[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 96 (Tuesday, June 6, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E763]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING PROFESSOR ROLAND ALUM, JR.

                                  _____
                                 

                         HON. THOMAS MacARTHUR

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 6, 2017

  Mr. MacARTHUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the academic 
scholarship and contributions of Professor Roland Alum, Jr., of New 
Jersey, specifically his recent article, regarding the 115th 
anniversary of the inauguration of the Cuban Republic in 1902. Include 
in the Record this article which was published on Saturday, May 20, 
2017 in the Jersey Journal. Professor Roland Alum, Jr., has managed a 
successful career of university teaching, administration, and 
scholarship, while still remaining committed to civic engagement.
  In his article, Professor Alum reviews a book by another New 
Jerseyan, Professor Margarita Garcia, which honors the legacy of Tomas 
Estrada, who served as the first elected president of the Cuban 
Republic. Prior to his installation as president, Estrada spent 25 
years in exile, mostly in the United States, where he grew to admire 
our democracy and civilian-dominated system of government. Professor 
Alum explains his view that these facts contribute to the reasons why 
the Castro brothers' dictatorship in Cuba demonizes Estrada's memory 
and further ignores the historical significance of May 20th. Professor 
Alum contrasts Estrada's good will and actual governmental history with 
the Castros' mega militaristic, oppressive totalitarianism, since 1959. 
He concludes his article with an emphasis on the significance of the 
date of May 20th, particularly to the pro-democracy Cuban-Americans, 
who constitute a valuable community in New Jersey.
  Mr. Speaker, the people of New Jersey are tremendously honored to 
have Professor Roland Alum, Jr., as a dedicated member of their 
community. It is because of his recent academic contribution, that I 
rise to recognize his scholarship and request that this article, as 
prepared by Professor Alum, be printed into the Congressional Record 
before the United State House of Representatives.

             Why May 20 Is so Important to Cuban Americans

                         (By Roland Alum, Jr.)

       On May 20, 1902, the independent Republic of Cuba was 
     inaugurated with the swearing in of its first elected 
     president, Tomas Estrada (aka Estrada Palma--with his 
     maternal patronymic added as per Hispanic cultural 
     tradition). Cuban patriots had been waging the War of 
     Independence vs. colonial Spain since 1895, a conflict that 
     blended into the brief Spanish-Cuban-American War in 1898, in 
     turn giving way to the first U.S. Intervention (1898-1902), 
     which called for elections in 1901. Estrada won the 
     presidency after 25 years in exile, mostly in the U.S.
       After rising in arms against the Spanish Empire in 1868, 
     Estrada (1835-1908) was taken prisoner; upon his release, he 
     moved to Honduras, where he was hired to reorganize the 
     postal, educational and health-care services. When the 
     Honduran military ousted the democratic government for which 
     he worked, Estrada settled with his family in Central Valley, 
     New York, 50 miles north of Manhattan (an hour's drive from 
     Hudson County), directing a pioneering private school there.
       In 1895, Estrada became the head of the Cuban Revolutionary 
     Party that had been founded in New York for the independence 
     of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Leading an extraordinary lobby pro 
     Cuba's independence, he often passed through today's Jersey 
     City's Liberty State Park on his train trips to/from 
     Washington. Hudson County is nowadays home to the second most 
     important Cuban-American community, and May 20 is routinely 
     remembered with celebrations, including a Bergenline Avenue 
     parade and ``pilgrimages'' to Central Valley. The Castro 
     family's Communist-styled tyranny and its pro-democratic 
     exiled opponents share in the commemoration of most Cuban 
     patriotic holidays, except for this one, given that the 
     ``socialist'' dictatorship demonizes Estrada as ``a U.S. 
     puppet.''
       Professor Margarita Garcia, a Hudson County ex-resident, 
     straightens the record of Estrada's legacy in her recent 
     ``Before `Cuba Libre': The Making of Cuba's First President, 
     Tomas Estrada Palma'' (Outskirts Press, 2016). One gathers 
     from her book that among Estrada's presidential 
     accomplishments (1902-1906) was the limiting the number of 
     U.S. naval bases from the seven requested of the nascent 
     republic, to one: Guantanamo. Above all, Estrada sought to 
     establish a civilian-dominated, honest governmental system, 
     drastically distinct to what had already become by then a 
     nefarious Latin-American militaristic model, of which he had 
     been a victim in Honduras.
       Unfortunately, throughout Cuba's republican trajectory, the 
     military often interfered in politics, culminating in the 
     Castros' six-decade reign, as the island-country is tormented 
     by an egotistic elite of ``revolutionary generals'' parroting 
     passe, hate-mongering Marxist-Leninist slogans while the 
     average Cuban suffers boundless deprivations.
       Since 1959, the Castro family--an un-elected, de facto 
     Caribbean nepotistic dynasty--has persistently accused 
     Estrada of turning Cuba into a ``Yankee vassal state.'' 
     Paradoxically, it was the Castro brothers who made Cuba 
     subservient to the far-away, failed Soviet Bloc, thus 
     transfiguring a progressive trending nation into a backwards 
     one from which its people desperately aspire to flee. 
     Ironically, that ruling entrenched gerontocratic oligarchy 
     now seeks the ``stinking Yankee dollars'' to subsidize the 
     government's business monopolies managed by a vast network of 
     corrupt Castro kinspeople and accomplices.
       What Cuba needs above all is a regime change that would 
     bestow power to the people and establish a democratically 
     elected, civilian dominated open society that will respect 
     individual freedoms and human/civil rights, as was envisioned 
     by the republic's founding fathers, such as Presidente Tomas 
     Estrada.

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