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Most of the refugees I knew owned there own land. They used to raise what was marketable. Rice, coffee, produce etc.
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Well of course. It wasn't the poor people who fled the revolution, it was the upper and middle class.
Thats a good point about people coming over in boats, though I imagine during Batista's regime there was legal immigration and more traditional illegal immigration to the US (overstaying a tourist vias, ect.). People escaping the regime didn't have to do it in such a dangerous and TV worthy manner.
Also to some degree Cuba's economic troubl i due to the US embargo, not just communism. Cuba has an export based economy (sugar) so if the nearest and largest buyer of that export isn't buying (and is trying to keep the rest of the western world from buying as well) it will do a lot of damage to the economy.
Of course communism has also hurt their economy. Che Guevera, who was in charge of the ministry of industries for the first couple years, publiclly admited on several occasions that he screwed it up. But, then again, you don't see the kind of hideous poverty in Cuba that you see in a lot of Latin America, and everyone health care, something not even the US can claim.
I'm not trying to defend cuban communism of make castro out to be some kind of saint. All I'm saying is that Communist Cuba isn't the pit of hell people make it out to be. Given that the sanctions probablly do more harm then good by giving him a boogeyman and further harming the cuban economy and that we treat other regimes with human rights records that are as bad or worse, but don't have a politically active refugee community concentrated in a state that is cruciial in presidential elections, better perhaps we should rethink the sanctions. I think after 42 years we can agree tat the idea that sanctions will bring down Castro is kind of ludicrious.