U.S. Policy Against Cuba

We disagree strongly with the editorial (Aug. 20) that “(U.S.) policy should be aimed at toppling Castro.”

We in the United States have no right to impose our desires on a small neighboring country. It is our reprehensible embargo that has brought Cuba to the point of collapse. In the past we forced Cuba to rely on help from the Soviet Union. Now even that assistance is no longer available, and yet, despite extreme shortages of medical supplies, Cuba still offers free medical care to everyone living in the country. We are still wrestling with the issue of providing health care to all our people.

The exodus of Cubans is caused by the United States’ actions in trying to overthrow the government by every means short of war! Our government even forbids U.S. citizens to travel there to see with our own eyes what is going on. So much for our “free” society.

The best way to solve the Cuban immigrant problem is to lift the embargo and allow normal trade relations with a country that poses no threat to the United States.

TED SHAPIN

RUTH SHAPIN

Orange

*

The Cold War is over and Fidel Castro no longer has the support of the Soviet Union for his communist regime, yet we continue the personal vendetta against him, with sanctions detrimental to the Cuban economy. And now we are facing another wave of refugees.

Hasn’t the time come for us to reverse course, lift the sanctions and help restore a prosperous economy to Cuba to reduce or eliminate the pressure of its people to seek asylum in the United States? How much longer are we going to punish the people of Cuba because of our personal grudge against Castro?

WILLIAM H. McCORMICK

Garden Grove

*

Many naive Americans are saying that the Cuban economic problems are the result of the U.S. embargo. This is not so. The desperate economic conditions in Cuba are because of Castro’s dictatorship. He runs Cuba as his private farm. He decides the life of the Cuban people. There are no unions, no free press, no political parties, no independent judicial system.

Eastern Europe received financial loans under communism, but economic conditions there did not improve until after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Restore freedom in Cuba first.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Glendale

*

Eight thousand Cubans reach Florida and President Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno (her state) spring into action. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants cross the California border and we can’t get the time of day from the feds. Where is California’s Guantanamo? Los Angeles. I hope the taxpaying voters from California remember this in ’96.

ALBERT FERGUSON

Santa Barbara

*

Ingrid Peritz’s revisionist commentary, “The People Castro Can Count on During Tough Times--Cuba’s Blacks” (Opinion, Aug. 21), is marred by glaring distortions and contradictions. For one thing, recent photographs of the thousands of desperate rafters escaping Castro’s gulag clearly rebuke her claims that Cubans of African descent support the Castro regime--one only has to glance at the many black faces among them.

By the same token, a look at the predominantly white faces of those in Castro’s inner circle reveals yet another of Peritz’s inconsistencies with regard to black “achievements” under Castro--gains which are illusory at best and remain just another pathetic example of two-faced “revolutionary” rhetoric.

As to her inflammatory statement that exiled Cubans threaten to go back to “repossess their homes and reclaim their lost power,” I can only remind her that those homes to which she’s referring were stolen by Castro. Contrary to communist propaganda, the overwhelming majority of Cuban exiles were average working people.

And one final note. We Cuban exiles are proud of our accomplishments in the United States, our adopted country. We’re people too. We have feelings. Communism apologists like Peritz should ask us what we’d envision in a post-Castro Cuba. I, for one, imagine freedom. Freedom for all. Freedom at last.

MIGDIA CHINEA-VARELA

Cuban-American Anti-Defamation Assn.

Glendale

*

Today’s immediate crisis in Cuba can be immediately solved by giving Castro a new career. Since Fidel’s first love is baseball, appoint Castro the commissioner of baseball, provided that he immediately leave Cuba for his new duties, which will include solving the crisis in baseball.

CHARLES A. DEEN

Culver City