Cuba has proven that capitalism and technology are failures - Page 88 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15112259
skinster wrote:They seemed fine when I was there.

I have seen people that visited Alcatraz and tell me it was a nice experience... I guess that means Alcatraz prisoners used to have a very nice life in there :lol:
Or what about the handful of "tourists" that make it to north korea... how often do you think they see people complaining or crying in the streets?
People in oppression can look just the same as anyone else.

To be fair, Cuban people are not even remotely close to what the poor people of NK are doing, but it does illustrate my point.
Between indoctrination, censorship of information, deterrence/fear of the government and plain old financial motivation (e.g. they wan't your dollars), there is plenty of reasons of why you had the experience that you did.
99/100 of the waitress that I see appear exceptionally happy and cheerful. Could it be because they get more tips? I don't know, this phenomenon eludes me.
When you go to cuba, as a tourist, knowing that you will be out of there in just a few days. Spending $$. Dealing with people that are used to dealing with tourists (meaning that they have a better economic situation than the rest of the population) people that KNOWS what you want, etc... you tend to have a great time and to take the impression that they are doing better than what they really are.
I also sold $3 pesos coins to tourists that had the face of "Ernesto (Che) Guevara". Many tourists would pay a couple of bucks for a coin that was probably worth less than 10c USD. I also put a big smile in my face to the tourists that would come stay in my house when my mother desperate to make $$ to feed us would rent one of the bedrooms of our house.. A single mother of 2 children illegally renting one of the house's bedroom to complete strangers that don't even speak the same language and would often return drunk to the apartment. And we would put a smile. And if they wanted to hear that Fidel was great we would tell them that, if they wanted to hear that France was gay, we would tell them that....
#15112342
XogGyux wrote:Ok, this is getting ridiculous.

What's ridiculous is that you had to look 15,000 km away for a country that is poorer than Cuba.

All you had to do was compare Cuba to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Columbia, Brazil, etc.

But when you do your comparison, imagine that you are in the poorer half of the country. Cuba wins every time. Even against much "richer" neighbors.

No homelessness. Everyone gets enough food. Everyone gets maximum education. Surplus of doctors.

NONE of Cuba's neighbors can top this (including Mexico and the USA). And these are the most important things to consider when looking at quality of life for everyone.

Having a handful of trillionaires looking out at hundreds of miles of slums from their 90th floor penthouses... is not the same kind of social organization.
#15112410
I am serious, you guys like Cuba or North Korea so much, put your money where your mouth is (or in this case your fingers :lol: ) and move there, not visit as tourists, go there and move!. We will know you did it when we stop receiving propaganda posts, because you will be censored (or in case of NK probably put in a work camp/tortured).
Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Good luck.
#15112412
XogGyux wrote:I am serious, you guys like Cuba or North Korea so much, put your money where your mouth is (or in this case your fingers :lol: ) and move there, not visit as tourists, go there and move!. We will know you did it when we stop receiving propaganda posts, because you will be censored (or in case of NK probably put in a work camp/tortured).
Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Good luck.


Did you grow up in Cuba?
#15112422
XogGyux wrote:I am serious, you guys like Cuba or North Korea so much, put your money where your mouth is (or in this case your fingers :lol: ) and move there, not visit as tourists, go there and move!. We will know you did it when we stop receiving propaganda posts, because you will be censored (or in case of NK probably put in a work camp/tortured).
Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Good luck.


I'd move to Cuba tomorrow if I could, if you can help me figure that out I'm all ears. :excited:
#15112426
skinster wrote:I'd move to Cuba tomorrow if I could, if you can help me figure that out I'm all ears. :excited:

My family and I spent 2 decades to get out of there, I sure enough don't keep taps of how to come back, it is certainly not my intention or even in my radar.
But why are you so lazy? My family and I "invested" 2 decades + to get what we wanted... if living in Cuba or North Korea is what you want why don't you put some of your time into that instead of convincing other people to jump into the lava :lol: . Seriously, those people are desperate for your dollars I guarantee you getting there to live there won't be even a fraction of what hundred of thousands of Cubans have to do to get out.
:knife:
#15112438
wat0n wrote:Would you please walk us through how things were/are as someone who actually lived there? How's the issue of racism there?


What's wrong with people in this forum and the obsession with race :lol: .
Geez. Racism is similar to here I suppose.
Perhaps more important than race is the division of country vs city. For instance, people from Habana would often make fun and ostracize those from Pinal del Rio (west from Habana) or those coming from Oriente (east from Habana). Orientales are illegals in la Habana. Wrap your head around that, imagine someone from Alabama wanted to move to Illinois and Illinois said "Not so fast buddy, you need a permit for us to allow you to come here. Kind of messed up.
#15112439
XogGyux wrote:I am serious, you guys like Cuba or North Korea so much, put your money where your mouth is (or in this case your fingers :lol: ) and move there, not visit as tourists, go there and move!. We will know you did it when we stop receiving propaganda posts, because you will be censored (or in case of NK probably put in a work camp/tortured).
Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Good luck.


One problem: Communist countries are well known of treating Western defectors very favourably because they are very good propaganda material themselves.

As I said many times, people like Member skinster should be seen as perpetrators just like Communist countries leaders.
#15112442
XogGyux wrote:What's wrong with people in this forum and the obsession with race :lol: .
Geez. Racism is similar to here I suppose.


It's the current obsession of the day and particularly when, in the backdrop of the George Floyd case, some people say Cuba is some sort of paradise where racism doesn't exist at all.

What you are saying is what I thought, although in other Latin American societies race just isn't as important as in the US... Even though racism still exists and there are still conflicts with the indigenous, the fights have traditionally been more over social class than race (in the US it's the other way around). Lately there's been a major focus on gender too, and race has become somewhat more important (particularly when it comes to relations with the indigenous peoples), but I think they are still secondary to social class and socioeconomic inequality.

XogGyux wrote:Perhaps more important than race is the division of country vs city. For instance, people from Habana would often make fun and ostracize those from Pinal del Rio (west from Habana) or those coming from Oriente (east from Habana). Orientales are illegals in la Habana. Wrap your head around that, imagine someone from Alabama wanted to move to Illinois and Illinois said "Not so fast buddy, you need a permit for us to allow you to come here. Kind of messed up.


Yeah, it's messed up on its own right. I agree that it's probably way more messed up than racism if racism is not all that qualitatively and quantitatively different from how it is in other Latin American countries or even the US. I don't know of any other country in the Americas where you need a permit to move to another city within your own country. I don't think that's how it works even in Venezuela or Nicaragua.
#15112444
One of my friends during the Beca en el campo was black. He was a smooth talker, tall, muscular handsome guy so he would always have a girlfriend. Most of the time it was a blond girl, and he would say that it was "to advance his race". We probably were 15-17 years old when he told me that. This kid felt he was inferior because of the color of his skin. Now, racism over there is not quite the same as here but I cannot put my thumb of what makes it different but it undoubtedly does exists.
On the other hand, Cuban population is fairly mixed, "brown". You don't see the same sort of Ahmaud Arbery or people screaming "white power" of sorts. Perhaps you could make an argument that in that sense it is less sinister.
I was never aware of people being killed or beaten for their race. That being said, I could not totally rule out the possibility that this could happen because the news in Cuba was not like CNN here, but I suspect that this either did not exist or if it did it was extremely rare.
#15112446
XogGyux wrote:One of my friends during the Beca en el campo was black. He was a smooth talker, tall, muscular handsome guy so he would always have a girlfriend. Most of the time it was a blond girl, and he would say that it was "to advance his race". We probably were 15-17 years old when he told me that. This kid felt he was inferior because of the color of his skin. Now, racism over there is not quite the same as here but I cannot put my thumb of what makes it different but it undoubtedly does exists.
On the other hand, Cuban population is fairly mixed, "brown". You don't see the same sort of Ahmaud Arbery or people screaming "white power" of sorts. Perhaps you could make an argument that in that sense it is less sinister.
I was never aware of people being killed or beaten for their race. That being said, I could not totally rule out the possibility that this could happen because the news in Cuba was not like CNN here, but I suspect that this either did not exist or if it did it was extremely rare.


Very interesting all in all. And yes, maybe it's not as well known since there is no freedom to discuss it to begin with. But I also think it would be different from how it is in the US since the Spaniards were a lot more willing to mingle with non whites during the colonial era.
#15112447
skinster wrote:I danced with over a million Cubans on workers day a couple of years ago, it was really fun. I didn't sense any coercion but did feel much love. Stop hating.

Dancing is one of the few things that makes life tolerable in Cuba. You are a visitor and you are not Cuban. Talk to Dr X who grew up in Cuba.
#15112462
XogGyux wrote:What's wrong with people in this forum and the obsession with race

Under the American system of crony capitalism, "race" is a determinant of income level and social status.

So in the USA, Jewish, WASP, black, latino, First Nation.... all have a specific income level and social status.
Which is yet another excellent reason to have a revolution like Cuba did.
No one accepts an "inferior" racial status, so this system that the USA practices is guaranteed to violently self-destruct. The rich in the USA always have to be able to leave quickly (have a bag packed and ready to go) because of this. So the rich have no real attachment to the land or the people living on it.

Geez. Racism is similar to here I suppose.
...people from Habana would often make fun and ostracize those from Pinal del Rio (west from Habana) or those coming from Oriente (east from Habana). Orientales are illegals in la Habana....

And yet all of these groups have access to housing, health care and education. So there are no similarities at all.

(And Orientales are called Palestinos in Habana, which is mean, but it's not the same thing as denying people from Orientales adequate education, health care, or housing. Learn what racism really means)
#15112466
QatzelOk wrote:And yet all of these groups have access to housing, health care and education. So there are no similarities at all.


You fucking kidding me? These people live in the same country and are discriminated against because they didn't happen to be born near the city and speak with a funny accent and you rationalize this kind of crap?
We have gone through this prior, healthcare, education and housing in cuba is shit. And this is the one that I saw in Habana that was by far better than the rest of the provinces. I sure cannot imagine what sort of desperation people in Camaguey or Santiago de Cuba are living in when they have to leave their home and try to forcefully move into a province in which people don't like them and that actually considers them illegal.
And Orientales are called Palestinos in Habana, which is mean, but it's not the same thing as denying people from Orientales adequate education, health care, or housing.

Orientales in Cuba are called Orientales. Just the same way that Vietnamese in America are called Vietnamese.
Look... they even put it in their sport shirts. https://www.ecured.cu/Orientales_(equipo_de_b%C3%A9isbol)
Image
"Palestinos" is a derogatory term used the same way that N***** is used in the US. It is offensive not only to people from Oriente but also for the very Palestinian people from which the term is inherited from. Yet another way of how you got the "tourist" treatment and don't understand shit of whats going on there at all.

Learn what racism really means)

I did not imply that discrimination against orientales was a race thing. In fact my exact words were:
Perhaps more important than race is the division of country vs city. For instance, people from Habana would often make fun and ostracize those from Pinal del Rio (west from Habana) or those coming from Oriente (east from Habana). Orientales are illegals in la Habana.

It explicitly says that this sort of discrimination is not based on race but actually on city/country class status. Why make your text so small? you were hoping I would not see your blatant lying attack? How about next time that you are about to say something stupid, instead of putting it in tiny font, you think about what you want to say for a min or two... and then don't say it at all.
Last edited by XogGyux on 10 Aug 2020 02:52, edited 1 time in total.
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