Fellow Marxist-Leninists - What are your opinions of Cuba?

[The Old Man from Scene 24]

I have mixed feelings about it. I hear some people say that it is a totalitarian dictatorship, but from what I've studied, I think that might be a misconception. Do you think that it is relatively good or bad county? Do you think that it is better than America in some ways?

I don't mean to push away other leftists, I'm just curious about the views of my closer comrades on this thread.

[Sendo]

If it were, would so many Canadians go on vacation there?

A healthy dose of skepticism is great. Apparently you self-identify as M-L so I can't imagine how it could be more authoritarian than the USSR under Lenin in the Civil War. If you're cool with that, you're probably cool with Cuba.

Up for debate is the level and quality of democracy. Some argue over whether the national state responds in accordance to the masses' wishes, or whether the local governments are more than rubber stampers or whether it's got nepotism (so fa only Raul, but Raul is Fidel's brother who himself was a revolutionary. There is no sign of a father-son transition).

Dissent seems fine if you're not being paid by the CIA. People move around and can travel and the government is making it easier to set up small co-ops or buy-sell real estate. Though the specific application of current reforms bothers me, it does address the long-standing problem of "under socialism no one is homeless, but you are never free to migrate."

If anything, Cuba is cited as the friendly model of M-L since it had no big bad (Stalin) no major event that can be slandered and misrepresented in high school curriculum (no GLF or GPCR). It's been pretty uneventful since the Missile Crisis and has bounced back from the fall of the Eastern bloc pretty well (see urban farming and energy conservation).

I'm going to assume you're American and advise you to ignore all mainstream opinions or even go with the exact opposite of what establishment says. The USA has said frankly that it won't deal with Cuba in any capacity or drop its imperialist rhetoric until it is compensated for the nationalized industries. Love the irony. A bunch of Mafia-owned businesses get taken over and the US state wants to get paid for it as in have moneys due to private American citizens get paid to the state.