On January 1, 1959, I was a 6-year old boy waking up and rushing to the dining room for breakfast. (My brother was a year younger and ran with me that morning) We got to the dining room and noticed that my dad was on the phone and my mom was seriously listening to his conversation. My mom also had her eye on the TV news. My dad had our little sister on his lap as he went on and on and on the phone. Mom pointed us to the dining table and we started eating our eggs, toast and drinking our milk. Mom came over in a few minutes and whispered: "Batista se fue!"  (Batista left!) No one understood that morning what it all meant. We certainly had no idea that a communist dictatorship was coming. Within months, Cuba began to change, i.e. the mass executions, the mock trials, the political prisons, the attacks on the press and the radicalization of the regime. Elections never came and Castro quickly started to blame the US to distract Cubans from all the unkept promises. We...(Read Full Post)