It’s not just material things they are mad about. They are chanting ‘Libertad!’, “Freedom!”, and one person was even flying an American flag before it got taken away.
Cuban authorities have shut down the internet on the Island to prevent protestors from organizing and spreading word of the protests out of the country.
It remans to be seen if the current government has the nerve to brutally crack down like Fidel did. But there are food shortages, medicine shortages, Covid vaccine shortages and queues for everything. Cuba is a basket case.
It’s probably too much to hope for that the Communist government will fall. But we can hope.
That may be wishful thinking on your behalf. It may turn into that with time, but right now it seems like they’re marching for food, electricity and vaccines, not for concepts like freedom. That’s usually the case with these things. The vast majority of people won’t fight for abstract ideals, but they will fight to protect their families.
Of course, food protests have brought down regimes before, so who knows?
They will, if they see the relationship between those ideals and the real problems they’re facing. But that may be asking too much. Look at all the people in the U.S. who can’t understand that abstract ideals have real consequences.
Cuba is a wonderful place full of wonderful people. My hope would be that they move into democracy slowly and cautiously. The last thing they need is to become like the US — corruptly governed by corporations, self interest and flat out greed.
Cubans may be in the streets shouting, “Abajo la dictadura!”, but, make no mistake, that does not imply they are sympathetic to the U.S. or US “democracy” any more than they were in the 1950’s.
This can’t be. According to my leftist friends, Cuba is a veritable paradise where everyone has good access to both medical care and education. Any negative things we have to say about Cuba is probably due to the United States, right?
I don’t know exactly what Cubans want. I wouldn’t assume they want a form of government like that of the United States. On the flip side, an awful lot of Cubans wind up in the United States. From 1995-2015 the US has admitted about 650,000 Cubans I’m sure in part because things got worse in Cuba when the Soviet Union dissolved and could no longer prop up their economy. Maybe they don’t hate us all that much.
What’s sad is that Cuba’s current economic crisis has been greatly exacerbated by Trump’s sanctions prohibiting travel to Cuba, and much more significantly preventing people from wiring money to family in Cuba. Pompeo openly said their goal was to “starve” Cuba in order to destabilize the regime. This of course had been the policy of pretty much every US President until Obama.
Biden said during the campaign that he would reverse Trump’s orders, but thus far he hasn’t. I’m guessing that change of heart is due to the election results in Florida last fall.
I’m not a fan of the current regime, but saying that people can’t send money to their desperately poor loved ones because Politics is seriously fucked up.
I assume you’re joking, right? Either that or your “leftist friends” have been frozen in amber for several decades. Because I know a lot of actual leftists, and none of them would describe Cuba as a “paradise”.
I know some actual leftist as well, and you got me, none of them would describe Cuba as a paradise. Many of them do laud Cuba for their universal healthcare and education and either ignore the human rights violations or otherwise downplay them. I still know some leftist who unironically wear the hammer and sickle and will defend the Soviet Union though they tend to be on the younger side these days.
Well, I would laud Cuba’s healthcare and education while simultaneously decrying their human rights violations and lack of democracy.
I have also noticed – not in my personal circle of acquaintances but online-- that Marxist-Leninist imagery is in fashion with a lot of young people today. It’s hard for me to tell how much of that is sincere and how much is trolling. So I should revise that to say that, among those American leftists who argue their cases with words and statistics rather than with memes, M-L nostalgia is quite uncommon.