Che Guevara's Image Doesn't Fit Ghastly Reality

Cuban-American Humberto Fontova offers his take on the Communist revolutionary Ernesto "Che' Guevara in the Miami Herald.

Good thing the college “hipsters” who wear Che T-shirts didn’t live in Stalinist Cuba under their idol.

“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates!” snarled the KGB-mentored Che Guevara in 1961. “Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service! Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. It is criminal to think of individuals! Individualism must disappear from Cuba!

By the mid-’60s, the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle (blue jeans, long hair, fondness for the Beatles and Stones) or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked out of Cuba’s streets and parks by Che’s KGB-trained secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” emblazoned in bold letters above the gate and with machine-gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were quite similar.      

Today, the world’s largest image of the man whom so many college hipsters sport on their shirts adorns Cuba’s headquarters and torture chambers for its KGB-trained secret police. Nothing could be more fitting.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link: 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/16/3693495/che-guevaraa-image-doesnt-fit.html 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/16/3693495/che-guevaraa-image-doesnt-fit.html#storylink=cpy

 

Mob Talk: Merlino's Move To South Florida Is Rocking The Boat Among Local Wiseguys

Philadelphia's Fox 29 offers a video news report on South Philly organized crime figure Joey Merlino's move to South Florida after being released from federal prison.

Former Philadelphia mob boss Joey Merlino's move to South Florida has created some waves in organized crime circles just north of Miami, where he now lives.

 

In Monday night's Mob Talk, FOX 29's Dave Schratwieser gets the inside story from Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie Brown on why Merlino's presence in the Sunshine State may be rocking the boat with local wise guys.

 

You can watch the news clip via the below link:

 

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/20141928/mob-talk-merlinos-move-to-south-florida-rocking-the-boat-among-local-wiseguys 

Joseph Merlino: The Mobster Next Door (In Boca Raton)

 

Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald offers an interesting piece on Philadelphia organized crime figure Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, who now resides in Boca Raton, Florida.
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A year out of prison, Joseph Salvatore “Skinny Joey” Merlino isn’t so skinny anymore. But he looks almost as boyish at 50 as at 39, when he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for racketeering. Back then, he was a five-foot-three, 100-pound dapper young don who masterminded the bloody takeover of the Philadelphia mob. Today, he is a two-hour plane ride from the Southwest Philadelphia row house where he grew up to become an underworld icon, both feared and eerily revered in the City of Brotherly Love.
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“How’d ya find me?” he asks, his Philadelphia accent unmistakable.
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 You can read the rest of the story via the below
link:
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 http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/29/3026287/joseph-merlino-the-mobster-next.html#
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Note: Merlino grew up in South Philadelphia, not Southwest Philadelphia.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/29/3026287/joseph-merlino-the-mobster-next.html#storylink=cpy

Cocaine Godmother Griselda Blanco Gunned Down In Columbia

 



David Ovalle at the Miami Herald reports on the shooting death of the infamous former drug dealer and murderer Griselda Blanco.

Griselda Blanco, the drug kingpin known for her blood-soaked style of street vengeance during Miami’s “cocaine cowboys” era of the ’70s and ’80s, was shot to death in Medellin by a motorcycle-riding assassin Monday.

Blanco, 69, spent nearly two decades behind bars in the United States for drug trafficking and three murders, including the 1982 slaying of a 2-year-old boy in Miami.

Called the “Godmother of Cocaine,” she was deported in 2004 to Colombia, where she maintained a low profile.  You can read the rest of the story via the below link: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/03/2983362/cocaine-godmother-griselda-blanco.html 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/03/2983362/cocaine-godmother-griselda-blanco.html#storylink=cpy

The Kennedy Assassination: Did Castro Know?

Glen Garvin at the Miami Herald wrote an interesting piece about an interesting book, Brian Latell's Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine (Palgrave McMillan). 

The orders surprised the Cuban intelligence officer. Most days in his tiny communications hut, just outside Fidel Castro’s isolated family compound on the west side of Havana, were spent huddled over his radio gear, trolling the island’s airwaves for the rapid-fire bursts of signals that were the trademark of CIA spies and saboteurs, pinpointing their location for security forces.

But now his assignment had abruptly been changed, at least for the day. “The leadership wants you to stop your CIA work, all your CIA work,” his boss said. Instead, the officer was told he had a new target: Texas, “any little detail small detail from Texas.” And about three hours later, shortly after mid-day on Nov. 22, 1963, the shocked intelligence officer had something to report that was much more than a small detail: the assassination in Dallas of President John F. Kennedy.

“Castro knew,” the intelligence officer would tell a CIA debriefer years later, after defecting to the United States. “They knew Kennedy would be killed.”

The defector’s tale is reported in a book to be published next month by retired CIA analyst Brian Latell, the agency’s former national intelligence officer for Latin America and now a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/17/2700186/the-kennedy-assassination-did.html

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/17/2700186/the-kennedy-assassination-did.html#storylink=cpy

Papa And The True Love Of His Life

Larry Lebowitz reviewed Paul Hendrickson's Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934 - 1961 (Knopf) for the Miami Herald. 

His not-so-implausible premise: The true love of the final half of Hemingway’s tumultuous life was a 38-foot fishing vessel named Pilar...

Hemingway hosted more than 500 visitors, many of them celebrated, aboard Pilar, making it an easy metaphoric vessel to carry the narrative. Placing Papa behind the wheel, Hendrickson covers most of the well-trod hagiography — fishing off Key West, Havana and Bimini; hunting in Idaho and Africa; literary friendships and paranoiac rants at critics; extramarital dalliances and bittersweet relationships with his tragic sons; hard drinking and debauchery; diminishing skills; dementia and ultimately suicide.

You can read the rest of the piece via via the link below:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/18/2409990/papa-and-the-true-love-of-his.html

The book sounds interesting. As Hemingway is one of my favorite writers, and as a sailor who loves boats, I look forward to reading this book.

Bay of Pigs At 50: Ex-CIA Agent Who Helped Capture Che Guevara Talks About His Experience In The Bay Of Pigs Invasion

Luisa Yanez in The Miami Herald spoke to Felix Rodriquez, the current President of The Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506, on the 50 anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Fidel Castro's Communist Cuba.

Rodriquez, seen in the above photo, is a former CIA agent who was in Cuba 50 years ago. He later helped hunt down Castro's Communist guerrilla ambassador, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in Boliva.

You can read the newspaper piece via the below link:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/15/2169717/brigade-veteran-says-there-was.html

You can read about how Brigade veterans are honoring the day in Miami via the below link:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/16/2171348/bay-of-pigs-survivors-pay-tribute.html#storylink=omni_popular

You can also read Cuban-American Humberto Fontova's column on the Bay of Pigs, and my interview with Fontova, via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/04/anniversary-of-heroism-and-shame-bay-of.html