Increasing U.S. Ties With Cuba

Re “U.S. Has Post-Castro Era in Mind With Latest Steps,” Jan. 6: Let me see if I get this right. Hard-line anti-Castro Cuban Americans are against relaxing the embargo on Cuba. The same Cubans or their descendants, who fled Cuba, are continuing to hold the island and its inhabitants hostage to their blind hatred of Fidel Castro.

When will America stop allowing this minority of privileged expatriates and their progeny to continue to exercise such undue influence over a people who did not or could not run away when their country was in most need of them. Was and is Castro a dictator who should have long since been overthrown? Absolutely! But at what cost? The Cuban people have been the pawns despicably used by Cuban Americans.

RALPH M. CASILLAS

Los Angeles

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In “After Castro: Is Capitalism on Horizon?” (Opinion, Jan. 3), Tad Szulc attempts to argue that Castro’s socialist government has been a 40-year failure and needs to end. But in the author’s own words, Castro enjoys support as a “legendary revolutionary chief,” and the army is “highly professional” and was never part of any “repression apparatus.” Also Cuba has “literacy, much technical expertise [and] impressive public-health structures.”

The author has convinced me that the only thing that needs to end in Cuba is the embargo; the government appears to be doing its job well.

BETHANY LEAL

Los Angeles

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If we Cubans have an ounce of shame left in us, we should not send a single cent, or go visit Cuba. When most of us left our country, they called us gusanos (worms), servants of “Yankee imperialism”; they called our wives prostitutes; they paraded in front of our houses yelling at us, “Go and never come back!” Now they want me and my dollars back in Cuba. No way. The reason I left Cuba is still there. When Castro goes I’ll go.

MARIO ABELLEIRA

North Hollywood