Why is Latin America so Dangerous?

[Jack_Dawson]

Or...why does this story freak me out so much?

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/403345.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. For one thing, the kid's father was in THEIR country. Contractors from other countries

would not be allowed to butt into internal affairs in the U.S. or they'd go home with a slightly skewed gait in their walk.

Latin America wouldn't be nearly as dangerous for people butting in, if the people flying over it weren't working as paid mercenaries.

Of COURSE you're going to hear a lot of absolute ignorance from Miami. It's the right-wing dictator's home away from home. All the death squad leaders, right-wing genocidal dictators, impeached Presidents, violent coup leaders, money launderers, Latin American government embezzlers, mass murderers ALL end up in South Florida. An author I read said it's as if Latin America has simply VOMITED its poisonous stomach contents onto American shores in Miami.

It's hard to take ANYTHING you read in the Miami Herald seriously. You will grasp this the longer you attempt to find anything sensible in it. It's a complete embarrassment to the McClatchy newspapers, and before that, Knight Rider, and before that, Capital Cities, etc.

This goes back all the way to when they had a decent publisher, David Lawrence, who wrote articles the first wave Cuban reactionary "exiles" didn't like, and their little tyrant leader, Jorge Mas Canosa declared war on the Miami Herald, and David Lawrence and staff started receiving death threats, city buses were covered with huge signs bought by Mas Canosa which said, "I don't believe the Herald," and their newpaper vending machines all over town were suddenly being jammed with chewing gum, and smeared with feces.

David Lawrence and his wife both started having people to check their cars for bombs every day before starting them.

Finally, David Lawrence left town, and eventually the Herald found a way to pander like a son-of-a-gun to the Cuban "exile" community, and now, all rabid right-wing interests.

Here's an article which discusses it:

May/June 1992 | Contents
TRYING TO SET
THE AGENDA IN MIAMI

Bashing the Herald is only part of Jose Mas Canosa's strategy

by Anne-Marie O'Connor
O'Connor, who is based in Miami, is Latin America and Caribbean correspondent for Cox Newspapers.
The Miami Herald usually takes and assumes the same positions as the Cuban government. But we must confess that they were once more discreet about it. Lately the distance between The Miami Herald and Fidel Castro has narrowed considerably. . . . Why must we consent to The Miami Herald and ElNuevo Herald continuing a destructive campaign full of hatred for the Cuban xile, when ultimately they live and eat, economically speaking, on our support?

Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, in a local radio broadcast, aired on January 21 and printed in full in El Diario las Americas.

The revelation that The Miami Herald and its Spanish-language counterpart, El Nuevo Herald, were in bed with Cuban leader Fidel Castro must have confounded the editors of the Cuban Communist party organ, Granma, since the Havana daily has repeatedly portrayed them as right-wing tools of the eternal CIA campaign against the thirty-three-year-old revolution.

Anywhere else, Mas Canosa's remarks might have been ignored. In the darker recesses of Miami's exile community, however, his words were clearly a call to arms. Within days Herald publisher David Lawrence, Jr., and two top editors received death threats. Anonymous callers phoned in bomb threats and Herald vending machines were jammed with gum and smeared with feces. Mas Canosa's Cuban American National Foundation quickly denied responsibility and condemned the hijinks, but Mas's words were highly inflammatory in a city where public red-baiting has served as a prelude to bombings and, in past years, murder.

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/92/3/miami.asp

[magbana]

2. And nobody twists the truth better at the Miami Herald than . . .

Pablo Bachelet!

[Mika]

4. Twist the truth? LOL More like ..

.. a straight-up fucking liar.

:hi:


-

[Judi Lynn]

5. If he didn't like like a wild man, he probably would have been fired, like their former REAL writer,

Max Castro!

Here's a sample of his writing:

posted May 1, 2007 (May 14, 2007 issue)
Miami Vise
Max J. Castro

I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and any other leader that is oppressing the people. --GOP Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Miami, interviewed in 2006 for the British documentary 638 Ways to Kill Castro.

Fidel Castro is dying. Or perhaps he is already dead. That, at least, was the rumor in Little Havana over the past several months, where reports that the health of the comandante en jefe was improving were treated with skepticism.

Premature predictions of Castro's death have been a mainstay of Miami's rumor mill since long before last July, when the Cuban government announced that the elder Castro had transferred power temporarily to his younger brother Raul. Cuban-Americans who first heard "news" of Castro's expiration in elementary school are now receiving their AARP cards. Countless Castro opponents who anticipated Fidel's death have preceded him to the grave

The demise of Fidel Castro has been part of the Cuban exile imagination for a long time, as evidenced in such works as León Ichaso's 1996 film Bitter Sugar, which culminates in an abortive assassination attempt. That is especially the case for early 1960s and '70s exiles, among them Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her parents, who consider themselves part of el exilio histórico (el exilio histérico to its critics). Identifying with this exilio histórico signifies a hard-line position as much as time of arrival. Upon hearing of Castro's serious illness, some of these exiles lamented the possibility that he might die of natural causes rather than being executed. "I would have liked to kill that man to set an example for future generations," said Orlando Bosch, the man many hold mainly responsible for the terrorist downing of a Cubana Airlines passenger plane in 1976, which killed seventy-three people, to a reporter last August, when asked whether he was "relieved or frustrated" that Castro was seriously ill. "The prospect that he will die in bed really upsets me."

What is really happening in the exile capital now that Castro no longer wields absolute power in Havana and his death might no longer be just wishful thinking but a real possibility?

After the round of noisy, if lightly attended, celebrations in Miami after the July 31 announcement of Castro's turnover of power, an eerie calm seems to have settled in. That is largely because an orderly succession in Cuba has already occurred. The popular uprising hoped for by many has not materialized.

"They are depressed. They are in shock," said Alfredo Durán, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the former chair of the Florida Democratic Party. Durán, who has long advocated dialogue and an end to the embargo, was kicked out of the Bay of Pigs veterans' organization for his views. He says that hard-line exiles "never imagined that a transfer of power could take place while Castro is still alive. Now they don't have the slightest idea what to do."

More:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070514/castro

[Mika]

3. Since when is Latin America represented by Colombia?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=2172&mesg_id=2183