went on to chair the UN Human Rights commission.

  Felix Rodriguez was 17 when he first volunteered to fight the wicked old men (almost twice his age) who had taken over Cuba in 1959 with the help of the wicked older men in the Kremlin. As a 19-year-old member of Brigade 2506, Felix infiltrated Communist Cuba weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion, organizing underground freedom-fighters, planning for the sabotage of key roads and bridges, staying a step ahead of the Castro’s secret police and their KGB handlers and coaches, as 58-year-old Herbert Matthews shilled for them in the U.S. media. Almost half of his comrades in the infiltration teams (all in their early 20’s) died in front of firing squads, after torture. Nineteen-year-old Felix Rodriguez knew the odds. He volunteered anyway.

  After the Best and Brightest had stabbed the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters in the back, Rodriguez again foiled the Communist dragnet by slipping into the Venezuelan embassy and escaping a year later to Florida. After the Best and Brightest stabbed them again and twisted the blade with the Kennedy-Khrushchev swindle that supposedly solved the Missile Crisis, Rodriguez, along with hundreds of his Brigade 2506 brothers, enlisted in the U.S. Army.

  Later, as a CIA operative, Rodriguez played the key role in tracking down and capturing Che Guevara in Bolivia and was the last to question him. “Finally,” at age 26, “I was face to face with the assassin of thousands of my countrymen, of hundreds of my patriot friends,” recalls Rodriguez. His captive Che Guevara was almost 40 at the time; in Felix’s eyes he was among the wickedest of the old men who had converted his homeland into a joyless, stifling police state and satrapy of the even older men in the Kremlin.

  But remove the wispy beard and beret from Che Guevara and you’ve got Jim Morrison of The Doors. In 1959, Raul Castro with his blond ponytail was a ringer for Joe Walsh circa “Hotel California.” Yank the cowboy hat from Camilo Cienfuegos’s head and you’ve got the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. Put a green army cap on Cream’s drummer Ginger Baker, darken his thin beard a bit, and there’s Fidel Castro himself.

  So these Cuban Stalinists were on the cutting edge of fashion. They pre-empted the Haight-Ashbury look by a decade. In any picture with them, Nikita Khrushchev looks as far out of place as the frumpy Ed Sullivan introducing the psychedelic Jefferson Airplane on his stage. But in fact the fat, bald, boorish Butcher of Budapest was the main patron, bankroller and soul-mate of these young, hirsute, hard-core Cuban Bolsheviks.

  And woe to Castro’s subjects who attempted the “Heepee” look and lifestyle when it really kicked in a few years later!

  “These youths walk around with their transistor radios listening to imperialist music!” raved Fidel Castro as he denounced rock ‘n’ roll in a 1968 speech. “They corrupt the morals of young girls and destroy posters of Che! What do they think? That this is a bourgeois liberal regime? No! There’s nothing liberal in us! We are collectivists! We are communists! There will be no Prague Spring here!”8

  Imagine long-haired youths destroying images of Che Guevara! It’s easy when you are, unlike Occupy demonstrators, actually forced to live under Che Guevara. The impulse then becomes irresistible.

  USEFUL IDIOTS FROM WOODSTOCK NATION

  Not that stupid old men like Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Bob Beckel are alone in hailing the youthful idealism of a Stalinist regime that jailed tens of thousands of Cuban youths for the crime of growing long hair and listening to “Yankee heepee” rock music.

  In fact many of the very “Yankee heepees” whose music was criminalized by Fidel Castro themselves hail the KGB-mentored jailing of their fans. This hailing often takes the form of composing songs in honor of the regime that jailed young Cubans who were caught listening to their own music smuggled into Cuba.

  When in 1979 Fidel Castro invited Stephen Stills to perform in Cuba, the famous Woodstocker could hardly contain his elation. The fervent champion of human rights, civil rights and free speech—indeed, CSNY’s last tour in 2010 was entitled “The Free-Speech Tour”—not only took up the offer to perform at this “Havana Jam” but also composed a song in Castro’s honor, entitled “Cuba al Fin!”

  Jazz-master Paquito D’Rivera, still living in Cuba at the time, recalled watching Stills on stage at Havana’s Karl Marx theatre lovingly crooning the song to the families of Castro’s Stalinist nomenklatura as if Havana Jam were a personal performance for the Soviet satrap himself.9 Within blocks of this cheeky “jam”—which also included fervent human-rights activists Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joel—Cuban youths, black and white, languished in dungeons as they suffered prison sentences longer than Nelson Mandela’s. Their crime was the commission of free speech.

  “They invited me because they knew I was politically astute,”10 gloated Stephen Stills about the acumen and good taste of his Cuban hosts, who to this day jail Cuban youths for the crime of saying “Down with Fidel!”

  “There’s a man with a gun over there, tellin’me I gotta beware,” wrote Stepen Stills in his 1967 hit, “For What it’s Worth.” You know what, Stephen Stills? Cuban youths have something to tell you regarding that scenario. If only you’d deigned to part company from your Stalinist hosts in Havana and asked around.

  “Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid, Step out of line, the men come and take you away.” Your lyrics, Mr. Stills—and they describe to a T your hosts in Havana, who took away Cubans at a higher rate than Stalin took away Russians or Hitler took away Germans.

  “Young people speaking their minds, And getting so much resistance from behind ....” Quite so, Mr. Stills. Cuban youngsters were getting it from the people right behind your stage from the Stalinists who were sponsoring you, who were brown-nosing with you, while they were jailing and torturing young people for the crime of listening to your music.

  “You have to give them due respect because they have a unique form of socialism that’s very significant in the scheme of world history,” Stills declared in explaining his Cuba visit.11

  Oh, it’s unique all right, Mr. Stills. Can you think of another 20th-century regime that jailed and tortured youths en masse for the crime of growing long hair and craving rock music?

  Famous Woodstocker Carlos Santana also glorifies the regime that criminalized his music and imprisoned his fans. At the 2005 Oscars the famed guitarist, on hand to perform the theme song for Motorcycle Diaries, stopped for the photographers, smiled deliriously and flung his jacket open.

  Ta-DA! There it was: Carlos’s elegantly embroidered Che Guevara t-shirt. Carlos’s face as the flashbulbs popped said it all. “I’m so cool!” he might have beamed. “I’m so hip! I’m so sharp! I’m so politically astute—like my buddy Stephen Stills!”

  Indeed, as if hipness, sharpness and political astuteness meant proudly advertising the emblem of a regime that criminalized your music and lifestyle.

  Judy Collins, though not physically present at Yasgur’s farm on August 15, 1969, certainly merits mention here. The Spanish-sounding gibberish that closes out “Judy Blue Eyes” is Stills employing a faux Cuban accent, singing: “How beautiful it would be to bring me to Cuba, the queen of the Caribbean. I only want to visit you there, how sad that I can’t go, Oh va, oh va, va!”

  Well, exactly ten years later Stills fulfilled his wish, and as a personal guest of the beautiful island’s owner and warden.

  Upon Che Guevara’s death, the bereaved “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” herself sought solace in songwriti
ng, composing a lovely ballad entitled “Che.” “You have it in your hands to own your life, to own your land” goes the chorus which represents Che himself consoling Bolivian campesinos who mourn their savior’s death.

  Attempting to own their own lives and land is precisely what got thousands of Cuban country-folk massacred by Che Guevara’s firing squads. America’s millionaire songstress might have mourned Che’s death, but it was Bolivian campesinos who helped track him down and kill him.

  “Only through the total eradication of private property will we create the new man,” instructed Che Guevara. “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible!” thundered this idol of the “do-your-own-thing” Bohemians.

  Not to be outdone by Judy Collins, famous Rhodes Scholar Kris Kristofferson composed a song entitled “Mal Sacate,” wherein he laments: “You have stolen all the land that you can steal, and you killed so many heroes.”

  A perfect tribute to his Havana Jam hosts, you might think?

  Instead Kristofferson was lambasting Stalinism’s enemies, the men who fought Che Guevara. The very next stanza mentions the “murdered heroes,” among whom we find none other than—Che Guevara!

  Judy Collins and Kris Kristofferson obviously share the same “political astuteness” with their friend and soulmate Stephen Stills. So let’s excuse them for confusing Fidel Castro with Country Joe McDonald and Che Guevara with Wavy Gravy.

  Former “Pretenders” singer Chrissie Hynde’s latest album is entitled Fidelity! in honor of Fidel Castro. She and her lover had recently visited Cuba and “saw pictures of Fidel Castro everywhere!” she explained.

  Imagine that!

  Champion of Cuban Stalinism (and segregation) Chrissie Hynde was a noisy opponent of South African segregation. You’ll find the identical “incongruity” in Castro fans from Charles Rangel to Maxine Waters, from Danny Glover to Jack Nicholson, from Sidney Pollack to Steven Spielberg, from Francis Ford Coppola to Norman Jewison, from Ry Cooder to Bonnie Raitt.

  Speaking of Bonnie Raitt, she composed a song in honor of Fidel Castro entitled “Cuba Is Way Too Cool!” and performed it in his very fiefdom in March 1999 during a star-studded musical extravaganza entitled “Music Bridges Over Troubled Waters.”

  In brief, the only regime in recent history to criminalize rock music and jail its fans for the crime of being its fans has songs composed in its honor by rock musicians Bonnie Raitt, Stephen Stills, Judy Collins, Kris Kristofferson and Chrissie Hynde. Not to be outdone, native New Yorker and civil-rights activist Carole King sang a personal and heartfelt “You’ve Got a Friend” to the man who boasts of craving to nuke New York and who jailed the longest-suffering black political prisoners in modern history.

  The testimony of a Cuban rocker-wannabe might clarify matters: “In Cuba freedom is nonexistent,” the rock guitarist told Mexico’s Proceso magazine. “The regime demands submission. It persecutes all hippies, homosexuals, poets and free thinkers. It employs total repression against them.”12

  The Cuban rocker quoted above divulged the truth only because he’d managed to escape the nation-prison that Bonnie Raitt, Chrissie Hynde, Jimmy Buffett, Andy Summers, etc. all herald. That escapee’s name is Canek Sanchez Guevara—Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s very grandson. The regime co-founded by his grandfather jailed and tortured Canek for the crime of trying to play rock music.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jon Stewart to Don Fidel: Thank You, Godfather

  “I mean everybody who saw Godfather II knows what it was like when Castro took over!” (Chris Matthews, “Hardball, The Place for Politics,” MSNBC, October 20, 2011)

  “All I know about pre-Castro Cuba I learned from Godfather II!” (Jon Stewart, July 23, 2008)

  The media love to dwell on how a few U.S. mobsters once bribed a few Cuban politicians to allow a few casinos in Havana. To hear them tell it: in an economy that was overwhelmingly Cuban-owned, export- and manufacturing-oriented, and provided Cubans per capita with an income higher than most Europeans, the 13th-lowest infant mortality on earth, and attracted a flood of (primarily first-world) immigrants, this tiny sideline—the casino business—made Cuba a hopelessly wretched place screaming for a communist revolution. So don’t bother us with any boring statistics, you Cuban-exile revanchists!

  For almost forty years the primary—and perhaps exclusive —educational text on Cuba for liberals was a screenplay by fiction-writer Mario Puzo and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola. Bestselling author T.J. English, in collaboration with Castro-regime apparatchiks, then expanded on this educational franchise. Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution, he entitled the “New York Times Bestseller” that enchanted and enlightened Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, also known as the primary news and educational source for Americans under 40.

  “Well-researched ... knowledgeable ... Briskly paced and well-sourced, Havana Nocturne has the air of a thriller with the bonus of being true,” rhapsodized Tom Miller of The Washington, Post about the book.

  “Thoroughly and impressively researched,” attested The Miami Herald.

  “Bringing together long-buried historical information with English’s own research in Havana ... Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil’s playground for mob leaders,” glows the PR notice from publisher William Morrow.

  “The roots of this epic antipathy [between the U.S. and Castro] can be traced in part to the influx of mobsters and the plundering of Havana that took place in the late 1940’s and 50’s ... This book is nothing less than The Rosetta Stone, the key to understanding the Cuban Revolution,” the author modestly claims.

  During this interview the legendarily edgy and iconoclastic Jon Stewart royally blew his chance to revel in a nonstop snark-fest against the (genuine) establishment. Instead:

  “I love this book!” Stewart gushed upon greeting the author on his “Daily Show.” “This is the true story of Cuba—a fascinating book!” continued the Peabody Award-winner, barely containing himself.

  As a service to “The Daily Show’s” producers I prepared a script—based on fully-documented information—for Stewart’s interview with T.J. English that seemed ideal for enhancing the Peabody Award-winner’s acclaim for deflating blowhards and smashing pious platitudes with snarky truth. Here it goes.

  Welcome to the show, Mr. English, and thanks for coming. First off, it appears that the primary source for your book, cited no fewer than 72 times in quotes and footnotes, is an official of Castro’s totalitarian regime named Enrique Cirules.

  In fact, Senor Cirules is an official of Cuba’s La Casa de las Americas, which publishes and promotes the Castro regime’s propaganda in books and articles under the guise of art. In 1983 a high-ranking Cuban Intelligence officer named Jesus Perez Mendez defected to the U.S. and spilled his guts to the FBI. Among his gut-spillings we encounter the following: “The Cuban DGI (Castro’s KGB-trained spy agency) controls Casa de las Americas.” We were hoping to have Mr. Perez-Mendes on tonight to contribute his views on the veracity of your book’s claims, Mr. English, but were thwarted upon discovering that he lives under FBI protection for fear of being assassinated by the folks who hosted you in Cuba and collaborated with you in writing the book. 1

  Mr. English, in your book’s acknowledgements you describe this Castroite apparatchik Enrique Cirules as a “Cuban author.” Wouldn’t this be like describing Julius Streicher as a “German author”?

  Instead, minutes into the interview and in response to another Godfather-ite cliché by the smug T.J. English, Stewart—this winner of the Television Critics Association award for “Outstanding Achievement in News and Information”—gushes: “Wow! So the mob actually built Cuba’s economy! So it was actually worse than shown in Godfather II!”

  To continue with my script for “The Daily Show:” Mr. English, let’s look at stati
stics published by scholars who live in a free country without fearing torture-chambers and firing squads for telling the truth. The following items were culled from the Organization of American States, from the UN Statistical yearbook and from the Cuban government before it was totalitarian. We’ll compare these against the claims made by the Castro-regime apparatchik who constitutes the primary source for your non-fiction bestseller.

  In 1955, for instance, Cuba contained a grand total of three gambling casinos. The biggest was at the Tropicana Club and featured ten gambling tables and 30 slot machines. The Hotel Nacional featured seven roulette wheels and 21 slot machines.2

  By contrast, in 1955 the Riviera Casino in Las Vegas featured 20 tables and 116 slot machines. This means that in 1955 one Las Vegas casino had more gambling action than all of Cuba.

  We also ran some numbers, Mr. Author of the Rosetta Stone on the Cuban Revolution. For instance, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority the typical tourist spends five days in their city and spends an average of $580 ($75 in 1957 dollars) on gambling, the main motive for 90 per cent of visitors.

  Your own book acknowledges that Cuba’s casinos were patronized almost exclusively by tourists. Well, throughout the 1950’s Cuba averaged 180,000 tourists a year.3 For the sake of this show’s time-constraints, we decided to be very generous and ignore Cuba’s beaches, fishing, dining, palm-studded countryside, old-world architecture, sightseeing etc., etc. We said: let’s assume all those tourists—men, women, adolescents, children—did nothing in Cuba but gamble, and at the Las Vegas rate.

  Well, our calculator revealed an extremely generous total of $13.5 million for Cuba’s gambling industry annually. But in 1957 Cuba’s gross domestic product was $2.7 billion, and Cuba’s foreign receipts were $752 million.4 Mr. English, could you explain how the beneficiaries of that miniscule fraction of Cuba’s income came to own the entire nation of Cuba and to “infiltrate its levers of power from top to bottom,” as your impressively-researched book claims? “U. S. mobsters,” you write, “concerned themselves with controlling casinos, banks, political leaders and the gross national product of the island.”