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A LETTER WRITTEN BY A CUBAN (IMAGINARY,of course)

(This is not meant as a reflection upon Cubans, or to insult anyone.)

Mi Quierda Relacciones:

Enclosed you will find a money order for fifty American dollars, which I know will help you to buy some much needed food and clothing. I would send you more, but I went to an Indian Casino last week and lost six hundred dollars. I ran out of money and my credit cards were overcharged, so I was forced to stop gambling. Luckily, they comped me my dinner and they had this huge buffet just overloaded with so much food that I stuffed myself. You should have seen the huge roast beef, or the large ham, and the turkey--which must have been at least 20 lbs.

Well, my daughter's graduation dress is going to cost $300, and the limousene and party afterwards almost $300 more, so I have to begin saving some money. I am going to have trouble making the payment for my SUV and on my credit cards this month.

I have a good job here in Florida and it is much the same as Cuba, in-so-far as the language and food (oh, I forgot, you cannot find good food in Cuba).

We often talk about Cuba, and how evil Fidel Castro is, but the Liberal press here doesn't criticize him at all. Not too many Cubans have the cojones to stand up and speak louder about the evils of Marxism here, even though we have the freedom of speech to do so. I guess they're afraid of the Liberals, here. We even have Marxists teaching in our colleges now; they think it is a good idea to present both sides of the story.

You should see how well the Cubans live here. The Cuban millionaires live in big homes, often on the waterfront with big fast boats tied to their docks, drive expensive cars, eat in elegant restaurants, drink the finest wines, smoke big cigars and talk about Cuba all the time and how they hate Fidel. The cigars are usually Cuban, though. They won't spend a single dime, however, to help publish full page stories about the problems in Cuba in the nation's newspapers.

They either don't have that much interest, or are too miserly, or perhaps, again, lack they don't have the cojones to do so. Why just today the three men who hijacked a plane to come to Florida were convicted and will go to jail for twenty or more years, but no one has raised the issue at all.

I think of them as slaves fleeing their master, Fidel Castro. It used to happen here in the United States, before Abraham Lincoln. Now we either send them back to their master, La Grande Cucaracha, or put them in irons, almost like happened in the United States before the Civil war. Odd, how history repeats itself, isn't it?

Well, dear cousins, I hope that this fifty dollars will help you through another month. I am going down to buy a hundred lottery tickets, like I do for each new one; well, one of these days when I win it, I'll send you a couple of hundred.

Sinceremente,

PS Oh, in your last letter you mentioned how the paint keeps falling off the walls in your home. Do you know that here you could just run down to the store and buy a can of paint in a few minutes to fix that! You'd like it here.