Boston Globe: Cuba's lessons on caring for children (Barf Alert)

Boston Globe ^ | March 11, 2002 | Larry Fish, Michael Yogman, Lou Casagrande

[Cincinatus' Wife]

IF THERE IS one society in North or South America where President Bush's goal to leave no child behind is a reality, it can be found in Cuba, 90 miles off the Florida coast in one of the few remaining communist states in the world. That is the conclusion of 24 Bostonians who just returned from a week in Cuba where we focused on how Cuba raises and nurtures its kids.

[BansheeBill]

Child Prostitution

LOCAL STATISTICS

* Cuba's 1996 report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women stated that the problem particularly affected girls aged 14 and 15. In Havana, there are an estimated 6000 prostitutes, but the number of CSEC victims is small. It is reported that the number of child victims is smaller than other countries in the region. (ECPAT, CSEC Database, citing 1996 report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, http://www.ecpat.net/eng/ecpat_inter/projects/monitoring/online_database/index.asp)

GENERAL NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

* Child prostitution is a problem, with young girls engaging in prostitution to help support themselves and their families. Young girls have constituted the bulk of the prostitutes catering primarily to foreign tourists. (US Dept of State, Human Rights Report, 1999)

* In Cuba, the new generation of prostituted women vary in age between 15-25, although children as young as 13 are also found. (CATW Fact Book, citing Jesus Zzqiga, "Cuba: The Thailand of the Caribbean", Independent Journalists' Cooperative, 18 June 1998)

* Cuba has a well-documented child sex trade with the thriving sex tourism sector. (June Kane, Sold for Sex, 1998)

* It seems that many of the men who sexually exploit children are frequent visitors to Cuba, and it also appears that many of them fund their trips through smuggling. (ECPAT International, Julia O'Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor, Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism in Cuba, October 1995)

* Cuba, considered to be free of prostitution since the 1960s, is experiencing an increase in prostitution and sex tourism as a result of the economic crisis. (CATW Fact Book, citing Jesus Zzqiga "Cuba: The Thailand of the Caribbean", Independent Journalists' Cooperative, 18 June 1998)

* Sex workers have reported an increasing demand for adolescents and young girls. (ECPAT International)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

PJ O'Rourke's economic travelogue "Eat the Rich."

Good stuff.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I guess this explains why everyone was so adamant about getting Elian back to Cuba and Papa Fidel.
They were so concerned about his welfare in the U.S. that they denied him due process,
broke into a private home and snatched him at the point of a gun, all to save him.
America is bad for children, Cuba is good for children. Am I getting this right?

[Pearls Before Swine]

America is bad for children, Cuba is good for children. Am I getting this right?

Yep. Gotta get up early to fool you! (/sarcasm)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Well! I don't know how anyone could actually say that. It is truly alarming.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Thanks for posting the article. It is truly incredible that even in the middle of the article, where these oh-so sensitive tourists mention (to appear "fair") that they might have had a controlled tour, that they don't make the common sense connections. It is a dictatorship, they couldn't see everything--there is no freedom. They treat the shortages and rationing as a fact of nature (and partially a U. S. sin) without questioning why Cuba's economy is such a disaster. And the Fidel worship--of course he's convincing and a powerful speaker. But try to disagree with him sometime!

Communism has made a complete mess out of Cuba that will take a long time to sort out. PJ O'Rourke has it right; these guys don't know which end is up.

[TADSLOS]

Well, they must be doing something right. All of those Cuban refugees have superb nautical and swimming skills and an intense desire to use them.

[Cardenas]

THESE IS REAL CASTRO'S CUBA.

A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF CHILD ABUSE, CASTRO STYLE.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Published: Friday, May 5, 2000

Author: Armando Valladares

I was in solitary confinement in Fidel Castro's tropical gulag - where I spent 22 years for refusing to pledge allegiance to the Communist regime-when I heard a child's voice whimpering, "Get me out of here! I want to see my mommy!" I thought my senses were failing me. I could not believe that they had imprisoned a child in those dungeons. Later on, I learned the story of Robertico.

He was 12 years old when they arrested him. A captain in the political police had left his gun in his open car. When he returned to the car he saw the child playing with it. He slapped Robertico and took him into custody. The child was sent to an adult prison in Havana, where he was condemned to spend the rest of his youth. He would not be released until he reached the age of 18.

Robertico was sent to a gallery with common criminals. Within a few days, those soulless prisoners raped him. He sent several days in the hospital for treatment of rents and hemorrhages as a result. By the time he was released, his file had been stamped "homosexual" and he was taken to the prison area reserved for this classification.

Robertico was so slender that his body fit through the bars of the cells. One night he slipped out to watch cartoons on the guard's television. When he was discovered, he was sent to the punishment cells. He was taken out of those cells three times a week for injections because he was suffering from a venereal disease. A guard told me he was so young he did not even have pubic hair.

When I think of Elian Gonzalez, Robertico always comes to mind. This is the Cuban society to which Elian may return: a society where all rights are violated in the interest of subordinating all individuals to the will of the supreme leader.

Sadly, some in America still believe that the Cuban revolution was a triumph of good. It is worth remembering that many also refused to believe the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. Then, the world had to wait for eyewitness accounts from journalists and photographic evidence from their camera crews before finally accepting the horrible reality of what had happened.

Many other Americans seem to believe that even if savage things once happened under Fidel Castro, the situation has now changed. Yet the same dictatorship, which sanctioned the abuse of Robertico and has tortured thousands of political prisoners, is still wielding absolute power over the Cuban people. Fidel Castro has never recanted or apologized for the atrocities that have been reported by those who have escaped his grasp. And there is a stream of evidence that the brutality and repression continues. Last month the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned Cuba, for the eighth time, for its systematic violation of human rights. Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department have done the same.

It is standard practice around the world to transfer the custody of children to the surviving parent when the other dies. That is what is normal. But Cuba is not a normal place. If Elian is returned to Cuba, he will be sent back to a place where most people dream every day of escape. It is an island prison where a cruel tyranny has now lasted almost half a century. A fifth of the country's population - around two million people - have fled, and more than half-a-million have been courageous enough to apply for visas to leave.

Outside of Cuba, Elian will grow up as a free person with a free conscience. But if he returns, he will be "reprogrammed," as Castro himself has made clear. The Cuban government has already shown the world the residence where psychiatrists and psychologists will instruct Elian on how to despise and hate anyone who is against communism - including his own mother, who gave her life to bring him to freedom. In a few years she'll be nothing but a traitor to the Revolution. If Elian returns to Cuba his father will have no authority whatsoever to make decisions related to his education. Cuban "law" gives that authority to the Communist government.

Children are indoctrinated in Cuba from the moment they start to read. They are taught that the Communist party is owed loyalty above everything else. And they are taught that they must denounce their parents if they criticize or do anything against the Revolution or its leaders. For Elian, absolute control by the Communist party will begin in elementary school with the so-called "Cumulative School File." This is a little like a report card, but it I not limited to academic achievements. It measures "revolutionary integration," not only of the student but also of his family. This file documents whether or not the child and family participate in mass demonstrations, or whether they belong to a church or religious group. The file accompanies the child for life, and is continually updated. His university options will depend on what that file says. If he does not profess a truly Marxist life, he will be denied many career possibilities.

From his elementary school days on, he will hear that God does not exist, and that religion is "the opium of the masses" If any student speaks about God, His parents will be called to the school, warned that they are "confusing" the child and threatened. The Code for Children, Youth and Family provides for any parent who teaches child ideas contrary to communism. The code is very clear: No Cuban parent has the right to "deform" the ideology of his children, and the state is the true "Father." Article 8 of that same code reads, "Society and the state work for the efficient protection of youth against all influences contrary to their Communist formation." It is mandatory for all Cuban children over the age of 12 to do time in a Communist work camp in the countryside. Away from all parental supervision for nine months at a time, children there suffer from venereal disease, as well as teenage pregnancy, which inevitably end in forced abortion.

When the reprogramming plan for Elian is complete, we will see him repeating the slogans of the Revolution. He will have lost his liberty, his ability to dream, his youthful innocence, and perhaps even hope, and should he ever do anything that angers the regime, we must hope he will not end like Robertico, cornered in a cell, calling for his mother. This time, she will not be able to save him.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And all those soccer players and baseball players and doctors, and so on and so forth, who when they get a chance to get the hell out of Cuba, they seek asylum.

[KC_Conspirator]

I read this, this insanity and I want to tear my hair out- like the utterly fraudulent and specious claims about the "fine, free medical care available to all in the Workers' Paradise...."

These people are liars of the worst kind. Maybe if they are good little communists, they will get the ultimate treat, which is la jaba, or "the bag", which is an extra monthly ration of rice, soap, and toilet paper.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The people who wrote the article for the Boston Globe must know these things. But they do not condemn them. That leaves the obvious answer, that they approve. They and their ilk fawn over Castro because they like his style of dictatorial control and his 50 years of railing against the free society that prospers 90 miles from his rotting prison island. I'm glad the Boston Globe printed it. We all need to be reminded there are people living here in freedom because others died making it so and yet they poudly praise a communist dictator name Fidel Castro. Imagine an editorial praising George W. Bush and the goodness of America ever being printed in Cuba.

[Dqban22]

Renown English historian, Hugh Thomas, who wrote an scholar “History of Cuba, The Pursuit of Freedom” from the Discovery to the beginning of Castro’s revolution, referring to Castro’s Cuba affirmed in The Spectator (7/12/1986): “The comparison must be with the account of Nazi concentration camps. Although there as yet no gas chambers in Cuba, there have been experiments of a criminal biological type designed to see how far an individual can survive starvation, beating, solitary confinement, and many various kinds of ill treatment. Valladares’ account of working in a stone quarry is not dissimilar to, and no more humane than, the many accounts extant of ‘life’ in Manthausen.”

To maintain his reign of terror in Cuba, Castro counted with 297,000 active forces in addition of over 60,000 Soviet troops. Under Batista there were 11 major prisons in the whole Island, Castro counted with 597 major prisons and concentration camps where over 500,000 Cubans were imprisoned and tortured for periods from a few years to more than 35 years sentences. During the war, in Hitler’s Germany there were 548 prisons and concentration camps inside their territory. Germany had over 30 million inhabitants, Cuba just over 6 million. Before Castro there were not Cubans leaving their country for political or economic reasons. Under Castro over 2 million Cubans fled their beloved island for political reasons.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It's more than the mind and spirit can comprehend.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Cuba: A touching beauty-[Excerpt] "The old men are too frail to schlep luggage at hotels. And the old women can't seductively sidle up to foreign men and whisper enticements in their ears -- something you can see on any busy street, any day or night, in Old Havana… Other old people pick up a few dollars by begging around Havana's exquisitely restored historic buildings, like those on the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza Viejo.…Beggars aside, a tourist runs into examples of the corrupting power of dollars literally every day and in unexpected places. ……….. Education and health care typically combine to lower birth rates all over the world, but those achievements weren't what struck me most. It was how peaceable everyone was together. [End Excerpt]

[SpookBrat]

Thanks for posting this. This was shocking. I also appreciate you bumping it, otherwise I wouldn't have seen it this morning.

[SpookBrat]

This was an excellent read my friends.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[marylina]

Thanks for posting this, Cincinatus. Very unnerving.

Thanks for the PING, SpookBrat. Glad I didn't miss this one.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Unnerving is a good description.