>If you're going to ask this question, then you might want also ask how would they had fared had Cuba and USSR succeeded in those places

Better? Cuba, considering the embargo that fucked them twice over, is better off compared to most of the hell-holes intervention created in Latin America.

Even as a dictatorship it's much more benign compared to people like Pinochet that was supported, put in place, and much beloved by the US.

I'm not sure we can reach that conclusion. Many of those places were industrializing with light industries before the ussr and Cuba meddled. Another issue is and was demographic growth and transitioning from rural to urban societies which created social issues the user and Cuba tried to leverage in their quest to evangelize their political and economic systems.

Also, do we ask something from the UK for embargoing us for a couple hundred years?

You could, but currently they are hardly better off (the us) to offer much. Unlike others, their embargo was "too little, too late".

I've been to Cuba twice. I disagree.

How many times have you been there?

It's not the relative number of times that counts.

You can live for years in a place and have the wrong impression about it. In fact, you can even be born in a place and leave there all your life and have and have the wrong impression about it. And you can also have historical reasons to disagree that don't apply to the general population (e.g. one's relatives being big-shots under the previous regime).

It's also easy to visit a place and just see what you wanted to see. Tourists traveling in utter misery do it all the time -- they have a great time, and people a few km from their hotel might be dying in slums.

I'm not saying that you did those things and I didn't. Just that measuring how many times more one has been there is not really relevant.

Translation: you've been there zero times and only know what you've read from your Progressive news sources and Michael fucking Moore.

I went both times as part of a humanitarian mission to bring medical supplies. Cuba sucks. Great people. Horrible government.

>Translation: you've been there zero times and only know what you've read from your Progressive news sources and Michael fucking Moore.

Not an American, not interested in Michael Moore -- there are actual historians and accounts not just pop culture, and I've visited several times (and a large number of other parts of the world too).

But the use of "progressive news" as some kind of bad source paints a picture.