«The United States embargo against Cuba prevents American businesses, and businesses with commercial activities in the United States, from conducting trade with Cuban interests. It is the most enduring trade embargo in modern history.” Wikipedia
These are the stated complaints of the protestors. Again, the embargo is bad policy and makes peoples' lives worse. Moreover, the embargo give a convenient excuse to the Cuban government for its malfeasance, but it isn't the reason things are so shitty. Their government just doesn't deliver basic goods and services.
Bureaucratic inefficiency and disincentives for farmers aside, the fuel shortage seems directly tied to the embargo:
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba must implement emergency measures to stave off an acute fuel shortage in September caused by the Trump administration’s efforts to block oil shipments to the country, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Wednesday.
The problem is that even when Cuba was trading with the USSR, Venezuela, Bolivia, China, etc. they never managed to build any local industry, and as such have nothing to trade for oil. None of these trade partnerships were effected by the embargo. If Cuba had any foreign reserves or anything at all to trade they could buy gas from any number of places that are opposed to uS interests.
I agree the embargo sucks, but Cuba was letting crops rot in the field when they had oil. The government just sucks. They could have tried to regularize relations like Vietnam did in 1995 and implement pragmatic reforms, but they have continued to stay the course with ruinous policies in the name of political purity.
See this US congressional report that explains it pretty well: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R46791.pdf
They know they can trade with 180+ countries right? And that the embargo can be lifted in as little as a week; all the regime has to do is return property that was stolen during the coup and transition to a democratic government.
The fact that they prefer mass starvation and people dying because they can't get medicine should tell us all we need to know about the current regime.
I mean, the (economic) problem Cuba has is internal, not external. There isn't much that Cuba has to offer as value, except their geographical position and maybe some cheap labor medics.
They've got virtually free resources from Venezuela (not viable any longer) and other "allies". But even there it isn't like they trade a lot with China or Russia, to mention two examples.
They get plenty of dollars and euros through tourism (with EU companies that gladly help) yet they don't really invest it or do much productive with it.
If Cuba really tried to be self-sustainable as they claim, why they don't buy some machinery to improve their productivity, they have plenty of supliers outside US-EU.
And by the way, if you want to jump over the US embargo is not that difficult to open another company or just sell through a 3rd party and make information opaque, which is already being done right now by the way.
Cuba is just a "chapuza" as we say in spanish. A mess, with a caste of people who barely manages to justify their existance, and keep control over the population so revolts don't happen. It's just that this time they can't really have much control of the situation.
You can access onei.gob.cu to check all that. It's a bit tricky to get access from outside Cuba. I can access with my home connection but not with mobile one.
«Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008." Wikipedia
That's 49 years, the current "president" is just a continuation of the same dictatorial murderous regime.
As a Venezuelan with a Cuban parent, it pains me to see people blaming the US for the misery in these countries because, these goverments love to blame it on the US, that's a key part of their playbook.
Is Haiti or Dominica any better off than Cuba?
I can only speak for Venezuela so let me put it in perspective: The US placed the embargo in 2019[0], that's many many years after inflation and corruption had made the poor poorer, drained all the brains out and stole productive companies from their owners (aka "nationalized")[1].
To somewhat answer your question: the dictators actually appreciate the embargoes, because it keeps them in power by providing the perfect scapegoat for the complete chaos.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during... 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbN3-uWnTqY (the word he keeps repeating means "expropriate", he's talking about all sorts of different companies or even random buildings in the street)
Or just not used against Cuba?
Was it not okay to embargo other countries whom we had disagreements with or were those okay to embargo, like (imperial) Japan, (apartheid) South Africa, (ayatollah) Iran?
Did Cuba bomb US territories(Japan), practice Apartheid (South Africa) or nationalize their oil (Iran).
But I guess the answer is yes, embargoes make sense when we disagree vehemently with another country and its policies.
But I know what people are saying: "I want you to embargo countries I don't like, and I want you to not embargo countries I like." and everyone will have a different set of countries.
Along with the $2 billion portion of the UN budget.
Along with the $3 billion to NATO.
When 5k US troops were being pulled from Germany, that news wasn't greeted with applause, but with Merkel shitting herself.
Yea, the US isnt perfect. Spending $15b on the world that just loves to take a shit on us... fine by me. I for one dont disagree with isolationist policies too much. This country is made up of folks that left other countries for a reason. Why interfere with the world stage? It's not like there are any other super powers that'll exploit that power vacuum. The US is the only super power with big bad, evil intentions in the world.
This implies implicit US dominion over Africa and latam. KGB was supported by the Soviets, which did not face the same level of embargoes as Cuba did.
Cuba has never been a nuclear power. Maybe check this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
Khrushchev was so taken aback by their cavalier attitude towards nukes that he took them back. So yes, for a few months they were a nuclear power.
This is confirmed by the USSR archives of that time plus interviews with Cuban officials back in the 90s where they conceded they wanted to bomb us and only Khrushchev kept it from happening.
[1]https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/jfk-def...
Excerpt of above link (Khrushchev's response to Castro): "In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to carry out a nuclear strike against the enemy's territory. Naturally you understand where that would lead us. It would not be a simple strike, but the start of a thermonuclear world war."
Castro was about to unleash WWIII and resulting in millions of deaths (even Nikita said so).
So yeah, I'm not bothered by the sanctions.
Now Obama did try to roll back parts of the embargo in 2016. And Trump added additional constraints. in the 2020 elections just enough Cuban Americans voted for Trump over Biden to lose the FL electoral vote.
While most of America agrees the embargo should end this is the reason why politicians don’t want to touch it. It’s political kryptonite.
Seems the sanctions are working right now.
Yes, prevented from trading with the US. Not with every other country in the world
It's still a bankrupt island that prevents any citizen from leaving.
It's probably better than NK, I'll give you that. But that's a very low barrier.
Now, the embargo is a very good excuse for their failures. Excuse, not reason.
This is somewhat related, but for those here who are interested in how local elections work in Cuba (they have 90+% participation!!!!), this is an excellent video on Cuban elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aMsi-A56ds
Given that Cuba's regime was responsible for putting nuclear weapons next to the border and pointing straight to the US, and given the fact that a sizeable portion of the population of a swing state lived Cuba's oppression in the first person, only the most nieve can believe this has anything to do with ideology.
> In response to the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev agreed to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles on the island to deter a future invasion.
- The US backed a coup that put Fulgencio Batista in power
- Batista murdered over 20,000 Cubans (not my words, that's what John F. Kennedy said)
- Cubans were in horrific poverty exactly because of US policies
- When Cubans overthrew the dictator who was murdering them by the tens of thousands, the US attempted to invade them, the most likely aim being another US-backed dictatorship
The US embargo is purely sour grapes over losing access to a country's natural resources it wanted to exploit coupled with, as you point out, a dysfunction in the way US elections work. Pointing nukes at a ruthless, amoral enemy with vast resources was a perfectly valid reaction for Cuba given the context.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Batista was losing to a left-wing candidate, did a coup, and there was no election. Then he continued to support US corporate interests. This doesn't track at all with, you know, *gestures broadly at US intervention in Latin America* to you?
Now is that true? I don't know but I'd bet that's more or less what you'd hear from a supporter and the easiest move is to just take them at their word.
No. The root cause of the embargo is, manifestly, that the Cuban Revolution ousted American capital interests from the island and gave the preverbal finger to US economic hegemony. All else is secondary, after-the-fact justification. Broadly similar story for Iran. The US has proven time and again that it ultimately has little interest in things like democracy and freedom, but if you fuck with the money, woe be to you.
Leftists always want to hold up places like Sweden as socialist success stories, but Sweden is a capitalist society. They tried socialism for 20 years, it was a dismal failure, so they pulled out.
Venezuela is an abject failure. North Korea is an abject failure. The USSR was an abject failure. China is a failure. New Zealand had a great GDP before going socialist and nearly bankrupting themselves. The list goes on and on and on. Sure, the US embargo against Cuba may have hurt the Cuban economy, but the people of Cuba wouldn't have benefitted if the embargo didn't exist. Any extra wealth would have gone to the ruling class, just like it always does.
How many failed runs do you have to have at communism and socialism before you admit it's a stupid idea and that Karl Marx was a megalomaniacal loser who destroyed his family in his pursuit of self-aggrandizement?
Regarding Cuban elections, you might want to talk to some Cubans about that.
Page 9 to 17 to see their trading partners. It's in Spanish but I think it's understandable.
It comes from the ONEI website but access is tricy, so I uploaded it.
I mean it's pretty obvious to me where Cuba has to go for trade, and how to avoid US embargo.