History Lapse in Cuba
Dmitri Prieto
Not long ago, I saw a guy on a bus wearing a cap with the Confederate flag on it. Plus, written across the front was the motto “Confederacy border patrol: Keeping Yankees north since…” (followed by an absurd date from American history). The man – a Cuban, white and mustached – was also wearing a US Marines t-shirt with something scrawled on it having to do with 9/11.
This threw me for a loop.
I remember that when I way as little boy, I once drew a swastika symbol. When my mother discovered it, she gave me a tremendous reaming out, reminding me of the millions of human beings who lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis.
From that moment on, I always recalled it when they showed scenes on TV of the 1945 victory march past Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square by processions of Soviet soldiers, who threw Nazi flags onto the pavement – beginning with the personal banner of the Führer.
“Look! See that? There it is. They lost, we won, and the swastika was brought down. Justice always conquers evil,” I remember my mother once saying.
Although I sometimes doubt of my mom’s last sentence, I continue to hate ideologies of hate and all they represent.
For me, there’s not a lot of difference between the flag of the Confederate States and that of Nazi Germany. Just as slavery was called a “peculiar institution” by the planters in Dixie, the leaders of the Third Reich could have called their extermination camps a “peculiar institution” of Germany.
I don’t believe that a person with an understanding of history can wear the flag of the Confederacy if they don’t deeply identify with this ideology of hate and exclusion.
I know that in the US there are no laws regarding its prohibition; the First Amendment of that country’s constitution is very permissive concerning freedom of beliefs and expression. But in Germany, wearing a swastika is formally considered a violation of national security.
In Cuba, we have José Martí (1853-1895) who as a boy mourned the assassination of US President Lincoln. Previously, he had seen a black person lynched from a tree. Later he wrote in “Mi Raza” (My Race) that all human beings were the same.
He also contended that the US won its independence with Washington, and it’s Revolution with Lincoln. This was neither rhetoric nor sheer conceptual hermeneutics: Martí was clear, because the party that he founded for the independence of Cuba – a party with membership equally open to blacks and whites, men and women – was not called an independence party, but a revolutionary one.
What is there to be “proud” of in wearing the Confederate flag in Cuba? Has the KKK now metastasized among us?
But before concluding, I wanted to clarify something. That was not the first time I’d seen a person in Havana wearing the symbol of slavocracy on their head. It’s paradoxical, but I’ve even seen Blacks wearing the flag of the Confederacy. As absurd as that is, it’s a fact.
I can only explain this as being the result of a tremendous ignorance of history. This is due to an educational system in which only the history of Cuba is emphasized. Exposure to other histories, though taught, don’t stick because this is usually based on the mere memorization of texts. If this were not the case, such stupidity could not be explicable in a country where general education is accessible and mandatory for everyone.
That guy threw me for a loop. I’ll never know if I acted correctly; I just stood there, quiet… The guy probably deserved seeing his cap mashed into the floor, along with a good punch in the nose… though this would have probably ended up with my giving a presentation on US history in a police station.
The Confederate Rebel Battle Flag is one of the most beautiful flags in the world. It represents in memory all the brave who died defending their southern rights. It’s also part of the Cuban history too, read the books: Cuban Confederate Colonel by Antonio de la Cova, Cubans in The Confederacy by Phillip Thomas Tucker, and The Woman in Battle by Loreta Janeta Velazquez. These great Cuban heroes fought for an ideal and they should be remembered and respected. I’m a Cuban by birth and have always put my country of origin first everywhere, although my roots are European. Just because some ignorant frustrated people of low self esteem accuse the flag of being racist or prejudice, I will not be ashamed to wear the confederate flag, fly it, and claim it as part of my culture. I’m proud to be a confederate Cuban rebel!
This piece threw ME for a loop! (At least, you, Dmitri, being born in Moscow, have an excuse for ignorance of the details around the U.S. Civil War, unlike the majority of Americans, who have no such excuse.)
Here is the primary flaw: “I don’t believe that a person with an understanding of history can wear the flag of the Confederacy if they don’t deeply identify with this ideology of hate and exclusion.” A person “with an understanding of history” would NOT call the Confederate Battle Flag, “the symbol of slavocracy”, or relate it to “hate and exclusion”! You demonstrate your lack of “understanding of history”. You started with a false conclusion and worked backward into a TOTALLY false comparison with NAZIism. These two viewpoints could NOT be any further apart. (I hope that you understand “nationalism” and “nationalists”.) Please, PLEASE research H.K. Edgerton, a black Confederate advocate. Maybe there is hope for you yet.
The confederate flag is beautifuf.
. . . The victorious Republican Party became the Grand Old Party (GOP) and these phonies have swaggered to the present day as the open political arm of the banks, big landlords, military industrialists and monopolists of all sorts.
People on the Left should understand that Southerners often remember the devastation and poverty inflicted them by the Republican Party. This does not automatically make them revanchists–although many certainly are. The Left should instead focus on the real causes of the Civil War, the sick political acumen of the GOP, and have a bit more compassion for the Southerners black, white and brown who were victimized for the GOP’s rise to political dominance.
Republicans have written their version of Civil War history and foisted it on the nation. This does not mean that the Left should sing chorus to this false version, and just berate white Southerners for their backward views.
Let’s work together for the elimination of racism everywhere.
Regarding the US Civil War 1861-65: The Federalist Party of Adams, Hamilton, and other Northern industrial and banking interests, had disgraced itself in the War of 1812. When the British really kicked ass, the Federalists sent a delegation to Wash. DC, threatening to break off and form a new country of New England states, rejoining the British Commonwealth. But, An. Jackson’s unexpected triumph at New Orleans, Jan. 15, 1815 humiliated them so much their delegation left DC as laughing stocks. The Fed Party dissolved itself in shame.
These Federalists hvr did not go away. They waited and watched. When the slavery issue began to boil in the 1850s, they saw their chance to goad Southern slave owners into secession. They founded the Republican Party around the issue of slavery, slave owners took the bait, blood flowed like water and the South was impoverished for a century.
(cont . . .)
Apparently some revanchist Southerners have stll not forgotten/forgiven. This suggests that perhaps General Sherman should have gone further; then again, an impossible task, as exemplified by Comrade Stalin’s attempts to extirpate the kulaks. Besides, subsequently it would have denied us the pleasures of William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, William Penn Warren, and many other of our most innovative story-tellers of the 20th Century.
yes, you cubans do have a tremendous ignorance of history
“For me, there’s not a lot of difference between the flag of the Confederate States and that of Nazi Germany.”
We in the Southern United States have formed a far different opinion.
“The government of the U.S. has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war – to take their lives, their homes, their land, their everything….to the persistent secessionist, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better”
“extermination, not of soldiers alone…but of the people”
“There is a class of people men, women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.”
– General William T. Sherman
A similar thing occurs with the teaching of ‘Universal History’ that focus only the history of Europe, this drives me mad too.