Cuba: Here we go again?

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.

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!

To understand what's really going on in Cuba right now -- the massive protests across the country -- you have to grasp three things:

(1.) The Leninist government's years-long crisis of legitimacy;

(2.) the causes of recent hyper-inflation;

(3.) the mixed politics of dissidents

— JMC 🌹🏴 (@red_dilettante) July 12, 2021

(thread, has sources)

there are some material specifics there for once which is most welcome

of course the US condemning authoritarianism, jailing (/torture/execution) of dissidents, suppression of "democracy" etc is pretty rich considering, you know

it's a real problem how rote and programmatic the responses have become for these crises - this is not the same as bolivia which is not the same as venezuela despite some similarities but they might as well be identical judging by how most people in the north talk about them, regardless of their political persuasion. not saying I'm not guilty of this either

lol

pic.twitter.com/UXf3UJ592s

— Phil Lord #BlackLivesMatter #StopAsianHate (@philiplord) July 18, 2021

Excellent thread, Left. Thanks.

otm

aren’t you talking about the thread ufo posted?

yeah, ufo, sorry

We stand in solidarity with the Cuban people and condemn the suppression of the media, speech and protest.

We also call for an end to the U.S. embargo and additional Trump-era restrictions that are profoundly contributing to the suffering of Cubans. pic.twitter.com/Fw6Quv5TAN

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) July 16, 2021

^ an unexceptionable statement that sits astride the middle ground, but which the right will call a radical threat to mom, apple pie and baseball

AOC is getting a taste for the bomb.

how did you derive that?

By posting a contrary opinion to xyz of course

Also Canada should do much much more wrt to vaccination in Cuba, considering it has normal trade relations.

https://truthout.org/articles/my-heart-aches-for-cuba-and-i-yearn-for-more-solidarity-from-the-global-left/

"Cuba’s Abdala and Soberana, the first COVID vaccines developed in Latin America, weren’t invented, fabricated and administered by the bureaucrats in the “Palace.” The Cuban people, those that took the streets to change their lives and were repressed by the government, are the ultimate generators of Cuban wealth."

Nonsense. Without the revolution no vaccine would've been developed in Cuba.

anyone who dares to watch could see the patrolling troops running, threatening unarmed people and beating them

Glad that doesn't happen in liberal democracies.

Always love it when Brits take lead on the Convo about what's best for the Cubans. Granted it's not much diff than Americans doing the same. Be nice to hear from...idk...Cuban-Americans.

Twitter is full of ppl talking down to actual non-Revolution Cubans atm

*Cubans or Cuban-Americans

Police brutality is unnaceptable and it must be condemned when it happens everywhere, I don’t see what’s controversial about that.

When it's being raised as a primary reason one must preface any statement with a condemnation of the "shitty dictatorial govt" and that a failure to be sufficiently anti-Cuban state essentially makes you a Stalinist, the universality is quite relevant.

Always love it when Brits take lead on the Convo about what's best for the Cubans. Granted it's not much diff than Americans doing the same. Be nice to hear from...idk...Cuban-Americans.

Because it’s never about Cuba per se, a lot of it is about showing your badges of being a leftist, it’s about showing the world how much outside the narrative and edgy you are.

Showing how edgy I am is really what this thread is about yeah

it’s about showing the world how much outside the narrative and edgy you are.

It seems more likely that in the case of hard leftist ilxors it is a reflection of their true convictions and the ideology they embrace. Whether it is a reflection of the realities of Cuban society and politics is open to question, but there's no need to impugn their motives.

When it's being raised as a primary reason one must preface any statement with a condemnation of the "shitty dictatorial govt" and that a failure to be sufficiently anti-Cuban state essentially makes you a Stalinist, the universality is quite relevant.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Sunday, July 18, 2021 5:32 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would suspect that most people on this board who are reacting against police brutality in Cuba also would be against police brutality in the US, pro-BLM and would love for the US prison industrial complex to be dismantled.

It only becomes weird when are you ok with one and not the other.

i mean that double standard goes both ways & the takes from the liberal centre on this have hardly been any less awful than those from the "hard left". and when people have cheered on coups in the past it's hard to trust where their concerns are coming from even when they are valid in a particular instance

But who cares about the US liberal centre's awful takes when Cubans themselves are protesting. Why is it always about western narratives?

Cuban: 'My govt is unable to provide for me and uses police brutality to suppress dissent, I'm fearing for my security'
Non-Cuban on the internet: 'Yeah but life in the west is sorta the same! Gotcha!'

Don't light a cigarette so close to your strawman.

I don't see anyone expressing hostility to protesters... except for people dismissing the possibility of pro-government protesters upthread. (Weird!)

What gets push back from 'the left' is when people like you, openly hostile to Cuba and who've yet to find Latin American regime change they won't cheerlead, decide that they've derived some great meaning from protests they aren't actually involved in, and that great meaning is that the "shitty, dictatorial govt" must be toppled (and that this obviously has mass support among the population). To be suspicious of the roots of protest or to not (again) preface all statements with a blanket condemnation of the Cuban state is obviously unacceptable.

I don't feel like justifying the meaning I find in seeing the end of Latin American dictatorships, nor do I really feel it is necessary to explain why such regimes are bad, or that anyone needs your approval for assessing the wrongs of that particular regime. And I too, shouldn't have too make blanket statements about the evils of the West.

Fact is, an actual Cuban posted an article written by an actual Cuban about the protests and you felt compelled to make it about... police brutality in the West? That's what's unacceptable to me. Either you are a psychopath unable to give the benefit of the doubt to someone with the slightest different world view than yours, or you are suffering from heavy paranoia and decided that any resistance to your ideology has to be a CIA conspiracy. None of these things put the protesters, or the welfare of Cubans at the center of the debate, all agency has been erased, and I'm not saying any of this because we both disagree, but because of how you answered that particular article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/black-lives-matter-misses-point-about-cuba/619471/

Does she "love the bomb"?

I am Black & Cuban and deeply hurt by the #BLM statement on Cuban protests. They are blind and deft to the Cuban ppl, to their demands. With whom is their solidarity? Certainly not with the people in the streets. LISTEN to us. #SOSCuba https://t.co/UHHDngeBWa

— Dr. Odette Casamayor-Cisneros (@odettecasamayor) July 15, 2021

She's from Cuba and wrote the article Alfred said. I'm sure xyzzzz can explain to her why she's wrong

You gotta be suspicious!

The bit I quoted from the Cuban-American academic is clearly wrong. Vaccines aren't just "for the people". The achievement of training Cuban ppl to be doctors and scientists that are able to develop a covid vaccine doesn't come from the sky. No other Latin American country has done this! Without the revolution the island would be Tourism with bits of agriculture. And no one here would bother about whether Afro-Cubans get a fair treatment or human rights.

No one is stopping Alfred, the one Cuban-American in the board I know of, from posting here.

And posts aren't going to stop the Cuban Revolution from either carrying on or unravelling and the US gradually taking over or whatever so I'll carry on.

I don't see anyone expressing hostility to protesters... except for people dismissing the possibility of pro-government protesters upthread. (Weird!)

milo z, if this is directed at me (which I suspect it is): that’s not what I wrote. I wrote this:

these are government-ordained counter-protests to the actual protesters (or “worms” in government parlance)

this was in response to the first post on the current situation, the tweet xyzzzz linked about Cubans chant(ing) "I am Fidel!", as thousands flood the streets in defense of the revolution, without providing any context

what I said was that these counter protests to the actual/original protests were government-ordained...

(to quote the president himself**: « ¡La orden de combate está dada! ¡A la calle los revolucionarios! » / « The order of combat is given! To the streets the revolutionaries! »),

...not that the protesters were forced to participate in them. I’m perfectly aware that most regimes have plenty of virulent supporters, authoritarian ones included.

** https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/es/presidencia/intervenciones/comparecencia-ante-la-television-cubana-11-07-2021/
(hope this source is trustworthy enough for you)

Don't light a cigarette so close to your strawman.

You drew a line between the “actual protesters” (the ones you like) and the counter-protests. The use of actual there implies that the pro-government protesters aren’t real. (there was also the post right above you that loled at the idea of pro-government protesters.)

so nice that we care about human rights violations except when they happen in Cuba, then it's just hysterical misguided people whining. or that we assume people critical of the Cuban government are clamoring for the US to come in and topple them.

xpost he didn't say "to actual protesters", he said "to the actual protesters", clarifying that these protests were a response to the original protest, not something that spontaneously happened on the streets. this isn't hard to understand.

but you're always fishing for gotchas, so you do you I guess.

xyz and milo all think the protests in Cuba are bots and that all protesters are paid though so guess *case closed*

Without the revolution the island would be Tourism with bits of agriculture.

Instead it's tourism... and catastrophic agriculture... and an inability to provide vaccination (it itself developed) to its own citizen because the govt can't deal with basic currency policies. Thank god for Fidel!