Cultural exchanges with Cuba are mostly one-way affairs

"Cultural exchange" is the ill-advised policy concocted by Bill Clinton and cancelled by him when Castro shot the three planes from the humanitarian organization Brothers to The Rescue in international waters on February 24, 1996.  Obama has forced this "one way" - to Castro's advantage only - policy again.  Fabiola Santiago's article below, brilliantly spills the beans about what is actually going on.  I recommend its reading for educational reasons as to the seemingly innocent, politically correct means used by the enemies of the U.S. (Cuba among them) to gradually break down our free system.  It shows how easy it is to infiltrate our nation with the acquaicense of even POTUS.  Obama should know better . . ..  Unless he is aware and it's what he wants and consistent with his ideology.  Needless to say the problems that Obama is causing for the law abiding pro-America Cuban American exile community with the influx of Castro's people positioning, using violence and intimidation taking over Miami to expand their political and economic influence is not a nice "cultural exchange".  One more reason to get him out of the White House before he succeeds with his goals.

Agustin Blazquez, producer/director

AB INDEPENDENT PRODUCTIONS

http://www.youtube.com/JAUMS

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From: Qbnchzhd@aol.com [mailto:Qbnchzhd@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2011 11:38 PM
To: Qbnchzhd@aol.com
Subject: Cultural exchanges with Cuba are mostly one-way affairs

Posted on Fri, Oct. 07, 2011

Cultural exchanges with Cuba are mostly one-way affairs

Fabiola Santiago

fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com

There’s little novelty in Cubans from the island traveling to Miami to play their music, show their films, exhibit their art and read their literary works.

Culture from the island is imported as routinely as it is from New York, and this week alone I’ve been invited to the art opening in Coral Gables of an artist from Pinar del Río and a dinner with a visiting Cuban art dealer.

The policy under which the cultural elite of Cuba readily get U.S. visas is called “a cultural exchange program,” but that’s a bit of a misnomer, as it implies a two-way deal.

Cuba doesn’t issue visas as freely to the Cuban cultural elite on this side of the Florida Straits, so it’s quite unusual to see a Cuban-American performing or showcasing his or her craft in Havana. It happens in some circles and with some carefully chosen intellectuals, but from here-to-there is rare.

Freedom rings on this side, thankfully, and for the most part the presence of Cubans from the island among us is illuminating and informative, if not always in the ways those involved intended.

When you live in a free society, it’s easier to distinguish the real thing from the opportunist (he just wants to sell his paintings and run; he claims to not know anything about social issues, particularly Las Damas de Blanco, the brave Ladies in White who peacefully march every Sunday in Havana and are attacked by pro-government mobs).

And it’s priceless to witness an artist using euphemisms and jargon acceptable to the Cuban government in her artist statement and in conversations with left-leaning Americans — then in private with Miami Cubans, after a couple of drinks on South Beach, blurting out: “We can’t wait for that degenerate old man to die.” And from there, letting it all hang out, the sweet taste of freedom flowing with the mojitos.

Interesting exchanges all, but now here comes an opportunity for the Cuban government to shamelessly export its best propaganda tool camouflaged as culture.

Later this month arrives La Colmenita Children’s Theater to stage the play Abracadabra. According to a promotional press release , the play advocates against the “injustice” of the jailing of Cuban spies in the United States, known as “The Cuban Five” — one of them released Friday — and calls for the end of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

The children’s tour has been scheduled to coincide with a United Nations vote on the embargo Oct. 25.

News of the play — the tale of a teacher and students whose flight of fancy is inspired by the “freedom-loving” spies — arrives in my mailbox in a press release from clueless public relations specialist Karen Lowe.

She pitches coverage of La Colmenita, The Little Beehive, and its U.S. tour – shows in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, none so far scheduled for Miami – by pointing out the newsy Miami connections to the spies.

She cites the downing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 in which 73 people were killed, attributed to a Cuban exile who has long denied involvement, and notes that the founders of La Colmenita are the mother and brother of a man on that flight. She doesn’t say that another brother, a filmmaker, showed his movie recently at the Miami Film Festival, or that another brother was working at Miami’s America TV.

Nor does she offer that these are the same children trotted out in Havana to celebrate Fidel Castro’s birthday, to uplift the comandante’s spirits when he’s sick, and, whenever there’s any sign of true change, to peddle the view that the regime is one great big timba party with lots of love for children and culture.

Any tactic is valid to sustain the nearly 53-year-old dictatorship. No qualms about using children to pull at the heart strings of international public opinion, although if you’re an optimist, you might be inclined to say that this is another sign of a mortally wounded fiefdom.

Just watch the little children, their bodies trained to sing and dance to the rhythm of Cuba’s fraudulent revolution, advocating for the release of cretins and the lifting of an embargo that doesn’t really exist when several planes fly to Cuba daily loaded with American goods, when shipping companies send parcels and dollars to the tune of millions a year, and when artists return to Cuba with their pockets full of American cash.

Under the “cultural exchange” rules, there’s not supposed to be any payment, but all artists are paid, only the money is called a living stipend. Sure.

The only thing embargoed in Cuba is truth.

As for the cultural exchange program, it will be a treasure the day writer Yoani Sanchez is allowed by the Cuban government to travel here and claim her journalism prize at Columbia University, or to read from her new book about life in Cuba. And it will be even truer the day Cubans on the island get to hear singer Willy Chirino’s voice ring in Havana’s Karl Marx Theater: “ Oxígeno!”

Oxygen!

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