About 5.3 million people, nearly half of the country’s population of 11 million, filled the streets of cities, towns, and municipalities across the Caribbean island today to celebrate International Workers’ Day. “A sea marched toward Revolution Square this May Day,” began the report in Trabajadores, the daily newspaper of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, covering the mobilization of 600,000 in Havana. “It was certainly a sea of workers and other people, men, women, old, young, teenagers, and kids who came together to form this multicolored and enthusiastic stream, showing the world once again that Cubans defend their revolution and won’t be intimidated by blockades and other threats.”
This sounds awfully simplistic.
“What about the US?” is not a real arguement. We are discussing Cuba, not the US, Botswana or Uruguay.
The Cuban regime is brutal and authoritarian with minimal respect for human rights.
I started this thread with “I might trade the US government for Cuba’s right now”. In that context, it’s completely fair to compare the two.
I am talking about blaming everything on sanctions.
I am not that knowledgeable about Cuba, but I have met people from Cuba who moved to the Eastern Block and I know a little bit about events Cuba in context of global history (missile crisis, overthrow of Batista).
Your approach doesn’t sound nuanced enough based on my experience talking to Cubans (and they are not your descendants of Cuban exiles in Florida types).
But they still have free healthcare. You can walk off a plane in Cuba and get healthcare. It might be shit healthcare, but poor people in the US have shit healthcare too in Republican states.
So what? There are countries that have free healthcare and also have a democratic political system and aren’t run as a brutal dictatorship.
You keep doing the “but what about the US?”, thing. We are not discussing the US, we are discussing Cuba.
I’m not OP, that was my first comment. Also, we can compare Cuba and the US right now because we’re going authoritarian and they’re already authoritarian. It’s interesting that they have some things better than us.
Comparison is fine. But you are engaging in whataboutism. We are discussing Cuba’s brutal authoritarianism, this topic can evaluated with references to the US.