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Cuba

Cuban Army Polo

The Cuban Army polo team visits New York in 1939. How different the Americas might be had Fidel Castro preferred the polo of his patrician background to the baseball he is known to be fond of. If only he had attended the Cavalry School instead of the Universidad de la Habana!

May 3, 2009 7:13 pm | Link | 14 Comments »

Castro on Franco

Castro also admits to some unexpected sympathies with a few enemies of the left: He wistfully recalls Francisco Franco, whom he describes as “honourable” for not bending to Washington’s will and breaking relations with Cuba. Just as Castro reaches back past his own birth to claim spiritual kinship with Marti and other independence leaders, he weaves the Spanish general into a broader tapestry of Cuban history. Franco was born in a town that sent troops to a Spanish battalion defeated by US troops in 1898. Castro speculates that perhaps Franco as a boy welcomed the beaten soldiers home and thus might have seen the Cuban Revolution as “Spain’s revenge.” In any case, Franco, a Galician like Castro’s father, was shrewd and stayed out of WWII, unlike the “stupid” war that Bush and Aznar got themselves into.

— Greg Grandin, The Nation, 8 July 2008
July 17, 2008 6:32 pm | Link | 3 Comments »

While there’s life, there’s hope

IT WAS TERENCE who wrote Modo liceat vivere, est spes, meaning “While there’s life, there’s hope”. This coming Wednesday is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it would be particularly appropriate to remember in our prayers to the Virgin the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro. Castro’s health has been deteriorating greatly of late, so we must earnestly pray to Our Lady that the Cuban president will accept the gracious mercy of Our Lord as he nears the end of his earthly life. (The recent and shocking defeat of the referendum to enshrine socialism in Venezuela has been attributed to the intervention of the Virgin of Coromoto, but rest assured that Our Lady is never too busy to hear our prayers). It would be very foolish and neglectful to think that Mr. Castro, who has been baptized after all, is somehow beyond the grace of God, so please remember him in your prayers: these Brigittine nuns certainly are!

December 10, 2007 7:05 pm | Link | No Comments »

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