I REMEMBER CUBA Growing Up American-Cuban

“Cuban-Americans are approximately 20 percent more likely to earn $30,000 more than their Anglo-American counterparts. All other Hispanic groups lag behind.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cuban Americans “have acquired an enormous amount of wealth and prosperity in an extremely short period of time. No other immigrant has achieved this as quickly as Cubans.”

Cuban-Americans are in their 48th year of exile from Castro-Communism. The Census Bureau added that second-generation Cuban-Americans are more educated than even Anglo-Americans. More than 26.1 % of second – generation Cuban-Americans had a bachelor’s degree or better versus 20.6 % of Anglos.

In 1997, 36.9 % of second-generation Cuban-Americans had incomes greater than $50,000 versus 18.1 % of Anglo-Americans. The Census Bureau noted that of the top 100 richest Hispanics in the U.S. more than 50% are of Cuban descent (ten times what it should be on a population basis); 38 % of Mexican descent. The rest are scattered among all other Hispanic groups.

The above information is contained in the recently published “I Remember Cuba”(Growing Up American-Cuban. A Memoir of a town named Banes), by Jack Skelly whose home was in Cuba almost 30 years. To purchase a copy of this compelling book of history retold, visit: www.ebookstand.com/m/jackskelly

Skelly retired on December 31, 1990, after 40 years in Washington in the news business (30 in daily and weekly journalism, ten in public relations and lobbying). His specialty was Cuban, Puerto Rican, Latin American, and Hispanic American affairs.

In its January 25, 1999 issue Insight Magazine wrote: “Jack Skelly is the most experienced newspaperman in the United States writing and commenting on Cuba. He traveled to virtually every country in the Hemisphere, including Canada. He covered many of the major news stories of the 1950′, 1960′s, 1970′s, 1980′s, including the Castro-Communism anti-Batista rebellion, the April 1965 Dominican Republic uprising when President Johnson landed the Marines, the 1969 Honduran-El Salvador border war, and the launching in August 1961 of President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress Program at Punta del Este, Uruguay. He was in Havana for UPI on January 9, 1959, when Fidel Castro, his ten year-old son Fidelito by his side, rolled into Havana on a U.S. Sherman Tank while thousands shouted: “Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!”

“I Remember Cuba” is mostly about the author’s growing up days in the town of Banes. However, after watching the way the U.S. liberal-left media, either intentionally or through ignorance, distorted the true picture of pre-Castro’s Cuba, Skelly decided to set the record straight with official statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Census Bureau and the American Chamber of Commerce of Cuba.

The popular myth spread by the U.S. and European media was that pre-Castro Cuba was a basket case that needed a socialist revolution. Not so, said the U.S. Department of Commerce. Cubans had the highest standard of living and per capita income in the hemisphere, higher than Argentina and Uruguay. (Commerce Department publication, July 1956, Investment in Cuba, page 5)

U.S. business was bad for Cuba, withdrawing millions in profits, adding little to the welfare of the people. Again, Department of Commerce, same publication: As of 1958 U.S. investment in Cuba was $861 million. Adjusting for inflation, that foreign investment number amounts to more than $4.3 billion in today’s dollars. Among European countries, only the United Kingdom received more U.S. direct investment than did Cuba, while world economic powers such as France and Germany received less.

State Department official figures reveal that in February 1958 there were 270 American firms, subsidiaries, and affiliates in Cuba. The American Chamber of Commerce of Cuba offered the following: “a survey made in Cuba in 1959-after the Castro regime took over-showed that U.S. business interests in Cuba had more than 100,000 Cuban employees. Using an average of 5 1/2 persons per family -the figure most commonly used by Cuban statisticians-it was shown that about 500,000 Cubans were dependent upon U.S. business for their living. This was almost 10 per cent of the population. U.S. firms paid higher salaries than did the Cuban firms and complied strictly with Cuban social and tax laws.

Department of Commerce figures show that the amount of money withdrawn from Cuba by U.S. business interests amounted to less than 3 per cent of the investment.

As for health and education, Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate (32 per 1,000) in Latin America; Cuba ranked third in number of physicians, had a life expectancy of close to 60 years (the average for South America at the time was 56 years and that of Central America was 51.9, while the U.S. was 68 years), and a literacy rate of nearly 80 percent, which was considerably above the Latin American median of around 50 percent.

Skelly’s father, George Martin, Norwich, Connecticut, was head of the railroad for the United Fruit Sugar Company (today the Chiquita Banana Company) in the Banes Division. His mother, Marguerite Agnes Hoye, was from Providence, Rhode Island. Along with Skelly’s two brothers, George and Richard, they retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1951. endall

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