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Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by cardanome on Sunday July 21, 2024 @11:09AM (#41025656)
> It doesn't explain why Cuba needs to import 70-80% of their food despite being a fertile tropical paradise.

There have been famine and starvation before the communists took power. I don't think Cuba has ever been fully food self-sufficient. Not many countries are.

Not to mention agriculture needs access to fertilizers which the sanctions make harder to get.

The more important part from your source:

> The largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba is one of the most successful in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Food-based social safety nets include a monthly food basket for the entire population, school feeding programs, and mother-and-child health care programs.

This is a big achievement.

Also it doesn't make sense to compare Cuba with the richest Western Countries. Communist revolutions tend to happen in the poorest countries of the world. Saying they are poor because of communism is confusing cause and effect.

If we compare Cuba to her peers in Latin America, especially Haiti, then Cuba is doing vastly, vastly better. Cuba is doing really well on the human development index, providing free health care and decent education for all.

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by krvajal on Sunday July 21, 2024 @12:42PM (#41026266)
what food basket are you talking about? that thing only exists in the news. in reality why dystopian reality you live in?

Cuba better than Haiti??? You are reading to many fake news. Cubans are travelling to Haiti to buy food and medicine.

Cuban healthcare good? You are joking right? If you need surgery have to bring your own equipment, including chirurgical globes and syringes. You have to either buy it in the black market or have a relative in a capitalist country to send it to you.

Dont even get me started on education.

Happy to provide you more details and break the bubble you are leaving in.

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by cardanome on Sunday July 21, 2024 @01:19PM (#41026525)
I have lived in Cuba for one and a half years and have studied there. The education system is in same aspects superior than the one in my home country, Germany.

I have visited schools and the education level of the vastly higher. The knowledge of the children greatly impressed me. In fact you could talk the average person on the street about complicated issues regarding history, philosophy and economy. Many where even multi-lingual.

It is true that Cuba has trouble getting some medical equipment due to the sanctions but she also has a for a small island impressive pharmaceutical industry. There is a great medication for diabetics that would save many lives if it were allowed to be exported in the US. Not to mention having developed their own covid vaccine.

You are probably living in a exile-Cuban bubble.

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by nec4b on Sunday July 21, 2024 @05:54PM (#41028512)
Potemkin villages for the young foreign revolutionaries and misery for the locals.
Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by cardanome on Sunday July 21, 2024 @07:04PM (#41029133)
I was able to travel the whole country freely. I didn't stay in some touristy hotel, I lived among Cubans. There is literally no way my experience could have been controlled by the state.

People were not afraid to talk critically about their government with me and did so often.

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by nec4b on Monday July 22, 2024 @05:55AM (#41032584)
People are starving, leaving the country in millions, but you are still adamant they are delusional and live in a bubble. Maybe, just maybe you haven't saw and understood everything while visiting?
Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by cardanome on Monday July 22, 2024 @08:10AM (#41033512)
No one is starving.

Ever heard of something called propaganda? Are you still searching for the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein had?

These people are literally paid by the government to spread anti-cuban propaganda. It is even on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald#21st_century

> On September 8, 2006, the Miami Herald's president Jesús Díaz Jr. fired three journalists because they had allegedly been paid by the United States government to work for anti-Cuba propaganda TV and radio channels.

> Less than a month later, responding to pressure from the Cuban community in Miami, Díaz resigned after reinstating the fired journalists, saying that "policies prohibiting such behavior were ambiguously communicated, inconsistently applied and widely misunderstood over many years".

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by nec4b on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:28AM (#41035561)
Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by cardanome on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:14PM (#41036111)
Again, no one is starving.

There is shortages of certain goods, yes. Starvation? No.

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by Yawrehto on Sunday July 21, 2024 @12:43PM (#41026278)
>If we compare Cuba to her peers in Latin America, especially Haiti...

Haiti has a complicating factor. After winning independence from France, France told Haiti to pay 'debt' back to France. In the end, it had to pay 112 million Francs, which is an amazing sum for a newly independent country, and I think that it's unique in history, a government demanding that exorbitant of a payment from a newly independent country. It took until 1947 for Haiti to finish paying, 122 years of payment. You can't get over that sort of thing easily.

Wikipedia has a good article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_Independence_Debt. In another article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti) it's said that Haiti's debt is mostly from that demand.

That said, Cuba's life expectancy (Cuban GDP per capita: $7,486 or so, as of 2021) is equal to or greater than much wealthier countries, like Lithuania ($30,577), Oman ($46,574), Seychelles ($30,126), or Russia ($26,120). In 2020, its life expectancy surpassed the US! Cuba has consistently outperformed countries like Lithuania, Russia, and even the world in life expectancy (counting since 2000), all of which have much greater GDP per capita. See https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy and https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-pe....

Re:10% of Cubans have left Cuba in the last year by derektank on Sunday July 21, 2024 @01:59PM (#41026796)
It wasn't the independence debt. Haiti was a poor country in the 40s and 50s but not exceptionally poor compared to other peer countries. What set Haiti up to be the basket case it is today was the decades of corruption and malgovernment that occurred under the dictatorial rule of the Duvalier family.