Cuba: Maybe We Should Give Them a Chance

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These numbers are easy to manipulate. The UN doesn't investige this, they simply report what the Cuban government tells them. Since the embargo doesn't cover medical equipment, they can't report the real numbers and blame the US for them. Oscar Elias Biscet and many other Cuban activists can tell you that this is indeed true.

Barbara A. Anderson; Brian D. Silver (December 1986). "Infant Mortality in the Soviet Union: regional differences and measurement issues". Population and Development Review (Population and Development Review, Vol. 12, No. 4) 12 (4): 705–737. doi:10.2307/1973432. JSTOR 1973432.

If I am to choose between listening to two million Cuban exiles or a wacky dictatorship that took advantage of political tension to gain power, I'm going with the latter.

The two mostc apitalist countries in Latin-America (Chile and Barbados) have a much higer standard of living than Cuba. If the litteracy rate in Cuba is so good, then I'm suprised the people in Cuba have no higher IQs than the people of Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico or any other Latin-American country. Given that Batista's government built more than 1000 schools and increased the life expectancy by 11 years in just six years, whatever progress Cuba has made since WWII, isn't because of Fidel Castro.




The Cuban government does.



Without the embargo, Castro would have been overthrown somewhere in the 1960's, because he then would have noone but himself to blame for the broken promises.



Too bad all the modern medical equipment is reserved for those who can pay in hard currency.



Mexicans or Brazilians have at least a little freedom of speech and aren't killed by police boats if they try to emigrate.

This is a weightlifting blog I read. He went to Cuba. The guy is originally from Malaysia, so he's not American, and I don't know if you'd count Malaysia as Third World or not, but it's not coming from the perspective of 3 cars and lattes. One of his purposes in going was to see if he could find the Cuban weightlifting club/coaches (he didn't.)

http://lifthard.com/where-the-hell-have-you-been/
http://lifthard.com/so-i-went-to-cuba/
http://lifthard.com/about-appreciating- ... anda-pull/

Not related politically really, but hilarious part:

Relatively speaking, Cuba has one advantage over other Latin American/Caribbean countries. Less crime. El Salvador very close by has a murder rate of like 70 per 100K, and Cuba's is 5 per 100K like USA. Jamaica's is 40 per 100K. So as far as Latin America goes, I don't know. One Middle Eastern guy I was talking to, for example, said of the Middle East "You cannot have democracy there, it's a circus if you do, the only way that region can be ruled is with fire and iron." I wonder if Latin America is the same.

I think you'd have to be a fool, though, if you think Castro has made Cuba better than it was. Even if you do believe all the lies about free healthcare blah blah, just look at the place. Everything is unpainted and dilapidated and from pre-Castro times. No productivity actually happens in Cuba. You can see more pictures of Real Cuba if you want online. I fail to see how you can say it's an improvement to have a country be totally run down and dilapidated like that. I mean, in some ways, I like the "recycling" going on, IE, I like how they keep the 1950s American cars running instead of being wasteful like USA, but it's not because they're being environmentally friendly or anything, it's because they're broke as all hell.

I notice these socialist countries tend to be frozen in time. Cuba seems almost like, in some ways, a 1950s theme park. You can trace their economic decline to where the country "stops." North Korea, oddly enough, actually had the same per capita GDP of South Korea until 1971. I think the place was a relatively stable and OK place to live (despite being all Kim cultlike) until the late 70s. Then either North Korea made it's mistakes or the Soviets had to give less aid. So you look around North Korea now, you see everything stopped around that time. All the buildings, cars, etc, are from then. But I'd say Cuba is an incredible failure, as they've "stopped" in the 1950s. IE, everything remained frozen in time after the revolution. Which strikes me as weird.

But besides bringing "order" which is sometimes severely lacking in Latin American countries, I can't really think of anything positive about the Castro regime.

Look, my partner is from the Philippines. The reason I mention is because I have out there twice so have witnessed first hand what happens when you mix a market economy with grinding poverty. For the majority of Filipinos it is an unmitigated social catastrophe. Over there, if you can't pay the doctor's fee, there is no safety net. You get squat, you get nothing; you have to go without. At least in Cuba, as much as you criticise it, there is a bare modicum of service available to the most vulnerable. When I was in the Philippines I lost count of the amount of people I saw with missing teeth and visually apparent health problems.

Whats more, since the end of Spanish rule the Philippines has more or less tried to model itself entirely on the American political system. Another impoverished nation that has done this is Liberia; it is one of the poorest if not THE poorest nation on Earth. If you are going to blame Socialism or Castroism for Cuba's inadaquacies then by the same token American Neo-liberalism must accept the blame for the problems in countries like the Philippines or Liberia.





Freedom of Speech doesnt mean a whole deal when you don't have access to the media or communication infrastructure. Capitalism has failed to deliver new innovations to the most vulnerable no less than Socialism has.

Cuba has no internet.

Also I bet most people in the Philippines have cellphones and internet access (even from a cafe,) even the ones with health problems. I mean maybe you can argue they're too poor to care about socioeconomic or political issues, but at least they have access.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_t ... per-capita
Philippines is #51 in the world for cellphone access. 981 phones per 1000 people. Cuba has a whopping 17 per 100K, is in almost last, right next to Ethiopia.

Wow, I'm shocked. What with everyone's eyes being turned east, to China and Africa and North Korea, I got the feeling that we had kind of forgotten our fellow Americans. I'm heartened by the turnout here on both sides.

I do not think that either Castro is a saint. There are very few leaders, socialist or otherwise, that can be called "Good" after examining the facts. I will say, though, from what I've read, that I think Castro is not as bad as Batista, just as Batista was not as bad as the colonial governors who preceded him. I think we can look at Cuba and everywhere else in Latin America as a process of progression. It is remarkable to look at the Latin America of seventy years ago and to look at it today. It is not a totally different world, but it has endured the years of Soviet and Western funded tyranny and come out much stronger for it.

The socialist countries that you say are stranded in time... Why are they such? By the way, this assumes that progress is inherently better than stasis. When you say that they look as though they are stuck in the 1950's, you sound like those who say "Let's bring them into the 21st century!" and clap each other on the back. This is not the 1950s, in Cuba, or in Guiana, or in El Salvador, or in Darfur, or in Lesotho. This is what the 21st century looks like. Poverty, recycled old cars, starvation. We grow fat by stealing food from other's plates. We're like the bully who buys GQ smooth clothes by stealing the neighbor kid's allowance. The neighbor kid won't look nearly as classy.

Picture this. A young woman has been held in a dungeon for ten years. She was beaten. She was raped. When she went in, she was beautiful. When she came out, though only ten years older, she looked as though she had aged a century. Years later, the scars still show on her face. She walks taller, maybe. She aches less. But she will never be the same as her peers, all untouched and radiant. Her ordeal will always show.

This is how I think of Latin America. Think of what drove The United States to bloody revolution. A mere tax hike of a few percent. We consider the men who fought this revolution heroes, despite the fact that they fought a relatively unnecessary war, they passed laws almost immediately banning free political speech (Alien & Sedition Act), and violently and brutally put down populist movements in the West. They profited from slavery and they began a campaign of genocide against the native tribes. But they were heroes.

Now look at Latin America. Their first contact with the west marked the beginning of genocide, both through butchery and disease. The natural resources of the continent were squandered and mined out. The Cerro de Potosi, the richest mountain in the world, lies empty. The Indios were taken as slaves, sent into the worst conditions, and had no rights. Until the late 20th century, slavery and Indian hunting were still carried out in much of South America. The Plantation owners and big miners became rich, the natives died. Then the poor Mestizo joined them. The divide grew between rich and poor, and the conditions of the poor were little better than slaves. The landscape was changed and the soil drained of nutrients by the introduction of coffee and sugar, and nations that once had some of the richest food growing potential in the world became net importers of foodstuffs.

The revolutionaries of North America were middle and upper class gentlemen looking to protect their investments, while the revolutionaries in South America were peasants, Mestizo and Indian both, who merely wanted to survive, who wanted their country to provide for them the way it did their Incan and Mayan and Aztec and Guajiro ancestors. One, a revolution of the rich, the other a revolution of the poor. Both revolutions were equally brutal.

For those who say that Batista's regime in Cuba was better for the Cuban people, because they had modern cars, and new buildings in beautiful Havana, consider this. Those cars were largely luxury models for the wealthy and for the high ranking government workers. The Batista loyalist. A new facade on a schoolhouse in Havana did nothing for the poor farmer in the countryside. The work came and went with the sugar. The US dominated the market, with Batista agreeing to sell to the US at US determined prices only when the US wanted it. The average Cuban worked during the harvest, and it was grueling, dangerous work. The money from the sale went into the pockets of Batista and the Multinationals.

So yes, maybe they don't have upward mobility. Yes, most Cubans don't drive a Lexus. Yes, they have a lot of growing to do. But after the last few centuries, having agriculture, health care, shelter, and education are a huge improvement. Comparing their advancement to our idea of the 21st century is like setting up a 100 meter dash, positioning our guy's starting line 50 meters behind the other, and giving the other guy a baseball bat with which to knock our guy back when he got close, and wondering why our guy lost.

This is the thing. All of us Americans, talking about it... We take the word of refugees who did well under Batista. We take the word of the US government that Cuba is evil and horrible and all. We take the word of Sean Penn and Castro and a billboard that life is wonderful. Why not go see for ourselves? Why not make up our own minds. The only thing that the embargo has done is held Cuba back and kept us from making a truly informed decision.

My point is, that with the exception of a few wealthy most people in developing capitalist nations have no computers. So the point about the internet becomes redundant.

Yes, they could use internet cafes but its small consolation when they cannot see a doctor, dentist or even acquire employment. There is no legislation to protect the disabled or lower social castes and the custom is there to give a photograh when applying for work. The custom among employers is to not hire anyone who is too 'ugly'. Sure you can't blame their political system for that directly but its indicting of the dog eat dog values they have adopted.

The Libertarian view of a nation's merit is bizarre. Freedom of Speech for freedom of speech sake takes precedence over the infrastructure for access to said freedom of speech as well as life preserviing facilities such as basic medical care.

The Philippines do not employ a free-market economy. Actually, the Philippino market is as centralized and regulated as the market in India, Moldova and China. Moreover, the Philippines were never payed billions to be a puppet regime for the Soviet Union, they do not have the excellent agricultural climate as Cuba does and they did not have detention camps where people with AIDS were executed--like Cuba had in the 1980's.

In 1980, Botswana and Zimbabwe were on the same level; the former chose capitalism, the latter chose socialism. Botswana as of 2012, had four times the GDP of Zimbabwe and is one of the fastest growing economies today.

In 1945, Japan was a poor and war torn country; yet they still had the highest long-term growth in the world between 1945 and 1973.

Germany chose capitalism in 1945 with Hitler out of the picture. Despite suffering the highest damage of all WWII countries and having to pay for the damage they caused themselves, Germany had a higher standard of living than the USSR by 1955.

Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, were all worse of than Cuba in 1950. Today, these countries have a European standard of living.

The post Soviet countries with the highest standard of living (mainly the Baltic states), chose capitalism when the communism fell. On the other end of the scale, you have those who still kept the socialism intact. Compare the standard in Latvia with the standard in Belarus or Moldova and see for yourself.

There are hardly any capitalist dictatorships left. If Batista had never been overthrown, Cuba would gradually become more democratic and would be on par with the Asian Tigers today.



America has a mixed economy (and allthough mainly capitalistic), can't be classified as neo-liberalistic. Liberia is the polar opposite of neo-liberalism and is as repressed economically as Laos and Belarus.

How on earth would any of these countries you mentioned be modeled after the US economy?



I shouldn't really dignify this statement with an answer, but here goes nothing:

There are both computers, magazines and newspapers in Cuba. If freedom of speech was implemented, it would mean a helluva lot to the Cuban people. A lot of former third world countries (Singapore, Barbados, Japan etc.) have access to both cell phones, digital television, foreign magazines and internet because capitalism caused economic growth and the government had no oportunity/desire to interfere with what the people could or couldn't buy.

Last edited by Kurgan on 12 May 2013, 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

http://www.therealcuba.com/

Just look at all the pictures on that site.


Everything looks like it has been literally hit by a bomb.

What capitalist nations would that be? Allthough many poor capitalist countries do not have multiple computers per household like we do in Europe, many poor capitalist countries still have computers in public libraries, in universities and so on.



Actually, the highest unemployment in the world is in Zimbabwe, where 70% of those capable of working are unemployed. Zimbabwe uses the exact same economic model as Cuba does.



This has nothing to do with capitalism versus socialism, but is more about whether a system is ascriptive or achievement based. Not hiring someone if they're ugly, is a common thing to do in all countries where you have a ludicrous amount of applicants for every job. The same goes for not hiring someone because of poor eye contact, lack of mannerisms and so on.



Freedom of speech isn't mutually exclusive with good healthcare.

Too bad a lot of countries who were on par with Cuba in 1950, offer far superior health care services today. The wonderful Cuban healthcare is a myth.

Point 1: Cuba is at a state of war, of course there is going to be dilapidated buildings.

Point 2: Thats obviously a hackneyed anti communist source. I'll take what it says and its carefully cherry picked images with a massive side order of salt.

A state of war just because of the embargo? Why doesn't Iran have a bunch of dilapidated buildings then? It has a US Embargo, too. Hell, Iran was in an actual literal war with Iraq for an entire decade. How many actual wars has Cuba been in lately?

Last edited by 1000Knives on 12 May 2013, 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

@ Kurgan,

you still completed avoided the main crux of my point.

In impoverished market based countries, if you cannot afford the premiums or doctors fee YOU GET NOTHING.

In centralised economies, like Cuba, you get treated. No-one said it is high class but its something, thats the point.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xRR0VByjvw[/youtube]

I didn't see this whole episode, but that's Anthony Bourdain's trip to Cuba. He tries to be pretty non-partisan about the whole thing. Good for a watch I guess.

Actually, Castro has spoken fondly of Kim Jong-il, but he does have a degree of skepticism towards his bratty son.



Bill Clinton was a pretty good leader. He really deserved that blowjob.



Castro is responsible for far more deaths and far more imprisonments; not to mention the fact that he stalled the economic growth. Batista was not a good president, but he did have a set of moral standards (eg. he released all the political prisoners and abolished the death penalty for ALL cases in 1956).



What precisely improved in Cuba?



Far from it. Before the fall of the USSR, Cuba was a much stronger country. Namely because it was a puppet regime.



Both Iraq, Botswana, Thailand, Qatar, Ghana and India have grown a lot the last ten years. While most people on the planet do not have Playstations, LED televisions and WiFi everywhere, they don't live in shanty towns with one car per 50. person either.



During Batista, Cuba actually had a middle class. Today, almost everyone is poor, while the remaining few are filthy rich.

The average industrial salary in 1958 in Cuba, was higher than that of many European countries and Cuba had 90% of the GDP Italy did. Allthough batista was decadent as all fuark, his sucessor was even worse. Despite the fact that a medical doctor only makes 22 dollars a month on Cuba, a cuban prostitute can make four times that amount in hard currency in one night. Furthermore, Castro has an array of luxury cars and his house isn't exactly modest:





Raul Castro drives a BMW 760 if I remember correctly.



George Utset (who runs TheRealCuba.org) is the son of a human rights activits who was imprisoned during Batista. Actually, more black people did well during Batista than on Cuba today.



Some take the word of Michael Moore more seriously.



The embargo kept Castro in power, sadly.

Cuba hasn't been in a state of war for centuries. The Castro regime did help the USSR wreck havock in various African countries, though.



George Utset never wrote anything bad about communism. He has actually stated on many occations that Cuba is not a genuine communist state, but reminds him more of fascism.

In any case, I'd gladly take his word over the word of Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore or anyone who wears a Che Guevara t-shirt.