The Cuban government is reluctant to open internet access to the people, despite of they already have the needed bandwith through a submarine cable from Venezuela. Is really fascinating how the Cubans have developed a higly optimized offline distribution channel to share dowloaded content like websites, software, video games, tv shows, movies, with almost the same comsuption patterns of the connected world.
"Telecommunications providers will be allowed to establish the necessary mechanisms, including infrastructure, in Cuba to provide commercial telecommunications and internet services, which will improve telecommunications between the United States and Cuba."
If Cuban government allow this kind of companies to do business on or with Cuba, that could be huge. But if happens, this could be very slow, sadly.
Disclosure: I'm the cofounder of some Cuba related startups, a classifieds ads site censored by the Cuba government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUmPkb44n_w, they block us by ip and dns, despite of the censorship, revolico is one of the most visited sites in the country, taking into account that cuba has a 5% internet penetration. Also a atypical remittances platform https://www.fonoma.com and crowfunding site for cuban artists shutted down by the USA goverment because of the kind of restriction that they are softening today http://www.yagruma.org
You started revolico!? That's awesome man, I think that project "opened" the mind of a lot of cuban entrepreneurs. I know a few cool projects over there, I also know a lot of plastic artists trying to start projects that connect the "exile" with the people of the island. As you might know, even among those oppose to the regime, there is a lot of bias against cubans from America(unless they are family/friends). I'm also cuban, living in NY, I'd like to help out with whatever I can. You'll find my email on my profile.
I've visited Cuba on a Canadian passport. Aside from the beautiful beaches the thing that struck me most was the desperate poverty of people living in shacks outside the 5 star resorts.
While I hesitate to predict that this change will be all for the good, I do believe that the poorest in Cuba will benefit significantly from increased trade.
It's because we don't criminalize homelessness as aggressively as other major cities and the homeless population is concentrated near downtown where the SROs and social services are located. Keep in mind that it's generally not simply poverty but mental illness or a history of abuse/violence that separates the homeless here vs. the working poor in the favelas and slums of the third world.
>> "It's because we don't criminalize homelessness as aggressively as other major cities"
I don't think that matters - the op's point still stands. Do you think criminalising homelessness solves the problem? It just (poorly) hides it. There may be a different between the 'working' poor and the mentally ill that you point out but I'd be willing to bet the mentally ill aren't left to live on the street and fend for themselves in Cuba.
I was pointing out a difference between the reasons for poverty (mental illness, etc.) between the homeless and people who live in poverty in third world countries (political/socio-economic oppression, etc.).
I don't believe in criminalizing homelessness as it's a public health issue but I would contest the opinion that it poorly hides it. Look at any thread about New Yorkers complaining about SF and count how many times they talk about how the streets of New York have so many less homeless people. Of course, they probably don't understand the reasons very well (Rudolph Giulianis war on the homeless, etc.) but it certainly seems effective at hiding it when you either lock up homeless, force them to go underground and out of sight, or buy them a bus ticket to sunny California.
I agree with you that criminalization doesn't solve any real problems, it just sweeps them under the rug. Short of wide public support and funding for an expansion of social services, housing, and in some cases institutionalization, I don't expect any solution to the problem anytime soon.
Do you think that poor social service provision is a more important factor than the the homeless being insufficiently criminalized? If you do, you should probably clarify that.
I read this as the commenter implying other places do criminalize the homeless more, not that criminalizing the homeless more is good or ideal. Simply pointing out that the reason you see more homeless around in SF is that it's not aggressively criminalized. Not sure why making that statement carries the implication that they should be criminalized.
This might have been your impression, coming straight from Canada. I visited Cuba a decade ago, having traveled in Latin America for > 1 year. I can't say that Cuba seemed to be worse off than many of these other countries.
Ahh I see how my comment could have been interpreted as meaning "everyone in Cuba lives like that." That's not what I meant. Outside of the few resorts I had access to there were always people begging and the beaches were spotted with shacks in severe disrepair. The stark contrast is what stuck with me.
exactly. The Latin America is filled with countries there people are poor and powerless and oppressed by their government and non-government organizations (criminal and drug cartels, guerrillas, left and right paramilitaries, etc...) As Cuba was an ally of USSR such policies were reasonable back then. The USSR had disappeared 23 years ago though...
>" I've seen worse conditions in both Costa Rica ... "
It depends on your definition of worse. In Cuba there was a general shortage of several basic items (toilet paper, eggs, meat... etc.) were most people (the only exception is the political class) have to face rationing and long lines. As far as I know that is inexistent in Costa Rica.
Inadequate overall wealth to supply basic needs leads to lines and rationing in socialist systems, and just pricing goods out of the reach of non-elites in basically capitalist systems, so the symptoms look a bit difference but the substance is much the same.
Except when it is not. In Venezuela we are facing similar problems and even when people have the money you can't buy what you need, not even if you are on a elite.
It has more to do with the incompetence in economic areas rather than a capacity of making wealth.
The US figure reflects very long careers; late retirements; investment in large teams of trauma specialists due to high war, car crash, and gunshot wound rates; a high percentage of women physicians working part time; and a high concentration of expensive specialists with no documentation that they improve outcomes and paid for by large federal government subsidies.
The actual amount of primary physician and general surgery time available to Americans is very low compared to other countries with similar numbers of doctors. Most countries also allow as many as half the cases administered by fully licensed doctors with 12-20 years of post-secondary schooling in the USA to be handled by nurses and pharmacists. Prescriptions for sniffles or heartburn, basic non-controlled medications, simple physical assessments, and vaccinations are handled by professionals the USA would consider nurses or pharmacists or unlicensed assistants in most first world countries. In the USA those jobs take the time of physicians.
And that is the top reason, among many other unrelated ones, that health care is so much more expensive in the USA. US doctors are fewer and have more responsibilities and thus must be paid extraordinarily to work very long hours and not retire at the usual ages or else some must go without care. It's not an accident; medical societies have blocked medical school expansion for decades until recently as the population grew.
Cuba, on the other hand, appears to be counting nurse practitioners as physicians. That's fine to do because they're highly qualified, but it makes the numbers not comparable across countries.
> It's not an accident; medical societies have blocked medical school expansion for decades until recently as the population grew.
Sort of. There are a lot of very common misconceptions around this.
The AAMC (not AMA!) limited the number of medical school students until about ten years ago, at which point they announced an explicit goal of expanding the number of graduates from medical school.
However, this doesn't mean anything in practice[0], because the bottleneck isn't the medical school graduates - it's the residency programs. As a medical school graduate, you have an MD, but you are not actually qualified to practice medicine. That requires usually four years of training (minimum), plus several more for various specialties.
These programs are costly to run, and so hospitals that offer residency programs are funded by the federal government to do so (through Medicare). The only way to expand the number of practicing physicians in the US is to skimp on quality during training (which nobody wants to do), or to increase funding through Medicare (which nobody wants to do.
> US doctors are fewer and have more responsibilities and thus must be paid extraordinarily to work very long hours and not retire at the usual ages
They also have to be paid a hefty amount to pay off massive debt. If you see an attending physician in his 30s (or even 40s), even if he's making a respectable amount of money, there's a good chance he still has a negative net worth. The level of debt of course varies by location, specialty, and quality of education, but it's rather misleading to look at an e.g. $200K/year income for a physician and compare that to the equivalent amount in the tech industry.
In this case, the bureaucracy eventually overcame institutional resistance of the wealthiest professional Americans to reform of a system that limited doctors and thus vastly expanded their incomes. I expect that same government and institutional bureaucracy to eventually increase significantly the residencies, but it will move in that typical slow motion of bureaucracy eventually doing good.
When it eventually adds to our production of new doctors, it will have a bigger impact than ten Obamacares or single payer plans or HIPAAs.
The debit of American medical students is as legendary as the vast incomes of doctors, both wildly out of proportion to the rest of the first world. Hazing practices during residency are also still crazy, though much reduced after glacial bureaucratic reforms.
I don't know if there's any better idea there than to hire and appoint good administrators to plan better. A violent revolution like the one in Cuba that built a better health care system seems too extreme.
Licensing practice is mostly at the state level (aside from certain DEA pharmacy regulations). States that promote licensing, liability, and practice regulations that encourage more pharmacists and nurse practitioners to practice more independently have much lower overall health care costs (also dental hygienists, opticians, &c).
Your pharmacist is part of a system that got your health care right this time.
yes, good points. It seems that Cuba has become something of a health resource for other countries in Latin America, where there is much less access to doctors (and NPs) than in Cuba. Middle-class people in those countries travel to Cuba for health care. At least that is picture I get when I've spoken to a bunch of people in the region over the past few years. I hear about a number of people travel to Cuba, others got to Chile, and almost no one can afford to go to US to get treated.
At the south of the continent, it is far more common to travel to Argentina, to get free health care. As Argentina has a large public health system, (that has been gradually loosing a lot of quality in the past 20 years) it's common that poor people from Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay travel and get attention for free in Argentina's public hospitals.
I highly recommend reading "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot" which explain how dictatorships can pick a handful of indicators and elevate them to first-world levels while still making everybody's life miserable.
The indicators per se are not gamed. Instead, you select a few indicators like "Olympic medals", "life expectancy" (etc) and commit every resource of the country to them at all cost and without regard for everything else. The indicators you picked will show amazing and you can use them to justify your ideology. Pretty much like a SEO hack, they are hacking public opinion (looks like it worked on you).
Japan has a lot of welfare fraud which inflates their life expectancy numbers. It also has a fairly low level of income inequality relative to their per capita GDP which helps things. (AKA few poor people.) And to top it off universal healthcare which significantly increases a population’s life expectancy.
Edit: Arguably the high food prices reduce obesity which is really important.
> Arguably the high food prices reduce obesity which is really important
I don't think it's the food prices, because the cheapest foods tend to be the ones that lead to obesity (among other health problems). Fast food burgers and white bread are not expensive here in Japan, but fresh fruits and vegetables are.
I think there are many factors, but the pretty great universal health care system has to be a big one. As a working adult in Tokyo, I receive tons of preventative care and thorough annual check ups. It's cheap, and virtually all health care for my kids is completely free until they turn 15.
The lack of equal access to health care in the USA is almost certainly a reason that poor people die 5 years earlier than affluent people[1]. I would guess good access to health care is a big reason that Cuba does so well on that front, despite its obvious economic obstacles.
my experience in Japan is they eat more vegetables more often. I think this helps in so many ways. They also eat too much salt, smoke too much and probably work too many hours, but apparently the vegetables and great tea are doing something right.
You're focusing too much on Japan. Japan was just an example. This number that Cuba excels on has little relation to health. So what is the point that Cuba has this great number? It's just a number.
Canada, which has even fewer physicians, has a life expectancy only 2 years less than Japan.
Ehh, just pointing out that having more doctors is not that important from a public heath perspective. Plenty of people in the US for example only really see/need a doctor at birth for vaccinations and then suddenly die in there late 80's or early 90's. For much the same reasons that some people actually lived into there late 90's 2000+ years ago.
If nothing breaks there is little need to fix anything.
Comparing statistics from small, homogeneous populations to statistics from larger, heterogeneous populations is fraught with peril. Doubly so for metrics on education and health. (I like to call this the Scandinavian Fallacy)
As engineers we would never compare uptime statistics from a small, niche startup serving a couple thousand people to uptime statistics from, say, Google. Why do we immediately ignore these principles outside of engineering?
small, niche startups usually have poor uptime on their services. we commend them if they have a year up (hell, if they still exist after a year), but criticize Google for being down once every few years.
therefore, if you want to bring in the analogy of startups and Google, it should be even more impressive that small countries (viz. people in small countries, viz. Cuba) live longer than Google (viz. people in large countries, viz. United States).
No, because the specific topics at hand are not comparable (service uptime and, say, physicians per capita). The analogy was meant only to illustrate the fact that you cannot (should not) directly compare statistics from such different entities without attempting to control for the variables.
What does the heterogeneous populations of the US have to do with it? Maybe when it comes to life expectancy you're right, because genetics is a large factor in that. But when it comes to literacy rate and the proportion of physicians that's entirely down to government policy.
Do you really think the US couldn't beat Cuba on those metrics if they decided spending money on those topics was more important than spending money on the military?
I believe the point that is being made is that the US was designed from the outset with the idea that diverse factions compete against factions, and that was the only way such a large and varied democracy could work. See Federalist 10.
Citizens of the US have wildly varied views about what it means to be a good American, and we often have greater cohesion to groups such as race or state, etc. Just about the only thing we do agree upon is when there is an existential threat to the country, hence military growth over time.
Cuba or Norway have much less divided societies to govern, and Cuba's leadership is so small that it can focus on specific issues in a way US politics cannot.
Sure, that's a factor in US politics. I'm just saying that has nothing to do with having a heterogeneous population as the parent was claiming.
The parent was comparing the proportion of physicians in Cuba v.s. the US and claiming that the US couldn't match Cuba because of its heterogeneous population.
Now if you look at the WHO report on density of physicians[1] you see first-wold countries like Japan and Canada ranking below the US on the number of physicians per-capita.
I think numbers like these have a lot more to do with how the health care system is structured than the sort of population you have. E.g. maybe nurses in Japan and Canad have a bigger role in health care than the US.
Huh? I'm a big proponent of eliminating agrochemicals, but you've set up a huge straw man here: No one is arguing that agrochemicals are "necessary" in the sense that agriculture is impossible without it (indeed, millennia of experience prove otherwise). Rather, the rationale is that they allow us to increase productivity for the same input of acreage and man-hours.
I'm not saying that agrochemical proponents are right (I've heard that crop rotation is as good or better than synthetic fertilizers, though it's hard to argue against the labor efficiencies of huge tractors and lots of pest/herbicides), but the simple fact that agriculture is possible without agrochemicals doesn't disprove the argument that it might be better with them.
It's the same in India and other countries I've visited. Trade alone won't help. I realize India and Cuba are apples and oranges, but my point is that significant trade doesn't necessarily trickle down to the poorest.
That said, I do hope it does help some people in Cuba who have fallen victim to unnecessary stresses caused by the embargo.
That's absolutely not true. People live better across the world today than they lived 50 or even 20 years ago. I read statistics somewhere that people in some obscure African country today (can't recall the name) have a living standards of Finland of 20 years ago.
Think about this: the major health issue nowadays across the world is obesity, not hunger.
Other Caribbean countries are like that without embargoes though. The first time I went to the dominican I saw all kinds of shacks made out of whatever they could fine/steal. The second time they built a new highway that avoided this and basically you ran through fields. I was disappointed because I wanted to show my family the real DR.
Caribbean countries are typical areas that lost their economic identity and are now basically overpopulated. The reasons people moved (or rather were dragged) there, are no more; and they would probably do fine if only they could go back to pre-1500 population levels (or thereabout) and just live off tourism. But they can't, so they will keep struggling to find new economic identities.
The Cuban revolution could ignore this for 30 years, because of their ties with the USSR and emphasis on redistribution of existing resources; and then the old problems came back once the USSR crumbled. Now they are trying to build an economic identity around healthcare and education, and without the embargo (which stops technology from entering the country) they might actually succeed in ways that will hopefully inspire other islands.
I visited Cuba a month or so ago and one thing that struck me was the way a general lack of wealth didn't manifest it's self in a way in you'd associate with impoverished people in developed countries. The quality of the health and education systems are tangible and one of the biggest points of contention from the people I spoke to seemed to be the lack of internet.
>"The quality of the health and education systems are tangible "
I will be very careful with that statement. Cuba government is very good at propaganda and making people to think that.
In Venezuela we have a first hand experience about that since there is a lot of "collaboration" between both countries (basically oil in exchange of medical and education services). The result is a lot of cases about medical malpractices.
Also education is very opinionated with a strong emphasis in political indoctrination.
> Aside from the beautiful beaches the thing that struck me most was the desperate poverty of people living in shacks outside the 5 star resorts.
This is, unfortunately, not a problem unique to Cuba. I had this very same reaction when my wife and I vacationed in Jamaica. To get to this lush, tropical all-inclusive resort, you spend two hours riding in a minibus across bumpy barely-paved roads through some of the most abject poverty I've witnessed anywhere. It was very difficult to reconcile the insulated world of endless food and finely manicured lawns inside the resort with the world you witness just outside its gates.
I'm also not sure whether the flooding of subsidized US agricultural products will benefit the poorest in Cuba. Take Haiti for instance that went from self sufficiency to a net importer of rice when local producers can't compete with US subsidies.
That's theoretically a good thing. If it costs less to eat rice from the US, then that capital can be put to use in other ways. The problem can be an existing large imbalance in income producing resources. If rice agriculture is the only thing available, then wealth imbalance can/will increase and power dynamics start looking like oil or natural resource rich countries.
If, on the other hand, people are able to eek out improved standards of living, in general, with savings on food costs, they can increase health and education spending and get into a virtuous cycle of increased living standards.
There have been good things happening in Cuba before this announcement such as issuing private business licenses and allowing people to sell their homes (instead of the old bartering system).
Cuba actually has an incredible socialized medicine healthcare system, and the US embargo specifically carves out an exception for cancer pharmaceuticals developed and manufactured there. Its not that far fetched that you would see medical tourism take off from Florida with its vast retiree population.
If I were in the travel business in Florida, I'd start advertising now to get your name out there, and fly to Havana to have a conversation with Raúl Castro about how much yearly revenue you could be bringing in (all in USD I might add). About $39 billion/year is spent in Florida on Medicare; taking only a small piece of that is an incredible proposition for a country the size of Cuba.
"Despite a 50-year trade embargo by the United States and a post-Soviet collapse in international support, the impoverished nation has developed a world-class health care system. Average life expectancy is 77.5 years, compared to 78.1 years in the United States, and infant and child mortality rates match or beat our own. There’s one doctor for every 170 people, more than twice the per-capita U.S. average.
Not everything is perfect in Cuba. There are shortages of medicines, and the best care is reserved for elites. But it’s still a powerful feat. “In Cuba, a little over $300 per person is spent on health care each year. In the U.S., we’re spending over $7,000 per person,” said Drain, co-author of Caring for the World and an essay published April 29 in Science. “They’re able to achieve great health outcomes on a modest budget.”"
Please explain how that's any different than the US when you can't afford medicine or care? It makes little difference whether the shortage is due to no physical supply vs not being able to afford it. If you can't get healthcare, you can't get it.
“In 2013 over 20% of American adults are struggling to pay their medical bills, and three in five bankruptcies will be due to medical bills. While we are quick to blame debt on poor savings and bad spending habits, our study emphasizes the burden of health costs causing widespread indebtedness. Medical bills can completely overwhelm a family when illness strikes,” says Christina LaMontagne, VP of Health at NerdWallet. “Furthermore, 25 million people hesitate to take their medications in order to control their medical costs. Unfortunately this can lead to even worse financial outcomes as preventative treatments are not rendered and patients end up using expensive ambulance and ER care as their health worsens.”
I am an anesthesiologist. I worked in some of the best hospitals in the country in residency (UCSF and Harvard's BWH), and I worked in Detroit and I work now in a small Catholic hospital. And I can tell you that quality of care poor get is the same as rich ones get.
Then I also grew up in Soviet Union, where supposedly great healthcare was developed. And I can tell you they had a horrible health care like they have it in Cuba today.
If Cuban health care is so great, where is their great health research and studies? When did they publish the last time in Lancet on in NEJM? Where is that?
And I can tell you that quality of care poor get is the same as rich ones get.
That's because you're an anesthesiologist, and you see the acute cases which have already been admitted to the hospital. Poor people don't receive comparable long-term care. They don't receive comparable followup care after procedures. They can't afford lifesaving medication, they can't afford physical therapy, and they can't afford psychiatric care. They're denied for transplants, and many surgeons won't accept them as patients because their recovery stats are so much lower due to the aforementioned lack of followup.
All of this, without even mentioning the increasing number of specialty surgeons that operate on a cash-only basis, or the poor who don't go to the doctor simply because they cannot afford to. There's no comparison between the care that the rich and poor receive in this country, except possibly once they're unconscious in the OR.
> If Cuban health care is so great, where is their great health research and studies? When did they publish the last time in Lancet on in NEJM? Where is that?
Cuba invests heavily in cancer research.
"Even in times of economic hardship, the Cuban Government has remained constant in its political and financial support for biotechnology. In the last 20 years it invested around one billion US dollars in research and development. Today, the Cuban biotech industry holds around 1200 international patents and markets pharmaceutical products and vaccines in more than 50 countries. Exports are soaring and generate yearly revenues of several hundred million dollars."
What does getting basic primary care to the population (vaccinations, preventive care, well baby care) have to do with how many research papers get written?
I have worked in one of the top medical schools in the US, with world-class researchers, and know that there is very little there that is directly applicable to a population of rural farmers and impoverished city dwellers.
My conclusion is correct. Your conclusion comes from a propaganda perpetuated by dictators and their left-leaning sympathizers.
You can't describe Cuba's state of the art modern medicine by repeating a mantra that Cuba has more doctors, or Cuba delivers immunizations, etc etc.
When your grandma falls in the West and has a syncopal episode, she will get a full work up in the hospital. That includes a CT or MRI scan, Holter, maybe even cardiac EP study, pacemaker, and maybe cardiac ablation, etc etc.
The evidence is clear: Cuba does not and never had anything resembling a great health care system.
The US system -- despite being the mist expensive per capita in the world -- has both of those features, too; sure, the rationing method in the USA is different (rather than a formal elite with special access, we have pay-to-recieve and an elite defined by the ability to pay -- but there's still limited supply and the best care going only to the elite.
One of the lasting myths emerging from American rhetoric is that Cuba is starting from a low base. In fact the per capita GDP (as well as quality of life) is approximately on par with Panama and far exceeds the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Nicaragua. Tourism will remain the major source of foreign currency, but I think this change will lead to further development in pharmaceuticals and telecom.
Cubans enjoy greater economic and medical security under socialism than their counterparts in capitalist neighboring countries, even without subsidies from Russia and even with a strict embargo with the US.
The country is surprisingly politically free for a tiny nation facing an existential threat from a hostile super power that has invaded, attempted to assassinate it's leader, and funded militants dead set on violent revolution for decades.
American leadership immediately resorted to torture and illegal domestic surveillance when faced with the loss of two skyscrapers and 3,000 lives from an enemy that is more like an annoying gnat than an existential threat.
Cuba is a success story for socialism, and that is why US policy has sought to punish it, and to make it fail. The US did not want a successful socialist nation in it's sphere of influence, it gives the other nations subject to the Monroe doctrine ideas.
> The country is surprisingly politically free for a tiny nation facing an existential threat from a hostile super power that has invaded, attempted to assassinate it's leader, and funded militants dead set on violent revolution for decades.
Despite the fact that I spend much of my working life writing "if" statements, I am going to ignore everything after the sixth word of this sentence and express disbelief at how you can claim that Cubans are politically free.
Considering how much political freedom was jettisoned by the US after 9/11, I am amazed that Cuba sits as close to the free side of the freedom spectrum as it does considering its been under existential threat for five decades.
Cuba is not a completely free and open society, and I don't claim to be able to pinpoint with certainty where on the freedom spectrum it sits exactly. I have never been there, as a US citizen I have not been free to travel there.
We are not free to go see for ourselves, we just echo the dominant ideology.
From the reading I have done I know that Cuba is more free than I was led to believe in school. It is not an Orwellian state.
I cite a comment from this thread on the topic:
> When I was there I was struck by people saying how hard it was and how they had to get by on about US$2 a week - this was a while back now.
Cubans are free to complain, I've heard it's a national past time.
They are free to engage in politics within socialism.
They are not free to oppose socialism and work to end it.
Americans have never been free to undermine capitalism. Anarchist/Marxist revolutionaries in the US have always been monitored, harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed. See the history of the FBI, the Palmer raids, the Wobblies, Joe McCarthy, the black panthers, SDS, etc...
The US has given the Cuban government justification to curtail rights. This justification would not exist if the US would have respected Cuban sovereignty and not tried to murder it's leader, invade and destabilize.
How do you tell the difference between a sincere citizen activist and a foreign spy when the most powerful empire the world has known is actively trying to sabotage your government?
In the US in the years after 9/11 we heard a dire meme repeated over and over that went something like "If we get hit again it will be martial law" and we mostly accepted that as inevitable.
I find the finger pointing at Cuba to be unfair and lacking historical context.
Indeed, I don't think the communist government would remain in power long if they ever had a free election. When I was there I was struck by people saying how hard it was and how they had to get by on about US$2 a week - this was a while back now.
His economic argument is just as wrong as a political argument would have been: Cuba is a complete failure economically and has been for the last 50 years.
Cuba is third world poor. A country where the average person earns $300 to $500 per month, is a slave pen. State sponsored slavery is the only way you can repress people to such an extreme extent as to hold their standard of living that low for 50 years.
Given there has never been an economically successful Socialist nation in world history, it makes perfect sense that Cuba would be a failure just like all the rest.
In 2007, the life expectancies at birth were as follows (World Bank data):
Cuba, 78.26 years;
Latin America and Caribbean, 73.13 years;
United States, 77.99 years.[24]
The mortality rates for children under five in 2007 were as follows (World Bank):
Cuba, 6.5;
Latin America and Caribbean, 26.37;
United States, 7.60;
You are right, Cuba is third world poor and they still beat their capitalist neighbors and even the wealthy and powerful US in life expectancy and infant mortality.
Cuba does so much with so little because of the radical idea that we are all in this together. Cuba spends $300 per citizen on health care, the US spends $7000. I spent $5000 personally just this year on health care and I'm young and healthy.
Those in capitalist countries are getting fleeced, and Cuba shows us that. If Cuban socialism didn't exist I couldn't point out these facts, and that is why Cuban socialism was such a threat and why the US has acted so insecure towards the tiny island's revolution.
I don't want the US to adopt the Cuban system, I just believe we had no right to violate their sovereignty, and having different political systems out there lets us have a sort of A/B test for politics. I don't believe a global political and economic monoculture is healthy.
As an American I wouldn't want to trade places at birth with a Cuban, but if I had the choice between being born to asset-less parents in Jamaica or asset-less parents in Cuba, I know I would be healthier, more materially secure and far safer from violent crime in Cuba. I also would have a much greater chance of not dying during my birth.
Compared to their neighbors? After adjusting for a worldwide-unique embargo?
Honestly, I'm not into communism and am very surprised that their figures are as good as they are. It's dumbfounding.'
I guess it's more a statement of how hard it is to come up from the bottom whatever your system is. Russia and China both showed great results in their first couple 5-year plans before communism petered out and didn't deliver further gains.
If Cuba is such a success story, why do they have to force their people to stay and why do people risk their lives to escape and defect to the United States anyway?
This has to be a troll post. Cuba has operated under a violent, murderous, strict dictatorship for five decades. The exact opposite of politically free. Fidel was never afraid to murder his competition, or anyone that dared to oppose him in fact. If your country hasn't seen a leadership change since the 1950s, and you have zero freedom of speech or press, what you have is not freedom.
Sugar, shellfish, citrus and coffee. Medical products and tobacco are small parts of what they export. They also export nickel and cobalt which have generated more than $2B/yr in some years.
It would be easy to increase tourism which would bring in foreign currency in a similar manner to exports. Just dropping the restrictions on US tourists visiting and on Cuban locals being able to run shops, restaurants and lodgings would probably pretty much double GNP.
This is actually (amusingly) incredibly unpopular in cigar circles who are calling this the "end of an era".
Most discussions seems to center around the doom and gloom of quality dropping and prices increasing as the US/Cuban cigar market opens and the demand for CC increases.
No discussion on the legality of owning CC changing amusingly. As apparently everyone forgets that smoking a Cuban Cigar can be considered an act of treason currently.
When I was in Cuba, a lot of people I talked to were obviously in favor of lifting the embargo, but others expressed misgivings about what it would do to their culture and society. Cuba is an indescribably weird place where almost everybody is (on paper anyways) poor, yet education, health care and the arts flourish. Violent crime is virtually unheard of, say what you will about how they achieve that. They are very proud of their resilience in the face of a half-century's worth of crippling U.S. sanctions--in particular the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Normalization will lead to a rise in the Cuban material standard of living, and with it will come all of the attendant social woes that we have here. That's neither totally good nor totally bad, and it should be up to the Cuban people to choose their own path, but I can see why you might oppose this for other than purely selfish reasons.
> Cuba is an indescribably weird place where almost everybody is (on paper anyways) poor, yet education, health care and the arts flourish. Violent crime is virtually unheard of
I grew up in the Eastern Bloc, I was in college when the revolutions happened. Now I live in the US.
When I describe the life under communists to people who grew up here, I mention, of course, the lack of political freedom, the demagoguery, etc. But then I say things like "OTOH unemployment was zero, health care was free (\), college was free, and everyone was sure to receive a livable pension from the state when they retired." Oh, and there was a decline and clear commercialization of the arts immediately after revolution.
Then everyone gives me odd looks.
It's like they expect a tale of Aragorn vs. Mordor, with clear heroes and villains. It's not like that. Life in the US is clearly better overall, but there are some interesting points to be learned from the ol'country too. Not kicking the destitute to the curb seems the most important.
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(\) - if you felt the impulse to point out that "free" really means "paid out of your taxes", please be informed that Captain Obvious and his minions are not welcome here. Yes, we get it, ktnxbai.
Unemployment is a feature of a regulated capitalist economy. The primary source of unemployment is the minimum wage. There are a nearly unlimited source of jobs available if you would accept $1/hour as payment, and if you have no other employment then at least it gets you experience/recommendations and enough to buy some food.
The minimum wage is a trade off. You create e.g. 10% unemployment so that the ~4.3% of people who make the minimum wage (and still have jobs) can make $7.25/hour instead of $5 or $3. There is a legitimate question as to whether this is the right trade off, but people seem to be in favor of it.
A food, anyway, provided you aren't spending your $8 a day on rent.
How would social services work in this system without minimum wage? Would people making below a minimum wage deemed necessary to house and feed and care for oneself be eligible for benefits?
> A food, anyway, provided you aren't spending your $8 a day on rent.
When you have the choice between a job that pays $10 and a job that pays $7.25, you generally pick the one that pays $10. When the choice is between $7.25 and $4 or $4 and $1 the choice is similarly obvious. But so is the choice between making $8/day and buying eight pounds of pasta/rice/beans/etc. or being unemployed and hungry.
> How would social services work in this system without minimum wage? Would people making below a minimum wage deemed necessary to house and feed and care for oneself be eligible for benefits?
That's how it works already. People making minimum wage qualify for government benefits that phase out at higher income levels.
> Unemployment wasn't that low before the minimum wage was established. What was the primary source of unemployment then?
The poor state of travel and communication at the time. You couldn't exactly hitchhike to the nearest city with a public library and find work via the internet in 1938.
> In a free market economy, unemployment is a necessity
Perhaps a "necessity" in the sense that it's a necessary outcome of a system designed like that.
E.g., you build an engine according to the principles of thermodynamics in this universe, a necessary outcome is wasted heat. The engine would not work if you prohibited the waste; or it would become something else entirely (not a Carnot machine anymore, or whatever).
The trick is to figure out a system where the necessary outcomes are not very undesirable. Pretty hard to do that with the entire human society.
I mean it's a necessity in that you need an elastic supply of labor to respond to the market forces that ostensibly drive a free market economy to meet the needs of its participants.
Cuba flaunts the US hegemony from right under their noses, but they have great wealth in their geographic location, and their society. Cuba could become the Switzerland of the western hemisphere given the right outset.
The US is the militant world hegemon. Which happily sends uniformed killers halfway around the world to take control. Proximity to the US isn't healthy for freedom-lovers with browner skin.
It's a good thing, but Cuba is about to be gentrified. I really wish I had visited before now, Cuba is going to lose a lot of culture in the long term. I can envision McDonald's and Starbucks everywhere.
Your perspective is flawed because you are projecting too logical a world view on the opponents of rapprochement, but from an emotionally conservative perspective it's seen as giving up the fight against evil.
Agriculture, including tobacco production, accounts for only approximately 4% of Cuban GDP--after heavyweights like tourism (embargo just prevents Americans from going there), gas export, industrial production, and the medical sector. Of greater interest to HN readers than the implications for one trivial luxury good, Cuba has one of the greatest mismatches between literacy (~97%) and telecom development and accessibility (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba) in the world.
Not true. I went to Cuba twice from the USA, legally as a student with an OFAC license. This was in 2002 and 2003.
First time via Toronto (Baltimore -> Toronto -> Havana).
Second time we took one of they very few available IIRC American Airlines flights from Miami. Baltimore -> Miami -> Havana.
Believe it or not, the Canada trip was much easier. In Miami we encountered a lot of hostility from the Miami Cuban immigrant community. Eg, the gate to fly to Havana was really hidden in an obscure place between two terminals, and we felt people were jerking us around when we asked how to find it (we were literally sent to both extreme ends of the airport a couple times). Returning we had some aggressive questions from an immigrations officer when he found out we weren't visiting family there, and sent us to the line for getting our bags fully inspected for farming produce contraband.
So yeah, it is possible to fly there from the USA legally, but in our opinion flying waaaay out of the way to Canada was actually easier and less stressful.
Of course, but the problem is that US authorities have a problem with you giving US dollars to Cuban businesses. You can go there and spend, sure, but when you go back, somebody will (should) knock at your door. Obviously this doesn't happen to simple tourists, only to Jay-Z/Beyonce and businessmen.
I'd argue quality devs are mostly born and self-made and then slowly polished over a long period of time -- not the kinds of folks who are cranked out of a vocational school. It's an intellectual craft. It's not manning a fry bin.
> smoking a Cuban Cigar can be considered an act of treason currently.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."
Like most of the Constitution, I'm sure that there's way more to understanding this section than reading the written words. Nonetheless I'm skeptical of the claim that smoking a cigar could be considered treason.
> Criminal penalties for violating the Regulations range up to 10 years in prison, $1,000,000 in corporate fines, and $250,000 in individual fines. Civil penalties up to $65,000 per violation may also be imposed.
As a larger cigar smoker. This is largely marketing from non-Cuban companies. While a lot of Caribbean tobacco is very very good, Cubans are the best without question. And this isn't so much like wine where experts fail to recognize quality in double blinds. A proper cuban cigar has a very distinct veining pattern, and far more almost oily texture. You can tell by touch alone with little training.
Seasoned critics can name the nationality of a cigar just by touch its actually very cool to see (I'm nowhere near that good lol a few different countries are too similar for me).
And the "golden age" of Cuban cigars is often cited as before WW2 so either way its long pasted.
Brazilian tobacco tastes good, but leaves are not spotless like in Cuba, so Brazilian cigar makers have to import them just for the "capa" layer (the external layer in cigars). Many countries do the same.
Nope. I smoke cigars weekly and I can tell you Cuban cigars are the bests (they are allowed in my country).
In the U.S. you will find the same brands like Partagas, but they're made with blends from other countries than Cuba, and they are really inferior. I tried a bunch of them and Cubans wins everytime.
Its actually been catching on in the US. Its not as good as Cuban, but its far superior to most Caribbean varieties I find. Has an oddly cinnamon spicy flavor (I'm in the US so Cubas are rare unless you hunt for them) rather good.
I would expect this to be officially settled before the embargo is actually lifted. Ownership of nationalised industries and other US assets has always been item #2 on the diplomatic agenda, with #1 being military alliances (originally with the USSR, now Venezuela and China).
I expect the Cuban government will concede on a few national-level items (like legitimacy of the Guantanamo base) in exchange for the US government publicly affirming that any ownership claim from US businesses and individuals pre-revolution will be considered null and void. Anything else would be complete madness. Apart from difficulty in tracking original documents (which were likely destroyed during and after the revolution), handing nationalised assets to US citizens would mine the economic power base of the ruling elite in Cuba.
Consider hotels: they power one of the few sizeable economic activities on the island, i.e. tourism; but any hotel built before the revolution (and there are quite a few, all around the island) would have to revert to (likely US) previous owners, instantly transferring a lot of wealth out of the island. Not gonna happen.
Exiles who left the country. If you were to speak to elderly Cubans who fled they would tell you about how they all had their possessions taken from them.
Any reason to expect they have a stronger or more likely to succeed claim than, say, the Japanese-American families whose possessions were taken from them in WW2?
I guess this will partly depend on the sentiment of the public. If you look at retributions for damage in World War Two, one sees that even cases where people _sold_ items to German citizens (possibly under duress, but after decades, and with many archives destroyed in the war, that is hard to prove in some cases) that were settled in the fifties or sixties got reopened decades later.
The USA and OPEC flood the market with oil (literally), crashing prices and sending the Ruble into a spiral. Just as Cuba starts to worry about Russian support going forward, the USA swoops in to provide some economic bracing.
I think this move effects Venezuela more than Russia. It is Venezuela that provides cheaper oil cuba in return for many services like healthcare etc. Now that oil is already cheap, Cuba does not need for patronage of Venezuela.
You may have the causality the wrong way around here here: with Venezuela's oil revenues cratering and what remains of their economy after a decade of Chavismo spiraling rapidly downwards, it's unlikely they can afford to be Cuba's sugar daddy for much longer.
This is the correct answer. Venezuela is begging China for loans presently to delay an inevitable default. They were already in disaster mode before oil plunged. It's a smart move on Cuba's part to reconcile with the US.
This analysis is a little off-- Cuba has received only symbolic support from Russia since the fall of the USSR. However, dynamics in the oil market are significant for Venezuela, their chief ally (and main supplier of energy resources!).
Putin handed Cuba $32 billion dollars a mere 5 months ago:
"During the [July 2014] visit, Putin agreed to write off $32 billion in Russian debt to Cuba, leaving just over $3 billion left to pay over the next 10 years. This was a significant economic weight lifted from Havana, whose gross domestic product shrank by up to a third with the loss of direct aid and subsidies from Moscow after the Soviet Union fell. Putin and Raúl Castro also agreed to new deals in energy, health and disaster prevention and help with building a vast new seaport. Moscow is also now exploring for oil and gas in Cuban waters, right in the U.S.’s backyard."
I think it's fair to say tensions between the US and Russia are increasing over the Ukraine. An obvious, and historically effective, Russian intimidation tactic is a military presence in Cuba. Improving relations with Cuba makes that a bit tougher to achieve. I'm not saying this is the reason, just another positive outcome.
There are a ton of good reasons to improve relations, and few reasons not to.
I think you're giving these people way too much credit. As if the shale oil boom was a plot all along. And it doesn't seem like they've had much support from Russia for most of the last 25 years so why would they worry about losing it now?
I think it's tempting to connect the dots. But they're just dots.
I believe Cuba is just collateral damage in the bigger things going on, but if the US can snatch away one of Putin's toys at an opportune time and turn the screws a little harder, why not?
Cuba will happy accept economic aid from the US (in the form of lifted sanctions) in the light that the Russian oil industry faces the possibility of collapse. Everyone expects a sudden humanitarian/tourist opening, but I don't believe that's going to be as quick.
"Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary." [1]
Thank you for looking that up and providing the reference. The M-W argument is flawed when the bit that "literally" modifies already is hyperbole. "Abuse of language sends me through the roof" is hyperbole. "Abuse of language literally sends me through the roof" is just ridiculous.
Since this is HN, does anyone know what the IT sector is like in Cuba?
Apparently they have a university dedicated to IT stuff[1] but I don't read Spanish and I couldn't really find any projects/research page on there. The only thing that seems to be portrayed is a Linux distro called Nova.[2]
On your second link, there's a great pun on "HumanOS", which in Spanish simply means "Humans".
On the university site, there's a few hidden links to Cuban Mozilla fans[1], a digital publication for open source software [2], a youth-targeted site for open-source users[3] (seems down), and a women-targeted site for IT [4]. Note that there's more, but everything seems to be down at the moment, it might be the HN effect
There are lot's of different projects internally. You have to remember that the cuban people does not have direct internet access, so is harder for Cubans to distribute their open source projects.
Here in Miami there are a number of Cuba initiatives for IT/tech education and entrepreneurship/startups. Happy to put you in touch with people if you're interested.
My parents and I left Cuba when I was a child and proceeded to live in various parts of the world before eventually settling in the US. I would like to go back and visit some relatives there at some point, and as a Cuban-born naturalized American citizen I know it is legal for me to do so even currently, but I was informed that I couldn't actually enter Cuba with only an American passport. The Cuban govt requires that I enter as a Cuban citizen, which means obtaining a Cuban passport that costs $200 to renew every 2 years [0]. I'm sure this is mostly just an easy way of extracting money, but I sure look forward to official diplomatic relations being established and hope some of these requirements change -- I don't feel very comfortable entering Cuba as a Cuban citizen and not knowing where my rights end or begin.
The passport you use is irrelevant: if Cuban still considers you a citizen, and decides it wants you to do military service or something, you're screwed even if you entered on a US passport.
I'd recommend formally renouncing your Cuban citizenship (and getting the documentation to certify this) if you want to be 100% sure there are no hassles.
I'm thrilled to see this. This is the sort of hopey changey I was looking for from Obama. Maintaining the status quo in re Cuba is just mindless stubbornness at this point.
It seems like people commonly raise the fact that Cuba still jails political dissidents. However, while accurate, it ignores the many MANY countries the US hasn't embargoed which do similar or worse.
For one example, the US and Saudi Arabia are "best buddies" but yet the Saudi government is often doing extremely anti-freedom stuff. I mean this is the only country on earth where women are forbidden from driving.
So my point is less "Cuba is the good guy" and more "if they're going to continue the embargo then keep it consistent, hit Egypt, Pakistan, China, Yemen, and so on" for it also.
In 2008 G W Bush has removed North Korea from Embargo list, and embargo has to be renewed every year based on "some" Enemy Act of 1917. Cuba is the only country in US embargo list, I understand it is personal as Cuba is just few miles away from US, but still the embargo is inhumane and people are suffering. John Oliver has a very interesting piece on his HBO show.
Unfortunately I do not think this is the full truth. I believe there should not be an embargo BUT the embargo is not the main cause of poverty in Cuba.
Cuba has a huge tourism industry. A lot of the business that serve tourists are state owned. Where does this money go? Everything from hotels to restaurants are state owned. Who is profiting here?
I think at this point its less personal and more choice. Cuba chooses to run its govern and keep their people in poverty, the US chooses to keep them on an embargo list. Comparing this to Mexico is a poor example. There is ample current trade with Mexico that if cut off, would hurt the country. The US has not traded with Cuba for a LONG time but has traded with most other world super powers. Nobody here to blame but the Cuban government.
Technically wouldn't it be everyone profiting since it's going to government? If it was an foriegn business owner like alot of resorts in the bahamas, who would be profiting there? Certainly not the people living on the island.
Your assumption rests on the notion that the government = everyone, and that the people in power aren't focusing that money toward their own pockets. I'm not aware of a Socialist government that has ever existed that did anything but line their own pockets while the people starved and went without.
Mao's China, Lenin & Stalin's USSR, old Vietnam, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Hugo's Venezuela, Fidel's Cuba, North Korea. It's the same story every time.
The one thing I don't understand is how the US embargo is to blame for the lackluster Cuban economy. Cuba is free to trade with most Western countries including the EU and Canada.
How much of the economic misery is due to the Castro government and how much is due to the US embargo?
Presidents Clinton and Bush both waived that part law, and Canada, Mexico, and the EU all don't recognize it. So I'm not sure it has had any real impact other than antagonizing US allies, and generating some private lawsuits.
> Presidents Clinton and Bush both waived that part law
Part of the issue with Helms-Burton is that the retaliatory provisions include a private cause of action for any expatriates whose (former) property is impacted, so that it is impossible for the executive branch to control the application of the law.
> and Canada, Mexico, and the EU all don't recognize it.
Whether foreign countries recognize it has no impact on a anyone subject to it if they have assets that become subject to the jurisdiction of US courts.
> So I'm not sure it has had any real impact other than antagonizing US allies, and generating some private lawsuits.
Those private lawsuits are an additional risk, which is taken into account when firms decide whether or not to do business in or with Cuba -- and which are a negative factor in those decisions. Which illustrates how the embargo's impacts extend beyond just US-Cuba trade.
Yes, I agree there is private lawsuit risk, and noted it. I was responding to the parent saying "So no trade for Cuba, then." There is trade, there are some lawsuits, and the US Govt. policy is to ignore the law.
> Whether foreign countries recognize it has no impact on a anyone subject to it if they have assets that become subject to the jurisdiction of US courts.
I disagree, but regardless, the fear of private lawsuits hasn't kept large European, canadian, and Mexican companies from doing business and trading with Cuba.
Some parts of it, like agriculture and medicine, have been relaxed, but most of it still stands. And what does it matter if the EU doesn't recognize it? E.g. Volkswagen better recognize it or Volkswagen will lose all sales in the US.
Is it plausible that Cubans would really be driving oldsmobiles if they had access to European or Asian cars? That's the only evidence you really need to understand that the embargo is, in practice, global.
Is it plausible that Cubans would really be driving oldsmobiles if they had access to European or Asian cars?
It sounds like the restrictions on cars comes from the Cuban gov't, not the embargo.
Until a few weeks ago, there was no way to legally transfer ownership of a vehicle like this. The only cars that could be freely bought and sold were those built before 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power. That's why there are still nearly 60,000 classic cars on Cuba's streets, but few late-model Hondas. Bringing in a new car requires special government permission and a 100 percent import tax...[1]
The US embargo -- and the palpable external target it presents -- is a major source of the longevity of the Castro regime (and the longevity of the regime itself motivates the maintenance of the embargo), so in a very real sense all of the misery resulting from the regime also can be blamed on the embargo, and vice versa. They aren't independent factors.
I don't disagree. The Castros have been helped plenty by the embargo by keeping public distain focused on the US rather than their own government's policies.
An american embargo on Mexico will effect Mexico in spades even if it can trade with others. I am not glorifying Castro, but we have hardly hurt Castro, the idea behind the embargo is to make it unbearable for Cubans and make them revolt against Castro - that did not happen in 50 years and so its about time to change the tactics. US is the giant that can infuse a boat load money via tourism, or capital or through access to new technology and services. US can influence Cuba more if its economy is coupled with America's. That how we tackled Communist Chinese, remember.
Sorry but the embrago doesn't stop them from trading with many of their neighbors. I'm getting sick of the left giving the horrible Castro regime a free pass by hysterically yelling, "embargo" everytime Cuba comes up.
Cuba's main problem is its leadership. The US coaxing it to a free market system that respects human rights and property rights is only good for Cuba. The Castros were more than willing to continue to starve their people and become the West's North Korea.
>John Oliver has a very interesting piece on his HBO show.
Maybe you should get your opinions from something other than lowest common denominator appeal comedians. Start here:
You are mistaken, the US embargo with Cuba does prevent Cuba from trading with other nations, as other nations are restricted in their USA trade if they do trade with Cuba.
Iirc, any vessel that trades with Cuba is restricted from trading with the USA within some time window. So clearly most Caribbean nations choose to focus their trades with the big USA partner.
Regarding human rights, as others have mentioned, we don't embargo countries that have far worse records.
The Cuban embargo is nothing but an antiquated relic of the Cold War that hurts the citizens of Cuba without having much impact on causing change in the government. And ironically it only serves to strengthen the government by giving the people an easy scapegoat for its problems.
Have you been to Cuba? I've been twice. Incredible experience and I highly recommend it.
> The changes follow a rare private intercession by Pope Francis, the Catholic Church’s first Latin-American pontiff, secret meetings between Cuban and American delegations at the Vatican.
*Hit-tip to Pope Francis...bien hecho.
I found that the most odd thing here. Obama personally needed a Pope to remind him about Cuba? I mean, it's good a church is doing something beneficial but it sounds strange.
as with the phrase, only Nixon could go to China, only the Pope could go to Cuba, if not the US. Pope Francis's reputation is nearly unassailable currently. Cuba being predominantly Catholic gave him an edge no one else would have, him being the first Latin American Pope is icing on the cake
First, it's important to note that the economic sanctions on Cuba require the action of the Senate to be lifted. That's virtually a foregone conclusion however.
U.S. policy usually tends to favour business. That's why the economic sanctions on Cuba were bound to be removed sooner or later. At present, there are some products (e.g. compressors and other items requiring a large foundry to produce) that are very difficult and expensive to get in Cuba because most companies that produce them are either American or owned by American companies. Smaller companies from countries such as Canada have made a practice of "bootlegging" for the Cubans. In recent years it has not been uncommon for a compressor skid to be produced in Texas, shipped to Alberta via rail, shipped to the East coast through Canada via rail, and finally shipped to Cuba.
The reason sanctions against Cuba are finally being dropped is probably related to the death or extreme old age of most everyone who can remember having property snatched away from them when the Cubans nationalized everything after the revolution. Subsequent generations of Cubans and americans have been brought up to distrust each other though. It won't be as easy as some think for U.S. companies to march back into Cuba and set up shop again. Companies that have been quietly running mines and building power plants for the Cubans over the last few decades will likely have the edge. It's going to take time and patience for trust to be restored.
There's more to the Cuban embargo than meets the eye. It is true that the Southern Florida Cuban exile community wields a disproportional amount of influence. Florida is almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and is a big state in terms of electoral votes; so when a sizeable block like the Cuban exiles votes a certain way, it can tip the balance.
However, that is not the entire story. If we (US) were really that concerned about the lost property of the Cubans expelled by Castro, we would also look inward and ponder the fate of the British supporters kicked out in 1776; the KMT supporters kicked out by Mao; etc.
If we can trade with China, Russia, etc. then there's no reason we can't trade with Cuba. In fact, the opening of the borders with USSR is often listed as one of the key factors in bringing it down; so why not do the same with Cuba?
It's kind of funny, but this won't actually bring all warm-n-fuzzies from the people most affected by it. The refugees/dissidents in Miami are saying this isn't going to change anything because it allows the Castro regime to double down on economic growth from new business relations with the US. The non-refugees are saying this will make immigration worse. The people both on the island and those illegally importing products into the country from Miami may face higher prices and tighter restrictions. And if political reform comes, it could be at the cost of dismantling the relatively strong public health and education systems.
I get the feeling that the embargo will last until Fidel reaches room temperature.
I do find it interesting that in recent years, Bacardi has been playing up its Cuban heritage. I suspect that they're itching to get back, but that whole issue of returning confiscated property stands in the way. Will Cuba end up with something like the Treuhandanstalt in post-reunification Germany?
I figure the last two years of President Obama's term are going to be one wild ride. He has clearly shown he could not if he harms others in his party politically and he certainly could care less what the Republicans think.
Freed from any need to cooperate; now that Republicans are in control; with Congress its going to be fun. Why do I say no need, with Reid in charge of the Senate he had to play by party rules, he is free of that.
Some moves will definitely be for the good, some may not be. Regardless it should be chaotic if not fun to watch
And while that's technically only a "section" of the Swiss embassy, a glance at a photo of the place makes it pretty clear that there's a bit more going on.
I've been to the Cuban interest section in Washington DC several times. It's not really an embassy in that diplomatic functions and freedoms don't exist like proper embassies.
The ambassador's freedoms are quite limited. Eg, at some point he was not allowed to leave the confines of the DC beltway. Diplomatic immunity be damned. Really sucked for us planning an event in my Baltimore uni for him to speak at, where the travel restriction came into effect just days before and we had to resort to video conf.
Well, that's the thing: since it's not an embassy, it doesn't have an ambassador with diplomatic privileges, it has a "chief".
But my point is that this is all just paper. Out in the real world, the US can (and probably will) pretty much just swap out the plaque outside the "US Interests Section" with one that says "US Embassy", with the chief and their assistants magically transformed into diplomats.
What are we going to do about all the trademark conflicts? US rum and cigar companies stole the brand names of famous Cuban companies, because they knew they could get away with it.
"Ospina describes how the Bacardi family and Company left Cuba after the Castro regime confiscated the Company’s Cuban assets on 15 October 1960; in particular, in nationalizing and banning all private property on the island as well as all bank accounts. However, due to concerns over the previous Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista the company had started foreign branches a few years prior to the revolution; the Company moved the ownership of the Company's trademarks, assets and proprietary formulas out of the country to the Bahamas prior to the revolution as well as constructing plants in Puerto Rico and Mexico after Prohibition to save import taxes for rum being imported to the US. This helped the company survive after the communist government confiscated without compensation all Bacardi assets in the country."
"More recently, Bacardi lawyers were influential in the drafting of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act which sought to extend the scope of the United States embargo against Cuba. In 1999, Otto Reich, a lobbyist in Washington on behalf of Bacardi, drafted section 211 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Appropriations Act, FY1999 (Pub.L. 105–277), a bill that became known as the Bacardi Act. Section 211 denied trademark protection to products of Cuban businesses expropriated after the Cuban revolution, a provision keenly sought by Bacardi. The act was aimed primarily at the Havana Club brand in the US. The brand was created by the José Arechabala company and confiscated without compensation in the Cuban revolution. The Havana Club trademark had been registered by the Cuban government in the United States without permission of the rightful owners. The new law invalidated the trademark registration. Section 211 has been challenged unsuccessfully by the Cuban government and the European Union in US courts; however, the act has been ruled illegal by the WTO (August 2001). The US Congress has yet to re-examine the matter."
Basically, Cuba stole some brands after the revolution, so the U.S. said "fuck you, you can't trademark a brand you stole from its rightful owners". The EU and WTO have a problem with that, but luckily the U.S. has never given a shit what the EU or WTO says.
And as I said a while ago in my most downvoted comment ever (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442817), Sherritt stocks will go through the roof in case relations start to normalize. And they did today, with +25%.
The title of the Bloomberg article "Cuba’s Half Century of Isolation to End" perpetuates a major misconception for US citizens. Cuba isn't isolated from the rest of the world (in the manner that North Korea is) -- it's just the US and Cuba. The island is fully connected as a tourist destination for Canadians, Latin Americans, and Europeans and they import consumer goods from Korea, China, Vietnam, etc. There are major differences (e.g. the military apparatus has controlling interests in nearly all business ventures, including those with foreign firms) but "isolation" is a pretty inaccurate characterization.
The retaliatory policy the US has against any entity doing business with Cuba severely limits business engagement with Cuba, since firms that engage in many kinds of business with Cuba risk retaliatory asset seizures if assets come within the jurisdiction of US courts. While foreign trade with Cuba is less constrained by the embargo than direct US trade, it is inaccurate to say that the embargo only affects direct trade between US and Cuba.
Right, that's an important nuance. But that means that a firm in a country like Spain is only constrained by the embargo if it also does business with US companies, right?
Not quite; some restrictions have been lifted but this is not yet a done deal:
"Although the decades-old American embargo on Cuba will remain in place for now, the administration signaled that it would welcome a move by Congress to ease or lift it should lawmakers choose to."[1]
> Have to agree. What does Obama have to lose by just going out on a limb and ending a horribly failed policy?
Because "like so many others" he simply doesn't have the power to; it requires Congressional approval. I suppose he could do what you want and unilaterally declare it over, but that would be a very clear breach of power and would result in many moderates and liberals decrying his overreach. It would end up - at the least - the subject of legal action and an injunction and perhaps even spur bipartisan support for impeachment proceedings.
The power of the Presidency is in general greatly exaggerated by the media. The President has broad power to set the agenda (which the rest of the government and the country is largely free to ignore) and has some power over policy/legal execution (particularly within foreign affairs), and over the military, but that's about it. Even within the executive branch the President is not as all-powerful as the media or even high schools tend to imply: even excluding agencies that are altogether independent, the President generally cannot walk in and tell people what to do.
More interesting would be to see who supports a continued embargo and why? Instead of rubber-stamping it, congressmen would have to take a position one way or the other, and I doubt there's much good argument for its continuation en-masse.
Obama could force Congress to have to address Cuba head-on. I don't know if it's the most important thing or not, but you'd at least get to see why we continue a useless embargo.
Guantanamo Bay isn't US soil, it's Cuban soil indefinitely leased to the US for the purpose of maintaining a naval base. (The concentration camp is a side benefit, constructed to evade laws against building concentration camps on American soil.)
I have to think this is related to tensions with Russia and avoiding a second missile crisis. I wonder if there will be a reaction from Russia about this news.
Putin seems to like turning back the clock on that kind of thing. Just because it's irresponsible doesn't mean he won't do it. He's a rational actor in terms of his own grip on power and nothing else.
Again, Cuba's no longer a vassal state. I suspect they have little interest in hosting Russian nuclear missiles, and I suspect the US would be more than happy to help them resist a Russian effort to restore the Cold War situation.
And it cost them forgiveness of 90% of Cuba's debts. I doubt the other 10% will cover hosting nuclear missiles, especially if Cuba's at the point where they're interested in better relations with the US.
Imagine that the US didn't lift the embargo but Russia offered access to Russian cars (yes, they exist), cheap oil and whatever else Russia can provide. That would be very tempting for Cuba, I think.
The Cuban government is reluctant to open internet access to the people, despite of they already have the needed bandwith through a submarine cable from Venezuela. Is really fascinating how the Cubans have developed a higly optimized offline distribution channel to share dowloaded content like websites, software, video games, tv shows, movies, with almost the same comsuption patterns of the connected world.
This is a loable move from Obama admnistration and can have a pontentially impact on the near future of cuban internet. The White House fact sheet (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/fact-s...) said:
"Telecommunications providers will be allowed to establish the necessary mechanisms, including infrastructure, in Cuba to provide commercial telecommunications and internet services, which will improve telecommunications between the United States and Cuba."
If Cuban government allow this kind of companies to do business on or with Cuba, that could be huge. But if happens, this could be very slow, sadly.
Disclosure: I'm the cofounder of some Cuba related startups, a classifieds ads site censored by the Cuba government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUmPkb44n_w, they block us by ip and dns, despite of the censorship, revolico is one of the most visited sites in the country, taking into account that cuba has a 5% internet penetration. Also a atypical remittances platform https://www.fonoma.com and crowfunding site for cuban artists shutted down by the USA goverment because of the kind of restriction that they are softening today http://www.yagruma.org