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Miami-Dade commission rejects Democratic bill to help reunite Cuban families – Joseph Zagales

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The Miami-Dade commission rejected the Democratic bill to help reunite Cuban families. The bill would expedite travel applications from Cuban relatives of U.S. citizens. Even though the democrats hold a slim majority on the commission, they still could not get the bill passed. Cuban Americans no longer hold a majority on the commission. Republicans claim that the bill was a way for Democrats to use the “pain of Cuban people” for politics. The bill was proposed by Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

This bill seeks to revive a program launched under George W. Bush. The bill allows Cuban-American families to apple for “parole” for relatives living in Cuba. The status allows family members to bypass some U.S. immigration delays and come to the United States while waiting for visas to be approved. The program was put on pause when the U.S. embassy in Havana.

In this article, Latin America is discussed in multiple ways. The main point is about Cuba. The article talks about Cuba as a place where people need to escape communism and socialism. The bill is trying to get people to escape the horrors that go on in Cuba. This is not a good look for Latin America in this article. Cuba is portrayed as a bad place to be in and live in.

This bill and article relates to what we learned about Cuba. We learned how Cuba was in revolution and how Castro lead the revolution, but we did not learn about what happened after. My grandparents are both from Cuba. They experienced the entire rise of Castro and what happened after. In Cuba, Castro began to take people’s land and homes. He then did not let them worship their own religion. Many people were in poverty and being oppressed. My grandparents were some of these people. This bill and article talks about the effects of everything Castro did to the country. The bill basically allows people who escaped to be able to bring their family members who are still in Cuba to America even while their Visa is still being approved. This article is directly talking about one of the places we learned about.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article237555054.html

Class Notes 11/18- Joseph Zagales

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We began class on Monday with announcements.  After announcements, we heard our LA in the News from Amber.  After this we discussed Chavez’s speeches and looked at what makes a speech a good primary source.  This is important for our class, because as a historian one of the most important things is to be able to look at primary sources and be able to make conclusions and tie the sources with our arguments in history.

We talked about questions we must ask when discussing a speech:

Context- is it a reactionary speech or a new policy speech?

Who is the audience?

The speaker’s point of view?

What are the limitations?

How is the tone and delivery?

After discussing this, we watched Chavez’s speech.  As a class we responded to what we saw in the speech.  Some of the responses included, that the speech seemed to be prepared and very theatrical.  Another word used to discuss this speech was provocative.  This is important to look at, especially with what we are learning because we got to see Chavez addressing other Latin American countries and other countries, discussing his policies and how he thought America was the real problem.  We then talked about Chavez’s vision for Venezuela.  He talked about how he wanted to use oil money to better the education and healthcare in Venezuela.  He then compared himself to Jesus and other Latin leaders from the past, like Bolivar and Castro.

We then split up into groups to discuss our HAP and the speeches we did the homework on.