This week is the last week of Hispanic Heritage Month.
My former Congresswoman, and the mother of one of my highschool classmates, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen went to a Books and Books in Miami and saw a display for books of Hispanic Heritage.
The original tweet has since been deleted, but because of the magic of the internet, I can still give you the text.
Mañana, I’m honored to read a book for #HispanicHeritageMonth to my 3 year old grandson’s class but this is the selection of outstanding Hispanics at my local @BooksandBooks:
Che Guevara
Frida
Cesar Chavez
Sonia Sotomayor
Apparently, there are no conservative Hispanics pic.twitter.com/7WBcvzMhcq
— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) October 6, 2019
I have a feeling that she took that Tweet down, because based upon the Tweets that are still up, some old Cubans might try and burn Books and Books to the ground.
https://twitter.com/RosLehtinen/status/1180923430453104642
Yes, you read that correctly.
A bookstore in Miami is featuring a hagiography of a racist, Communist, mass murderer.
I guarantee this book ignored that Che ran the infamous La Cabaña Fortress prison, where tens of thousands of Cubans were executed by firing squad.
Che was a murderer and a madman. He, along with Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe, was on the JV squad of murderous despots to the Varsity Squad of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The only difference between them was body count. Cuba just didn’t have the population to support the murder of millions.
I don’t know if there will be a backlash against this, but there should be.
Featuring a book about Che that is even vaguely positive for Hispanic Heritage Month is like featuring a white supremacists biography of Hitler for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
I grew up in Miami in the 80’s and 90’s, so I was taught about the Cuban Revolution from the grandparent of my friends who witnessed it first hand.
It is because of this, even though I have no Cuban heritage, that I feel so strongly about this topic. Witnessing the grandfather of someone you are close to break down and cry, telling the story of family members who were executed by Che’s goons, it makes it real in a way that history books never capture.
One of the great travesties of history is that while most people know of the Holocaust, very few know what really happened in Cuba. Che’s face is seen on the shirts of young, hip Leftists. Fidel Castro was mourned by world leaders when he died.
There is a part of me that is occasionally tempted to take a sabbatical from engineering and do something different. One of those things is to try and make a movie. Since Hollywood has never, and probably will never do it, I would love to make what amounts to the Schindler’s List of the Cuban Revolution about the La Cabaña Fortress. To bring into the pop culture an understanding of exactly what was done to the Cuban people.
Maybe this is a project worth Kickstartering.
Every “Hispanic Heritage Month” display I saw around my daughters’ schools featured only Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans. Apparently, the entirety of history features no one of note from Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Philippines, and the rest of the Hispanic world.
The only display that really bothered me was the posters that said Sotomayor was the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice… Because why should we teach our kids about Benjamin Cardozo?
The Left is the most racist bunch of people in this country.
Miguel can back me up on this. Ask any Leftist and “Hispanic” is synonymous with “Mexican.” Not just Mexican, but the poorest, poncho and sombrero wearing Sonoran Desert Mexicans.
I have countless examples. I had a buddy who was of Mexican heritage, by way of Spain. He is ethically European and spoke proper Castilian Spanish. The number of Leftist who denied that he was Hispanic because he was white was unbelievable.
Then there is by buddy who is of Venezuelan heritage, born in Oklahoma because his parents were with the Venezuelan oil industry and they were getting their degrees in Petroleum in Oklahoma. Everyone assumed he was Mexican.
Just watch every Democrat who comes and campaigns in Florida and tries to pander to people of Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage with the same words they use to pander to people of Mexican heritage, though they share virtually nothing in common (even a language).
Just as the Left has homogenized all people of European heritage to “white” regardless of history or culture, they’ve done the same thing to Hispanics and assume that they are all Mexican because that is the largest representation of Hispanics in the US.
When all you care about is race and skin color, actual cultural heritage becomes irrelevant.
Nothing to add here
On the one hand, I can understand why an anglophone American might assume any Spanish-speaker in the U.S. was Mexican-American or Mexican. Mexico is one of the largest Spanish-speaking countries by geography and population; Mexico is right on our border; and, Mexico is the country of origin for the majority of our Spanish-speaking immigrants… It is a reasonable assumption.
On the other hand, there’s the people who will vehemently deny reality when confronted by facts that contradict their assumption.
I’ve been called “racist” for saying things like ‘Antonio Banderas is not a Latino.’ or ‘Miguel de Cervantes was not a Mexican author.’
I’ve also been called a “cultural imperialist” for saying that Zorro was created by a Scottish-American from Chicago and that ‘Latinx’ is not a real Spanish word.
Don’t even get me started on the hate that was heaped upon me for saying that the Philippines are a hispanic culture.
Progressives are some of the most ignorant people… and I mean ignorant in the literal most dictionary definition sense: they are totally unaware of geography, history, and vocabulary.
…and so, so smug about it!
I’m not sure I would view Portugal and thus Brazil as “Hispanic”. While Portugal has at time been part of the Spanish empire, much of its history is independent, and it has a different language.
The Philippines is not so obvious either. While it was a Spanish colony, its language is not, and neither are most of its people.
“Hispanic” refers to anything related to the culture and society of the Iberian Peninsula… Or to use the name the Romans gave it: Hispania.
Hispanic is not a synonym for Spanish
My high school Spanish teacher was a Cuban exile. He had a PhD in education, unfortunately from a Cuban university so it was not recognized in the US. He and his wife left Cuba in the sixties. While they were “legally” allowed to leave, they had to leave everything behind, including their children. He had nothing good to say about Castro, and I suspect that if a student had the temerity to show up wearing a Che shirt, he would have gotten an earful (in Spanish) of words we weren’t supposed to know.
I watched this video about the victims of socialism the other day. The presenter is having a hard time. It sounds like he is tearing up as he documents the millions of dead from socialism.
The young students at the conference are quiet but they don’t look moved. At the end of the presentation they give a LONG standing ovation. This is uncommon for presentations at this particular venue.
But the comments? Jokes, people that are suppose to be listening making comments about “funny” things as the presenter documents yet another few million dead at the hands of socialism.
https://youtu.be/6jkXozOyqsc?t=848
I’ve skipped a head past the “waiting for speaker” and the introduction.
YouTube comments are uniquely poisonous.
Che’s face is seen on the shirts of young, hip Leftists.
That right there happens a lot. I can recall back in the early 80’s when I was just starting high school seeing the Che shirts. I was so NOT political at the time that I didn’t know who he was but thought the shirts looked cool. However I did not purchase one as i was informed by a friend who WAS political at the time about Che. Thus began my political journey, shunning a Che shirt and listening to Ronnie run for Pres.
To this day, one of the greatest and saddest things I’ve ever seen is an old Cuban woman beat a hip Leftist in a Che shirt with a cane while screaming (in Spanish) “Che murdered my brothers.”
He deserved every whack to the skull that woman delivered, and more.
I hereby move that the readers of this blog pool our resources to buy Abuelita a top-shelf mojito and a fine cigar.
Does anyone second the motion?
Could you imagine the reaction to an equally positive book about a Nazi?
Yes, unfortunately I can.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5344-1932-2
Engineer as movie producer? I like the idea.
I’ll pitch in.
I too grew up with several Cuban refugees.
Che was a mad dog.
Here’s some more silliness by people who are happy to ignore geography and history. On Google’s main page today, they have a link that reads “Explore the lives of 13 Latino trailblazers for Hispanic Heritage Month”
In the words of Luke Skywalker “Amazing, every word of what you just said… was wrong.” Well, nearly.
To begin with, they profile fourteen people, not thirteen.
Then they include two people born and raised in the United States of America, which isn’t part of Latin America even in the most generous of definitions for that rather fuzzy term.
We could probably also dicker about the use of the word “trailblazers,” its not like any of these folks were the first painters, musicians, authors, or whatever. But I’ll allow them a bit of puffery with the claim.
Finally, there’s some of the specific claims in the profiles:
Such as saying that ” magical realism, [is] a literary genre unique to Latin American authors[.]” which no doubt would be a surprise to Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Alice Hoffman, Nick Joaquin, Haruki Murakami, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.
They also claim, without citation, that Isabel Allende Llona is “[t]he most widely read Spanish-language author[,]” which would probably shock Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Yep. Google-smug.
It’s a sort of parallel track to the experience, wherein I get lectured by patients (who have come to see ME!) about their maladies, wherein they share with me the results of their Google search, and the google-recommended therapeutic choices.
I’m a mid level practitioner (times 14 years), have been an RN for 30 years prior to that, and worked my way through RN school as a medic on the Big City Fire Department. I really don’t feel the need to consult with my Google “informed” patients, in order to establish a plan of care.
Similarly, Google appears unlikely to establish your Mark 1, Mod 0 snowflake as any sort of subject matter expert on, well, anything.