Unwelcome Exiles

When, a few days ago, Raul Castro succeeded his brother as leader of Cuba, the media people who had been sounding out the Miami Cuban exiles for their reaction appeared to be as disappointed as the exiles themselves. One report said that whereas, if Fidel Castro had stepped aside 20 years ago there would have been wild celebrations in the streets of Little Havana, amid countless plans to return to Cuba at once to commence rebuilding, now there were only shrugs, while the waiting continued

If Castro had tripped, fallen, and slammed headfirst on his belly into the metal foiding chairs back in the 1980s instead of in 2004 and a little later had stepped aside, maybe there would have been widespread rejoicing in Miami, and maybe those plans for rebuilding Cuba would have been studied anew. But my question is, what would have been so different about the prospects for a triumphant return to the island then, as compared to now?

I don't see it.

Cuba has long been a very interesting situation to me, all the more so since (surprise!) I've been completely out of step with the official thinking on the subject, so that what seems to be entirely true and logical to me seems not even to have occurred to the Cuban exiles and to the politicians in Washington who have for so long kowtowed to those exiles when setting the U.S. policy toward Cuba.

First, Fidel Casto hadn't been long in the Soviet embrace when I figured out exactly how his country if not he himself could be pried back out of it. However in all this time that method hasn't come close to being tried. But I'll get back to that on another day.

Could it be that those shrugs rise out of the exiles' awareness that the clamor for the victorious return to the island of a large number of their 650,000 souls can be heard only by them? Maybe people are battier than I realize, but I would think that in a halfway sane world, there would be a lot of resentment toward the exiles on the part of the people who stayed in Cuba.

Foremost among the causes is the embargo that the U.S. imposed on Cuba almost as soon as the Castros took power and which has been staunchly supported by the exiles ever since. Yet it has accomplished not one iota of its purpose, which ostensibly was to oust the Castro regime, and it should be a towering embarrassment to them that all the world can see that that regime is still in place and faring as well as ever. Instead, for nearly five decades the embargo has only served to wreak hardships on the people, which suggests that the purpose of the embargo has really been to punish the stay-behinds for not getting rid of the Castros themselves. ?So, having endured the pain of being embargoed for so long, the stay-behinds should be grateful to the would-be returnees, who meanwhile have been living the good life in Miami all along? That makes no sense at all.

Then there's the resentment that one feels toward a formerly important family member or other who has been absent for a long time while those who remained on the home place continued to cope as best they could. Then it happens. That prodigal returns and attempts to reassert himself and take charge again. But meanwhile those who have stayed behind have grown to feel that they, however things stood in the past, have become the Big Dogs in the enterprise, while they regard the returnee as little more than a visitor, who hopefully will not stay long, regardless of blood ties or anything else.

That's only natural, but in this case that figures to be exacerbated by a racial aspect, or so I've read. The people who took off for Miami tended to be better off and Euro, while those who stayed behind had a larger percentage of less affluent and less privileged Rainbows, and they can be expected to look with a very jaundiced eye at any attempt to boss them around and even to displace them from their homes, properties, positions, and everything else by the much more moneyed exiles, and never mind the million new houses that the exiles say will be needed to be built in Havana alone, or even the remittances that a number of exiles have sent to the island all along.

Added to that, there will still be a big group of people on the island who are used to being the authorities, and they will strongly reject any likelihood of being pushed aside so as to allow a new regime to take over, fresh from all the decades of wishful thinking in Miami.

The exiles have not covered themselves with honor while living in the U.S. Instead they have actually helped damage the fabric of the host country to which they should be grateful, by siding so consistently with that bane of American life in the last half century, the Republican Party. So they would not be able to return with anything worthwhile to contribute, outside of money, and even that they would be certain to use mainly for their own benefit. They would have soaked themselves for too long in their sourness and bitterness at the failure of themselves and, preferably, others, to reestablish what they consider as their rightful hegemony over the island. Consequently they could return with absolutely nothing in the all-important ways of goodness and mercy, and that would be a very poor prospect indeed for the Cubans who remained on the island, voluntarily or not, gritted their teeth, and toughed things out.