The gusanos are the Cuban exiles who fled Cuba when Castro took over. I don’t much like these people, though in recent years, a higher quality person has been leaving, mostly for economic reasons.
A gusano tells many a lie indeed; in fact, the gusano’s very existence is really just one lie piled on top of another endlessly. Granted there are quite a few legitimate things to criticize about the Cuban model, and if the gusanos limited themselves to that, one could almost bear them. But they can’t. They wildly exaggerate and lie about every negative thing, and they will never admit that one positive thing has come out of the Revolution.
Some of the lies:
Fidel Castro has “bloody hands.” Not really, or at least not for a long time. There were 600 executions after the victory of the Revolutionaries, but those were people running death squads that slaughtered thousands of workers, peasants, teachers, students, union members, etc. They had a lot of blood on their hands themselves.
There was a long insurgency that went on all through the 1960′s. It was eventually defeated. Many of those captured were executed on charges of rebellion. The number was approximately 10,000. The last rebel was executed in 1970.
Since then, there have been few executions. The last one may have been in 1987 when a Cuban officer was executed for drug trafficking.
Cuban prisons are hellholes. Not really. By Latin American standards, I would say that they are actually halfway decent. For one thing, torture, though it exists, is rare, and it is rampant all through the region.
There are shortages of everything in Cuba. It’s not really true anymore. All over Havana and in most of the larger cities, the sidewalks are lined with entrepreneurs selling just about everything you can think of. Cuban exiles fly from Miami with duffel bags full of US products and give them to their Cuban relatives to sell on the street. So most products are more or less available, surely not in state stores, but then probably on the street. A few things are hard to get such as spices and packaged goods.
The Cuban diet is “bland.” So? So what? How does the average Latin American eat? Beans, rice and tortillas. There is a very high level of malnutrition all through Latin America. Malnutrition is for all intents and purposes absent from Cuba.
Cubans are “starving.” Like Hell they are. See above where I wrote that the malnutrition level is effectively zero (2%). If there’s no malnutrition, how is anyone starving?
Cuban hospitals are Hellholes. Not really. Do you realize that wealthy, very rightwing people from all over Latin America fly to Cuba to have special operations done because Cuban doctors are so good? It’s true.
Cuba is a sponsor of terrorism. That’s the latest lie in an annual pack of lies put out by the Snake Department of the United Snakes called the Sponsors of Terrorism Report. It’s been a pile of political bullshit, crap and lies ever since this lying report was first issued, and this BS continues to this very day. Cuba doesn’t sponsor any guerrilla groups in Latin America in any way, shape or form.
Cuba has given political asylum to some guerrillas were wanted in other countries. Asata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army has been given asylum, along with members of the FARC revolutionaries and the ETA Basque freedom fighters. I fail to see how giving political asylum to guerrillas and political prisoners wanted by other countries is sponsoring terrorism.
The definition of a “sponsor of terrorism” simply means “any country the US doesn’t like.” If we don’t like you, you’re a sponsor of terrorism, and that’s all there is to it.
Gusano insanity on the embargo. It’s clear that the embargo hurts the Cubans very badly. In fact, the Cuban Interests Section in New York is going to shut down soon because no bank in the US will handle their transactions because it violates US sanctions laws and can result in huge fines.
Gusanos, disgusting liars that they are, tell two different stories about the embargo.
The first lie is: The embargo doesn’t even work! The embargo doesn’t do one penny of damage to the Cuban economy! The economy doesn’t work because Communism doesn’t work!
While there is some truth to this in that the Communist system has major issues and many of Cuba’s economic problems are self-inflicted, the truth is the embargo causes massive damage to the economy.
The typical response of any sane person then is to say, “Ok, if it doesn’t hurt them one bit, then let’s lift the embargo.”
But then the gusanos go apoplectic! “No! No! No! We will never lift the embargo! Never ever ever ever!”
You see, that makes no sense. Obviously the gusanos know that the embargo hurts Cuba, but they lie and say it doesn’t to put all the blame on Castro. After all, if it didn’t work, then why not lift it, right?
People are so desperate to flee that island that they get on board rickety rafts and drown! Well that’s not really true. The truth is that all Cubans fleeing want to come to the United States, to Miami. They never want to go anywhere else. The gusanos say capitalism works so great in Latin America, then why don’t Cubans ever flee to any of the capitalist paradises in Latin America? Because they blow, that’s why? People probably have it better in Cuba than in Haiti, Jamaica or the Dominican Republic.
And the only reason they flee in the first place is because we have a special policy that insanely treats Cubans differently from any other group of immigrants to America. It’s called wet foot, dry foot. If you get on a raft and make it to Florida, that’s dry foot and even though you’re an illegal alien, you get an automatic right to stay in the US permanently. If they catch you in the ocean, they take you back to Cuba. 20,000 illegal aliens are allowed to immigrate to the US scot free every year in this manner.
Those people are prisoners on that poor island! Not true. There is actually something called the “Orderly Departure Program.” You have to wait in line for about 6 months, and then you generally get permission to emigrate. However, if you have a fancy degree, you may be required to pay back the money that the state spent educating you before you can go.
Castro is worth $11 million or $100 million or however many million dollars. The liars at Reason Magazine are the ones who made up this one. The Wall Street Journal liars then picked it up and ran with it. This figure was arrived at ingeniously. They took the total net worth of the Cuban economy, and then they insanely decided that Fidel Castro owned every single peso of that wealth, down to the last centavo! Castro himself owns all of Cuba! He’s one of the richest men on Earth! Of course it is not true. Castro receives a salary, but it is not large. Fidel as a man is not really interested in material things.