132
‘There is no money’: Cuba fears total collapse amid grid failure and financial crisis
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
132 points (99.3% liked)
World News
39020 readers
2433 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, but that won't solve the fundamental problems that led up to this.
Yet it might have solved those problems had the sanctions been lifted 20+ years ago, allowing Cuba more access to diversifying their power grid through being able to get better deals for parts than they currently can.
The sanctions are part and parcel to why they're struggling, and to ignore that they've been extremely limited in who they can trade with, and that limits their options for budgeting what they can buy because they have very few suppliers, is foolhardy.
No, we can't fix the past, but we can recognize that it might have gone very differently had sanctions been lifted long ago.
The fundamental problem is not "Cuba pays slightly more for its parts from China", the fundamental problems run much deeper. Cuba spent thirty years embracing a position as a resource colony for the Soviet Union in exchange for massive subsidies on their sugar exports (the Sovs paid 5x the market price for Cuban sugar) and invested that money - nobly, but not wisely - in raising living standards instead of the creation of an economic base that wasn't reliant on total vassalhood to a powerful state on the other side of the planet.
It emerged from the end of the Cold War with a well-educated and healthy population, but no real economic prospects with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its massive amounts of aid which subsidized the sluggish economy of the Cuban government. So what did the Cuban government do?
Nothing.
Fucking nothing.
Not wholly true, I suppose - they vacillated between encouraging private enterprise and cracking down on it, which, ironically, was more ruinous than just doing either alone. Fidel Castro himself admitted that the government policy royally fucked up in the 90s-2000s transitional period. After Fidel's death, Raoul also admitted that the agricultural sector of the country was ultra-fucked. After Raoul's retirement, the Cuban government has been hesitant to make fundamental changes to the government because the Castro family was what lent the government legitimacy outside of its socialist credentials - leaving them slowly taking on water and sinking in a mess several decades in the making.
As it stands now, Cuba is reliant on a meagre tobacco industry, rum, promising mineral rights to China, and remittances from the expats in the dreaded Yanqui Empire (the remittances quite literally outstripping the total value of Cuba's exports).