If you have never seen the movie Before Night Falls I recommend it. While I agree that 20th century politics in Latin America was complicated, it's also true that the Castro regime committed a lot of human rights violations in ways that now seem really unjustified. I am not saying the United States was innocent. I am saying that a lot of people suffered under the regime needlessly and that should be acknowledged honestly.
I know it's mindboggling, but really there aren't. This is one thing that Westerners typically don't get about the Communist-bloc countries, or don't seem to care. Whereas in average the standard of living was always much higher in Capitalist countries, if you looked at the Eastern European Communist bloc for example, there's no extreme poverty, because the state takes care of that (and it's an extremely important thing for the State to take care of, or else the population would come to believe that Socialism wasn't working). Sure, being an average American in the 70s would be a lot more comfortable than being an average Pole in the same period — but there were no people living under bridges in Poland scrapping food from trashcans. If you ask the poorest people of any Capitalist country whether they'd switch places with the poorest ones of a Communist country, they'd do it in a heartbeat.
Of course, this idea gets lost to the mind of the Western middle class because in general they just don't think about the poorest members of their society (or some just think they deserve their fate).
The Communist era had numerous well-documented flaws, but really, the things it got right aren't spoken about enough in the West. We could learn something from that. For example, the levels of education of the population in the Soviet Union were never attained in the United States. How do we fix that in the Capitalist system? Do we want a more educated population in the first place? Do we want to live in a society with no children in the streets? If we do, what do we have to change in our society to attain that? It's important not to take a whole system for granted as a full package ignoring its flaws, be it Communist or Capitalist.
But indeed, the saying _is_ correct: "Millions of children will sleep on the streets tonight. None of them is Cuban."
Communism in Cuba has at least remained true to its roots, imposing, for more than half a century, a juvenile notion of egalitarianism on the masses. Rather than uplifting them, this has reinforced the lowest common denominator: Everyone is poor.
In Argentina, Jauretche would say: "O es pa' todos la frazada, o es pa' todos el invierno" (paraphrasing, "Either the blanket covers everyone, or everyone suffers the winter")
The country itself is poor, because of the blockade. If the US would let private companies trade with them and with the cubans freely, they wouldn't be poor.
Don't let Communist propaganda blind you. The blockade did not stop Spanish hotels from settling on the island (taxed at 50% by the state), or dealings with Russia or the Chinese, or gas trades with Venezuela. Do you know where all the wealth from those dealings ended up? The top ranking officials and their families.
Yeah, it ended up feeding millions that live in the island, training thousands of doctors, and providing all that's required for all the cubans. And it's not enough to live up to the standars of the rest of the world, which could live far better with better distribution of wealth.
The Castro family can travel the world and enjoy a lavish lifestyle while most of the population lives in poverty and are not allowed to leave the country. Your naivete is cute.
This applies to literally every head of state that every country's had. It's a tired line of reasoning. I hope you start demanding humility of your own leaders too.
But no, we hold Cuba to a standard that no country on Earth has achieved. Maybe except for the Germans, since Merkel is keen on doing her own groceries.
Free trade between private corporations and individuals is a capitalist concept. After all, free trade is predicated on the ability for a single actor to decide how to allocate goods and services.
I was born in Romania under communism, which fell in December 1989.
We didn't have children living on the streets either. But the reason for that was that giving children up for adoption was essentially illegal, the women of our country being denied contraception, having a mandate to reproduce and raise offsprings. And also foster homes were essentially prisons, some in really poor conditions; at least those that had the children with special needs were absolutely horrible (i.e. the new men couldn't admit the existence of the handicapped).
So you know, the actual reason many of these countries haven't had children on the streets is because the police wouldn't allow it ;-)
And I feel compelled to mention this for those among you that might get romantic ideas about how communism happened to be in practice.
> And also foster homes were essentially prisons, some in really poor conditions
This is still true of most orphanages in countries like Brazil. It still beats dying of hunger and cold under a bridge any day, which is unfortunately still a common occurrence in those countries.
But this is no different than what happens in capitalist nations, which show a constellation of different policies as well. Romania was different from Yugoslavia, which was different from Cuba or Hungary.
Most Cubans live in very poor conditions with no means to improve their lives because of low wages and high cost of living (by Cuban standards, tourists will find it cheap so that should show you how little money they make). Also, government oppression against those who speak up is a great deterrent to changing the current socio/economic situation.
You talk about levels of education like a grandiose achievement, it is, but to what end? there are many Cuban doctors that cannot feed their families with their state provided salaries and have to resort to illegal means. or defect to other countries where their education is not valued and have to start from near zero.
homelessness in Cuba is not reported because it goes against the image the government wants to portray. so the statement "Millions of children will sleep on the streets tonight. None of them is Cuban." is only supported by the state-ran media and it's very inaccurate.
nothing is a big word, of course it had an impact. but totalitarianism, oppression, indoctrination, etc. were not caused by outside factors, they are direct actions by the dictatorship.
That statement is supported by people I talked to who've been there. It's not like Cuba is North Korea; it's not that hard to see what life there is really like.
Also, I do consider their levels of education to be a grandiose achievement, and "to what end?" — well, their levels of healthcare for one. I don't claim their system is perfect or even good, but one can't judge the value of education only on the salaries they bring.
They provide the standards of living that an economic blockade allows them to provide. Either everyone eats, or everyone rations their food. It's that simple.
I think his general point was that there are basically no homeless people. True or not, this can easily be checked by traveling there. It is possible to travel freely and I certainly got the same impression while I was there.
