Rock With Nova Scotia in 2010

We’ve all seen the movies and heard the stories about the corrupt regime in Cuba in the 1950’s laundering money for the big mob families. Then Fidel Castro, who had more education than Batista and almost all of his ministers, wins an un-winable civil war and drives the mafia and its cronies out of Cuba (In all fairness a lot of nice people got hurt too).

And instead of issuing orders for mass bloodshed against his former enemies he threw an olive branch to the U.S. to help rebuild his country. When that was rebuffed by the Eisenhower administration Castro followed in the footsteps of Egyptian president Abdul Nasser – the upstart leader who kicked out his colonial masters, France and England – who got funding for the Aswan dam from the U.S.S.R. Okay, this is kind of a long-winded social studies lesson but for 58 years Cuba has been off-limits to Americans.

Think of this logically. There used to be no worse country than “Red” China. And except for “ping-pong summits” travel to this huge country was as forbidden as the emperor’s city in Beijing. During the “Cultural Revolution” hundreds of thousands were murdered or imprisoned. Now, they’re our pals.

And for a really big leap, look at Vietnam. The Viet Cong made Castro’s bunch look like the cigar chomping guerrillas that they were . This was a country that broke the Paris Peace Accord and seized the whole country in 1975, driving thousands of people out and imprisoning and murdering thousands of others. Now, they are big-time pals. “We had a tiff, but no harm done!”

But tell me, except for the hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles (I don’t disparage their claims) why does such a small piece of real estate 90 miles from Miami cause so much apprehension and suspicion. Especially since the fall of the U.S.S.R.? I mean their’s got be a statute of limitations on travel to Cuba.

I didn’t really care for Pierre Trudeau, a former Prime Minister of Canada, but he did get it right with Cuba. He normalized relations with them because he saw them as no threat to the peace and security of North America. In addition, as many political and social scientists have said for years, “If you want to cave in a regime be friends with them.” In other words if Nixon had gone to Cuba along with his trek to China Fidel would be in a rest home in Bolivia by now.

My point is to my American friends: You are really missing the boat with Cuba (no pun intended). It’s a great holiday place and the people are really friendly. It’s time to put your candidates to the task and stop the stupid visitation ban.