Countries:
Barbados, Cuba
Topics:
Ideas, Health, Media, Politics

This post is also available in:

pt:
Barbados, Cuba: Rumores sobre Fidel...

According to Barbados Free Press, the blogosphere is “going wild on ‘Castro Dead' rumour”, while Blog For Cuba says, “If you want us to believe he's alive, prove it.”

Posted by Janine Mendes-Franco

Share This Share this article

12 Responses to
“Barbados, Cuba: Castro Rumours”

  1. August 20th, 2007 at 16:07 pm
    shirley pate:
    1

    I was very sorry to see this kind of topic on your website. Unfortunately, the sites you refer to are quite sensationalist and propagandistic in tone. In my opinion, this is not an issue and neither is it news. These rumors pop up constantly from the right-wing Miami Cuban crowd and they do it to amuse themselves. Remember, these are the folks who want to rent the convention center in Miami for a “celebration” when Fidel dies. Fidel Castro is one of the most beloved and revered leaders in the world. And, this is not rumor, it is fact.

  2. August 21st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
    Alberto de la Cruz:
    2

    Ms. Pate:
    Castro is so loved and so revered that over 2 million Cubans, some of them risking their lives in rickety rafts, have left the island to spread the word to the world of just how wonderful he really is.

    Someone, like yourself, that considers a dictator that has murdered tens of thousands of people and has jailed hundreds of thousands more, is “beloved,” needs to reexamine what they consider good and what they consider bad.

    For the record, I will be in the Miami Beach Convention center celebrating the eventual death of the tyrant who jailed and murdered my family members.

  3. August 21st, 2007 at 13:20 pm
    Georgia Popplewell:
    3

    “I was very sorry to see this kind of topic on your website.”

    Shirley - you’ll see all kinds of topics on our website, as our mission is to report on what bloggers across the world are saying. If you notice, the entry comprises two quotations from bloggers.

    Thanks for reading!

  4. August 21st, 2007 at 15:25 pm
    Ziva:
    4

    Ms. Pate, so you think my tone sensationalist and propagandistic, and not news worthy. The tone of my blog and other anti-Castro blogs is in reaction to people like you who callously dismiss the suffering of the Cuban people. Thankfully, Genocide Watch and international Human Rights groups such as Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, etc., do deem the systematic murder and oppression of the Cuban people newsworthy. Fidel Castro beloved? Not by his victims.

  5. August 21st, 2007 at 16:13 pm
    Val Prieto:
    5

    Shirley,

    Youll forgive me if I, personally, dismiss your naive statement, based upon what I can only assume to be a peripheral knowledge of Cuba and the Cuban people.

    Perhaps if you’d lived under the auspices of that “beloved leader” having to deal with CDR’s, actos de repudio (acts of repudiation), food rationing, indoctrination of your children, no choices as to where you work or where you live, not being able to have more than 2 visitors in your home at one time, no access to world media and outside information, no access to the internet, no possibility of traveling outside the island, not being able to voice any disagreement with the government, no access to tourist areas, being an indentured servant to the state, having family and friends incarcerated for ridiculous reasons, having your children do forced labor in fields…etc…Then and only then would you possibly be able to comment on said “beloved leader.”

    And your criticism and ignoring the opinions of exiles, specifically because they left Cuba and reside in the United States, smacks of hubris and condescension. Not every cuban exile is a right wing extremist, but every single one exiled because their living conditions were intolerable and the affront and infringement on their basic civil an human rights, and their ability to live like free individuals, was all encompassing and unbearable. Thus many, if not mot, risked their very lives to leave their homeland and that “beloved” leader behind.

  6. August 21st, 2007 at 18:11 pm
    shirley pate:
    6

    Hi Georgia.

    Thanks for writing. You all provide such a wonderful service and I think there are serious issues that deserve attention and the “Castro dead” rumor is not one of them I hope you all pick up more news about Haiti - now that is a serious subject about which your audience needs to know more.

    Best wishes,

    shirley

  7. August 21st, 2007 at 19:34 pm
    JJacobs:
    7

    Shirley is right. And I wonder where Prieto got all those ideas from. So he thinks we Cubans in Cuba don’t smile, don’t dance (well I can’t dance), don’t party, don’t go to the beach, don’t entertain, etc. Interestingly enough Prieto, it seems, eventually went and joined the nation that is responsible for most of Cuba’s suffering, for the suffering of Cuba is not the result of Fidel but of decades and decades of US harassment and economic soffocation. (And by the way, there are more Mexicans trying to cross to the US side than there are Cubans taking to the sea to get to Miami.) I mean Cuba is far from being idyllic or perfect; there is a lot that needs to improve here in Cuba, there’s lots of daily hardships. But a look around Latin America shows our neighbors, Peruvians, Hondurans, Guatemalans, etc. are no better off. Oh, but there is democracy and freedom there, and children prostitutes, drugs, violence are all invisible.
    Prieto, Alberto should not react so viciously to Shirley’s comments. Instead, they should come down to Cuba sometime, check it out for yourselves, not from the US mainstream media.

  8. August 21st, 2007 at 21:20 pm
    Georgia Popplewell:
    8

    Shirley - we cover Haiti whenever we can. Our coverage, however, is severely limited by the fact that there’s just not much citizen media activity going on there.

  9. August 22nd, 2007 at 2:39 am
    rsnlk:
    9

    I find it curious that JJ Jacobs purports to be posting from Cuba, since ordinary Cubans are denied access to the internet.

  10. August 22nd, 2007 at 7:44 am
    Ziva:
    10

    So, forget the executions, the oppression, the consecration camps, forget all of Fidel Castro´s crimes against the Cuban people. They love him, they are smiling happy people, and any misery they suffer is the fault of the U.S.

    Pray tell then, why do those rafts only go one way, straight to Florida?

  11. August 24th, 2007 at 23:24 pm
    Tony the miamian:
    11

    How dare you make such a comment about castro? he is not loved. the people that show up to rallies are forced. the military makes them attend. castro is a bad man. thats not partisan. thats fact. how dare you speak about cuba like you know what you’re talking about?

  12. February 20th, 2008 at 3:40 am
    Global Voices Online » Caribbean: Castro - End of an Era?:
    12

    [...] bloggers closely following reports of the leader's deteriorating health and speculating as to whether or not he was even alive. This is probably not the way the blogosphere expected him to go out - The Latin Americanist, in [...]

Join the conversation

Please consider
  • Comments on Global Voices are moderated.
  • If your comment does not appear immediately, there is no need to submit it again.
  • Please treat others with respect.
  • Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.