New Chico State caps
In discussions I heard this morning on KGO radio 810, it was pointed out that a principal in New York was suspended for defending a student that wore a t-shirt that read Intifada USA. During that discussion the swastika and the Confederate Battle Flag were mentioned as equal symbols of hate.
A new hat appeared at the Chico State Bookstore that follows the popular fashion of this day. It comes in both black and olive drab, has a flat top, and bears the words Chico State. I bought one of these because it is reminiscent of the uniform caps worn by American soldiers in the mid sixties. Since I wore a 1550 olive drab uniform in the Air Force Reserve, the cap brings that service to mind, even as it has a more sinister identification and identity.
In the American Studies class I'm attending at Chico State, we are reading the book Finding Manana, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mirta Ohita. She documents growing up in the post-revolution world of Fidel Castro's Cuba, and as someone who came over to this country in the 1980 Mariel boaatlift, where thousands of people fled the Castro dictatorship, she sheds light on the structured and strict world that Cubans found themselves in.
As further documented in a Public Broadcasting System report on the Bay Of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, Castro was commonly seen in an olive drab uniform with a stiff version of this flat top cap.
The name of this new Chico State cap, which with matching olive drab shirt and trousers can reflect the horrors on the Cuban communist government and all those imprisoned for being counter-revolutionary, or died escaping this government, reflects how little the youth of today know of actual history. Nobody would dare wear a swastika or confederate battle flag on campus. But what is wrong with wearing this new cap, named for the leader of Cuba?
Chico State calls it the – Castro Cap.