May McCain's Great Grandchildren Live to See the Glorious Day of Cuba's Liberation

Jon Swift has praised the recent events in Cuba:

In a letter published in Cuba's state-run newspaper Granma Fidel Castro announced that he is resigning as President of Cuba, finally succumbing to the sanctions that have crippled Cuba's economy and steadily weakened his rule for the last 50 years. Although Castro tried to save face by claiming that he was quitting because of his "critical health condition," it is clear that half a century of U.S. pressure has just worn him down....

All of those liberals who complained that sanctions were not working and said Castro was thumbing his nose at the United States should apologize to the ten Presidents who have methodically plotted Castro's downfall since 1959 now that Castro has finally said, "Tio." While it may have appeared to some that Castro emerged unscathed from the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 638 attempts by the CIA to assassinate him using poison cigars and exploding, mollusks, the embargo, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Mariel Boat Lift, which deprived the country of some of its finest criminals and mental patients, we can now see that each of these incidents chipped away at Castro's power little by little until he had no choice but to surrender.

And now I can predict what will happen two, or three, or ten, or twenty years from now. Eventually Communist rule in Cuba will end, which will be the signal for the south Florida Cuban exiles to march triumphantly back to Havana - or will it? I suspect that on that great day, the Cubans will look at the arriving Americans, with their American clothes and American "Miami Sound Machine" music, and say to them,

¿Quiénes son usted?

Even in 1999, the New York Times noted that the people of Miami are very different from the people who are still in Cuba.

The people from an earlier Cuba and their children have grown into a Miami Who's Who. The mayors of the city and county of Miami, the county police chief and the county state attorney are all Cuban-born or of Cuban descent. So are the president of the largest bank, the owner of the largest real estate developer, the managing partner of the largest law firm, nearly half of the county's 27-member delegation in the state Legislature and two of its six members of Congress.

About the only accomplishment Cuban-Americans cannot claim is regaining their country.

"There's an irony and pathos about the situation," a University of Miami sociologist and expert on Cuban affairs, Max Castro, said. "They have succeeded as immigrants and failed as exiles."...

[I]mmigration over the decades has made Miami so distinctly Cuban that the cultural clash is no longer between Cubans and Americans as much as between different waves of Cuban immigrants.

With each batch of immigrants who win the annual visa lottery and with each smuggled boatload of Cubans that land almost daily in South Florida, Cuban Miami becomes less cohesive, encompassing a people who differ in social class, race, generation and politics, and who increasingly come from different worlds....

Immigrants from Cuba still count on welcoming relatives like Efrain Veiga, who left Cuba as a child in 1962 and now, at 47, is the successful owner of Yuca, a restaurant in Miami Beach. Veiga has visited Cuba twice and regularly sends money to relatives there.

But even Veiga was startled by his latest experience with a cousin, whom he had helped leave the island, put up in his home here and given a job in his restaurant.

Veiga said he was surprised when his cousin balked at working weekends....

The shock is mutual. [New arrivals] said one of their biggest surprises in the United States was how hard people work. Another is how "Americanized" their compatriots have become, they say.

"People are so materialistic," said Olga Rodriguez, 40, who came legally last year with a 22-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. "It's like they have the dollar sign on their forehead. It hasn't happened to me yet. I offer rides to classmates in language school even if I have to go out of my way."

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