The Militant - April 17, 2006 -- Letters

Vol. 70/No. 15 April 17, 2006

Letters

New Orleans ‘reconstruction’
I recently returned from New Orleans where I was involved in the cleanup of the flood-damaged houses. Here’s the situation in brief: There is little infrastructure reconstruction occurring in the heavily damaged areas of New Orleans, which account for about half the city. The majority of public schools, community colleges, and large apartment buildings are water damaged and remain closed. I saw a shuttered general hospital, and shuttered firehouses. As of mid-February, at least 40 percent of the city area has no electricity or gas. Many neighborhoods are nearly vacant. Hundreds of neighborhood businesses have shut because of hurricane damage, or lost population. The levees remain vulnerable to an oncoming hurricane season.

Ben Roberts
San Francisco, California

‘Playa Girón’
The lead article on the sports page of the March 7 New York Times is one in a series on the Cuban national team competing in the World Baseball Classic. Reporting from Havana, Jack Curry interviewed 21-year-old Cuban player Yuliesky Gourriel.

Gourriel, reports Curry, “flashed a copy of Playa Girón, a book about the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.” Curry did not identify the publisher. Pathfinder Press has published, in English and Spanish, the book Playa Girón /Bay of Pigs: Washington’s First Military Defeat in the Americas by Fidel Castro and José Ramón Fernández.

Without suggesting he had read the book, Curry said it is “not light reading,” adding, “but for Gourriel it is apparently required reading.” Of more interest was Gourriel’s reaction to the book. “It’s very good,” the Cuban player told the Times.

Geoff Mirelowitz
Seattle, Washington

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