{"id":2911,"date":"2006-08-02T22:03:29","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T05:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/02\/no-temais-una-muerte-gloriosaand-hurry-up-already\/"},"modified":"2006-08-02T22:05:44","modified_gmt":"2006-08-03T05:05:44","slug":"no-temais-una-muerte-gloriosaand-hurry-up-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/02\/no-temais-una-muerte-gloriosaand-hurry-up-already\/","title":{"rendered":"No Temais Una Muerte Gloriosa…And Hurry Up Already"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here in Miami, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the third night of the Ra\u00c3\u00bal Castro Ruz era. Although I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say the euphoria (or the schadenfreude) has entirely evaporated, calm has returned just in time for everyone to rush to the supermarket to stock up on water and batteries should Tropical Storm Chris<\/a> decide to spoil any weekend festivities. Only a man as evil as Fidel could pick the Monday before a weekend hurricane to drop dead. Thoughtless bastard.<\/p>\n

All kidding aside, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been fairly surreal down here. Coverage of the crazy Cubans shaking their booties<\/a> across several major thoroughfares in Miami has been on all the national networks. We saw hours of videos here. Yes, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve danced on Fidel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grave before, but this time it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different. It really is. The announcement<\/a> that Fidel was ceding power — even if it is only temporary — was like watching a coma patient twitch his eyes after 47 years. You simply just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sit back and relax when something like that happens. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re celebrating and waiting to see what twitches next.<\/p>\n

We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really pretend to know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on down there, but fueled on shots of high-octane Cuban coffee, everyone is speculating. Maybe for once they told the truth. Maybe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already embalmed. Maybe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just in a coma or stroked out in a hospital bed. Maybe \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as my friend Robert suggested \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on Calle Ocho dressed as a little old lady, spying on his Miami Mafia funeral. And with Ra\u00c3\u00bal missing in action too, the conspiracy theories multiply with each passing hour. Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, backroom coup d’\u00c3\u00a9tat. The possibilities are endless, and I suspect we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never really know.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve rolodexed through a number of emotions these last three days \u00e2\u20ac\u201d mostly disbelief, grief for family and friends who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t live to see this, and hope that the future starts now for Cuba instead of after another couple of years of close calls \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but I never expected in my wildest dreams to actually be concerned for the Castro butchers. For all the trouble those two have caused I guess I want them to have a more fitting end than gastro-intestinal trouble and some quick \u00e2\u20ac\u0153demise\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a dark hallway. Just what the hell has happened to Ra\u00c3\u00bal? Until this mystery surfaced everything had been going according to my schedule of how the changeover was likely to happen.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost a traitorous feeling, I suppose. My Mom and most of her family fled their adopted island home within a couple years of the glorious revolution in \u00e2\u20ac\u212259. Then again, if it weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t for the Castros, she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have moved to Miami, and I would never have been born, so I guess they do deserve a smidgen of concern from me…or maybe I was just hoping for the better entertainment value of a nice, public lynching. <\/p>\n

(I posted<\/a> a bit about this on Monday night over at Crash Landing, one of my regular blathering haunts.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here in Miami, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the third night of the Ra\u00c3\u00bal Castro Ruz era. Although I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say the euphoria (or the schadenfreude) has entirely evaporated, calm has returned just in time for everyone to rush to the supermarket to stock up on water and batteries should Tropical Storm Chris decide to spoil any weekend festivities. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2911"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}