Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

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A bit of context to this factoid:

- 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.

Batista feel because the US cut off arms supplies and withdrew its support. Obviously, they weren't aware that Fidel Castro was not just a typical rebel and would become one of the cruellest tyrants in recent history.

> The US backed a coup that put Fulgencio Batista in power Source? Not even Cuban propaganda have said that ever, read a little bit of history.

Given the US track record with coups in Latin America[1] in the 18th and 19th century, I would place the burden of proof on anyone claiming that a Latin American coup was not US-backed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

That's not how it works, before Batista's coup, the president was Prios Socarras, that had no beef with the US, I would say the opposite. Batista's coup, was an inside job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista#Military_cou...

> In 1952, Batista again ran for president. In a three-way race, Roberto Agramonte of the Orthodox Party led in all the polls, followed by Carlos Hevia of the Authentic Party. Batista's United Action coalition was running a distant third.

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?

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