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| Viva Cuba - Viva USA |
History is happening right before our eyes - Cuba-USA: March 21, 2016 . The
first day of Spring and also signalling a new beginning in a long-rime
historic and often turbulent relationship between the USA and Cuba,
For
me personally it brings back many memories, going back to when I was a
kid visiting Havana, Cuba in 1957, with my parents ( two years before the
Castro Revolution) - on the way from La Guaira, Venezuela to Le Havre,
France.
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| Cuba-USA -A new Chapter -Raoul Castro and Barack Obama - |
Cuba at that time was a US backed "Republ
ic"
ruled by Fulgenca Batista, a ruthless dictator with close links to the
US Mafia. He ruled Cuba with an iron hand, while the mob controlled all
the night-life, prostitution and other criminal activities.
The "real
economy" of Cuba at that time was mainly in the hands of US multi-
nationals, as was over 50 % of the sugar industry,
The US multi-national
communications giant of that time, ITT,, controlled all the
communication systems on the Island.
Fast Forward to 1980 - working
for a multi-national aluminum corporation based in Pittsburgh, I was
assigned to organize a "strategy planning" meeting for our Caribbean
External Relations Managers. We chose the beautiful Florida Island of
Key-West to hold the meeting.
Again history happened right before our
eyes, when we literally saw from the hotel we were staying in Key West
how droves of Cuban refugees started arriving on Key West shores - this
eventually became known as the Mariel Boat Lift.
And here today we are
again in Florida, April 21,2016, watching live scenes form Cuba, with
Raoul Castro and Barack Obama starting a new chapter in the Cuban US
relationship - we can only hope that Cuba and the US will have learned
from their past mistakes, and that greed will not, once again, become the
driving force of this relationship.
Viva Cuba, Viva USA !
EU-Digeswt
