”The United States’ 60-year-old economic embargo against the country, which prevents US-made products from being exported there, would make it difficult for Cuba to acquire vaccines and therapies, researchers and officials knew.”
The embargo has had an exception for food and medicine for the past 30 years.
I’d guess the reason has more to do with minimal foreign exchange reserves to purchase vaccines from any country.
Cuba is also free to trade with 179 other countries in the world.
Honestly, the Cuban people can stop this embargo tomorrow morning by simply returning stolen property to it's rightful owners and deciding to chose democracy over the support of the Castro family.
Same way the patriots at the Boston tea party chose democracy.
The Castro family could have ended this suffering decades ago. They decided not to, preferring to see "their" people starve and die of preventable diseases.
It’s rather opaque at least to me who the ‘rightful owners’ are: willing buyer and willing seller might suggest indigenous Cubans, but I doubt that would do much about the blockade, and might makes right would presumably suggest that the party is right.
Moreover even if the ‘rightful owners’ of property were found, it’s far from obvious how that would solve geopolitical difficulties with the US; after all, all sorts of governments which violate most Americans’ notions of property rights are on very good terms with it.
As for the possibility of spontaneously choosing ‘democracy over the support of the Castro family’, at best this is an almost vacuous statement akin to ‘if nobody were to litter there would be no more additional litter’. Even quite praiseworthy and courageous peoples have some difficulty overthrowing their governments (e.g. in Sudan, Myanmar, Hong Kong…); the ‘patriots at the Boston tea party’ made similar choices, but merely choosing revolt does not guarantee success.
Finally, on the embargo: the medicines exception of course exists, but US sanctions can, if desired, affect trade with most of the world economy, since most companies have some connexion e.g. to the US financial system. To the extent that is not the case in Cuba, that is because the implicit suggestion of the original quote, viz., that were sanctions loosened certain economic benefits would accrue in Cuba, has itself either been implemented or not been contradicted by some contrary policy.
> Even quite praiseworthy and courageous peoples have some difficulty overthrowing their governments (e.g. in Sudan, Myanmar, Hong Kong…); the ‘patriots at the Boston tea party’ made similar choices, but merely choosing revolt does not guarantee success.
Democracy and freedom are never granted; they are fought for.
> Finally, on the embargo: the medicines exception of course exists, but US sanctions can, if desired, affect trade with most of the world economy, since most companies have some connexion e.g. to the US financial system.
If they would rather trade with Cuba than the US, that's their decision.
> Democracy and freedom are never granted; they are fought for.
What a brave thing to say from the confort of your sofa.
I mean you being American I imagine that should be read “they are fought for mostly by the French with French money and weapons in a proxy war against England”.
> Democracy and freedom are never granted; they are fought for
This is not quite correct; sometimes they are both fought for and granted—as, e.g., in every mostly agreed decolonisation, or the path from Groote Schuur to the interim constitution, &c. &c.
More to the point, that is precisely why I quibble with the claim that the people of Cuba ‘can stop this embargo tomorrow morning’; they could tomorrow start to fight for democratisation (which plausibly leads to the end of the blockade)—with no guarantee of success.
> If they would rather trade with Cuba than the US, that's their decision.
This is more goalpost-shifting; the initial claim here is ‘Cuba is also free to trade with 179 other countries in the world’, which it isn’t in the case where all the other countries decide not to trade with Cuba because of American pressure. Of course in this case it is also other countries’ decision quite how to respond to American pressure. Now it so happens that sanctions on Cuba do not seem to have as much extraterritorial effect as e.g. those on Iran, so the question does not in practice arise to the same extent as in this hypothetical. But your original point seems to be that a blockade by one country couldn’t be to blame for that much economic difficulty because other countries may not have instituted such a blockade themselves; this is, as a general point, wrong. (Incidentally, where does the number 179 come from? The UN alone has 193 members—and presumably one ought to add Taiwan &al.)
So let puts it clear. When somebody stole property from the England Crown and half a country from Spanish Crown (land that was stolen first to natives) to make a new country claiming liberty, that was fair and correct and will never return it;
And when somebody stole property from American and Spanish families to make a new country claiming liberty, that was unfair and unacceptable and they must return it ASAP. Correct?
This is an incredibly naive take. The U.S. couldn't care less about democracy in Cuba or anywhere else. It has a long history of supporting brutal dictators in South and Central America as long as they were right wing and pro American. One example: Chile 1973, a CIA backed coupe toppled and murdered the democratically elected President Salvador Allende.
So you support the starvation of the Cuban people (your words) so long as the government doesn't change. What if it never does. You think starvation and collective punishment by the US is the way to go? Would love to hear your thoughts there as there are many countries on sanctions (especially poorer ones) and some politicians even brag on killing more than 500000 children like Bill Clinton's foreign secretary Albright did.
I'm curious what the world's rights are vis a vis oil producing countries. If OPEC stopped producing tomorrow, what are non oil producing countries' rights vs the rights of oil exporting countries?
We know what George Bush thought, of course and we probably know what most oil consuming countries would want --which aligns with GHW, but what is the responsibility of these sides? Is OPEC obliged to export because if they didn't millions would die? Would it be okay to invade at that point? How do we square things?
Or as Joe Biden put an embargo and withheld vaccine supplies to India as they were dying from Coronavirus even though the US had overcapacity and had already had more vaccinations in stock than the population. Should India attack the US for killing lots of its citizens?
Or should they invade their neighbor for playing around with such pathogens and not having good practices when handling them such they they may accidentally escape? Interesting conundrums.
> Cuba is also free to trade with 179 other countries in the world.
Cuba is free to do that, but what about the countries? Or more specifically, the companies who wanted to also trade with US-based companies? In Europe, there were occasionally cases of US-companies who tried forcing European companies to stop trading with Cuba because of their own legal situation. Some succeeded, some not.
The majority of the suffering in Cuba is due to being cut off from the world's largest economy. The population is largely happy, but have had to survive on little due to the compounded effects of many decades of US embargo. The people are well-educated, have a rich culture, good medical system, but live in an economy that has been strangled by an outdated US policy that causes immense suffering. The Castro's obviously have problems, but the effects of the embargo are as much, if not more significant.
Do you have a source for your claims? The only information about LGBTQ+ rights on Cuba I could find is that not only is discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity is illegal, but a new Family Code who includes homosexual relationships is also being drafted as of 2021.
Please do not use our suffering for gotchas on internet discussions. If you actually care, do something about it instead.
Do you really want to use actions committed in the 1960s as baselines to judge an entire country today? The United States, 20 years later, allowed LGBTQ+ people to literally die on the streets by HIV.
> Are you Cuban?
I'm a transgender woman who lives in a country with an active agenda against LGBTQ+ people today, and will not stand for my (and my friends') suffering being used to spread any propaganda that doesn't seek to liberate us.
> Do you really want to use actions committed in the 1960s as baselines to judge an entire country today?
Same leaders. Same party.
> I'm a transgender woman who lives in a country with an active agenda against LGBTQ+ people today, and will not stand for my (and my friends') suffering being used to spread any propaganda that doesn't seek to liberate us.
A house divided against itself, cannot stand. Let's defend the Cuban regime because... it doesn't help the cause of your country's LGBTQ+ people?
> The people are well-educated, have a rich culture, good medical system
As this is exactly what is missing from the US, it's not hard to see how disastrous an economic and cultural colonization of Cuba by the USA would turn out.
It would be very hard politically to end the embargo now. Florida is too important and the Cuban ex-pat vote moves the needle. If you don’t take a hard line on Cuba you lose almost 30 delegates.
Do you have any ideas on how this can happen without the same shocks that devastated local industries and social safety nets in the former Eastern Bloc? They were bad enough in developed European countries backed by a superpower (hell, look at how the superpower turned out), I can't begin to imagine how bad it would be in a small country like Cuba.
The embargo has had an exception for food and medicine for the past 30 years.
I’d guess the reason has more to do with minimal foreign exchange reserves to purchase vaccines from any country.