Cuba has to live with a neighbor that turned democracies into mass graves whenever they stepped out of line. If you want to talk about freedom and choice, start there.
https://x.com/nxt888/status/2025569472669741129
You are asking the wrong laboratory the wrong question.
You look at a small island under permanent siege and say:
"Why did you not conduct a clean Western experiment in pluralism, press freedom, and multiparty elections? We will never know what the voters would have chosen."
Cuba knows exactly what happens when a small, poor, strategically placed country under U.S. influence tries to run that experiment.
It watched Guatemala elect Arbenz, nationalize land, and try to touch United Fruit.
Result: coup, terror, mass graves.
It watched Chile elect Allende, choose a peaceful road, newspapers, pluralism.
Result: coup, torture centers, bodies in stadiums.
It watched the Dominican Republic elect Bosch. Land reform. New constitution.
Result: coup, military junta, U.S. Marines on the beaches.
So when you ask, "Why has Cuba never allowed fully competitive multiparty elections with full Western-style press?" what Havana hears is:
"Why did you not open every door that the CIA has used in your neighbors, under the same conditions of poverty and dependency, and pretend it was a neutral choice?"
Cuba had to choose between two very ugly realities.
A socialist one-party system under embargo, or a formally pluralistic system under the permanent threat of Miami money, U.S. intelligence, and an elite that would happily restore the old plantation.
You call it a lack of "freedom of press."
From Cuba’s point of view, the press you are asking for is not a blank canvas.
It is a proven weapon.
It is the media ecosystem that helped pave the way for coups across the continent, funded by foreign agencies and local oligarchies, saturating the airwaves with "freedom" until the tanks rolled in.
As for "We will never know if voters would have moved away from socialism":
You keep pretending that voters in a besieged country get to choose as if they were sitting in Switzerland.
What would "choice" look like in your imagined Cuba?
A ballot where one option is:
"Remain socialist, under embargo, under sabotage, under constant U.S. hostility"
and the other option is:
"Abandon socialism, open fully to U.S. capital, watch the blockade lift, dollars flood in, Miami exiles return with their lawyers and their claims"
and you call that an equal, free decision?
Empire does not stand neutrally at the edge of the polling booth.
It stands behind one box with a bag of money in one hand and a knife in the other.
You say "we will never know."
We know enough.
We know that every time a poor country in the U.S. orbit has tried to reform itself through "fully competitive" electoral democracy, if the result threatened U.S. interests, the outcome was not respected.
It was removed.
So yes, Cuba locked certain doors.
Not because socialism is allergic to votes in the abstract, but because in the very concrete historical reality of Latin America, those doors have led straight to disappearances, torture, and the return of the old landlords.
You want a philosophical answer.
Cuba had to make a survival answer.
You have the luxury to treat its choices as a thought experiment about ideal institutions.
Cuba has to live with a neighbor that turned democracies into mass graves whenever they stepped out of line.
If you want to talk about freedom and choice, start there.
Start with the reality that for a country under empire’s gun, "multiparty democracy with free media" is not a neutral pill.
It is a pill that has moved many of its neighbors from hope to helicopter flights over the ocean.
In that context, the mystery is not why Cuba did not run your experiment.
The real mystery is why you insist on pretending the lab is clean. x.com/arvm87/status/
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posted by Satish Sharma at
05:37
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