CUBAN REPUBLICANS ARE AN ANOMALY

THIS IS ONE ODD THING THAT ONLY EXISTS AMONG THE CUBAN EXILES AND NO OTHER HISPANICS

Since I am Cuban born, left my country when I was 14 years old into an unwanted exile I think I am qualified to offer an opinion on the oddity that is my fellow countrymen embracing the Republican Party and their repugnant ideology.

First let me point out that there is a bit of an elitist component to this party affiliation. Exile Cubans see themselves as the ruling class of Cuba, forced into exile by a Marxist totalitarian regime that saw to it they should and would lose their privileged status along the pecking order of the former Cuban society. The Cubans see themselves as conservatives because they associate communism with anything that is not recalcitrant, aggressive anti-communist rhetoric.

I can still remember what my fellow countrymen were saying about then President John F. Kennedy: “this American President is a communist”. I heard that time and time again, so that early in the game the Cubans were already ideologically aligned with the Republicans. Part of the reason was that President Kennedy took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs invasion failure. For those of you who are not familiar with this let me clarify one thing: The plans for the invasion were well under way under Eisenhower and continued after Kennedy’s inauguration. The failed military incursion was a combination of Pentagon incompetence and the United States caving in to the United Nations strong condemnation of the whole operation. The U.S. did not offer the air cover and the Cuban government easily defeated the invaders. 

I also think that it is propitious to point out that at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion; Fidel Castro enjoyed tremendous popularity among the Cuban people. Very few were at that point dissidents and any invasion had no chance of succeeding even if they had prevailed militarily…the Cuban people were not going to allow it. So that those of us in the exile community wrongly assumed that the Cuban people would have welcomed the invaders and hailed them as heroes. It would have to be at least a couple of decades into the totalitarian tyranny before the Cuban people actually began to oppose their regime. Of course, by then it was too late. Fidel Castro had already consolidated his power and established one of the most repressive regimes on the face of the earth.

But to hear the Cuban exile leaders it was going to be less than a year before Fidel Castro would fall. The American government would never allow it to continue…but that it was better to have a Republican led Congress and President because they were perceived to be more anti-communist, more likely to engage into an invasion of Cuba in order to liberate it. Year after year I heard my fellow countrymen say that we would spend next Christmas in our free homeland. We saw one after another American President and Fidel Castro still clung to power. At least that is what was the predominant talk heard around the Cuban coffee stands throughout the city of Miami. We started to see massive numbers of Cubans arriving every day, some in make shift rafts, some in one mass, mother fucking massive migration also known as “THE MARIEL BOAT LIFT”.

I also saw some very dumb things that my countrymen embraced. They were so naïve and gullible that if a Republican candidate would come to Miami for the purpose of raising funds, they would give and give and then you would see somebody like President Reagan standing in “La Esquina de Texas”, Little Havana, USA and at the top of his lungs yell: “Viva Cuba Libre” and he would have the Cubans eating out of his hand.

For decades, Miami Cubans were considered die-hard Republicans. Former President Ronald Reagan famously cemented that bond in May 1983 when he visited Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, downed a Cuban coffee at a popular restaurant, and gave an impassioned anti-communist speech at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium.

Among Hispanics in Miami-Dade, Republicans still outnumber Democrats 251,929 to 132,432 123,985 are not affiliated with either party. But almost 25 years after Reagan's speech, the Republican Party's once seemingly unbreakable grip on the Cuban exile community may be loosening.

I think that the cohesive nature of the Cuban exile has shielded them from some of the aspects that have caused other minorities to drift into the columns of the Democratic Party. Because Cubans in Miami, New York and New Jersey did not meet with much discrimination and racism, they did not associate the Republican Party with the underlying racism and xenophobia. Other Latinos have experienced a totally different situation.

I am thinking of how different Marco Rubio must have had it as compared to somebody like me. Marco Rubio was the offspring of working class Cubans but he did get a piece of the pie, he was able to get an education and advanced his lot in life due to his perseverance and hard work. That much I have to give credit to the guy. But that is where my admiration for him stops…other than I think that he is drop-dead gorgeous. But he is not thinking that other minorities have been humiliated and discriminated and I was among one of those because I lived in California in the sixties and was perceived to be Mexican. One more interesting fact: 99% of the Cubans who came to the US in the years before Castro as Rubio’s parents did…were leftist exiles and it was hard to find an anti-communist Cuban living in Miami when I arrived in 1960.

I tend to look at some of these Tea Baggers with a certain degree of disdain because they remind me so much of the Cuban exiles. For the life of me I can’t figure out why they defend the super rich and the very corporations that exploit them. They are not part of that 1% of the super rich that benefits from Republican tax cuts and subsidies to corporations. They are clearly either poor or middle class, albeit misguided and ignorant without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

I know first-hand of a Cuban woman who was left a widow very young with four children to feed, clothe and educate. She is a second cousin to my mom and my mom bears the same name as her mother. The woman surely endured untold hardships. A single mom with no job and no skills she was forced to collect welfare. She would make papaya and guava preserves at home to make a little extra income. Yet, this woman is so Republican she makes Tancredo look like a progressive. I used to take my mom to her house and I would cringe whenever I looked at her living room wall and see a photo of Ronald Reagan.

It is evident to me that this woman is not very bright, that she totally ignores the fact that Republicans see people like her as “welfare queens” and to those they would not give her the time of day. She is so out of her league it is pathetic as she continues to insist that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. There is no sense in telling her any different because she is not going to accept it.

The last time we heard from her was when she called my mom and invited her to attend a Tea Bag protest against Health Care Reform. 

 

Rep. Ileana Ross-Lehtinen is an ardent Reagan admirer 

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