"elephant in the room" refers to something that is huge but that nobody talks about. Everyone agrees with the fact that marxism doesn't work, and everyone talks about it, so I don't think we can call it an elephant in the room. there is far less discussion (especially in the US), about the impact of the US sanctions

the same discussion applies to venezuela

I was referring to the recent trend of blaming USA for Cuban poverty. Characterizing it as "elephant in the room" is somewhat en vogue for leftist types. And I was turning it back on them. The real "elephant in the room" is the failings of the brutal communist ideology that failed the Cuban people in nearly every possible way.

Good old times of right wing dictatorship, when cuban dictator was USA friendly. No embargo. Nobody cared.

wonder why you're being downvoted, The American ambassador literally presented Batista with a golden telephone (that's where the symbol comes from) as a reward for having essentially sold the country out to a few chosen American companies (in this case the telecom industry)

Not true, US had a weapons embargo against the Batista regime in 1958, this helped Castro to oust Batista.

yep. Everyone here crying out "dictatorship" apparently has never heard of Fulgencio Batista.

I mean, the US embargo is a big cause of why they're poor. But the dictatorship is the cause of that embargo.

If Cuba could trade freely with the US, their economy would be better. If Cuba were under a more free government, their economy would be better: also, they wouldn't be under a US embargo, and their economy would be even better.

Whether an ideological stance is worth the economic collateral damage is a value judgement.

But you can't say the embargo is not causal of Cuban poverty.

> But the dictatorship is the cause of that embargo.

Well, the political ideology of the dictatorship and its unwillingness to be a puppet state of the USA are the cause of that embargo. As diplomacy in the Arabian peninsula shows, the USA has no issue with dictatorships and hereditary absolute monarchies provided they buy American weapons and fight on the appropriate side of proxy wars.

The united states doesn't need to enforce a trade embargo. Cuba's government does not control the united states.

Poor people all over the Caribbean living in all the destitution described here and then some

Many Cubans acknowledge that both pieces have resulted in the misery of regular people. They're not at all naive about their government or the US's policies towards them.

Guy who decries dictatorship just asks other people to shut up, very consistent.

And strict regulation of the economy along Marxist lines, which we know doesn’t work from the multitude of other failures.

The brutal communist dictatorship that the embargo has helped to further entrench. Simple fact is, all these years later, both exist.