Is Cuba the next Haiti?

[Peter Andersen]

IMHO in no way is Cuba the next Haiti. Haiti has been a mess for centuries.

The proposal Lark presented was moronic from the start. But look how many hits it earned! He is likely a sock for an editor trying to reach a month end hit quota total

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Some real romantic visions of Cuba here.

Go see it with your own eyes. It isn’t the Soviet Union, though that influence is noticeable, especially in the diesel smell around Havana. The dual economy is hard to explain but experiencing it is enlightening.

I’ve seen Haiti too, but that was 30 to 40 years ago, under Baby Doc. I am reluctant to opine on it, given the passage of time. What I recall of it is very different from Cuba. Pure desperation.

 

[Mrleft8]

Go see it with your own eyes. It isn’t the Soviet Union, though that influence is noticeable, especially in the diesel smell around Havana. The dual economy is hard to explain but experiencing it is enlightening.

I’ve seen Haiti too, but that was 30 to 40 years ago, under Baby Doc. I am reluctant to opine on it, given the passage of time. What I recall of it is very different from Cuba. Pure desperation.

The diesel smell in POS, St. Georges, Bridgetown, San Juan, Kingston, Kingstown, Georgetown.... It's all the same. Truck stop aroma. Fried food, diesel fumes, rotting/burning vegetation, and urine.
It's the smell of the tropics. If you don't see at least two dead dogs on your way from the airport, or dock to where ever you're going, you're staying too close to the airport/dock.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

The diesel smell in POS, St. Georges, Bridgetown, San Juan, Kingston, Kingstown, Georgetown.... It's all the same. Truck stop aroma. Fried food, diesel fumes, rotting/burning vegetation, and urine.
It's the smell of the tropics. If you don't see at least two dead dogs on your way from the airport, or dock to where ever you're going, you're staying too close to the airport/dock.

Havana is pretty clean. Very little of the usual garbage blowing around.

 

[ShortForBob]

Not from me. Cuba has issues, but they have never once been as big of a mess as Haiti usually is and I can't see them chopping down every tree in Cuba and having endless gang wars no matter how bad their government screws the place up.

Funny. Is Cuba really any more screwed than the USA?
Draw up a list of undesirable things and see who gets most.

Poor national health care
Surveillance
Inequitable education.
Bad infrastructure.
Child malnutrition
Lack of privacy
Poor diet
Police brutality

etc

 

[Autonomous]

'Cause all the 'Muricans escaping to Cuba?

 

[spankoka]

I don't know if it's as nasty as Haiti, but Cubans do seem to be fleeing. The Cuban community in Canada does not necessarily have the anti-communist baggage of the Cuban community in Miami. That hardly means that diaspora is getting behind the status quo in Cuba.

As holidaying Canadians return to Cuba, Cubans themselves are fleeing in record numbers

Canadian tourists returned to Cuba in large numbers this winter after their numbers fell to almost nothing during the pandemic. Preliminary figures suggest that Canadians accounted for about 52 per cent of all foreign arrivals in Cuba in January. Cubans themselves, meanwhile, are fleeing the...

ca.yahoo.com

 

[kent_island_sailor]

I don't know if it's as nasty as Haiti, but Cubans do seem to be fleeing. The Cuban community in Canada does not necessarily have the anti-communist baggage of the Cuban community in Miami. That hardly means that diaspora is getting behind the status quo in Cuba.

As holidaying Canadians return to Cuba, Cubans themselves are fleeing in record numbers

Canadian tourists returned to Cuba in large numbers this winter after their numbers fell to almost nothing during the pandemic. Preliminary figures suggest that Canadians accounted for about 52 per cent of all foreign arrivals in Cuba in January. Cubans themselves, meanwhile, are fleeing the...

ca.yahoo.com

Notice no Cubans fleeing to Haiti.
Cuba has issues, but Haiti is like some sci-fi zombie apocalypse
* seeing as how Haitians invented zombies, maybe this is appropriate

 

[bridhb]

Notice no Cubans fleeing to Haiti.
Cuba has issues, but Haiti is like some sci-fi zombie apocalypse
* seeing as how Haitians invented zombies, maybe this is appropriate

Having never visited, but knowing someone who has a very nice water sports set up in the Dominican Republic, I always wondered how they shared an island with Hati and the seemingly huge economic differences. Is there a strong border security force?

 

[Mrleft8]

Funny. Is Cuba really any more screwed than the USA?
Draw up a list of undesirable things and see who gets most.

Poor national health care
Surveillance
Inequitable education.
Bad infrastructure.
Child malnutrition
Lack of privacy
Poor diet
Police brutality

etc

Cuba has excellent national healthcare. One of the best in the world, I've been told.
Cuba also has a very high quality education system. and it's free.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Having never visited, but knowing someone who has a very nice water sports set up in the Dominican Republic, I always wondered how they shared an island with Hati and the seemingly huge economic differences. Is there a strong border security force?

They're building a wall.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Having never visited, but knowing someone who has a very nice water sports set up in the Dominican Republic, I always wondered how they shared an island with Hati and the seemingly huge economic differences. Is there a strong border security force?

Dominican Republic cracks down at border amid Haiti chaos

Haiti is rapidly spiralling into chaos and the neighboring Dominican Republic has responded with crackdowns on migrants and a military buildup the government claims will “guarantee border security.”

abcnews.go.com

 

[ShortForBob]

Cuba has excellent national healthcare. One of the best in the world, I've been told.
Cuba also has a very high quality education system. and it's free.

well, as no one took up my challenge, I assume that people just don't want to know.

 

[spankoka]

One could say the same thing about Australia, or Canada.

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

One could say the same thing about Australia, or Canada.

Yeah but we have a nice moat that's hard to cross.

You poor suckers have a big land border with the undesirables.

FKT

 

[Ishmael]

Yeah but we have a nice moat that's hard to cross.

You poor suckers have a big land border with the undesirables.

FKT

"Deplorables", please.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

The Canadians, English, German, and French friends that I have who have stayed on Cuba say it's just like the DR, or Jamaica, but less expensive.

Found another difference:

DR and Jamaican baseball players can just come here if they want

The Cuban national baseball team lost to the United States 14–2 in the World Baseball Classic semifinals Sunday night in Miami. But that's not all it lost.


Bullpen catcher Iván Prieto didn't join his teammates as they flew back to the communist island on Monday, staying in Miami, reported Pelota Cubana, which broke the story. The details of his whereabouts—and whether he was picked up by family members at his hotel, as some have speculated—remain unclear. The Miami Herald reported that Prieto simply "didn't show up at Miami International Airport for the team's flight to Havana."


Why exactly Prieto chose to defect is also uncertain, but one can assume that it is to pursue a career in the MLB. For decades, Cuban players have been barred from joining the MLB due to the U.S. trade embargo, leading to multiple defections. To offset this, the Baseball Federation of Cuba in 2019 proposed a deal with the MLB to allow a list of players to join the league without having to defect. The Trump administration rejected that deal. For Cuban baseball players, abandoning their team while abroad is a way to chase their dreams.

...

The U.S. embargo makes it more difficult for those who are trying to leave the authoritarian regime to bring their talents here, but some politicians are trying to ease the journey. In January, the Biden administration announced new pathways for asylum for Cubans, and earlier this month, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to finally end the embargo.
...

Defecting from a dictatorship can be bad for the health of those you leave behind...

 

[Mrleft8]

Found another difference:

DR and Jamaican baseball players can just come here if they want



Defecting from a dictatorship can be bad for the health of those you leave behind...

Or not. It depends on how much good publicity the govt. can get out of treating the defection as a humanitarian good will gesture.

 

[spankoka]

Cuban baseball players play in Japan, but it's Cuba that gets paid and then the player gets paid an allowance by Cuba. To me, that suggests that those Cuban players have incentives like their family's safety back home. It if it was otherwise, at least one Cuban player would go rouge and demand his club pay him directly. To be fair, the NHL used to have the same sort of arrangement with the Soviet Union.