To Red Tide Luís

To Red Tide Luís


You know Luis:

The tools to secure freedom are being developed daily. Mostly these are computers, cell phones, satellites, etc. It won't be long before these things will be cheaply combined in a wristwatch sized package. These will flood into Cuba connecting islanders directly for the first time widely to the outside world. The clock is ticking on the regime's days. This tech hydra is growing new heads everyday. There will be someone wielding power within Cuba who will soon realize this and see the hand writing on the wall. They will try to ride this wave instead of being overwhelmed by it. This person, probably military, will be without blood on his hands who will take the opportunities technology presents because the following is the future.

Imagine a computer/communicator for about fifty bucks that would fit in a wristwatch or other small device that could easily be brought into Cuba and left with family. It will be linked with a satellite hundreds of miles over head. It will have a method of recharging the batteries using the electric grid. There will be two main uses for these devices. Mostly the young will use them for entertainment. But mixed in with these thousands of gamers will be our underground army who will be coordinated and linked through encrypted communications. These asymmetric pods will operate independently to undermine the regime using the traditional methods but aided by these emerging technologies. All the junta can hope to do is delay the inevitable. The more they do this the greater the anger and retribution that will be meted out to them by the people. History is filled with examples just like these of gun-powdering your way through the castle walls of a disbelieving, stunned leadership.

But rather than resists the inevitable, wouldn't it be better if right now the top leadership just abdicated? Then a military leader could temporarily take over, announce that elections would be held within the year and normalize relations with the US. Couldn't they use a couple billion bucks instantly brought in by Cuban exiles and the US government? Once these bloody guys at the top are gone couldn't we say it's all been a big mistake, let by-gones be by-gones and shake hands? The sad aspect of this entire quagmire is, everyday another Cuban dies exiled from his family or imprisoned in poverty brought about by absolute stupidity.

To sum up, the end is very near for the regime. The form the final days will take on depends on the top people. They can make it a smooth prosperous transition - or bloody, enraged one probably resulting in the loss of their own lives.

For liberty

Tomás Estrada-Palma

Political Divorce

Political Divorce

Americans divorced themselves from the Republican Party. The trouble is they reconciled with their ex-political spouse the Democrats. I hear people everywhere so hopeful that now things will finally change. They will not. They will continue going in the same direction that they have been going for decades – down. Come on and get real! Were we more civilized in 1950? Were there fewer percentages of poor people? Were the children scoring higher on tests? Were there fewer unwanted pregnancies? Was it just plain easier to make a living as long as you were willing to work an honest day's work?

Americans in 1950 were more self-reliant and it showed in the much smaller sized government and tax bills. It was just plain easier to earn a living without the government monkey clinging to your back. But Americans began ignoring the warnings of our founders and started demanding government take responsibilities for everything right up to the type of toilet you can legally put in YOUR bathroom. But Americans have been rendered so brain dead by government schools that all they know how to do now is parrot government reports (lies) rather than think logically and analytically.

Today at least Americans now know something is wrong though most have no clue what it is. It is a road called statism that we are traveling down, whether paved by the Democrats or Republicans that will lead to our eventual demise. It’s all happened before yet we are so smug and ignorant that we think we can follow the Roman model and not meet their same fate.

Say statism was the equivalent of wife beating. A husband beats his wife so she divorces him but she marries her former husband who regularly beat her too. After a few years she is fed up again and divorces him but returns to the other husband. My question to you Cubanos is: Do you think either of these husbands will stop beating this wife?

Just because the two ruling parties have blocked democracy with ballot restrictions, failed to put “None of the Above (NOTA)” on the ballot or refused to announce how many folks like me always write in NOTA when the choice is between the Democrats or Republicans, they still know I’m objecting to their rule. Do they tabulate how many people like me write in NOTA? You bet your ass they do! Politicos are born bean counters. So I will continue to only vote for Jeffersonian or in other words classical liberal, free-market, Libertarian candidates and NOTA the remainder of unacceptable inferior candidates of the ruling class of corporate/statist main parties – Congressman Ron Paul of Texas excepted. So while the majority of you vote for the road to serfdom even though the end of the line is the Cuban model, I’ll vote my principles quietly every time and hope that will at least give me some good karma when the bill comes do. Sure I voted since the 1970’s every election and never even once voted for a winning candidate. But that’s not my fault. That’s your fault if you don’t vote or vote for statists.

Tomás Estrada-Palma

Via Teresa Herrero

The Estrada-Palma Family Tree

Teresa Herrero, possibly a cousin of mine has been kind enough to send me this geneology of my family. I hope you will find it and some information I included about my immediate family interesting. Here it is:

Francisco Duque de Estrada y Valderrama, Captain of the Spanish infantry, from Asturias and Luisa Lopez de Estrada from Salamanca had:

-Capitan Andres Duque de Estrada y Lopez who arrrived in Bayamo in the mid 1500s and was named Lieutenant Governor of Santiago de Cuba. He married Leonor Tovar y Pacheco and had:

-Manuel Duque de Estrada y Tovar, Regidor Perpetuo and Alcalde Ordinario de Bayamo in the late 1500s.

-Andres Duque de Estrada y Gutierrez
-Juan Duque de Estrada y de la Vega
-Manuel Duque de Estrada y Silva
-Manuel Duque de Estrada y Ramirez de Arellano born in Bayamo in 1727

-Manuel Duque de Estrada y Odoardo born in Bayamo in 1749, married Ma. Teresa de Palma y Odoardo who had:

-Tomas Estrada y Palma who married Santos Guardiola’s daughter Candalaria who’s second child Tomas was my grandfather who we called “Hoppy.” That’s because we heard our older cousins the Reilly’s (my Aunt Candita’s Kids) call him “Poppy” and we mispronounced that nickname for the one that he would be called for the rest of his life – Hoppy. Hoppy and my grandmother had two daughters and a son – my father Tomas Douglas. He married Mom, Alyce Mae Carroll and I was born first followed by my brother Pat then my sisters Candita and Kathleen. I have a 19 year-old daughter Tiree, a 17 year-old son Alex, 15 year-old Mathew and 12 year-old Andres. Pat has 3 daughters and Candy has 3 boys and a girl. My sister Kathy just adopted a girl from China. Pat’s middle daughter has two boys making my younger brother a grandfather before me. Ha ha ha! Best of all his oldest grandson refers to Pat as “Bugga.” Needless to say that boy is okay with me.

In addition Teresa says:

Another artilcle with "Origenes of the elite Cubana" also includes information on Duque de Estrada. It also has de Cardenas, another old name from the 1500s, which is in my mother's line (Her grandmother was a de Cardenas from that family).

If you get interested in genealogy you will be marveled at what you will be able to find. I'm a history major (and masters in sociology) and it's been a lot of fun to trace my father's family (Romagosa) back to the 900s. I can't take much credit, since the family in Spain did most of the research, although I traced the Cuban branches and their linkage to the Catalan family. Some interesting items: St. Francis slept in one of the family houses in the early 1200s, Hugo de Romegos (an ancestor) was the veguer (like a governor) of Carcassonne in France in 1172-79, and his descendants are mentioned as knights that guaranteed accords for Counts, etc.

I thank Teresa Herrero for kindly providing me this information, the source of which is:

Herencia (Herencia Cultural Cubana, Vol. 10, No. 3, Fall 2004), www.cubanculturalheritage.org email culturacubana@bellsouth.net

Articles: "La Isla de Cuba: Conquistadores, Pobladores y Libertadores" by Juan Bruno Zayas de la Portilla, pp. 4-14; and "Origenes de la Elite Cubana, Siglos XVI al XXI" by Enrique Hurtado de Mendoza, pp 15-24.

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Tomás Estrada-Palma