Liberty Bell Visit by Fidel Castro’s Niece Angers Cuban-Americans
Source: New York Times
May 3, 2013, 12:21 pm 3 Comments
Liberty Bell Visit by Fidel Castros Niece Angers Cuban-Americans
By FRANCES ROBLES
A foreign visitors plans to view the Liberty Bell during a trip to Philadelphia on Friday afternoon has upset a prominent member of the Cuban-American community.
Mariela Castro, Cubas premier sexologist and the daughter of President Raúl Castro, is visiting Philadelphia as a guest of the Equality Forum, a gay rights organization that is holding its annual conference there. Ms. Castro plans to visit the Liberty Bell and the surrounding Independence Mall around 3 p.m., organizers of her trip said. Detractors of her fathers government objected to the visit, though.
Its insulting that the Cuban dictators daughter and standard-bearer of the Castro dictatorship would visit a symbol of Americas successful struggle for freedom from its colonial masters, said Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican. Ms. Castro and her family represent everything that the colonists fought and died to overcome. She should be ashamed of herself, but that would be asking too much of her.
Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum, which will honor Ms. Castro on Saturday for pushing for gay rights in Cuba, took a different view, telling The Times, The Liberty Bell is a symbol of freedom not only for America, but a symbol around the globe.
Read more: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/liberty-bell-visit-by-fidel-castros-sexologist-niece-angers-cuban-americans/
DURHAM D
(32,609 posts)F her.
kiri
(794 posts)This bell broke and was recast 2-3 times. That is, was melted down, re-using the bronze metal, and repoured to a bell shape. Done by Philadelphia founders--i.e., workers who melt and pour metal, who never cast a bell before--they got it wrong twice.
[Bronze is a difficult alloy--nominally a mixture of copper and tin, but usually some zinc, lead, antimony, arsenic, silver enters from impure materials. These change the melt and can change the timbre of the bell---as well as lead to cracking.] The "bronze age" did not last, but all modern bells are made of some alloy of bronze.
In the 1770s to early 1800s it was known merely as the town bell of Philadelphia.
Nobody in 1776 called this the "Liberty Bell".
It got this name from abolitionists in the 1830s who called attention to Africans in slavery as a way to promote anti-slavery.
Source: the National Park Service, on a recent visit and some knowledge.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)No fan of the Castros, so nobody flame me.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)These people don't get to decide where anyone can visit. Sorry. This isn't Cuba.
brooklynite
(94,511 posts)I hope it doesn't tarnish the family name.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)I highly recommend it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Revolution_%281996_film%29
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)It's a free country. Anyone can visit the Liberty Bell.
PB
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)My brain is going into irony overload.
Arctic Dave
(13,812 posts)It would seem they Cuban did the same thing by kicking out a buch of shitbag colonial corporate fascist.
Some people are to dumb to se the obvious.
Eljo_Don
(100 posts)Cuban-Americans, please, let her at least see the Bell because you know she has never seen liberty. It will do good to her.
bobclark86
(1,415 posts)the colonial masters were the American corporate-backed, mob-financed leaders in Cuba BEFORE the revolution...
Not exactly defending Castro here (like how I don't defend W or Hitler), just trying to get people to remember the first (at least mostly) home-grown government Cuba has ever had is the one they have now...
Eljo_Don
(100 posts)Old cuban people are like "moro viejo". That's the way old people think.
riverbendviewgal
(4,252 posts)told me that he visited Cuba before Castro and after....He said the people were better off with Castro.. He saw the poverty and vast differences in the classes before the revolution....The people had no shoes, education, medicine and food...People begged, even children. Women prostituted themselves. When Castro came into power that all changed. He said the people were happier. The rich ones were the ones who felt the hardships of Castro but many of those same rich Cubans escaped to the USA. Batista was a bastard to the people...He loved only the rich..
My friends go to Cuba often and extol how good it is to visit and the people are well and happy...There is no vast differences in wealth like in Miami Beach and the other areas where the poor live in. I have seen that myself in my travels to America.
The USA is pretty hypocritical when they accept Russia, China and Vietnam which are all communist.
Let the lady visit. America is a free country so they say.
LeftinOH
(5,354 posts)should seriously STFU. They alone are repsonible for the embargo and the travel been that's still in place.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Archae
(46,325 posts)Most of them were Battista (former far-right dictator of Cuba) goons.
They have this fantasy that as soon as Fidel Castro dies, they'll just waltz back and take up the corruption they fled.
Remember that little boy, Elian Gonzalez? The major reason he went home to Cuba was because his relatives here in the US were drunks and liars.
The "Cuban Embargo" is still in place due to the corrupt moneybags in the "Cuban Exile" ranks, they smuggle dope, do scams, etc.
And their pet politicians will do what the "Cuban Exiles" order."
Fidel and his brother are corrupt communists.
But is this an alternative?
The Castros die and the Battista thugs take over?
Proletariatprincess
(718 posts)Socialists. yes. Communists, maybe, but corrupt?
I know it is hard to find objective information about Cuba here in the USA, but I have never read a reliable source that said the Castros were in it for the money. They are certainly idealogues, but that is not the same as corruption.
It has been my experience that the left is less corrupt but more idealogical than the right which is much more concerned about money and power and respect for authority. That difference makes the right more subject to serious corruption.
But I know that I am biased. I am a Democratic Socialist like Bernie Sanders, and proud of it. That fact doesn't make my point any less valuable.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)timdog44
(1,388 posts)right wing myopic cuban Americans. They prevent any trade of information or goods with Cuba that would benefit both America and Cuba. Although I think the Americans of Cuban descent are beginning to see the light vs cuban American immigrants.
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)begin to discriminate against other immigrants and native minorities.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Give the Cubans a little taste of capitalism and they will want a whole lot more.
The Wizard
(12,542 posts)is a non stop blow hard who appeals to the element of Florida Cubans who believe they'll get their property returned when Castro is gone.
They'll get their property back when Europe's Jews get theirs back after it was stolen by the Nazis in the 30s and 40s.
Judi Lynn
(160,525 posts)That solution was available to them decades ago. They could have taken compensation for their property at fair market value, like the owners who decided to avoid the consequences of the country's revolution by taking off for other countries immediately. People who didn't come to the US already settled, and closed the book on their properties then. The "exiles" who ran to Florida or New Jersey opted to avoid settlement, many of them imagining the US would overthrow the people's government, as in the Bay of Pigs invasion, etc., and they would return. As time went by, the US government advised them they were not to make arrangements, as it would be seen as "trading with the enemy."
A typical article loosely concerning this problem:
U.S. Wary Of Push To Buy Claims To Confiscated Property In Cuba
BILLY HOUSE
Published: June 17, 2008
WASHINGTON - Estela Roberts and her family have always hoped they would be compensated one day for their property in Cuba seized after that country's 1959 revolution. Roberts, 62, whose family eventually relocated to Miami and then to Tampa, still remembers her family's beautiful home in Havana, down to the "marble staircase with some ironwork."
Along with a summer home in Tarara, a small sugar plantation, a bank and a tobacco store, the total value of the family's confiscated property has been estimated to exceed $3 million. Decades later, Roberts and her siblings have yet to receive a dime; frozen relations between the United States and Cuba have prevented their claim from being resolved. Now, suddenly, they could become prime targets for speculators.
An orchestrated effort may be afoot to persuade people such as Roberts and companies in Florida and across the country to sell their decades-old claims, warns the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.
Mauricio Tamargo, head of the commission, said his agency had begun to receive inquiries last summer from some claimants -- many with sizeable claims -- saying they had been offered payments for those holdings. It is not illegal to sell or purchase these claims, Tamargo said, but the purpose of this sudden activity remains unclear to the government. As a result, the commission has put out an alert for potential sellers and buyers to beware. The warning comes as claimants and their descendants are losing faith that after nearly a half-century they will ever see their accounts settled between Washington and Havana.
There had been a glimmer of hope with Cuban President Fidel Castro's departure from power. But the commission, which oversees their claims, has said more recently that it "is not aware of any plans for, or any indication of, a settlement between the United States and Cuba, nor is the commission aware of any bilateral negotiations between the United States and Cuban governments regarding these claims."
"I was always hoping. I always had faith. But now, I don't know," said Estela Roberts. Her father, Alexander, an American citizen, had taken over the tobacco company as an importer in Cuba for American cigarette companies from his own father, who had arrived on the island after World War I.
The Cuban government has paid lump sum amounts to settle outstanding property claims by other countries, including Canada, France, Spain and Sweden.
More:
http://tbo.com/south-tampa/us-wary-of-push-to-buy-claims-to-confiscated-property-in-cuba-132002
[center]~~~~~[/center]
Cuban "exiles" in South Florida, over 10 years ago, commissioned a satellite set of photos of Havana, and various other locations in Cuba where they had property. Now they all have extreme close-ups of all their old properties in amazing clarity to pour over at their leisure as they await the day they expect to descend upon the island like a plague of locusts to start grabbing everything back for themselves, on their way to returning Cuba to the feudal, racist state, with no revenue for the poor except seasonal labor in the cane fields, or tobacco fields, as they terminate Cuba's world-famous universal health care, educational system, also famous throughout the world, and back to no education, no housing, no medical care, living with almost no food, and intestinal parasites, as it was in the hey day of the ruling class' power over the powerless massive poor population.
struggle4progress
(118,281 posts)tokenlib
(4,186 posts)..after over 50 years. That we can't as American citizens choose to visit Cuba is the most idiotic and outdated policy ever. Remind me to go to Florida and flip off those "Cuban- Americans who need to grow up and realize how counter-productive to their supposed concerns that their behavior really is...
JI7
(89,247 posts)Demit
(11,238 posts)Let her come here & try to lecture us on the meaning of the Liberty Bell. Philadelphians are a helpful people. We'll set her straight.