FACT: Many of who fled Cuba in 1980 during the Mariel Boatlift were Christians. They were told to get out, stay out, and don’t come back or they would be killed. Further they could not bring anything with them except the clothes they wore and maybe — just maybe — one small bag of personal items. But all their valuables had to remain in Cuba because, said Castro, it was all his anyway.
Along with others, including mental patients and criminals that were costing Castro too much money to house, Christians came. These Christians came with nothing except one thing: The prospect of living in a country where they could be free to worship their Heavenly Father without fear of persecution.
They came. I won’t say gladly because they had to leave the land they loved, but they came. This Citizen Journalist knows all this because she was part of a large group of U.S. Christians who helped house and/or supply these, fellow brothers and sisters and their children, until they could get settled into a new country. We went through our houses and our closets. If we had two pots, one went to them. Clothes, shoes, beds, sheets, towels, underwear and socks and toothbrushes and soap. Food. Money. Tools. Vehicles. Forks and spoons. Plates. And more.
We did this with love and we did it for months as little by little we found places for our brothers and sisters allowing them to leave the temporary camps in Florida.
The horrors these Christians lived through to maintain and practice their faith in God and His Son prove dictators all have one thing in common:
Dictators don’t like competition, won’t abide it, and will do everything they can to squash it.
Castro and Raul, his brother, reveled in the pain they could inflict. They put men in prisons so dank and dark and for so very long that mold grew on their bodies and ate into their flesh. And why were they in those prisons?
They dared to want to live freely.
They dared to want to show they loved God.
Castro and his brothers have done everything they can to rape and pillage the very people they claim to have wanted to help and save from under the heel of another dictator. They lied. They cheated. They killed. They tortured. They stole. They oppressed. And all for what? To get money and riches, live a life of luxury, and have sex whenever they pleased with whoever took their fancy.
Dictators love having their precious egos stroked as they are treated like rock stars by people who have no idea about the realities of true oppression. Seeing their faces on t-shirts as iconic art simply further emboldens them in their excesses.
So, to those who name one or two good things Castro did as a way to mitigate his practiced horrors, I say this: Hitler absolutely adored dogs, so hey, we shouldn’t mind too much the torture and deaths of six million Jews and five million others who chose not to Sieg Heil.
After all, somebody who loves puppies can’t be all bad, right?
