Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It will be interesting to see which way Cuba goes. Raul is supposed to be a lot more progressive but I will believe it when I see it.
I wish Cuba the very best though, I love the country having visited a few times , its people deserve a proper democracy but I hope they don't completely lose perspective and just ape the way we do things in the West either. A third way would be good.
It shouldn't happen too fast though, I have noticed that when countries go from one extreme to another, all hell breaks loose and the only people who benefit are the rich, and foreign investors.
A gradual comeback to democracy should be the way and I hope ( but am dubious) that Raul can implement some changes and gradual thawing of private liberties and freedom of expression.
Location: Jonquil City (aka Smyrna) Georgia- by Atlanta
16,259 posts, read 24,761,129 times
Reputation: 3587
Castro was a decent leader for the Cuban people. He never made himself or his family rich off the backs of the Cuban people and he did his best for his people with limited means. Was he perfect? No- far from it. He did violate human rights but probably not as bad as most of the dictators in that part of the world.
Cuba does need a gradual, orderly economic transition. The solution is NOT to suddenly privatize every state industry. This is what happened in the former Soviet Union and much of the eastern bloc, and as noted above, all it did was create a new class of oligarchs, many of them with ties to the security services or government.
I'd hope for something more along the lines of an Estonian model, which involved much more deliberate, transparent privatizations of certain sectors, accompanied by tax code reform, new investment laws, and other reforms.
One counterexample would actually be Cuba's neighbor, Jamaica, which went on a privatization spree back in the 1970's. That shocked the system with high unemployment and income disparity, and helped lead to the current environment of gangsterism, political corruption, and extremely high violent crime rates.
The people of Cuba deserve to be free and hopefully, one day, the embargo is lifted.
People of Cuba, Please Adopt Democracy! Free Cuba! Free Elian Gonzalez! Cuban Cigars for All!
LOL!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
