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It also compares well with the pre-Castro Cuba, when the Batista regime was effectively a US puppet and the island itself a cheap and easily reached playground for US politicians, businessmen and mobsters. I see Dubya is now threatening to help the post-Castro Cuba towards the "blessing" of US style democracy. Not being a student of history (or indeed a student of anything much), Dubya will be missing the irony of the fact that it was the blessing of US style democracy which fuelled the 1959 revolution in the first place.
Cuba is currently no paradise, but there is much which is good in their social infrastructure. In any case the achievements of the revolution have to be seen in the context of nearly 50 years of unremitting US hostility, aggression and embargo.
The other irony is that it is US hostility which has largely kept the Cuban revolution alive anyway. An invasion of US dollars, video recorders and white goods could have achieved decades ago what the Bay of Pigs invasion was never going to achieve. The soft underbelly of any revolution is that the average Joes and Janes in the street are unwilling to commit for any length of time to the kind of privation needed to sustain an ideal.
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I would,likemto see them open up a bit and get some benfit from US trade without being consumed by the US empire.