What do Cuba and Florida have in common?
This week, state-mandated school indoctrination for political purposes was added to the mix.
The practices of the Communist Party-led regime in Cuba have been used for six decades to keep Cubans isolated and in the dark.
After this year's GOP-dominated legislative session, the same tactics are now pillars of the public education system.
Some math and literary books are being banned because they are being used by citizens who are jazzed by Republicans into a state of hysteria.
There are guidelines embedded into the law about what teachers are allowed to say and not say to students about race or gender identity. Nothing makes whites uncomfortable. When kids are full of questions about fellow classmates or themselves, there is nothing about being gay or trans in kindergarten to third grade.
It reminds me of when I was a kid in Cuba.
Self-awareness is not a Florida Republican attribute.
Florida's middle-school students will get an earful about the horrors of communism every Nov. 7 starting in the 2023 school year.
Public school teachers in Florida will have to teach at least 45 minutes on that day to Stalin, Mao and Castro. Poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech are some of the things that people endure under their regimes.
Blacks have been subjected to poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech, yet these same students are not taught about it.
Florida Republicans understand that irony isn't a concept.
The banned critical race theory says that the United States has prejudice.
Cuba does that as well.
The Cuban Revolution eradicated racism and poverty is the fault of the U.S. embargo, not the failed economic system, according to the only allowed point of view.
The GOP leans on education as a bill mandating communism lessons in class is signed by DeSantis.
You would think that Cuban Americans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans would oppose practices that remind them of repressive regimes they fled and that they would run as fast as possible.
The Hispanic population in the state has become more conservative because they prefer the right side of the political spectrum. It's okay for fascists to ban, censor and indoctrinate.
There is no importance to the fact that these practices are against democratic principles.
Who cares if they are hypocritical?
After George Floyd's murder, the cancel culture Republicans were dead-set against and now have Florida as a leading stage for culture wars of the right.
Miami's first-generation Cuban Americans are the perfect fools in the attempt to obfuscate.
Hispanics should be concerned that the Republican Legislature is demonizing only one ideology and banning books, censoring schools and cracking down on businesses that don't share their political views.
They would dedicate lessons to Nazism and the rise of right-wing paramilitary and hate groups if it was the goal. It's too close to the base for comfort.
The right doesn't like sending their children to public schools. They want to change the image of public schools in the 1950s.
A new generation of suckers is just like the one that Fidel Castro tried to build, from the cradle to the grave.
Castro called the generation of Communists being shaped.
The generation that the Cuban American Education Commissioner is trying to teach in Florida, what will they be called?
Please send suggestions.
It's not a thing that DeSantis can teach me about communism or any other kind of authoritarianism. I have first-hand knowledge of Cuba's brand.
I went to school in Cuba until the sixth grade, unlike the ignorant, party-compliant 40-something, Miami-born, Cuban American legislators and lieutenant governor. 42 years of writing about Cuba and Cuban Americans makes me easily recognize political chicanery.
My teacher mother resigned because she refused to teach children how to read. If the young teachers in my family had to do the same in Florida because of the repressive atmosphere the GOP has brought to classrooms, it would be something.
Maybe there is hope.
One fine day, a smart, fearless kid will raise her hand in the middle of the communism lesson and ask, "Is that what Republicans do in Florida?"
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