Carlos Miller
OK Exilo Extremo, we get it. You believe Luis Posada Carriles is a hero. A freedom-fighting champion of democracy. Unwilling to spare the life of a man, woman or child in his quest for a free Cuba.
A real Jose Marti. A mad bomber with more blood on his hands than the Unabomber. A CIA-funded terrorist who proves the American policy on terrorism is as hypocritical as its wet foot/dry foot policy.
You revere this man so much that you would never tolerate anybody speaking the truth about him, especially a group of pacifist women from San Francisco.
Fortunately, you represent only a minority of Cubans in Miami. A very vocal minority. But still a minority.
If given the chance, you would attack these people, even though they might be standing on U.S. soil and protected under the First Amendment, something that you have no clue about considering that Cuba never had any such policy in place during it short history of revolving door dictators after its independence from Spain.
However, your numbers are dwindling. Your attacks are weaker. Your lunges are feebler.
You are a dying breed of sheep. There was even a real sheep in attendance during Saturday’s counter-protest. An ironic fluff of symbolism surrounded by an ironic group of freedom fighters.
Your kind is dyinglike the dying terrorist you revere and the dying dictator you abhor and the dying presidency you supported. In case you haven’t noticed, nobody is saying Viva Bush anymore. Isn’t it time you removed the bumper sticker?
Even today, your sons and grandsons and even your sensible sister is voting for Obama. Your daughter is voting for Hillary because she believes it’s time for a woman to take charge. And the sole politician who courts your vote doesn’t even bother donning a guayabera anymore. Not to mention he is dying in the polls.
And even though you successfully intimidated a group of six Code Pink members on Saturday, including five women, you only did so because they are not from here and were unable to decipher your bark from your bite.
Those of us who live here know your bark is all you have left. It’s the bark of yesteryear. Back when your bite was so ferocious and widespread that even those exiles who disagreed with you kept their opinions to themselves for fear of being assassinated or car bombed.
But now you’re too old to play soldier in the Everglades, so you spend your days playing dominoes in Maximo Gomez Park. Who the hell was he anyway? Do your kids even know Cuban history? Do they even know American history?
Let’s hope they know and respect the American Constitution because you sure as hell never did.
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Below are photographs taken by my good friend and photojournalist, Danny Hammontree, whom I met two years ago after I had wrote a story about how he had a run-in with a protester after he photographed her. Danny also took the photo at the top of this blog. I just haven’t figured out how to put the credit below the photo without screwing up the whole page.
And here is a photo slideshow compiled by Al Crespo, a renowned Miami photojournalist whom I had also met in the trenches. Crespo, a Hemingwayesque veteran who won a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department after they shot him three times with rubber bullets during a protest, told me “welcome to the club, son” after I told him about my arrest.
