I was in Cuba on a "cultural visa" for a week about 10 years ago and a few things struck me:
- There are no rich people and there are no poor people. I didn't see a single homeless person / beggar but I also didn't see a single person that looked "middle class" in US terms.
- People seemed really happy to talk to Americans. I remember talking to a woman celebrating her 86th birthday and she told me (through a translator that she'd "see me next year in Miami".).
- Based on my understanding of the USSR, I was expecting a cult of personality around Castro, but there was no 'Placa del Castro' or anything like that. The only cult of personality was for Che Guevara, who was everywhere.
- There were two economies...one for tourists and one for Cubans. If a Cuban had a job, like in a hotel, where they could get dollars, they would be very well off. Everyone else was left with ration cards.
- We met a kid who spoke English but was afraid to talk (or to be heard talking) in English in public. He took us to his house where we talked for several hours and then there was a party (his grandmother's 86th birthday) where we (a friend and I) drank rum and partied until the wee hours. The rum was in a really old plastic jug (from the 80s?) that they would pour they monthly ration or rum into...they saved up for celebrations.
Overall I walked left thinking that Cuba would be a great place to live for most people but if you were the "Bill Gates" of Cuba it would suck. I suspect that when the embargo ends and sanctions are over (both ways) Cuba will become the "Caribbean Tiger" like Ireland or South Korea. The population is very healthy and education but the infrastructure sucks. All they need now is capital investment and they will really thrive. I suspect in the long run (as in 100 years) Communism will have served Cuba well relative to it's regional peers that didn't experience Communism...similar to China.
There are no rich people and there are no poor people
That is just not true. In central Havana, there are buildings that are literally crumbling - they couldn't exist in a Western city, they'd be condemned and torn down, but there are three families crammed in there, electrical cables strung across the street, corrugated aluminium in place of glass in the windows, wooden door and window frames rotting. . But if you head out to the suburbs and have dinner at a paladar, there're people living one family in a gorgeous Spanish colonial mansion with landscaped garden, a pond and a gazebo, who want for nothing and amuse themselves by entertaining Western guests.
In a society where everyone is equal - how do you get that?
I suspect it's gotten worse in the past couple of years, but also I was benchmarking against the peer countries in the region where there is destitute poverty juxtaposed with billionaires.
I love Reflexiones del Comandante en Jefe. I had the opportunity to study at the University of Havana in 2009. I read Fidel's "blog", which appears on the front page of Granma, the country's biggest newspaper, every time he publishes a new article.
this makes me glad blogs were invented. if this is truly fidel castro's blog, it is fascinating.
I don't agree with the majority of the decisions he has made a s a leader, but there is no doubt he is a thoughtful man. Having a vision into what makes him tick...available on your computer or phone any time day or night...kind of remarkable.
I was watching the documentary series Cold War, which is brilliant in that it is full of first-hand accounts in interviews with people that were at all the important meetings and events.
Some of my favorite moments were the bits from Castro's interviews. "Thoughtful man" is a great description. It was fascinating to see him describing events from his view, and he was captivating to listen to even in a language I had to read subtitles to understand.
I agree, it is an incredible look into the mind of this leader. Whether you agree with his ideologies or not, it is a fascinating read. (just spent better part of an hour going through each of his posts)
>you can't agree or disagree with putting innocents in jail, killing people
Yeah, you can. It depends on your own personal philosophy, but the most common idea where this could be supported is (a slightly extreme version of) the greater good, or perhaps if you believe that the ends justify the means.
Disclaimer: I know very little about Cuba and Castro. Just being argumentative.
Funny, but the answer is that part of the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement to end the Cuban Missile Crisis was that the United States wouldn't invade Cuba, and anyone else with the force to do so was a NATO member/American ally.
This is speculation, but looking at how the Cold War played out, then without that agreement the U.S. likely would've invaded Cuba at some point or other. It was still a good agreement overall because of the Moscow-Washington Hotline getting installed, though one can look at history and wonder if the Cuban people would've been better off living in an American territory similar to Puerto Rico instead of a backwards impoverished dictatorship. Hotline Agreement was good though -
"Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state - destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista - hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend - at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections" -John F. Kennedy, October 6, 1960
Perhaps in terms of GDP per capita or some fundamental rights like political opposition and freedom of speech. Otherwise, "backwards" is relative and baseless.
"one can look at history and wonder if the Cuban people would've been better off living in an American territory similar to Puerto Rico instead of [under Castro's rule]."
You might not agree it would be better for certain, but you definitely can at least imagine an American Cuba that's healthier than the current Cuba. It's not a particularly high bar.
"Healthier" is one of the only words that I would never use to describe an American Cuba — their Soviet subsidy led to them educating a ridiculous percentage of their population as doctors, so many that most work in other fields. Even now they still have twice as many working doctors per capita as the US, and are third in the world behind San Marino and Monaco: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=doctors+per+capita+all+... — I can't find good historical data, but I'm pretty sure it was even higher back in the 70s.
Their mortality rates are the same as the US, and the food they eat is a lot healthier out of necessity due to low industrialization.
Which is why the AMA in the US uses collective action to strictly limit the number of new medical degrees and licenses. They also do a lot of lobbying to ensure that their job territory is not encroached upon by nurses, EMTs, or other potentially capable non-doctors.
If getting a medical degrees leaves you with no debt, and practicing as a doctor saddles you with little liability, why would you be able to demand a high salary?
Actually, Cuba has the highest life expectancy in its region, and is basically equivalent to that of the US.
In terms of social health (person to person), one can say that Cubans enjoy a better situation.
"Political health" is a debatable rathole, on the other hand.
The US has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, and the largest prison population. (One in 31 adults in the US are under the supervision of the criminal justice system).
I don't know his viewpoints very well, but it's interesting that the source of his posts look like they were created in Word. Does Microsoft sell that product in Cuba? hmm..
Is this just a repost of his Granma articles? It goes back a couple of years, and makes me think we'd have heard about it sooner if it were a separate blog.
right, i just meant that the archives here are back a few years, i saw that the dates are up to current news. What I meant was that we'd have heard if he'd started blogging independent from the regular articles he already publishes in Granma.
- There are no rich people and there are no poor people. I didn't see a single homeless person / beggar but I also didn't see a single person that looked "middle class" in US terms.
- People seemed really happy to talk to Americans. I remember talking to a woman celebrating her 86th birthday and she told me (through a translator that she'd "see me next year in Miami".).
- Based on my understanding of the USSR, I was expecting a cult of personality around Castro, but there was no 'Placa del Castro' or anything like that. The only cult of personality was for Che Guevara, who was everywhere.
- There were two economies...one for tourists and one for Cubans. If a Cuban had a job, like in a hotel, where they could get dollars, they would be very well off. Everyone else was left with ration cards.
- We met a kid who spoke English but was afraid to talk (or to be heard talking) in English in public. He took us to his house where we talked for several hours and then there was a party (his grandmother's 86th birthday) where we (a friend and I) drank rum and partied until the wee hours. The rum was in a really old plastic jug (from the 80s?) that they would pour they monthly ration or rum into...they saved up for celebrations.
Overall I walked left thinking that Cuba would be a great place to live for most people but if you were the "Bill Gates" of Cuba it would suck. I suspect that when the embargo ends and sanctions are over (both ways) Cuba will become the "Caribbean Tiger" like Ireland or South Korea. The population is very healthy and education but the infrastructure sucks. All they need now is capital investment and they will really thrive. I suspect in the long run (as in 100 years) Communism will have served Cuba well relative to it's regional peers that didn't experience Communism...similar to China.