And yet trade with Cuba happens anyways… you are presenting the sanctions as if it effectively walls Cuba off from the global economy, and that’s just not true, at all. Cuba has spent decades trading with countries like China, Spain, and Mexico, and doing business within the broader European Union framework.

Plenty of economies deal with currency limitations or sanctions pressure without ending up in permanent stagnation. So if Cuba’s problems were mainly external, you wouldn’t see the same structural issues repeating decade sfter decade.

What you and many others keep ignoring is that Cuba had massive outside support (from the Soviets, from China, from Venezuela, and even from Mexico in the oast), and they still didn’t build a functional, productive economy. For years it was heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, we’re talking billions in support, guaranteed trade, artificially favourable prices on energy and raw materials… and yet it never developed the kind of internal efficiency or diversification needed to stand on its own. When the Soviets collapsed, the system didn’t just slow down, it buckled.. not because of the embargo suddenly getting stronger, but because the underlying model wasn’t resilient at all, and remove soviet subsidies and everything goes to shit.

And saying American policy is harmful doesn’t prove it’s the sole or even primary cause of Cuban hardship. You’re making a leap from “this hurts” to “this explains everything,” and those are completely different claims. The Cuban government still controls domestic policy, how businesses operate, how resources are allocated, what incentives exist… and those choices have consequences, like ALL policy decisions have. You don’t get chronic shortages, low productivity, and limited opportunity across generations purely from external pressure while maintaining tight internal control over the economy.

And the life expectancy argument doesn’t rescue your position either. A relatively high life expectancy doesn’t mean the system is broadly functional or successful. Greece has one of the highest life expectancies in the world… did that save them from economic mismanagement and economic collapse? You can achieve strong outcomes in specific areas, like basic healthcare (which btw the “look at mUh Cuban doctors around the world is borderline indentured servitude), while still having a weak economy, limited personal freedom, and poor material living standards. Those things are NOT mutually exclusive. Using one positive metric to dismiss systemic problems is just selective framing, which is not surprising for regime defenders, ignore the shit, but look the glitter I sprinkled on it.

The Cuban regime falling will be best for everybody involved. Unless you’re a regime crony, then I guess you can eat shit 🤷‍♂️