Cuba: Here we go again?

Yes yes very comparable situation to the US and Cuba (or US and anywhere in Central or South America).

Monroe Doctrine innit

When Amnesty International writes an article about Cuban protest, little do you know the CIA is behind it.

Black Lives Matter has released a statement on Cuba: pic.twitter.com/NgnT1o1oZE

— Sabrina Rodríguez (@sabrod123) July 15, 2021

Yes, it's hideous considering the number of Afro-Cubans protesting of the island

Terrible politics for leftists and Miami Dems who've been defending BLM since June 2020.

Lack of syringes is the big problem at the moment, if anyone want to help: https://ghpartners.org/syringes4cuba/

Wrt to the BLM tweet 'cutting of food' is a bit hyperbolic, in 2020, the US was the third biggest exporter of food to Cuba.

The BLM test is fine, 100%.

Tweet/statement

thx for the link VHS

it would be nice if people didn’t always feel obliged to take one state line or another. no need to accept the cuban state’s self presentation at face value in order to oppose US imperialism. of course any kind of regime the US would prefer to install would be worse. of course they will want to take advantage of or exacerbate any instability & coopt any dissent regardless of cause or motivation. of course this crisis would not be prominent news in this part of the world if the political leadership was different. of course the framing in western media is going to be utter bullshit. all these things should go without saying but apparently they don’t. that said all cops includes the cuban ones

I’m 21 years old and capitalism has completely imploded twice in my lifetime. https://t.co/CPcyTAEuNH

— Mac 🇵🇸 (@GoodPoliticGuy) July 16, 2021

The BLM test is fine, 100%.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, July 17, 2021 9:26 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tweet/statement

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, July 17, 2021

Black Lives Matter But Not In Cuba.

serious question: am I out of line for thinking a lot of this kind of thing is going on?

Just shockingly cruel. This woman came out to protest for her country, for the Revolution, but had her identity stolen *by the UN* and falsely portrayed as an anti-govt protester.

Latin Americans are always silenced if they don't agree with the US. pic.twitter.com/RMjLdnexIx

— Ollie Vargas (@OVargas52) July 17, 2021

A story in three parts: pic.twitter.com/r6bcMJYg8C

— Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) July 17, 2021

I've read a few accounts on Twitter. I'd likely believe it of the U.S. over the UN.

Protesting for the Revolution in 2021 while your countrymen are arrested and beaten has a Trumpian overtone.

. no need to accept the cuban state’s self presentation at face value in order to oppose US imperialism. of course any kind of regime the US would prefer to install would be worse. of course they will want to take advantage of or exacerbate any instability & coopt any dissent regardless of cause or motivation. of course this crisis would not be prominent news in this part of the world if the political leadership was different.

otm

is that the dude who tweeted in 2019 about Castro, a white man whose governing circle consisted of other white men, sadly shaking his head over racism before 1959

good thread here:

I’m very disappointed that @Blklivesmatter put out such an uninformed statement regarding Cuba…particularly when it silences so many Black Cubans who have been protesting and putting themselves at risk who consider BLM to be part of them and their movement too.

— Danielle Clealand (@ProfClealand) July 15, 2021

the replies to that tweet are...something

along those lines:

https://slate.com/podcasts/a-word/2021/07/race-cuba-afro-cubans-uprising

Black Lives Matter But Not In Cuba.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 17 July 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Lift the embargo except #itscomplicated

i'm with Alfred, the tweet was misinformed and largely centered the conversation around the US and ignored the protests on the ground in Cuba and seemed to lionize their government.

you can support lifting the embargo and also acknowledge this. these aren't either-or proposals.

exactly

Glad we all agree part of the solution for Cuba's future is more trade with capitalist economies.

The partial solutions for Cuba's future: lifting the embargo, let the people decide the system under which they wish to live, and read ILX for counsel.

I hope we can all agree that lifting the embargo would be a good thing in general for the people living in Cuba. If or when the Cuban government stands or falls should only become a consideration only after the embargo is gone. Even if you think the Cuban regime is bad and criminal, the fact remains that the embargo hasn't removed it after six decades, so keeping the embargo won't do anything to remove that government; the embargo only inflicts pain and misery on the Cubans to no good end.

Regardless of the embargo, some terrible economic decisions have been made and they have been compounded by the pandemic. And at one point I think it's also important to allow Cubans living on the island to parse terrible economic policies + authoritarian injustices from problems stemming from this horrific embargo. Alfred is obviously otm when he says it's not all about America.

To be clear, the regime was authoritarian regardless of the embargo.

Yes, I meant those are two separate sets of problems.

Glad we all agree part of the solution for Cuba's future is more trade with capitalist economies.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, 17 July 2021 bookmarkflaglink

It's not the gotcha you think it is

I don’t mean to excuse any particular actions of Castro and his successors, but an authoritarian regime is a pretty logical thing to have if the United States is trying to kill your president and overturn your government. How long would a left-liberal government that implemented radical land reforms and redistribution have lasted? Would the regime that followed be democratic, or non-repressive?

You're right. The embargo has been as much a propaganda triumph for the Castros and successors as for the Cuban AM radio commentariat. It still doesn't justify labor camps, etc.

Sure, there are reasons why the revolutionary Cuban government became so authoritarian. The same was true of the USSR. It's hard to argue that the Russian Federation is objectively better or worse for its people than the USSR was, but at least the present US sanctions against the Russian Federation are better targeted and less harmful than the Cuban embargo. Getting rid of the embargo is a no-brainer, imo.

Russia has taken almost 30 years to get life expectancy back to USSR levels so on one (rather important) measure it's pretty easy to argue it's been worse.

No one with the slightest bit of compassion wants Cuba to become an illiberal oligarchy state like Russia, and the spectrum of the possibility is much wider than what the USSR and the present Russian Federation presents.

The same way there is no excuses for this embargo, there are basically no excuses for authoritarian regimes.

Man, if this is true -

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRYawauDBpS/?fbclid=IwAR0ONtKr7b9xkE23tX47SaSJSzBSOeJtidtFzA_bS2_LGXv6UNmY2EnkxmU

Would be nice to have any sources for what he’s saying.

kinda distrust anyone who needs to emphasize that this definitely has nothing to do with the embargo.

The embargo has existed for a very long time and doesn’t explain the hyperinflation problem Cuba is facing at the moment.

Didn’t Trump recently put new sanctions in place though?

US inflation is above 5% - global shortages are going to impact Cuba much harder thanks to the embargo.

It would help if the govt knew how to deal with a currency, especialy in a world in which tourism has died out.

Heck, Miguel Diaz himself is acknowleding Cuba’s role in the hardships.

So yeah, sure, end the embargo, it sucks, but not everything is about the US, other countries have enough agency to take shitty decision on their own too.

Yes but most other countries haven’t had the most powerful country on earth working to limit their agency for 60 years. Anyway I just have to take with a grain of salt a report on what it’s really like in Cuba that comes from a former investment banker who has never lived there and insists that the embargo has nothing to do with the problems there.

To be fair, trusting ‘a former investment banker’ never seems to be a good idea.

Btw if anyone knows of good sources on the situation in Cuba that are somewhere in between “the poor oppressed people just want freedom in the form of US airstrikes” and “gusano scum get the wall” I’d appreciate it!

Al-Jazeera has been balanced imo

I did notice the gentleman in the link provided by Raymond thought it was an especially telling indictment of Cuba that uneducated people made the same daily wage as educated people.

In a nation that is fated to be poor, both by its lack of resources and by the embargo, the fact that the burden of such poverty is mostly equally shared is no indictment. There clearly are ways in which the powerful can get around this, but it's still FAR more equality of means than in any capitalist nation.

Lack of resources does not fate a nation to poverty, there are many counter examples. Plus Cuba is a large island with fertile soil with access to the sea, agriculture should not be a problem, except it is because command economies keep failing at it, regardless of the region or era.

It's like its impossible to acknowledge that a shitty dictatorial govt that jail dissidents and can't keep currency issues at bay has had a hand in Cuba's poverty.

Naive to think it's resources would've been shared with the poor had it kept being a capitalist country instead of a command economy.

We don't know what the lifting of the embargo would've done for its economy.