Regina Vazquez Professor Gifford English 114B 2/19/14 Castro Cruelty Against Cuba Imagine a place where your

obligated to worship one person, follow someone rules, and being treated like worms. Does that sound anything like hell? Well this is what you call the island of Cuba, which is being ruled by Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro has been governing Cuba for 40 years now. Although his people should love him because he is the government, they hate the guts out of him. The people living in Cuba are suffering so much. For example, in "Finding Manana", Mirita Ojito, a sixteen year old, shares her life of when she was a little girl and how Cuba was back then. Know one really had a voice except for Castro. Everybody wanted to do something to change the island but no one actually changed anything. In the book Finding Manana, I found a quote that really impacted me so much. This quote said, Does God put food on your table? Noooo Fidel does. Does God give you your books and pencils so you can come to school? Noooo, the revolution does.. And we were made to memorize slogans such as Fidel es mi papa y Cuba es mi mama. You can get so many conclusions out of this quote. Just by reading this you can see or even imagine how the people were living in Cuba and how Fidel was to his own people. Like I mention earlier, the people were obligated to worship only one person and that is Castro. When people would worship God they would make fun of them and would denied everything to them, including the education. In Cuba they start teaching in schools about how the revolution is really important to them and how they are always suppose to adore and listen to Castro. This is what happen to Mirita Ojito. She and her family were Catholics and they would go to church every Sunday. She and her family never listen to Castro or even about the revolution, all they cared about was to get to the U.S. But

when the school noticed this they denied Mirita from a really good school because she was catholic. All this explains and shows how the only voice there was was Fidel Castro and only his. How would you feel if you hear Obama calling us worms or something similar to that? Terrible right! Well this is where it leads me to my second quote. The second quote that really impacted me was when Castro said, I dont want to see all those worms. This might look like a simple sentence but if you think about it, it has a lot of information to talk about. What Castro meant by the word worm is someone worthless, low class, not important, etc. Now when this word comes from the person you are worshiping and listening to, its really hurtful. This is the reason why the people dont care and dont like Castro because he is cruel and selfish. It might seem that he cares for his country but in reality he doesnt. But still with all of this problems there are still people that dont want to leave there country. For example, Mirita mention in her book that she wouldnt want to leave Cuba because thats where she grew up and she has all her friends and family there and she feels comfortable. This is how other Cuban people think as well and thats sad because even though it doesnt sound like trauma, they are actually traumatized. And even though you wanted to do something about it you could end up in two places, either dead or jail. One of Cuba most horrifying place and torture is in jail. No other country of Cuba's size has held so many political prisoners for so long under such inhumane circumstances of atrocity and terror. They say that there are prisoners that are called los olvidados because they have been in jail for so long. Teenagers that went to prison when they were young are still there but really old, some blind, some with heart problems, and others with diabetic. I strongly agree that what Fidel Castro is doing is something really brutal. We can call this a crime against humanity. People think that all this torture and suffering happen years ago, but they are wrong because all those terrible things are still happening in todays world including all the prisoners. We are so busy living the good life that we dont see how other countries are living. All this is cruelty and Im

surprise that we havent done anything to help all those thousand people out. Our government needs to open his eyes and start doing something about because in the point that I see it, Fidel Castro could end up like Hitler. The book, Finding Manana, made me realize so many new things of Cuba and Fidel Castro that I didnt know. It made me open my eyes and made me realize that there are a thousand other places that dont have the same opportunities that we have in the U.S. Someone needs to do something of Fidel Castro and end this once and for all because like I mention in the beginning, living in Cuba is like living in hell. People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Word Cited: Capen, Dick. n.d., n. pag. <http://www2.fiu.edu/~fcf/castro.thwart.html>.