This is officially my last blog post on Easyjournal. I've moved over to Blogger.

CLICK HERE to go there.

The new address is http://yucababy.blogspot.com/.

Please update your links to this page, your bookmarks, etc.

And just to tempt you, there's a shiny, new post over there with pictures of Penny. You know you can't resist...

If you've been paying attention to Cuba-related news, you'll know the Congressional Black Caucus just returned from a trip to the island, and a visit with fidel castro (though, they did not visit with any leading dissidents, such as the Ladies in White, Dr. Biscet, Yoani Sanchez, Antunez, etc.). Members of the CBC have returned praising the castro brothers, declaring they saw no proof of oppression.

I call bullshit. These are smart men and women who have eyes, who know who they were dealing with, and who put their own personal, political agendas above doing and saying what is right. There's a great deal of energy in Congress now behind easing travel restrictions to Cuba and lifting the embargo. To return from their trip condemning the Cuban government would be to throw a mighty wrench into their agenda.

Let's see, political power and victory vs. moral obligation to speak the truth? We know who wins this one.

Like many Cuban-Americans, I'm conflicted over the embargo and over travel restrictions, but not so conflicted that I don't recognize the abhorrence that is the castro dictatorship, not so drawn by a trip to see the home of my parents that I turn a blind eye to the oppression there. The statements from some members of the CBC about the trip in the last few days are dishonorable, at best. Mostly, I'm just nauseated by the whole thing.

More eloquently than I ever could, Carlos Eire, author of WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA, and Yale Professor, wrote the following letter to President Obama, which I've now lifted from Babalu and copied for you here.


Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to you because a momentous wrong turn is about to be taken by the United States and you are uniquely poised not just to stop it, but to turn the occasion into a giant step forward for human rights around the globe.

The wrong turn in question is the one currently being railroaded through the House and Senate by profit-seeking lobbyists and naive politicians who favor the lifting of travel restrictions and sanctions against the Castro regime in Cuba. Many Americans favor a change in U.S. policy. You know this. But you also know that making unilateral concessions to repressive military regimes is not only foolish, but dangerous.

Since I know you understand the foreign policy risks involved, I won’t dwell on these. Instead, I would like to appeal to your sense of justice and your concern for human rights.

As you well know, the current regime in Cuba is one of the most repressive on earth. Despite all of the claims made by Cuba’s ruling elites about its ostensibly “free” education and health care, the sad truth is that Cubans are deprived of just about every freedom treasured in this country and also of the most basic human rights. On top of this, Cuba remains one of the most racist nations on earth, staunchly committed to practicing an insidious form of discrimination than can justly be called apartheid.

In many ways, Cuba is not very different from the old South Africa. One might say it’s even worse.

First, there is national apartheid: the vast majority of Cubans are not only segregated from the millions of tourists who visit the island, but are also forbidden the same rights as them, such as access to the internet and to foreign publications. Even worse, over 99 percent of the population, all of whom earn only seventeen dollars a month by government fiat, are effectively banned from the restaurants, beaches, and stores that these Euro- and Dollar-toting foreigners patronize. Then there is the question of travel imbalance: while the whole world can travel freely to Cuba, 99.9 percent of the Cuban population is denied that same right.

Second, there is racial apartheid, not much different from that observed by the old South Africa or some areas of the U.S. before 1965. About 60 percent of the Cuban people are of African descent. Yet, fifty years after Fidel Castro pronounced racism to be illegal on the island, Afro-Cubans make up only 17% of the senior leadership of the Communist Party and 10% of the senior command of the Cuban Armed Forces. Even more appalling: Afro-Cubans make up less than three percent of university students. We do not have exact figures for the racial make-up of Cuba’s police force, but it is no secret that it, too, is overwhelmingly white, and that Afro-Cubans are subjected to constant harassment at their hands. One statistic alone is very revealing: blacks make up over 80% of Cuba’s massive prison population. As if all this were not bad enough, discrimination also dominates the tourist industry, Cuba’s sole lucrative venture, where it is estimated that only five percent of the workers are black or dark-skinned.

Add to all this the fact that some of Cuba’s leading dissidents and advocates for human rights are of African descent, and what you have is a disturbingly familiar mirror image of the old South Africa. Cuba has its Nelson Mandelas too, who suffer treatment even more inhuman than that meted out by South African whites. Two who have attracted international attention are Oscar Elias Biscet and Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez). But they are far from alone. Hundreds of others suffer abuse and neglect in cramped cells, simply for speaking their minds and calling for an end to racism.

So what can you do about all this, as president of the United States?

Many around the world look up to you, even idolize you, as someone who stands for freedom and the equality and dignity of all human beings. Many also see you as the very embodiment of progressive politics and social justice. No other American president, and perhaps no other ruler in human history, has ever had as much good will extended to them as you have, simply for being who they are.

The world is ready to listen to you, as it listened to Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. The world is ready to follow your lead, and so are most of the American people. So, the sooner you act, the better.

Please take this suggestion seriously: instead of lifting the U.S.
embargo against Cuba, or easing travel restrictions, tighten the screws on the thugs who run Cuba. Call on the world to deal with Cuba as it did with South Africa in the 1980's. Urge the world to treat Cuba as an international pariah, and to cut off all commerce with the white despots who run the island, who have created a polarized, discriminatory society which is not much different from that of the South Africa of old.

If you were to speak out against this crime against humanity, and all of the other human rights abuses on that island, the world would listen. All you would have to do is to say that anyone who travels to Cuba or profits from Cuban labor in any way is as morally reprehensible as anyone who upheld apartheid in the old South Africa, or racial discrimination here in the old United States. And if other nations were to follow your lead, those who rule Cuba would have to loosen their grip, just as South Africa’s leaders had to do two decades ago.

Within a few months, Cuba would be free, and open to the world on an equitable level, not as a slave plantation.

Only you can do this. No one else can. If you want to succeed where your ten predecessors failed, turn Castrolandia into an outcast nation which the whole world should shame into change.

Help free the Cuban people, Mr. President, and, in the process, raise the world’s consciousness and its concern for human rights to a higher level.

Carlos Eire
T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies Chair, Renaissance Studies Program Yale University

A typical conversation at my house while Penelope's cartoons are on a commercial break:

In the background, a colorful advertisement for Littlest Pet Shop, or Barbie Tattoos, or PlayDoh Ice Cream Machine, or a frightening My Little Pony baby doll thing with the creepiest eyes ever, plays...

Penny: Mommy! I want that.
Chantel: It's not nice to ask for things you see on TV all the time.
Penny: But I WAAAANT it.
Chantel: Say, "I like it," and leave it at that.

The child is pensive for a moment, contemplating the pinkness and plastic-y goodness of the toys paraded before her in thirty second, alternating intervals. Her face suddenly brightens...

Penny: Mommy! I like that toy. I like it in my house. It would look nice here, I think.

So there you go. She's discovered loop holes.

She's also discovered chewing gum, and so between that and the constant asking for toys, my daughter has officially become a combination of Violet Beauregarde and Veruca Salt. I fear for her if she ever gets a golden ticket. And I'm telling you now, I'm not rescuing her from the bad egg machine.



A blog transfer update: I've just finished uploading 2007. Stopping to look at all of Penny's baby pictures is slowing me down. I wish I could just export the whole thing, but alas, I don't know my HTML, and Easyjournal is a big, ugly jerk.

People, it is taking SO LONG to transfer every blog entry to another site. Who knew I once wrote with such frequency? I'm up to Penny's birth in the copy/pasting nightmare. Three years worth of blogging to go, then the plan is a more regular blogging routine.

In the meantime, have a picture of my thirteen, er, three year old.



Is this attitude or what? She's saying, "Hurry up with the new blog, CHANTEL." Oh yeah, when she's frustrated, I'm "CHANTEL!" said just as you might imagine she'd say it, with just THAT face.

So, experienced mommies out there, how's four? Better than three? Huh? Huh?

I am so honored to have been invited to read back at the University of Miami, my alma mater. It was at UM that I came to value learning, and where writing became not only a hobby but a way of identifying myself. If you're in the neighborhood, come on by.



On another subject: I've been slow to post mainly because real life impedes, but also because I'm slowing switching everything over to a new blog website, as this one has become onerous when it comes to comments. I'll keep you posted when everything is new and shiny.

Three years ago today, we celebrated the day she was born with a funny little hat and long hours just LOOKING at her:



Today, Penelope woke up and immediately launched into a story about a dream she'd just had, where, as she put it, "The biggest bear I ever see picked me up and I hug him. He's so high! The bear come in our house! And I wub him vewy much." She had cupcakes at school, pinata and all, and came home to a girly smorgasbord of gifts: a unicorn you can ride, a princess house to crawl into, and a Barbie balloon as big as she is. Ask her her favorite color, she says, "Pink!" Ask her about her favorite food, and she says, "Meatballs and sagetti." Tell her you love her, and she says, "I wub you ever and ever and ever, too."

Here's our girl today:



And while we spend much of the time corralling her, entertaining her, and hauling her back to her own bed in the middle of the night, we still do a lot of what we did three years ago today--just taking her in, in awe of this person we helped make, struck dumb by the intensity of our love for her. It's funny to think we'll still feel that way when she's thirty, but I bet we will.

So, cheers to Penny on her third birthday. We wub you, mamita, ever and ever and ever.