This is a diagram of the Cuban population assembled by US Census. Interesting the USA lives to keep track of the people of Cuba, but, it won't reach out to help, except, on conditions. It can be said those conditions of failed Republican politics are failing them.
The Old Age Dependency (click here) rate increased by almost 40% over the 1990-2010 period. Child Dependency rates declined by about 30% in the same period, reflecting the declining fertility rate. (Table 1.).
The diagram above clearly shows a drastic fall in Cuban births. The births declined after the implementation of the USA embargo. They were far different 30 to 40 years ago. They returned to pre-embargo levels with a minor growth rate increase after the embargo.
For ten prosperous years Cuba did well and it was realized throughout the country, but, when the embargo was enacted the Cuban economy was impoverished. Such embargoes work for awhile, but, forty to fifty years results in an economy that doesn't work for anyone and belief in the future is lost. When a society loses it's belief in the future, the desire to bring children into the world becomes a burden rather than a joy.
What has occurred under the USA Embargo is a society that is stuck in their circumstances and aging. The USA Embargo has served the political rhetoric of the USA political right wing IN THE FACE of a deteriorating population and economic status.
I am not surprised the number of political prisoners has increased under President Raul Castro. The country has been waiting the death of Fidel allowing a new regime/government to bring about change and hope with their neighbors to the north. There is no doubt the USA has overshadowed Cuba's economy and society. So, when the ailing Fidel was unable to proceed with leadership and his brother took over, the people were at the very least disappointed, hence, more political prisoners to bring about stability.
I would expect the very sad status of the Cuban people to change under the new relationships with the USA. I would expect their economy to revitalize and it's political opposition to diminish. In time the so called political prisoners will be seen for what they are, average Cubans angry about their oppression and poverty.
A democracy is not necessary for capitalism, actually quite the contrary. In the USA today voters are very aware of voting rights impingement and a thirty year stagnation of upward movement of the Middle Class. It has been getting more and more difficult to maintain the status of Middle Class because capitalism has attacked that class of people with tax burdens and cost of living. The 2008 global economic collapse was the last bite from the USA capitalists. It changed the circumstances for Americans for the worse resulting in hopelessness, poverty and economic downturns that classified the recession as the worst time in USA history next to the Great Depression.
In China we notice a growing Middle Class to bring about a better quality of life. China has become one of the most promising economies in the world. It is anxious to become partnered with the USA to end as much greenhouse gas emissions as possible and that is very good thing. China as a side note has been interested in Cuba's outcomes for sometime. Cuba has a large Chinese diaspora.
...For Choy, growing up in Cuba had not been easy. The son of a humble Chinese shopkeeper, he suffered from the racism and wretched living conditions that plagued Havana under Fulgencio Batista’s regime. Batista’s brutal social indifference to poorer Cubans was, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. put it, “an open invitation to revolution.”
After being jailed for taking part in student protests in 1957, Choy joined the uprising that toppled Batista’s dictatorship. He became one of three Chinese Cubans who were made generals in Castro’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). Later, in 1981, Choy went to Africa to fight with Cuban troops supporting Angola’s leftist government against a U.S.-backed invasion by South Africa’s apartheid regime. All along he was motivated, he says in Our History is Still Being Written, by a deep personal commitment to “to act in the interests of the majority of humanity inhabiting the planet earth—not on behalf of narrow individual interests, or simply Cuba’s national interests.”...
For at least the last decade, China has sought trade relationships with the countries throughout the Caribbean, including Cuba. Perhaps with the USA removing it's embargo and Cuba in need of a far better economy, there will be investors to move Cuba's impoverished to a Middle Class.
This lifting of the Cuban embargo is not an experiment or misguided, the USA has dominated the circumstances every Cuban faces. This will change the course of Cuba. When I hear the words, "Cuba didn't have to do anything, it was all the USA that gave into the Castro regime." I have to laugh. Cuba has nothing to give and at least they have housing and food under the veil of Communism. The USA offered no guarantees to the success of removing the embargo, so what would anyone expect? First move to a different form of government and capitalism, too? You've got to be joking. The USA can't even tout it's own success under capitalism, except, for the 1 percent.
October 31, 2006
By Wayne S. Smith
The Embargo is Obsolete
Critics of U.S. policy on Cuba say the U.S. government is living in the past and has yet to shake its Cold War-mentality with regards to the embargo and Cuban policy on the whole. As Wayne Smith indicates, “Early on, there may have been some logic to US efforts to isolate Cuba and bring down its government – at a time, that is, when Fidel Castro was trying to overthrow the leaders of various other Latin American states and moving into a relationship with the Soviet Union, one that led to the missile crisis in 1962. But all that is now ancient history. Castro has built normal, peaceful diplomatic relations in the region, while any threat posed by the so-called Cuban-Soviet alliance ended with the demise of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago.”
After 46 years of failure, we must change course on Cuba (click here)
