Peter Krupa

King of Spain to Hugo Chavez at the Americas Summit last week: “Why don’t you shut up?”

Story here. Video here.

Although to be perfectly honest I’m still not sure why Spain has a king, and why he’s at political summits rather than moldering away in some castle, counting his gold.

The hot issue at the moment for Democratic presidential candidates is, for some bizarre reason, U.S. relations with Cuba. To rehash for the kids at home, U.S. citizens are forbidden from doing business with Cuba under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

That ban has been expanded over the years to include retail transactions that you would do while traveling. Hence, an ad hoc travel ban.

The exceptions to the embargo are food and medicine, which can only be sold to Cuba for cash. The purpose of the embargo is to keep hard currency out of the hands of dictators, with the hope that they will eventually bankrupt themselves and be overthrown.

People say the embargo has been around for almost half a century and look! It hasn’t changed anything. This is true, and I don’t believe lifting the travel embargo would be such a big deal if the Miami Cubans didn’t go around flaming whoever suggests it.

But the thing to keep in mind - and the reason I support the rest of the embargo until there are some changes on that island - is that the Castro brothers aren’t just fucking the shit out of their own people. In fact, over the last half century, Cuba has made a respectable go at fucking the shit out of the rest of the world as well.

Cuban troops fought for the Soviet Union in Ethiopia and Angola. Cuban money and logistics have supported left-wing Colombia guerrillas in a civil war which continues today. Cuban money and arms ended up in Nicaragua during the Sandinista disaster. And Cuban military and security forces are intimately involved in the clusterfuck currently being perpetrated in Venezuela.

These days, absent the hard currency to carry out military interventions or re-arm radical guerrillas, Cuba has taken to sending doctors around the region to do simple cataract surgery. Although it’s a great public relations coup, given Cuba’s track record I sort of doubt it is based in altruism.

All that to say, the Castro brothers aren’t solely focused on their island. They very, very much would like to export the disaster they’ve created at home, and have tried to do that many times.

Lifting the U.S. embargo, therefore would put a lot of hard cash in the hands of people who only want to stir up trouble. That’s why I’m all for lifting the ban.

But only after the Castro brothers’ exit, stage left.

I can think of a lot of ways a developing country could use $20 million that are better than giving it to Danny Glover so he can make movies. Apparently, Hugo Chavez can’t. Of course, considering the cash flow problems the Bolivarian Revolution has been having of late, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the financing arrived to Hollywood in the form of 400,000 barrels of heavy, sour crude.

Blogging looks easy, right? Just whack out a bunch of poorly-researched, polemical crap about some inane topic and hit the “post” button. But what’s really hard is to do that over and over and over again. Not because it’s difficult, mechanically speaking, but it’s hard to keep up the requesite outrage.

It’s fatigue, I think.

Like when I see an article in The Nation about Cuba. Right there, I know I shouldn’t read any further due to blood pressure concerns, but maybe I skip to the author’s bio, and I see that “Rosa Miriam Elizalde… is a columnist for the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde and author of several books… She has twice won the Juan Gualberto Gomez prize, Cuba’s most prestigious journalism award.”

And I don’t know. I guess I could rant and rave. I could link to the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index that puts Cuba in 165th place out of 168 - that’s a shade below Burma, but a tad better than Eritrea. I wonder if those countries give prestigious journalism awards as well.

But really, so much outrage is exhausting. Best to take it slow.

There must be some odd energy coursing through the Universe this morning. Reuters, CNN, and - of all things - The Nation have all just run honest stories about Cuba’s sex tourism, rebelious rock bands, and media control, respectively.

Now, over to you Bob Woodruff.

I like to ridicule the New York Times‘ earnest, patronizing coverage of immigration. At root, it’s always meant to cause pity, which is not a very humanizing emotion. Immigrants, in the Times‘ world, are victims. It’s especially frustrating because immigration to a foreign land is not pitiful. It is courageous, dangerous, and bold, which should theoretically make for some incredible stories of people with the kind of can-do, entreprenurial attitudes that make America great.

In that respect, the Times could learn something from Letras Libres, a Mexican/Spanish magazine that this month has an amazing story about a typical Mexican immigrant named Benavides Huaroco. It’s a story that breaks all the narrative cliches of typical immigration coverage in the English media. There are no victims here, just characters you can empathize with and root for.

In a nutshell, Benavides Huaroco is a subsistence farmer in Cheran. He sees his friends coming back from America, all elegant, speaking English, wearing new Converse, and he decides - you know what? - he’s going to get himself a pair of new shoes.

He has adventures. He gets chased by the Mexican authorities, gets screwed by his first employer, and returns back home empty-handed. He swears to never return, but his friend talks him into it, and they go back to work on a farm in Alabama. There are kind gringo employers that give him a hand. One of those gringos comments for the article:

“People like this are what make this country work… You want to make a lot of money? Then find some way to bring more families like that here, but legally. Businesses here need that labor, and if you can find a way to bring them here without problems, you’re gonna make very good money. The only thing they want is to feed their families with dignity. They’re good people, and hard workers.”

There’s nothing candy coated about the story. One time Mr. Huaroco got his drivers license suspended after he got caught drunk driving. Another time he has a racially-charged run-in with his African-American manager. It’s tough for Mr. Huaroco. But you know what? You don’t pity him. You cheer him on. You want him to succeed.

And in the end, when he’s making a healthy living selling Mexican music and sundry paraphernalia in his shop outside Foley, Alabama, and when he’s brought almost his entire family to live and work in the States, and when he’s still living in a mobile home because he wistfully keeps one foot in his homeland, you don’t feel sorry for him, because you know that from being a poor subsistence farmer in the back country of Mexico who just wanted a new pair of Converse, Mr. Huaroco has done pretty damn good for himself.

Why can’t the English media manage to find stories like this? Is it too cheesy? Not ironic/existential/desperate enough, the way immigrants are supposed to be? We’re all post-American Dream, right? Jaded in our upper-middle class malaise. Well, there’s got to be some reason 11 million people have entered this country illegally in the last two decades.

And I don’t think it was to become victims.

AP headline: Castro to be ‘ready’ for election

I think they put the scare-quotes around the wrong word. Anyway, it’s a good thing we have the AP around to keep America informed about the political goings on in Cuba:

A lengthy process of nominating candidates for municipal elections will begin this summer, leading to several rounds of voting. Then, by March 2008, Cuba should be ready to hold parliamentary elections that are expected to include Castro, Alarcon said.

The 80-year-old Castro was the world’s longest-ruling head of state, occupying the island’s presidency for 47 years before temporarily stepping aside in favor of his younger brother, Raul, following emergency intestinal surgery in July.

Emphasis mine, of course. Now we understand why, last month when the Cuban government expelled three foreign correspondents, the AP’s wasn’t among them.

One thing most foreigners will tell you is strange about the U.S. is our obsession with race. Why, they’ll ask you, do I have to place myself in a racial category every time I sign up for a library card? It’s a good question, but you have to just shrug and say, “Well. That’s America!”

Which brings us to the Washington Post Magazine’s piece this week written by a “Latina” who dyed her hair blond, and then typed a bunch of stuff about the experience. Ruminating on the above before/after pictures, I have to say that with dark hair, the young lady looks an awful lot like my mom, who’s lineage can be traced back to the Mayflower.

That could raise the incipient question of: “What the fuck is her problem?” But no! Wait! We have socio-economical-cultural-alliterative issues to unpack! And so our courageous author gazes deep into her naval and brings us a 3,500-word thumbsucker, the length and breadth of which I’ve only had to fortitude to skim.

Suffice it to say that she concludes by rejecting dyed locks and determining to remain “brown and proud.”

Since I’ve just vomited on my keyboard, I only have a few moments to make some brief points before everything crashes and I get electrocuted. I’ll be quick, because typing in vomit is not easy.

First of all, it’s interesting to note that our heroine is South American - Chilean, in fact - and judging from her picture, she most likely descended from those Europeans who, in years past, busied themselves killing off and enslaving actual brown people. Brown and proud? Yeah. And I’m Cherokee.

Second of all, the premise of her article is all wrong. She has this idea that “Latinas” define themselves culturally by their proudly dark hair. Which reminds me of the time I was in Venezuela with my wife, a Venezuelan who has better things to do than dye her hair. Her relatives were fascinated, and said: “Oh! You’ve left your hair dark! Like the indigenous people!” Because in Venezuela, if you don’t dye your hair, you’re a little weird.

It’s a thorny issue, ethnic identity, especially when you try and make it stretch across two continents and several dozen tropical islands. It gets really fucked up when you throw in the Guyanese and the Brazilians and you’ve got to translate everything into two more languages. Then the Garifuna show up and it’s all shot to hell.

Anyway, by the end of our author’s article, I was still unclear on how dying one’s hair blond makes one more… white? I dyed my hair blond twice, but not for that reason. People have always assumed I’m white. Unless I’m speaking Spanish on the subway, then they ask me where I’m from and I say Chicago and they don’t believe me and there’s all kinds of confusion. That’s because I’m white, but I speak Spanish. Kind of like, you know, the author of this article. Sometimes, people even ask me if I’m Chilean.

Ethnic identities. They’re complicated things. But if there’s one thing that identifies the American ethnicity, it’s that we obsess about ethnicities. Why write a 3,500 word article about whether dying your hair blond changes your identity?

Well. Because you’re American!

Regarding the debate in our troubled Union over what to do about immigration, I would remind the hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants who occasionally spill into the street demanding their rights in front of the Capitol building that things here could be a lot worse: The U.S. could adopt the policies of the Mexican government, as set forth in Section I, Chapter III, Article 33 of the Mexican Constitution.

And I quote:

… the Executive of the Union will have the exclusive power to expel from national territory, immediately and without necessity of due process, any foreigner whose presence is found to be inconvenient.

Foreigners are in no way allowed to involve themselves in the country’s political matters.

Welcome to America. As a foreigner, you can involve yourself in the country’s political matters without being summarily deported. Just, you know, keep it down.

Another word on the power of decree that Chavez has acquired. According to my Venezuelan human rights lawyer wife, there are some areas of law that a president with power of decree still can’t touch: for example, criminal law and taxes, and anything that would change the rights or the organizational structure of government guaranteed in the constitution.

All this, of course, has become sort of theoretical since Chavez packed the Supreme Court (he added 10 seats to the existing 20 and appointed his allies). But another interesting point comes out of his new power of decree.

In 1999, when Chavez changed the constitution through a special assembly, he made a tiny adjustment that was little noticed at the time. Article 190, Section 8 of the old constitution granted the president the right “to dictate extraordinary measures regarding the economy or finances when public interest requires it or when it has been authorized by a special law.”

The new constitution gives the president the right “to dictate, upon previous authorization of the assembly through an empowering law, decrees with the force of law.”

Notice something missing? That’s right, he can make decrees about anything now, not just the economy or finances of the country. My point is that the power of decree is not an afterthought: Chavez has obviously been planning it since at least 1999. And now, using his new power of decree, Chavez’s plans for the next overhaul of the constitution (I guess he likes to do this every eight years or so, sort of like an oil change) include top secrecy.

That is, he has decreed that the special council drawing up the new constitution be sworn to secrecy until the constitution is ready for the general assembly to rubber-stamp.

Draw your own conclusions.