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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2010 19:27:18 GMT
I got my information from the excellent Mexican biography of Che Guevara by Paco Ignacio Taibo. Castro tried everything to appease the United States, and quite a few American dignitaries supported his efforts. But the US administration supported the Mafia casino and prostitution industry and cut off all relations. And Cuba was forced to look for support elsewhere. They had never planned at all to seek help from the USSR, because they had confidence in American justice. Poor decision.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 26, 2010 21:25:34 GMT
They had never planned at all to seek help from the USSR, because they had confidence in American justice. Oh -- that is interesting! Well, even the least cynical person in the world could tell that the whole US reaction then and since to Cuba was not motivated by principle or even intelligent expediency. The embargo has kept Castro in power at least 25 years longer than he would have lasted without the embargo. It's fascinating to speculate on how Cuba's history would have evolved with no embargo, or even it had been lifted 10 years ago, 30, whatever.
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Post by joanne28 on Aug 28, 2010 2:33:30 GMT
I think Cuba has done very well under the circumstances.
My father saw Cuba pre and post Castro. He said that Havana in the 40s and 50s was the whorehouse of the Americas. He was in the merchant marines for eight years, which is when he saw the pre Castro Cuba. He had lots of stories.
I suppose the main problem the US government has with Castro is that he overthrew Batista, who was backed by the US at the time. Considering the political climate, I would imagine anyone calling themselves revolutionaries would be considered Communists. It was a very odd time.
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Post by gertie on Aug 31, 2010 0:56:04 GMT
I was so interested to see these pictures. When I was in high school, I had a teacher who was Cuban. She and her husband were highly educated scientists who were high up in a chemical company that eventually was taken over by the government. One day one of the kids in our class was talking favorably about socialism, which we were just starting to read about in government class, where it was presented initially in a rather idealized form. Our teacher chose at that time to tell us something of her life, and I learned a great deal more later.
Both she and her husband were doctorate chemists twice over because their Cuban degrees were not accepted in this country. They escaped Cuba with not really anything beyond the clothing on their backs. They never would have made it out at all had they not by a happy chance managed to take a plane earlier than that for which they initially held tickets, but it used up the last of their money. They didn't learn until in the early 80s when Castro allowed some of those that had left Cuba to come back to visit family with their ability to leave after the visit with some sort of guarantee of being allowed to leave at the end of the visit that the airport was closed up when authorities arrived to try to keep the two of them from leaving just after their earlier flight left.
The first year I had her for a teacher, the year of the lecture on socialism, was the year Castro opened the insane asylums and jails, and set crazy people and crooks all on boats toward Florida. I can't recall a word of mention regarding Cuba in our history or government classes throughout school, including college, so what she told us was about all we ever learned.
She said that Castro, whom she and her husband knew quite well and her husband's family had been friends of his family for some years, was insane but crazy like a fox. He saw that the people who had escaped Cuba when he took over did very, very well wherever they went as they were a people used to hard work, and for the most part only the most educated realized what an awful thing Castro was actually working on the country.
She said he looked at how poorly Cuba was doing verses how well those who left were doing, and was jealous. He therefore sold via the government travel company trips to Cuba to visit relatives. Those who traveled to Cuba had their luggage searched and all modern inventions confiscated, then found on arrival if their family lived on one end of the island, their hotel was on the other, so most just stayed with their families allowing Castro to avoid the costs the government travel company should have born for their stay.
I had all of this confirmed quite by accident in college when by chance two girls who's parents had escaped Cuba lived across the hall from me in my first college dorm. They happened by chance when we were discussing planned spring break trips to talk about their trip in the early 80s to Cuba. How their curling irons, most of their cosmetics, and their cameras and most of the photographs they carried with them were confiscated, they didn't know why. They thought I might be right that it was all pictures containing images of any modern inventions. Their relatives had no knowledge of modern washers and dryers, and never tired of hearing about their wonders. They thought the cars they first saw were part of some historical collection, then realized all the cars they saw were very old. The one night they spent in their hotel, which was clear across the island from their relatives, one of them dripped a little water on the floor after their shower and was admonished by a tearful housekeeper who told them any damage to the old wood floors would be taken from her wages.
Unfortunately, although they had taken away the modern inventions and pictures, people still had the ability to tell their families about what they were missing in the outside world. After these visitors, there was great unrest in the country, my teacher said. I recalled the news had been full of tales of unrest in Cuba because of how Castro's socialism had failed to deliver the promised prosperity just prior to the whole incident with Castro sending all those people from the asylums and jails over.
Our teacher also told us only a small percentage of the boat people were actually those released from insane asylums and jails, but that was Castro's design because he knew what it would do to how we looked on Cubans. Although someone like her with intimate knowledge of the country could probably talk to these people and figure out who was a crook or crazy person, the average American could not and would therefore be wary of every Cuban they met. It was Castro's own special sort of revenge and she felt sure he enjoyed quite a laugh thinking of how it would adversely affect their treatment and lives here, even among those that had been in this country long before this situation occured.
I thought often of her when we had that whole ordeal where they forced that poor child to return to that horrid country, where clearly his father was coerced and manipulated into demanding him back. I thought it a great shame he was sent back. Everyone said at the time Castro just wanted him to parade about as a symbol of how stupid and lazy we Americans have become and now I see he is paraded out at every highly publicized state event opportunity.
I hope you will all forgive me for this long post, I don't mean to take away from the report here but more to sort of round out what is show there. They are wonderful pictures, and the old cars are a wonder to behold to one such as myself who enjoys seeing antique cars. You have a wonderful way with a camera. It seems a shame about the old buildings, though I suppose if Cuba were more prosperous, they'd simply have been demolished to make way for modern buildings. Perhaps it is the time period portrayed, but isn't it easy for Europeans to travel to Cuba? I thought I saw posters for what seemed to me quite inexpensive Cuban beach vacations on the metro in Paris when I was there in 2001 and I could have sworn I read somewhere it's a popular European holiday vacation, the profits from which Castro has been shoring up his regime?
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 31, 2010 4:33:52 GMT
^ Of course European tourism washes in lots of hard Euros! That's why they're allowed in. Most of course get stuck in a tourist ghetto where it's easier to control them, but some, like Jack, do it on their own. There's more to life than good education (if in a slightly brainwashing style) and good medical facilities. I bet if Castro just opened the doors his country would be depopulated of all the doctors, scientists, university lecturers in a snap. And probably everybody else who didn't work for the government as well.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2010 7:33:13 GMT
I think that the elite suffer in just about any revolutionary situation. Being in the upper classes puts you near the power structure and makes you automatically guilty in the eyes of many people. Many revolutions pack a one-two punch because they are originally organized by dissident members of the elite, who overthow the people in power and then are swept away in turn once people understand that it is possible (like in France and Russia).
Cuba's revolution was relatively gentle (at least once the fighting was finished) until it refused to ply to American demands and had many of its reforms sabotaged. We will never know what might have happened if the United States had welcomed the new egalitarian government and supported it rather than pleasing the Mafia.
The Cubans that I met in Havana were generally very proud of their country and supportive of the government, at least in terms of standing up to the United States. Naturally, they were impatient for more reforms, but their main impatience was with the U.S. embargo. Cubans that I have known in Paris have generally been part of the "new" elite who are well aware that they are very lucky to be able to travel around the globe (generally on cultural missions), and they know everything that is bad about the current regime, but they still defend their country against our abysmal ignorance.
It is sort of the way that an American might criticize the government and everything else about his/her country constantly at home, but on the other side of the world, if people start saying things like "I heard that everybody in America has to wear a gun all the time" or "I read in a book that most Americans have never seen a vegetable," a giant burst of patriotism will ensue.
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Post by hwinpp on Sept 3, 2010 7:22:50 GMT
You could be right.
When I was in Algiers the second time all the dissidents' children were at the same, expensive, school as I was, Chileans, Argentinians and other dictator'd countries. They were all great patriots and most now live in France.
The poor Cubans, Poles, East Germans, Bulgarians, Czechs weren't aloud out of their compounds.
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Post by gertie on Sept 10, 2010 21:06:13 GMT
Oddly I always thought most Cubans were proud of who they are as a people but not of their government. At least that was very much the picture painted by those Cubans I have known. It was pretty much presented as they very much missed their families and their homeland, but were grateful to be away from what Cuba has become. Granted, most of the Cubans I have known left around the time Castro came to power, so perhaps in some ways it was a symptom of the things they had seen at that time.
I wonder what you mean about Cuba refusing to "ply to American demands" and thus "had many of its reforms sabotaged"? As I have admitted, I have had very little education regarding anything about Cuba, but what little I was taught was that Castro chose on his own to align the country with the USSR and communism at a time when the US was very anti-communist. Even that did not result in the embargo, which only ensued because Castro chose to welcome USSR missile emplacements. People of my parent's generation talk of great fear that missiles from Cuba would be bombarded on this country when Kennedy stood up to Castro and told him to get them out. My aunts and uncles have laughed about having atom bomb drills frequently during that tense time. My understanding was the embargo came out of that because although the missiles left, Castro remained very tied to the USSR. It was feared they would use everything they could learn about the US in order to help orchestrate the take over of the US by the Soviets. If you could be so kind as to point to something to explain what you are talking about, I'd be grateful.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2010 21:48:02 GMT
I am pretty much as ignorant as you are about why things happened, gertie, but I am not the least bit surprised that Cuba would have chosen to align itself with a friendly country (USSR) after having been rejected by an unfriendly country (US). Wouldn't absolutely everybody do the same thing?
I am not feeling energetic tonight about looking up another bit of data, but if anybody else wants to do it, I would be absolutely thrilled to know the answer. We all know that a certain number of Cubans fled the country after Castro arrived in power, but how many of the population actually did so? 1%? 2%? 5%? 10%?
Starting at what percentage can we imagine that a government is unacceptable? Just to spice things up, what about the fact that in recent years more Jews have left Israel than have immigrated there? Does that make Israel a bad place? And how many have left? 1%? 2%? 5%? etc.? Would this justify an embargo?
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 10, 2010 23:04:48 GMT
No wonder you didn't feel like looking it up! So far I haven't found any proportionate numbers at all. This may be of some interest: www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40566.pdfIn the meantime, the incredible contraptions that have been used to navigate away from Cuba are worth a look: www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba-immigration.htm(I've only looked at the pictures on that site, but haven't studied it closely. I suspect it's not presenting a completely balanced picture.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 10, 2010 23:07:31 GMT
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it bizarre to the point of dada that this link includes a "Kids' Page"??!
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Post by fumobici on Sept 11, 2010 0:07:45 GMT
I had a big fat paperback copy- abridged I assume- of something called the CIA Factbook with geopolitical, cultural and demographic data when I was a kid. I ate that stuff up.
How does one differentiate between economic migration and politically driven motivations for migration? And even assuming one could ascertain people's given motivations, how does one disentangle the two given that both the creation and distribution of wealth are very much influenced by the political climate and policies of a country? Successful political policy both encourages wealth creation and relatively lessens wealth disparities. Assume that Castro's economic policy had created significantly greater wealth than it did and achieved a reasonable distribution of that wealth created. Even given the political repression, one must entertain the notion that many of those who emigrated for ostensibly political reasons would not have been nearly so motivated faced with a smaller disparity in wealth and economic opportunities between the US and Cuba. To borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, "It's the economy, stupid."
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Post by hwinpp on Sept 11, 2010 2:32:59 GMT
I don't think it's only the percentage of people that manage to flee that's important.
It's also the fact that the government, in this case Castro personally, has decided people aren't allowed even to leave the country.
At the beginning of the Oliver Stone movie he lets Castro say 'from the beginning I was preparing for a war with the US', did he make that up?
Castro isn't some benevolent granddad with long beard and cigar, to me he's a commie dictator. Except he's in the tropics and there's a lot of cheap rum.
Things will change fast when he dies, wanna bet? That should say something.
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Post by gertie on Sept 11, 2010 21:40:29 GMT
As to what percentage leaving, I guess I'd need to know more about that percentage. 5 % of 500.000 is more significant than 5 % of 5,000,000 in a sense. If you are talking about a local economy of the former size, verses a local economy of the latter, that percentage of educated people is going to adversely affect the remaining population to a greater degree. I don't know percentages, but I was told most who left in the early years of the Castro administration were the better educated. Seems like somewhere I read something similar. I think later economics and politics were the deciding factor. Given many cross the ocean crammed into tiny unsafe boats, seems like you'd need pretty strong economic enticement or fear of death for stupid political reasons to entice me to try it.
To me if your government has to force people to stay, something isn't right. Since I posted my question, I did some research. I do wonder what I'd find if I could read Spanish, but the English sources I've read do not portray the US as rejecting Castro. Far from it, they suggest Castro rejected the US from a combination of anger over US support of Batista and anger at US paternalism. While I can actually feel some sympathy with those emotions by the leader of a small country, I do wonder how wise his actions based on those feelings might ultimately have proved for his country.
I did find a lot of interesting information in my reading. Among other things, medical care in Cuba is considered fairly well up to Westernized standards and much cheaper than in the US. I'm not so entirely sure about things changing fast when he dies. I won't be shocked if we see a lot of cosmetic changes but behind the scenes more of the same old people with the same old attitudes remaining in charge.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 22, 2010 14:05:14 GMT
I found this article interesting. I imagine those of you who've been to Cuba have seen evidence of some of the small, semi-underground economy there.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2011 0:53:32 GMT
All of the people I talked to back then seemed enchanted by how much things had changed already.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2013 22:58:17 GMT
Not sure how I missed this. Great report and photos here, Kerouac.
Cuba really interests me. It is amazingly easy to get to from here. And very reasonably priced and all inclusive hotel/meals/flight. Many Canadians in this area do go there for a week or two. I've had my eye on Havana for a while now.. the beachy resorts in Cuba really don't hold my interest in the same way as Havana does. The history of the city is intriguing.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2014 17:47:18 GMT
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Post by htmb on Dec 17, 2014 20:40:45 GMT
I'd like to visit Cuba. I've almost been twice with two different groups, but the timing for me was not right. Too bad I've forgotten all but a few phrases of Spanish.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2014 20:45:17 GMT
Actually, reading all of the articles, I saw that tourism is just about the last thing on the list of things to come. God knows why.
My main surprise about the current event is that it seemed clear to me that the U.S. was waiting for the death of Fidel Castro before doing anything. I guess that Obama finally decided that he is immortal.
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Post by lagatta on Dec 17, 2014 22:15:09 GMT
Well, I doubt Obama thinks that, but he is thinking that he wants to accomplish this - at least - before he is out of office. And there is really no longer unanimity among Cuban exiles and their children and grandchildren. The revolution was over 50 years ago (I don't know which is sillier, the US claim that the Cuban revolution is still some kind of threat, or the Cuban claim that the revolution is still ongoing).
One thing Cubans really need to realize the potential of such a highly-educated population is better Internet access. There is almost none, and it is very expensive, even for non-Cubans. Out of the reach of anyone not using it in their work.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2014 22:28:26 GMT
They were mentioning on the evening news here that only 3% of Cubans currently have internet access.
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Post by fumobici on Dec 18, 2014 1:41:32 GMT
A country without broad public internet access will create an ever broadening knowledge gap--it simply isn't possible to stay current on almost any field lacking such. You become an increasingly irrelevant backwater culturally of course as well. The big campaign donating American telcoms probably already have figured out where all the cell towers will be placed and at least informally leased/bought site access. Developing nations are easier to configure wirelessly than to try to piggyback onto some dysfunctional rudimentary phone system. In five or ten years, Cuban teenagers will be carrying smart phones. Castro's crazy experiment draws to a close. Cuba was a money machine for wheeler dealer types pre-Castro, and it will likely be again post-Castro.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2014 5:52:52 GMT
I think it could possibly develop like China without the current system completely breaking down. When I was in Cuba, I was impressed by how justifiably proud the Cubans were of most things. Their main problem was relations with the United States, a country which they loved anyway.
In any case, none of us has a crystal ball, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next year.
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Post by lagatta on Dec 18, 2014 13:41:04 GMT
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Post by lola on Dec 18, 2014 15:24:45 GMT
Hallelujah. Thank you, Mr. President.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 16, 2017 9:55:40 GMT
I would have sworn that the Cuban Thaw of December 2014 had its own thread, but no. That's okay, as all I have to report is bad news. Presidente El Creepo of the US, in his infantile overturning of the previous administration's progressive moves, is readying to do what he can to reinstate bad relations with Cuba. His and his daughter's business dealings in countries known for civil rights abuses must have slipped his mind, as he will prohibit Americans from "doing business with companies controlled by the military, intelligence, or security services in Cuba, which control large swaths of the economy ..." The reason for that prohibition -- "The current policy ... enriched the Cuban military and empowered a government that has engaged in human rights abuses." (source of above quotes)A little further reading: abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-cuba-policy/story?id=48058622
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Post by lagatta on Jun 16, 2017 16:37:15 GMT
Hmm, is this just the Donald's way to "make a deal you can't refuse" to take over Cuban-owned hotels? Cuba has welcomed Spanish, Italian and Canadian-owned chains. But they don't want the Mafia back. Can you imagine how life would be like there with drug trafficking, for one thing? Obviously the Mafia or an equivalent exists in all those countries, but I think the government wants to ensure that the hotel managements are clean. And we recall Trump's fondness for Saudi rulers... As for Ivanka Trump's business dealings, look how her clothing firms treat their workers (most of them women) in Indonesia and China: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/13/revealed-reality-of-a-life-working-in-an-ivanka-trump-clothing-factory
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Post by lagatta on Jun 17, 2017 0:21:33 GMT
Is this some nutty way of trying to "make a deal" to take those hotels over?
Remember how pallsy we saw him with the Saudi terrorist-supporting royalty, which refuse women the most elementary human rights and everyone is denied freedom of speech? Raif Badawi is still jailed for blogging.
Sorry - this just popped up on my screen now, after I'd made the post several hours ago!
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