to the north who has tried to strangle the Cuban economy since 1960??? Get a reality!! The Cuban government has been doing business with most of the globe since the special period in the early 1990s. The USSA was too interested in votes from the MiamiGUSANOS to give a flying fuck about normalizing relations with the island, and while they kept ratcheting up the pressure on the island Spain, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, and a host of other countries have been trading with the island, building hotels and resorts, cooperation with healthcare and medical research, education, and their latest and probably biggest venture, the discovery of oil off their coast.
Despite the poverty caused in large part by the embargo, Cubans are educated, entrepreneurial, have a strong sense of national pride, and are healthier than most of LatAm and the Caribbean. Your insinuation that they are some country peasants who just fell off the turnip truck and would take any kind of handout from anyone--is insulting.
Your "people can't be bothered to care when money enters the equation" statement describes murikans perfectly--they are collectively so self-centered that they can see only through the myopic US prism. They seem to have no clue that much of the world rejects their way of life and want no part of it. We are witnessing this first hand all over Latin America and little Cuba was the first to reject what many in LatAm describe as 'savage capitalism'.
<clips>
CUBA AFTER CASTRO?
Ever since Fidel Castro gained power in 1959, Washington and the Cuban exile community have been eagerly awaiting the moment when he would lose it -- at which point, the thinking went, they would have carte blanche to remake Cuba in their own image. Without Fidel's iron fist to keep Cubans in their place, the island would erupt into a collective demand for rapid change. The long-oppressed population would overthrow Fidel's revolutionary cronies and clamor for capital, expertise, and leadership from the north to transform Cuba into a market democracy with strong ties to the United States.
But that moment has come and gone -- and none of what Washington and the exiles anticipated has come to pass. Even as Cuba-watchers speculate about how much longer the ailing Fidel will survive, the post-Fidel transition is already well under way.
Power has been successfully transferred to a new set of leaders, whose priority is to preserve the system while permitting only very gradual reform. Cubans have not revolted, and their national identity remains tied to the defense of the homeland against U.S. attacks on its sovereignty. As the post-Fidel regime responds to pent-up demands for more democratic participation and economic opportunity, Cuba will undoubtedly change -- but the pace and nature of that change will be mostly imperceptible to the naked American eye.
...A few weeks into the Fidel deathwatch, Raúl gave an interview clearly meant for U.S. consumption.
Cuba, he said, "has always been ready to normalize relations on the basis of equality. But we will not accept the arrogant and interventionist policies of this administration," nor will the United States win concessions on Cuba's domestic political model. A few days later, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon responded in kind. Washington, he said, would consider lifting its embargo -- but only if Cuba established a route to multiparty democracy, released all political prisoners, and allowed independent civil-society organizations. With or without Fidel, the two governments were stuck where they have been for years: Havana ready to talk about everything except the one condition on which Washington will not budge, Washington offering something Havana does not unconditionally want in exchange for something it is not willing to give.
...From the perspective of Fidel's chosen successors, the transition comes in a particularly favorable international context.
Despite Washington's assiduous efforts, Cuba is far from isolated: it has diplomatic relations with more than 160 countries, students from nearly 100 studying in its schools, and its doctors stationed in 69. The resurgence of Latin America's left, along with the recent rise in anti-American sentiment around the globe, makes Cuba's defiance of the United States even more compelling and less anomalous than it was just after the Cold War. The Cuban-Venezuelan relationship, based on a shared critique of U.S. power, imperialism, and "savage capitalism," has particular symbolic power. Although this alliance is hardly permanent, and American observers often make too much of Venezuela's influence as a power broker, it does deliver Cuba some $2 billion in subsidized oil a year and provide an export market for Cuba's surfeit of doctors and technical advisers. (By providing the backbone for Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's social programs and assistance in building functional organizations,
Havana exercises more influence in Venezuela than Caracas does in Cuba.) Havana, without ceding any authority to Chávez, will optimize this relationship as long as it remains beneficial.
Nor is Venezuela the only country that will resist U.S. efforts to dominate post-Fidel Cuba and purge the country of Fidel's revolutionary legacy.
Latin Americans, still deeply nationalistic, have long viewed Fidel as a force for social justice and a necessary check on U.S. influence. As attendance at his funeral will demonstrate, he remains an icon. Latin Americans of diverse ideological stripes, most of them deeply committed to democracy in their own countries, want to see a soft landing in Cuba -- not the violence and chaos that they believe U.S. policy will bring. Given their own failures in the 1990s to translate engagement with Cuba into democratization, and the United States' current credibility problems on this score,
it is unlikely that U.S. allies in Latin America or Europe will help Washington use some sort of international initiative to advance its desires for radical change in Cuba.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86104-p0/julia-e-sweig/fidel-s-final-victory.html
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