The doctor from Mexico went back to Monterrey to practice and teach at one of the Mexican schools of medicine.

The doctor from Cuba, Ernesto, went back to Cuba to open a clinic right across the street from the Russian Embassy in Havana. He made a small fortune treating tourists and wealthy Cubans who were living it up in Havana's casino world and running around Ernest Hemingway bars. Remember that Havana was the Mecca of gambling long before Las Vegas began to flourish.

Under Fulgencia Batista's dictatorship most of Cuba belonged to outside interests. American hotels, utilities, the Mafia's casinos, and most of the sugar producing land belonged to foreigners, what the Cuban’s called "Latafundistas" or absentee landlords.

In the late Fifties, when Fidel Castro and his band of merry men were gaining strength in the mountains and most American journalists were cheering them on, Ernesto sent my father $50,000 to hold for him. This was a smart move on his part since those leaving Cuba later couldn't take more than $5,000 with them and I don'' know how much he might have sent to others in the States.

It’s also important to understand that, in the late Fifties, this was a lot of money. Those were the days when I would walk by the Brooks Brothers store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on my way to a fledgling market research company three of us had started. In the window was a $100 suit with a sign that read "for the man who wants to make $10,000 a year before he's thirty." That was the level of success in those days, and I had hopes of buying a suit like that someday.

In 1959, once the "Cuba for Cubans" revolution was successful, people like Ernesto were given the choice of joining the rest of Cuba in rebuilding their country or getting the hell out. Castro's revolutionary forces considered most of these Havana operators as parasites and I think, at one point, he even referred to them as "the pimps and prostitutes of Havana."

Trained well by American companies and the Mafia, a great many of these Havana Cubans moved to South Florida and everyone knows how they took it over from there.

One day, my folks told me they were coming into Chicago to meet with Ernesto and his family at the Lincoln Park Hotel up by the Zoo and would I like to meet with them there on Sunday afternoon.

By the time I showed up, things had been well underway for an hour or so. My father was at a desk in the corner explaining to Ernesto where he had invested his money and how to either cash it in or hold some of these investments. My mother was chattering away in Spanish with Ernesto's wife and six children. She had lived through two revolutions in Mexico herself so there was plenty to talk about. After meeting and shaking hands with everyone, my sister and I just sort of sat there feeling out of it.

Later, the folks and I went to Berghoff's, my father's favorite Chicago restaurant. I'll never forget what my father told me over some beer and brats. What he said was something like this: "I never asked that SOB for anything except a *-damned sponge. They grow all over the place down there. But do you think that ingrate brought me one?" My father took great pride in washing and caring for his car.

All of this took place right around the time when Castro and his nucleus were in New York City trying to get the United Nations to recognize them as a new nation. A thing that never happened because the United States insisted on reparation to all of the American's who had investments in Cuba.

That's the sticking point with Cuba. It always has been. And Casto's answer has always been the same—the American investors took their chances when they built or went into business on foreign soil under deals with an oppressive dictator. Old contracts are abolished and they have no right to property that was now returned to Cubans. That's what "Cuba for Cubans" was all about. Besides, the Cubans couldn't afford to pay them back and had too many other things to do like teaching people to read and write, have water and use toilets.

Many years later, when I was in the islands running luxury yachts for millionaires, I thought I would get my father a sponge or two. With some time on my hands at a little island called Children's Bay, in the Exuma chain of the Bahamas, I cut two sponges off the ocean floor and put them on a little finger dock to dry out. I stamped on those sponges every day, trying to get all of the little critters inside to give up their hold inside those sponges. They stunk. My feet stunk. The sponges never did dry out and I finally gave up. With a healthy appreciation for what the sponge fishermen of old must have gone through, I finally took those slimy lumps into deep water and dumped them. My father would just have to wash his car with rags and synthetic sponges.

That's pretty much the way our foreign policy with Cuba has gone. It's time to get rid of it—deep six it, send it to Davy Jones locker.

We've sponsored invasions of Cuba and assassination attempts on Castro. We've embargoed their island from trade and travel by Americans. We've even threatened other countries like Canada and Mexico who do business with Cuba. And now, we're insisting that they hold democratic elections before we'll even negotiate with them, something Castro was willing to do in 1959 before we insisted on paybacks to Americans who had already made millions in Cuba.

Once denied recognition, Castro did the same thing any new small nation would do. Just like a child threatened with a spanking from one, they turned to the other superpower for protection. Of course, it didn't hurt that Che Gueverra was already in favor of such a move. You could make a strong argument for how we drove them into communism after Castro expressed willingness to hold elections and not even run for the Presidency himself.

The fact that Cuba has survived as long as it has, built up to a 96 percent literacy rate, and has some of the best medical facilities in the hemisphere, training doctors from Central and South America all speaks for itself. For an island nation of ten million, they're doing pretty well despite our embargo and threats.

We've even made ourselves the laughing-stock of the world with legislation like the Helms-Burton act that allows people and companies to sue in American courts for the return of their former holdings in Cuba. In response to this joke, the Canadians came out with their own version of Helms-Burton. Rounding up some 3,000 descendants of former loyalists to King George, the Canadians threatened to sue for the return of their ancestor's land that included half of New York and most of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.

It's tantamount to the Indians suing the United States for genocide and the return of their property, or the Mexicans wanting everything from the Alamo to the state of Washington.

Maybe, because he is worried about losing the governor's race to Janet Sterno, brother Jeb is encouraging Dubya to court the South Florida Cuban vote. Like most elderly people, they go to the polls during mid-term elections. But it's highly doubtful that their children, who've grown up in the states, would really want to resettle in Cuba with Elian Gonzales and his father.

Personally, I think Castro would be nuts to allow Americans back into his country again since that's how their problems started in the first place. Lifting the embargo could be a step forward, but letting latafundistas back into the country could be a big mistake unless he feels capable of controlling them; i.e., not letting them own property or do business without a Cuban as primary partner, and other such steps to maintain Cuban ownership.

Meanwhile, everyone else in the world can travel to Cuba except, of course, those from the "land of the free and the home of the brave."