Unbelievable that Clinton threw the 'socialist' label at him...with the help from Univision!!

They come from states with leaders like those distators from the 80s.

are the ones the U.S. supported.

And came HERE? They hate dictators more than the US, that's why they chose America. Immigrants are very patriotic. He had an opportunity to be anti a few dictator and should have taken it. No need to stick to what he felt in the eighties when people are still fleeing dictatorial regimes today. All he had to do was just say, i oppose dictators in principle and move on. I think that would have been smarter. It was a trap.

They aren't pro-Fidel, but they're sick of the Cold War shit. They want to move on.

We aren't ever going to get the older Miami Cubans anyway. We haven't since 1964.

Who have escaped oppressive regimes?

Ask any Guatemalan, Chilean, Dominican or Hondurans living in Florida, to name just a few.

Also, ask any Haitian-Floridians(Haiti under the Duvaliers was just as repressive as Cuba, yet Miami Cuban politicians were more hostile about letting Haitian refugees in than anyone ever was about letting in Cubans).

It's not as simple as "capitalism=freedom, any form of socialism=tyranny."

And Cuba is not remotely comparable.

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras today - and we have to add Mexico since 2006. That's where the death squads are.

Outside the anti-communist bubble, Sanders may not gain much but has nothing to lose on this issue.

aren't going to vote Democratic anyway.

Like Gloria Estefan, whose father-in-law was a hardline cop under Batista.

Cuba needs more democracy, but not the loss of free university education and healthcare.

Like nicaragua. They also are very opposed to those types of governments.

I don't think most newer Florida hispanics are obsessively anti-left.

They fled from the types of regimes that were spoken of. And not just nicaragua, that was an example. Honduras. Guatemala. Panama. Etc. Just like they go to Cali, they go to other places with spanish speaking communities. Like Florida. Most did not arrive recently but they fled from dictators. Like the men mentioned. They are not in favor of left or right wing dictators.

Last edited Thu Mar 10, 2016, 01:24 AM - Edit history (1)

In Honduras and Guatemala, the dictators they are fleeing are right-wing, and were put in power with American support, as was the Somoza family(the pre-Sandinista rulers of Nicaragua) and Augusto Pinochet, the general HRC's hero Henry Kissinger put in power when he overthrew the democratic government of Chile. As was Fulgencio Batista, the pre-Castro ruler of Cuba.

Latin America has had a lot of tyrannical leaders. Most of them weren't on the left. And pretty much all of the people I listed ahove were murder on black people in their countries, too.

I am well educated, so this patronizing is out of order, Ken.

Most dictatorships in Latin America were and are on the right. Often they were imposed through U.S. military intervention.

The agenda of that sort of dictatorship is to slash social spending, crush unions, overturn ant anti-discrimination laws regarding peolw of color(Afro-Latinos and also indigenous people, in addition to LGBTQ people) gut environmental laws(or make sure none are passed in the first place) and give American and other foreign corporations total freedom to plunder the nation

The "anti-communist" countries in Latin America are among the poorest places on the Earth.

And the Sandinistas aren't dictators. They were and are an elected government. They left office peacefully after losing the 1990 election.

In Guatemala, a democratic government was replaced by a U.S.-backed junta in 1954. It is essentially still in power.

We staged a coup in the Dominican Republic in 1965, putting an authoritarian semi-democracy in power there.

In 1973, we destabilized the elected socialist government of Chile and put another military junta in power there.

We supported the military takeover in Argentina in the Seventies.

In the Eighties we armed right-wing death squads in El Salvador and invented and armed a bandit army called the Contras in Nicaragua(the Contras killed thousands of people, many of them innocent civilians. We then blockaded Nicaragua's economy(as we had done in Chile) in order to pressure the population in Nicaragua into voting out the Sandionistas.

I'm against dictators too...but our country's leaders need to stop causing them in Latin America and to admit we were wrong in ever interfering in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

They do not care which wing the dictator comes from, it's the DICTATOR part that is the problem. That is why it was a bad idea. Why argue? They hate dictators. All of them.

Cuba is under a dictatorship, but most of the older Miami exiles don't really want Cuba to be a democracy-they just want something like the Batista era back. To them, "freedom" just means property rights and getting rid of free education and healthcare.

And Bernie wasn't defending the idea of dictatorship. He was just saying it isn't the business of the U.S. government, with its horrible record of always supporting the wealthy and the corporations in Latin America, to try, as we have for fifty-seven years now, to isolate Cuba and try to restore the old order on that island.

My comment about educational materials wasn't meant as snark, and I'm sorry about the phrasing.

I have no idea why you think he is a factor in the aversion latino immigrants have to dictators. And you really are not in the heads of the older immigrants to know that they just think 'freedom' means property rights, that is selling them quite short.

What I said was, it was not a good idea to answer as he did. If you think people are racing off to decide whether they hate left wing dictators or right wing dictators more, then the issue we have is much more than communication or my level of education, which you have somehow decided is not up to par, and I am need of your assistance in discussing regional affairs in Latin America. I mean, I do read their news myself in spanish, I think I can educate myself very well without your help. Hmm. Perhaps you are over-analyzing.

Bernie wasn't defending the idea of dictators, he was saying the U.S. had no moral authority to intervene in Latin American countries(as we most recently did in Honduras in 2009). Our country needs to totally repudiate and apologize for our heritage of military intervention in the Americas.

The best way to prevent dictatorships in the region is to support egalitarian democracy...to let everyone, including the poorest of the poor and people from all races, to have a real say in the social, economic and political decisions that affect us all.

He doesn't pander. And you know what? Even if I disagree with him, he isn't gonna look into my eyes and lie to me. And that EARNS my vote and my donations.

It would be absurd of me to expect that any politician is going to share my views 100%. But I TRUST him. I have a lot more respect for a politician who tells me honestly what I don't want to hear than for one who spins in order to tell me what they think I want to hear.

he stays with what he believes no matter what.

They aren't fighting the old wars. They might have been more interested in Hillary's response to a question about Berta Cáceres.

What are the odds that HRC took notice and adjusts her own strategy?

and by going to the early days sure she can discuss repression in Cuba. She just couldn't resist.

But let's leave Cuba out of it. How about what happened in Central America. Reagan's policies, the contras, hundreds of thousands dead over cold war ideologies - really just a continuation of the Monroe Doctrine. Bernie has to be the first person so close to the US presidency to address that history, plus Allende, etc.

What I see that he's not doing is going after Hillary on her role in the Honduran coup. That was not decades ago and it directly lead to thousands of deaths and an influx of children coming to our borders.

that was going to significantly hurt Burnie. I saw it as a great testament to honest and clarity. I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

anymore. About time.

Van Jones in particular. He said the remarks could make it tough against Republicans in the general election if he got there but he clearly says what he thinks.