Introspection is a Good Thing

(Cross-posted from Babalu).

This post is about Ana Menendez's latest column dealing with Cuban exiles. This is your warning.

Why devote a full post in Babalu Blog to someone whose writings have proven to stand against most things we hold close to our hearts? Why give even more attention to her?

Stick with me, my answer is forthcoming.

The reaction to Ana Menendez's exile-bashing column 9 days ago has been swift and full of indignation, including the great counter piece delivered by Mercedes Soler a week ago. Ana's words were personal, and she's paid for it.

This reaction apparently got to our esteemed columnist, and she replied today with a follow up column that is as full of the "Ana as usual" as it is with surprising and revealing introspection.

The column's title "Exiles' 'Pain' (note the quotation marks around pain) Must Include Room for Dissent" and the opening paragraph offer the typical Ana Menendez fare:

We Cubans are infamous for our public displays of suffering, our flamboyant airing of grievances that other cultures have learned to keep private.

It's a trait that has always bothered me, partly because it is has become a symbol for much that others find distasteful in us and partly because it has allowed too many otherwise brave and intelligent people to wallow in corrosive victimhood.

Never mind that other cultures are also outspoken in their suffering. That doesn't make them - or us - inferior. Unfortunately, Ana is ashamed of the negative aspects that define not only Cubans, but all human beings.

After that, the column begins to peel away at some of the layers surrounding Menendez, and you know what? The end result is something that we all have experienced and can learn from.

After the intro, Ana delves into her family's past: their expulsion from Cuba and the "pain" they experienced. It then veers into a discussion about the Port of Miami Tunnel deal involving a French company which does business with Cuba (she writes about an attempted phone conversation with Miami radio host Ninoska Perez Castellon in which Ninoska proceeded to hang up on her. Perhaps not the polite thing to do, but our rights of free speech and expression include the right to get upset and be angered. I'm sure Ana and other liberals would understand).

After the detour, Ana gets back on track and closes the column by relating to us a recent conversation and dinner with her parents.

Later that day, I was supposed to have dinner with my parents when I got called back into the office. Before I made it back, my father made an offhand comment about the column that, without his realizing it, wounded me. At the office, I briefly considered canceling dinner. Instead, I drove back to my parents' house.

My parents and I sometimes clash on important issues. We have lived vastly different histories. Now and then, we hurt one another. But if I can't sit down and have a meal with those I disagree with, I have no right to ask anyone else to do the same.

Let's admit it, we all have experienced exactly what Ana described in that last section. Who among us hasn't rebelled against our parents, against authority? Of course, most of us outgrow that phase, but at the heart of this is a struggle that Ana appears to carry with her in every exile-bashing column she's penned: the conflict between her liberal-enlightened views and her parents' pain. For the first time, Ana reveals her weakness, a conflict between two powerful forces: her views and the legitimate feelings of her parents.

What can we take out of this? Indeed, there is room for dissent, as long as it's done respectfully and with good intentions. That's the problem, however. Too much dissent, on BOTH sides, is delivered and displayed with such lack of respect that the issues become drowned out by needless posturing.

What can Ana Menendez and those who share her ideology take from this? That there is also room for vigorous debate and even indignation from those whom you offend with your choice of words. They indeed have the right to express themselves freely - thank God - but we also have the right to react accordingly and within the law.

Most importantly, what I hope Ana can take out of this experience is a new-found sensibility towards those she disagrees with. After all, if she can understand her own parents' pain, then why not the pain and feelings of the majority of Cuban exiles who have lived one too many bad experiences? The same pain and suffering that Ana's parents - our parents - shielded from us second-generation Cuban-Americans.

Read Ana Menendez's column in its entirety below the fold at Babalu.

Basic Arithmetic

Some mornings, opening the op-ed section of the Miami Herald isn't such a bad experience. Today is one of those days that keeps me subscribed to the Herald, if only by a thread.

Emmy-winning journalist and El Nuevo Herald contributing writer Mercedes Soler gives us a great response to Ana Menendez's slime job of a column last week.

For those of you who might be thinking, "of course, Soler's just another one of them (hard-liners)", consider that Soler has hardly been known as an activist for the Cuban cause, let alone an evil hard-liner. Quite simply, Soler shares with us her dignified yet pointed response to someone whose disdain for her traditional roots is becoming more and more obvious with every word she writes. Soler is standing up for her roots and respects those who came before her and have been around the block a few more times than she has. Menendez could learn a lot from Mercedes Soler, but I doubt she will.

Okay, enough gum-bumping on my part. Here's Soler's column in its entirety:

The Exile Debate: Add and Multiply, Never Divide

I do not consider myself a reactionary person. Nor do I allow myself to be carried away by what society considers politically correct. I try to analyze beyond frivolities before I take a position. I am not interested in attacking persons or groups. I prefer to adhere to the motto of José López-Neira, a 90-year-old reader who writes to me daily and signs off saying: ``Add and multiply; never divide.''

I consider that my 20 years in journalism give me the authority to speak about the responsibility required by the right to free expression. I defend the free press, a fundamental pillar of democracy. Opposing, controversial and dissenting opinions must have a place in any open society. But cannibalism long ago ceased to be tolerated in a civil state.

In a recent column, my colleague Ana Menendez offends the Cuban-exile community. She trivializes the suffering, sacrifice and struggle represented by our 48 years in exile; she stains the memory of the 41,700 people who, according to The Cuba Archive, lost their lives because of the Castro government, plus the other thousands of men and women who have served and continue to serve prison sentences for demanding the freedom of expression she so frivolously squanders. She also embraces the communist rhetoric when she addresses us as the Cuban Mafia.

She orders us to swallow our pain. All this she does in English. Because if her parents hadn't been exiles, she probably would not have been born in the United States and would better understand her forefathers' history.

It is not my place to reply in the name of the exile community, the community of my parents and hers. Instead, I do so in the name of our own generation, the one in which she obligatorily was born or reared, kept away from her ancestral land because those old people -- the ones she today calls tired, dispossessed and reduced to pathetic acts of self-parody -- once were brave enough to leap into the void, abandon their loved ones and start a new life without money or knowledge of a new language.

Those same old-timers, in the most tragic of cases, even sent their children to Miami by themselves, in Operation Pedro Pan, just so their children could have -- like she now has -- the opportunity of thinking freely.

For those who prefer not to delve deeply into the meaning of the word exile, which not even remotely approaches the word immigrant, we Cubans here are an easy target of ridicule. Not a day goes by that I don't hear another Hispanic fake a Cuban accent and mockingly spout an ''oye, chico, qué volá,'' [''Hey, man, what's happening''] to conceal rivalry behind solidarity. Everybody wants to unseat a winner.

The fact is that the Cuban community, most of it, has come to the United States to integrate into its educational, labor and political processes. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, we Cuban-Americans represent almost 4 percent of the 45 million Hispanics in this country. Yet, our average annual income is higher than that of Anglos, and more than 50 percent of the wealthy Hispanics in this great nation are Cubans.

Our influence is palpable in the media, science, the arts, finance, Congress, the Senate, the country. And all this was forged in fewer than 50 years, under adverse conditions. We could have achieved more in a democratic Cuba.

Throughout the years, I have read with admiration, even devotion, the writings of many English-language columnists. Anna Quindlen of Newsweek speaks to my condition as a woman. Ana Veciana-Suarez touches my heart as a mother. Dave Barry puts me in touch with the girl inside me.

Leonard Pitts is my conscience in the face of racial injustice. And when Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize winner, deals with the negative aspects of the African-American community, he does not engage in mockery or vituperation. He broaches it with brotherly concern.

To criticize the nostalgia of the generation of Agustín Tamargo, Guillermo Cabrera Infante and so many others who live or died clinging to the idea of a democratic and sovereign Cuba is an act of cruelty. It is not a question of agreeing or disagreeing with those who want to boycott something that offends them, but to acknowledge that they have a right to do so here, knowing that in Cuba that act would land them in jail. To criticize those who are not brave enough to face off multinational corporations is simplistic. The exile community has defied Benetton, CNN, the Melia hotel chain and many others.

For someone named Menendez and someone named Soler to come to blows over this is fratricidal. A bitter postscript to another May 20 -- Cuban Independence Day -- in exile.

I Was Going to Ignore Her

But I just couldn't help it.

Thanks Ana Menendez for yet another slime job. Here's a letter I just finished whipping off to her:

Ana,

Your disrespect for traditional Cuban-American exiles continues to reach new heights.

Your column today was the latest in the series of slaps in the face to many...no, most in the Cuban-American community. Disagreeing is one thing, but when you use terms such as "Miami Cuban Mafia" and "right-wing lunatics" and to describe members of the community, you not only discredit yourself but also those who respectfully and intelligently disagree with the mainstream Cuban-American community.

Of course, your track record suggests that you probably don't mind discrediting yourself so long as you can take shots at a group of people you harbor a deep disrespect for.

Funny how a leftist agent provacateur such as Edmundo Garcia gets a free pass as a "well-informed" and intelligent person in your mind. Perhaps that's because you agree with him more than not. Or is it because he's a poor, helpless and powerless (with a microphone and free airwaves, mind you) person swimming against the stream of loud-mouthed, dumb "right-wing lunatics"?

Funny how you always trot out the war-horse cliche that the traditional Cuban-American exile community is old and dying, and that the days of nostalgia are "waning".

Why is it funny?

First, take a look at the faces in the pictures of last July's "castro could be dead" celebrations. I see a lot of young faces. You? Second, the Cuba Nostalgia convention is this weekend. Third, ever heard of Raices de Esperanza? If not, google it.

In closing, when a true transition to democracy takes place in Cuba, it's those that today are the most critical of Fidel Castro and his brutal regime that will take the first steps to ensure that Cuba gets back on its feet. Meanwhile, cynics such as yourself will only be able to watch from the sidelines and become even less relevant to Cuba's future.

Sincerely,

26th Parallel

Menendez on Deported Haitians

Ana Menendez's is on a Haiti kick these days. Here's the latest in a series of columns on Haitians and what she considers the injustice of being deported back to Haiti. This one was on the front page of the Sunday paper and has a nice three-page spread with several color pictures.

Some "money" quotes from the column:

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- At 30, Watson Navarin already is living the end of his story. The boy who left Haiti for the hope of America returned 11 years later as a convicted felon. His forced homecoming held none of the sentimental promise of the exile's return and all the bitterness that his family tried and failed to deliver him from.

Exploitation, cruelty, indifference. Haiti offers its poor many reasons for leaving and very few for returning. Those who do often come back against their will.

(...)

Navarin was deported to Haiti in 2004 after a drug conviction, but he still talks and dresses like the teenager from Asbury Park, N.J. Last Thursday, he was wearing long baggy pants, a jersey and a cap -- a light blue ensemble dedicated to the glory of the Lakers and the Clippers.

Tall, strong and foreign, he stood out in the hardscrabble streets of the capital where his presence was greeted with a kind of unfriendly curiosity. The outfit, the big silver chain and his English marked him as DP, a member of the shadow diaspora of deportees that even Haitian leaders are blaming for the crime and violence here.

Ana feels bad for Navarin because he gets harrassed for what amounts to being a show-off. I can't gather the sympathy for him, I'm sorry.

Jean Destin left Haiti for Miami when he was five years old. He says he was arrested for drug possession, jailed and deported in 2001 at the age of 25. He arrived, disoriented, at his aunt's house in Petite Place Cazeau, a Port-au-Prince suburb.

''I'd forgotten the language,'' he said. ``My own family couldn't communicate with me. I didn't know how to ask for a glass of water.''

Today, he lives in a concrete addition to his aunt's house. The 8-by-8-foot space is protected by security bars. On weekends, the space becomes ''Jean's Cine,'' where he plays Haitian movies on a television set powered by a Delco generator. Last week the hand-painted marquee announced Friday's offer: Love Has Limits. Destin charges the equivalent of 25 cents per person, and goud by goud is trying to make an honest living.

''I'm in my country, I'm not starving,'' he said. ``But there's nothing like the U.S.''

That's right...not only is Destin not starving, but he attempts to make an honest living. Try doing that in Cuba.

Here's the grand finale:

Few seriously challenge the right of the United States to deport another country's criminals, but it's naive to think that the consequences of that decision affect only Haiti.

The idea of a world divided into neat, autonomous nation-states is for children and maps. Reality offers few flat comforts. The streets of Port-au-Prince point to all the ways countries interconnect, the way a decision in Washington ricochets in a Port-au-Prince slum.

And the way America's failure in its own inner cities echoes back into even more desperate places where castaways from the dream struggle to survive with whatever rough skills experience lent them.

That's right folks, it's America's fault. It always is for people like Menendez. And while we're at it, let's forget about things such as sovereign nations and borders, and things that, you know, ensure a country's identity and independence.

My oh my.

Harmless Spies

It's been a while since I've fisked an Ana Menendez column, so when I read her column this morning, whistles and bells went off.

It's time to dust off the fisking machine.

Ana's reaction to the sentencing of Cuban spies Carlos and Elsa Alvarez is the subject of her column this morning. Apparently, she thinks the Alvarezes were victims of "misguided pride" who were trying to "persuade Cuba and the United States to make nice". The fact that she even tries to justify and/or downplay their acts is shameful, IMHO.

Contained in the dry court documents are all the personal betrayals and self-important skullduggeries that through coups, revolution and exile have remained a constant feature of Cuban political life.

In that context, Carlos' biggest sin was not ''spying'' but pride. Pride that he could game Cuban intelligence. Pride that he could be the agent of change by betraying friends. And pride that his academically informed ''conflict resolution'' skills could penetrate the miasma of cynicism and calculation that has crippled U.S.-Cuba relations this last half-century.

Here's some of the "harmless" personal information the Alvarezes had on their computer and which they shared with a foreign country, an enemy regime:

• FIU president Modesto Maidique's personal finances and private business ventures.

• A ''redacted'' U.S. government study on the "status of telecommunications in Cuba.''

• Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto, including that ''an investigation should continue'' into "the ties he has to the CIA, the Cuban American [National] Foundation and financial interests such as Bacardi.''

• A personal contact who had met with Richard Nuccio, then-President Bill Clinton's special advisor for Cuba, who ''was very depressed'' by Cuba's shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes killing three Cuban-American men and a Cuban exile and the subsequent Helms Burton law toughening the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

• Lula Rodriguez, a Miami-Dade Democrat who later became personal assistant to then-Attorney General Janet Reno and eventually deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs in the Clinton administration.

Here's Ana's justification of these actions:

Whatever combination of personal ambition and hopeless naiveté first led Carlos to open up to Cuban intelligence and then to the FBI, we can never really know. Neither can we know who ultimately served him up to U.S. prosecutors; that information is secret.

But the picture that emerges of Carlos and Elsa is less one of hardened spies than of two highly educated and religious people who assumed everyone shared their lofty ideals. A member of an underground anti-Castro student movement, Carlos eventually fled to America and grew to believe he could persuade Cuba and the United States to make nice.
...

This is not intelligence to make or break a country. This is theater of the cliché. By the time Carlos received a commendation from Cuba in 1991, he should have known he was being played in a game he'd long since lost control of.

Is Ana that naive to think that Cuba would have just stopped at gathering personal information on influential exiles? What do we wait for, leaked information on our ports and nuclear facilities? Do we wait for another Ana Belen Montes to show up?

I know. Ridiculous. But it gets better. Ana saves the best for last.

And then the judge sentenced him to hard time. Carlos thought he could be a one-man foreign policy machine and ended up betraying friends and trusting scumbags. The over-the-top hysteria and paranoia surrounding his slight story now must be giving Fidel sweet solace in his last days.

In the end, Carlos Alvarez's biggest victim was Carlos Alvarez. The bigger tragedy would be if the cause of moderate Cubans goes down with him. One suspects that, for the Cubans at least, that was the goal all along.

It's those insufferable hard-liners once again, causing a ruckus with their "paranoia" about those harmless spies. Of course, Ana asserts that the biggest tragedy isn't the fact that personal information was given to the castros, but that the "cause of moderate Cubans" is going down with the Alvarezes.

Un. Believeable.

Here's a man who was commended by the Cuban regime in 1991 for his invaluable work. If Alvarez is indeed a representation of the moderate Cubans, then we're really in bad shape.

Or Ana Menendez's vision of reality is totally warped. My bet in on the latter. And that's the best I can say about Ana.