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Comment by yieldcrv | Hacker News Reader

Everybody’s enjoying Cuba for travel and accomodations except the US, and as usual in the US we only get the extreme perspective of whoever was a loser in their home country. Comfortable people don’t go out of their way to come here.

It really skews our perspective, the Cuban government doesn’t need to give in to anything. The article is about a German resident just chilling in Cuba, and picking up an iPhone in Miami on a weekend bender. Nobody cares about the US’ political machinations so that Florida votes swing in the desired direction, the rest of the world gives Cuba enough commerce and doesnt think anything of it.

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Ironic how Cuba used to be a authoritarian country where Americans went to party.

Now it's an authoritarian country where everyone but Americans go to party.

You got exclusivity on Puerto Rico on the other hand. That didn't get free after the invasion.

FEMA struggling to spend the money to get back on top from Hurricane Ian. If I was Boricuas I'd feel very "are we 2nd class citizens again?" about this.

“again”

aside from it being trendy to say equality and espouse those values, what about PR’s status suggests the residents would be anything other than a 2nd class of citizen under the United States?

Puerto Rico keeps getting asked if they want to be a state and keeps saying no.

The current Supreme Court has suggested being open to revisiting the insular cases

That would create additional outcomes to PR that they are never asked about

The insular cases are pretty unrecognizably appallingly racist for what we expect of the court, really go read them, so I could see them overruling it and wind up dropping Puerto Rico and Congress being unable to reach consensus on any other outcome

Absolutely fascinating reading. Bound up in identity politics, but also shenanigans about how votes are counted, whats on the ballot, what combination of local politics vs the financial consequences for individuals (tax, benefits) you look at.

Puerto Rican's would gain some things in medicaid, have to pay different rates of tax, and lose some status in UN and LAC community contexts.

On the mainland, both major parties ostensibly support in principle self determination. That said, I don't see how the current political landscape could produce it, given the fracture lines.

I loved this footnote in the wiki page:

  Another misconception is that the import/export taxes collected by the U.S. on products manufactured in Puerto Rico are all returned to the Puerto Rico Treasury. This is not the case. Such import/export taxes are returned only for rum products, and even then the U.S. Treasury keeps a portion of those taxes

TBH as a Canadian been to Cuba many times, both for "all inclusive vacation package" trips and for "real" travel (rent a car, stay in casa particulars, tour around the country, meet and talk to real Cubans [in broken English/Spanish]) and, I dunno... I don't think I want to go back.

Beautiful country, amazing people. But it's kind of bleak, and not getting any better. I'm fairly radically left wing, and when I was younger I was more ambiguous about that regime -- critical but also fairly naive about it -- but I've seen enough now to just be totally critical.

Cuba is corrupt and authoritarian and I don't feel good about spending my money there.

They throw people with opinions like mine in jail, they make ordinary people's lives brutally hard, and it's basically run by a mafia with the name "Communist Party" stamped on it.

They've also become explicitly Putin-allied and part of that sphere of ick that pretends to be "anti-colonial" but is really are just vicious thugs.

The US needs to drop the embargo, but that gov't needs to end. Somehow.

I don’t disagree

But hoping American public and private sector economic pressures have anything to do with anything are the thing I find naive, and oozing with indoctrinated hubris that’s reinforced by people from that country that vehemently agree. Its a skewed perspective is my only point.

The “axis of ick” reinforces how little pressure there is on that government system in reality.

Those ills are not different from any other poor Caribbean island. There’s not that much accountability on any island nation regardless of the governance system.

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