Tuesday, March 22, 2016

His family is not impressed

ESPN's Dan Le Batard expresses vividly the pain of his family members - Cuban exiles who escaped the early Castro regime - dealing with President Obama's publicity trip to the island.
I'm not too emotional, but I cry just about every time I write about Cuba. My pain is very much borrowed. My grandparents and parents endured it so that my brother and I never would. It stings just the same. The fear and desperation of my grandparents combine with the suffering and sacrifices of my parents to produce an odd combination of sorrow and guilt and gratitude that won't stay down.
His mother's life as a teenager tells the chilling tale.
She had her phones tapped back home. She endured neighborhood spies coming into her home whenever they pleased. She attended services for students and intellectuals killed for fighting for elections and a constitution. For attending those services, she was chased through the streets by police dragging chains. Her brother was a political prisoner. Whenever she visited him, she wondered if the fresh blood on the firing-squad walls might be his. He spent almost 10 years in that prison for his politics. Why the hell would she trust any of that today?.

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