I don’t know everyone else’s writing process, I know mine. I come up with a working title and let the work flow from there.

 I’ll preface this title with telling you I’m third generation Cuban American brought up by a family not wedded to any political party. My grandparents and their siblings taught us about the dangers of going all in for any individual politician, or political party.  They’d witnessed a lot, Franco in Spain, Batista, and Castro in Cuba, and watched autocrats take over in other countries. They knew it could happen here, and would warn us when they heard or saw certain things from politicians regardless of party.  For the most part they weren’t academics or political scholars just experienced observers of history and people.

During the coming weeks and months, I will be researching and writing about the lies that we Cubans have been telling ourselves for decades. The biggest lie of them all that Cuba was some sort of bastion of democracy and freedom before the Revolution of 1959. The Big Cuban Lie.

The thuggery and corruption of pre (maybe post) Castro Cuba has permeated Florida politics in a big way, especially visible in S Florida. I will expose the people and families who draw a straight line to these pedigrees and the brand of politics that has been handed down like bad DNA. It has become our cultural DNA. 

Part of this cultural DNA is because we just like a lot other immigrant groups, (think Irish and Italian) benefitted from Jim Crow laws (pre 1964). That legacy and the poison they’ve fed us is now who we are. So much so that a lot of our young men (mostly) are openly participating in white supremacist organizations which draws a straight line from Jim Crow to Cuban Jim Crow. For those that don’t know Cuban history in the US and Florida pre dates the Cuban Revolution and Mariel and is so much more than Miami and Little Havana.

I am going to go hard on my community, not because I hate my people, because I love them. We are creative, resilient survivors. Just like cancer invades and destroys the body- xenophobia, racism, religious bigotry invade and destroy people and societies. Hate does and will make us believe lies about “the other” we can and must call it out in our own communities. I will shock and offend. If by doing so I can wake a few people up, so be it.