[Leftist] Stars of literature battle it out over Castro

Vargas Llosa on Friday took a swipe at the Colombian Nobel Literature Prize winner and longtime friend of the Cuban leader, calling him "a writer who is a courtesan of Fidel Castro, whom the dictatorship holds up as an intellectual alibi."

"And he so far has come to accept very well all the abuses, the trampling of human rights that the Cuban dictatorship has committed, saying that secretly he helps some political prisoners get released," the Peruvian-born Vargas Llosa told Caracol radio.

"It is no secret to anyone that Fidel Castro hands over some political prisoners to his courtesans once in a while," added the writer of the acclaimed novel "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter".

Vargas Llosa challenged his rival to "intellectually" explain his support for the communist leader but added: "I doubt very much that he will."

Vargas Llosa, who was to take part in the Bogota Book Fair, added: "I don't know what else (Garcia Marquez) does going to Cuba to be pictured with Fidel Castro; maybe to show that the regime has an important writer to show off."

Garcia Marquez recently condemned the death penalty "anywhere and for any reason," in reply to US writer Susan Sontag, who said she was troubled that the Colombian writer had not condemned recent executions in Cuba.

The Colombian writer, who won the 1982 Nobel prize, and the Cuban revolutionary have been friends for years. His signature was among 65 artists and intellectuals from several countries on a letter Havana has proudly waved saying "today there is a harsh campaign against a Latin American nation. The harassment Cuba is facing may be the pretext for an invasion" by the United States.

Sontag, also on a visit to Bogota's book fair, said that while she admired Garcia Marquez as an author, it did not seem correct to her that he had not spoken out after Cuba executed three men who tried to hijack a ferry to the United States.

Garcia Marquez told the newspaper El Tiempo "as a rule I do not reply to unnecessary or provocative questions, wherever they come from, even if they come from -- as in this case -- a person so deserving and respectable."

"As far as the death penalty is concerned, I have nothing to add to what I have said in private and in public for as long as I can remember: I am against it, anywhere and for any reason, under any circumstances."

The April 11 executions in Cuba came shortly after Cuban courts jailed 75 dissidents for between six and 28 years after they were rounded up and accused of threatening state security.

Cuba's harshest crackdown in years brought condemnation from the United States, the European Union (news - web sites) and Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II in addition to some political parties and intellectuals usually sympathetic to Castro.

The letter Garcia Marquez signed saying Cuba was being harassed was dated in Mexico City and also was signed by three other Nobel laureates: Rigoberta Menchu, Nadine Gordimer and Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

Others who signed the pro-Castro letter were Brazilian (news - web sites) architect Oscar Niemeyer and US actors Harry Belafonte (news) and Danny Glover (news).

JOHN PAUL II HAS ENDANGERED THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH IN CUBA
Jesús J. Chao
3/15/2003

On March of 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. When the Austrian cardinal, Innitzer, publicly welcomed Hitler and urged Austrians to vote for the Anschluss, the prelate was summoned to Rome and made to sign a retraction.

John Paul II’s policies towards Fidel Castro are in stark contrast with the unequivocal positions taken by H.H. Pope Pius XI and his successor, H.H. Pius XII, when dealing with a tyrant (Hitler) who as Castro, persecuted The Church and murdered tens of thousands of Catholics.

You might envision where would the moral status of The Church be if in 1942, after the Nazi persecution of the Church and when The Pope already knew of the extermination camps, H.H. Pius XII had honored Hitler with a high decoration of The Church and sent as his envoy the prefect of one of the Congregations of the Holy See with a personal message from Peter’s successor.

That is just what John Paul II did in Cuba after Castro’s 44 years of persecution of the Church and the murder of tens of thousands of Cubans, mostly Catholics, many of whom died shouting ¡VIVA CRISTO REY! ¡VIVA CUBA LIBRE! Before falling murdered by Castro’s infamous firing squads.

In appreciation for allowing Castro the opening in Havana of a convent for the Swedish Order of the Most Holy Savior of St. Brigid, the general abbess, mother Tekla Famigletti, bestowed on Fidel Castro one of her religious order's honors, the Ecumenical Cross with the Star of the Commander of St. Brigid. Honoring the ceremony was Papal personal representative, Crescinzio Cardinal Sepe, Prefect for the Pontifical Congregation for the Evangelization of the Nations and the Mexican Archbishop of Guadalajara, Juan Cardinal Sandoval. Corresponding to such a high honor, Castro bestowed the medal of the Order of Felix Varela, First Grade, to Mother Telka Famiglietti. Everything was so outrageous that the whole ceremony bordered on the sacrilegious.

Castro proved to be a shrewd horse trader. After expelling hundreds of priests and confiscating from the Church more than 150 Catholic schools and most of its properties in Cuba, by allowing a Mexican millionaire to pay for the convent, he bought the blessings of the Pope, and a Church decoration that in fact represented a Papal Bull condoning all his crimes against humanity. Castro, once again, outsmarted the Pope, as he has outsmarted most of the world secular and religious leaders during his 44 years reign of terror.

These Vatican’s policies have unquestionably damaged the future of the evangelization in Cuba, even though Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, as a show of respect for the suffering of the Cuban people, was not present at the ceremonies, and the Cuban Bishops’ Conference published a letter criticizing the exchange of decorations and excessive pleasantries. In the document the Cuban bishops made clear that “the Cuban Church did not have any participation neither in the preparation or the coordination of the program. Neither the cardinal Ortega, nor any other Cuban bishop was present, nor they were officially represented by any cleric from the Archdioceses of Havana or from the Cuban Church.”

The Cuban bishops had released a pastoral letter less than two weeks ago urging the government to ease up on its harsh treatment of citizens. Cuba’s top Roman Catholic clergyman, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, said in that letter: "The hour has come to pass from being a legalistic state that demands sacrifices and settles accounts to a merciful state willing to offer a compassionate hand before imposing controls and punishing infractions.”

The relationship between the Pope and Castro has raised deep discontent among the persecuted Cuban Catholics. Since their first encounter at the Vatican, the Pope received the Cuban tyrant as a very beloved prodigal son. It was the first affront of John Paul II to the dignity of the Cuban people. It was an appeasement policy maintained by the Holy See, regardless of the crimes committed to this day by Fidel Castro. On the other hand, John Paul II had repeatedly denied an audience to prestigious and honorable members of the Cuban Diaspora. Unfortunately, the Pope has profoundly damaged the moral status and the future of the Church in Cuba.

John Paul II has traveled the world asking for forgiveness for all the alleged offenses and sins, real or unfounded, committed by other Popes in another time. John Paul should make his own soul searching about his dealing with the Cuban tragedy. I wonder when is he going to ask forgiveness from the Cuban people for his lack of sensitivity towards the suffering of our people during the 44 years of bondage under the communist rule?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, RIP

by Fausta Rodriguez Wertz
4/18/2014

http://datechguyblog.com/2014/04/18/gabriel-garcia-marquez-rip/

Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, died yesterday. Cuba’s government-run media mourned Fidel’s friend, who even worked for Cuba’s Prensa Latina news agency in Bogota and New York. He was 87 years old

One of the giants of Spanish-language literature, García Márquez’s most renowned novel is A Hundred Years of Solitude, which brought magical realism to the forefront,
“In Mexico,” he says, “surrealism runs through the streets. Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America.”

It may at times, but it also helps to bear in mind that he had books to sell, and his own staunch support of Castro verged on the surreal: Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner, who knew Garcia Marquez well (they shared an agent), narrates (link in Spanish, my translation with emphasis added),

With no other factor than compassion for [Cuban political prisoner and former union leader Reinol González] Reinol’s wife, who had gone to Mexico to meet the novelist and ask for his help without ever having met him, García Márquez interceded with Fidel to release him. And so it happened: the Dictator not only released González. He gifted him to García Márquez right in the middle of the street, as one gives away an inanimate object, and, suddenly, the Colombian found himself in Havana with the strange gift from his powerful friend, owner of the lives and deaths of all his subjects.

That a human being would waste his prodigious talent in the service of a monstrous dictator after having witnessed such event speaks of a blindness, a void of the soul.

But then, Fidel had gifted García Márquez a fully-furnished mansion in Havana’s best neighborhood (link in Spanish), and a Mercedes, complete with staff, after the 1982 Nobel award was announced.

Regardless of the house and slaves, García Márquez lived in Mexico, where the government kept him under surveillance as a Cuban propaganda agent.

If you would like to borrow García Márquez’s novels from the local public library, I recommend Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude while in college and it blew my mind, but decades later attempted to re-read it both in the original Spanish and in the Gregory Rabassa translation, and found it unreadable.

Fausta Rodriguez Wertz writes on US and Latin American culture and politics at Fausta’s Blog.

NOTE: According to Armando Valladares, if Garcia Marquez had attained freedom and departure from Cuba of a political prisoner, it was a snitch like him who betrayed ninety-nine of his co-conspirators, and who was the leader of the MRP, the despicable Reynold González.

García Márquez supported the torture, the shootings, and the murders of my companions in the prisons...

If I were a devote Christian, I would have to say: that the Lord receive him in his arms...! but as I’m not, as I do not reach that level of spiritual perfection, I want him to be eternally in the hell pots.

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