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What we're doing to the Cuban people with this blockade is criminal. I don't expect to see justice in my lifetime. What a miserable state of affairs.
by WaxProlix 5mo ago
What we're doing to the Cuban people with this blockade is criminal. I don't expect to see justice in my lifetime. What a miserable state of affairs.
- ReptileMan 5mo ago[flagged]
- pasquinelli 5mo agodoesn't surviving a 70 year embargo make you question how bad the communists really are?
- Manuel_D 5mo agoNo. The fact that the Cuban authorities s decided that further impoverishing Cuba is worth preserving their single-party communist regime demonstrates that it is indeed a bad government.
- vrganj 5mo agoIt's not the Cuban authorities that are impoverishing Cuba, that's just victim blaming. It is American imperialism, at least stand by your crimes.
- Manuel_D 5mo agoA boycott is a crime? The US has decided not the trade with Cuba, that's it. Cuba is still free to trade with any other country that's willing to trade with them.
- vrganj 5mo agoIt's not a boycott. It's an embargo. The US is boarding and seizing boats with supplies headed for Cuba. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/americas/venezuela-cuba-oil-tanker.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/americas/venezuela-...
- Manuel_D 5mo agoThese ships were flying false flags, which is a violation of maritime law. It's legal to board and size ships doing this, regardless of embargos.
- lostlogin 5mo agoYet when Russia plays games with false flags and oil exports, American is too scared to act. Even with Russia adding Iranian attacks on US bases, the US remains quiet. It’s a strange world.
- pasquinelli 5mo agoone wonders why
- anigbrowl 5mo ago5 minutes before this post you were saying it's an embargo, not a blockade. Now it's a 'boycott'. I don't trust people whose arguments constantly shift to meet the rhetorical needs of the moment. You don't like the Cuban government because they're communists, OK fine. I don't like the American policy of starving people for years on end while making high-minded sermons about the moral imperfections of the Cuban government.
- kyboren 5mo agoOK, then forget the sermons; how 'bout this? The USA, like all serious countries, seeks to defend and advance its interests. Those interests include the suppression of self-declared enemies like Cuba and Iran, or seeking regime change so they cease being self-declared enemies of the US. The irony of your claim that the US is starving the Cuban people is that in fact, the US could go that far and it would actually end the enmity from Cuba. But they haven't and they won't. It would harm other interests, possibly engender enmity elsewhere, and outside of total war Americans don't play the game that dirty. But if people widely believe that's what the US is doing anyway, and they're "doing the time" without having actually having "done the crime", then considering that actually doing it would end the enmity from Cuba, it starts to look awfully attractive to Just Do It. So claiming that they are, when they actually aren't, only makes it more likely that they will. Anyway, given that both ex-communist states China and Russia have demanded economic reforms from the recalcitrant Cuban regime--which have not been forthcoming--and that food is not embargoed, I think the impoverishment and hunger of the Cuban people can't credibly be blamed on "el bloqueo". Cuba now imports their sugar--from the US of all places! You really think that it's American policy starving Cubans?
- M95D 5mo ago> The USA, like all serious countries, seeks to defend and advance its interests. Those interests include the suppression of self-declared enemies like Cuba and Iran, or seeking regime change so they cease being self-declared enemies of the US. 1) I'm not aware of such a declaration coming from Cuba. Please give a link. 2) Are you sure it's USA's interests, not just a few very rich people from USA?
- pasquinelli 5mo agoi remember during covid china sent its vaccine to cuba and america captured it and siezed it. that's why cuba developed their own vaccines. another point on the "maybe the cuban communist party isn't so bad" tally.
- ted_bunny 5mo agoThis comment shows that you do not understand the basic facts of the situation or are willing to lie about it. No one should engage you until you put in the bare minimum effort to at least know what you're talking about.
- Manuel_D 5mo agoIf you're going to accuse someone of lying, it'd be good to actually lay out that what you believe is a lie.
- pasquinelli 5mo agoafter a failed invasion to overthrow the cuban government, we spent a lifetime doing covert operations and using our economic dominance to try to starve cuba to death, but the problem is that cuba has resisted. i wonder if that'll still be your tune if america finds itself on the receiving end of that kind of treatment.
- ted_bunny 5mo agoThe world can only heal when Americans are humiliated back into living in reality.
- daedrdev 5mo agoCuba let 20% of the population leave in 2020-24 so that they would have fewer dissenters in the country who might overthrow the government. Thats a higher rate of population per year than the peak of the great Irish famine
- mothballed 5mo agoWhere does one go with one of the weakest passports in the world, no assets, no family connections, and probably only sporadically any skills capable of getting a work visa? I need to get on speed dial whatever immigration lawyer those people had.
- daedrdev 5mo agoI can't find the article but I did read a few years ago most had left to either Mexico or the US. The US had a very favorable program for cubans to enter, work and stay in the country under the Biden admin. The cuban government via National Office of Statistics and Information admitted it fell by at least 10%, but have not done a census in 15 years. Independent estimates range form 18-24%.
- pasquinelli 5mo agoif they don't let people leave to prevent total state collapse then they're starving their own people (by means of the american trade embargo); if they do let people leave, it's to tighten their stranglehold on the country.
- kyboren 5mo agoAny way you slice it, such an exodus is never the sign of a well-managed country.
- pasquinelli 5mo agoi'd love to see america "manage" the conditions america has imposed on cuba.
- mitthrowaway2 5mo ago[flagged]
- smallmancontrov 5mo agoSo that the Capitalists could sell the industrial base of the United States of America to the Communist Party of China for 30 pieces of silver. Cuba didn't have the ability to break the back of American labor. China did. That's the difference.
- xp84 5mo agoI’m not even left wing but I have to admit I’m pretty sure this is a correct analysis.
- mothballed 5mo agoIn a vacuum sure, but the communists replaced Batista, who was arguably as bad or worse at the time of the revolution. In the long run they'd have probably been better under Batista because being America's bitch is better for the health of Caribbean nations than being the bitch of USSR/China and the enemy of America while you haul your goods home in a donkey cart like it's the 19th century. But it wasn't knowable at the time the die was cast.
- culi 5mo agoImportant to point out that Batista was installed by the US. There are only 2 countries in all of South America that DON'T have the experience of having a democratically elected leader ousted in a US-backed coup and replaced by a dictator. Only 2. (Colombia and Uruguay)
- pseudohadamard 5mo agoThe situation was also something created by the US: After taking power, Castro visited the US to try and set up friendly relations with them. The US president refused to meet him, sending the VP (Nixon, ugh) instead and generally giving them the cold shoulder and squeezing Cuba more and more. Khrushchev saw the opportunity the US had handed him on a silver platter, and the rest is history.
- righthand 5mo agoRight because if we trade with the communists near us then people will start to realize that our government is made up of communism for corporations. Which is totally fine because we hide those communist ideas under “capitalism”. Let’s encourage the fed to buy more Intel shares and bailout big business (banks and PPP giveaways) but continue to wag the finger at communism in Cuba because it’s “bad” and the 1950s boomers got red scared!
- Arodex 5mo agoIf collective punishment is the norm you want to apply, that rule may bite you back sooner than you think...
- tomhow 5mo agoComments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- oceanplexian 5mo ago[flagged]
- ElevenLathe 5mo agoThe new thing is the secondary sanctions, which penalize those other nations for trading with Cuba, and the threat of phsyically interdicting oil shipments from Mexico or others (though for some reason a Russian one was let through somewhat recently). We're using our economic and military weight to bully unrelated countries from trading with this tiny little island that poses zero threat to the United States. The result is a massive amount of needless human suffering.
- dgacmu 5mo agoWe are threatening tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba, a country that uses oil for the vast majority of its electricity generation. It might be legal but it also seems immoral.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoWe have seized and intercepted ships trying to do so. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-blockade-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-b...
- daedrdev 5mo agoThis was the situation in the past, but the US has now forced Mexico and Vueneusalia to not ship Cuba gas. Of course the cuban economy is so weak it can't afford solar which could solved this, largely due to their own failures
- input_sh 5mo agoEven in the past there has been a bunch of nonsense "rules" that made other countries choose between trading with Cuba or the US, but not both. To name one, if a ship docks into Cuba without filing paperwork requesting to do so from the US, it cannot dock into any of the US ports within 180 days of leaving the Cuban territory. To name another one, if some product is made somewhere else, but contains >10% of US-made parts or materials somewhere in its supply chain, then as far as the US government is concerned it might as well have been 100% made in the US and therefore cannot be exported to Cuba. Otherwise, the company that sold it to Cuba risks being banned from operating in the US. So the US is and has been pretty much tilting the scale against any other country in the world trading with Cuba, using its own purchasing power as a bargaining chip. As for solar panels, they do not solve your inability to move cars around. They do reduce your need for fuel, but when you're 100% out of fuel, no car can move around and no amount of solar panels is ever going to fix that.
- Manuel_D 5mo agoThe US is not enforcing a blockade, it's an embargo. The US and other countries are refusing to trade with Cuba, but plenty of other countries can and do trade with Cuba. Cuba is not entitled to trade with the US. A blockade is when a country stops traffic, from entering a country's ports. It's an act of war, and a totally different thing from an embargo.
- insane_dreamer 5mo ago> A blockade is when a country stops traffic, from entering a country's ports. this is exactly what the US is doing
- jasonlotito 5mo agoRegardless, it's evil and should be treated as evil.
- ceejayoz 5mo agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/americas/venezuela-cuba-oil-tanker.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/americas/venezuela-... > The oil tanker seized by the United States off the coast of Venezuela this week was part of the Venezuelan government’s effort to support Cuba, according to documents and people inside the Venezuelan oil industry. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-blockade-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-b... > Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed. > The U.S. government called its 1962 policy a “quarantine” to avoid using the word “blockade,” which legally could be interpreted as an act of war. The Trump administration has also avoided using the word “blockade.” The distinction seems to be mostly word games at this point.
- Manuel_D 5mo agoThis ship was flying a false flag [1], which makes it legal for governments to seize regardless of the situation with Cuba. 1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-skipper-seized-us-near-venezuela/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...
- dirtbagskier 5mo ago[flagged]
- culi 5mo agoThank you for being one of the few that seem to actually understand that this is not just a embargo but an actual full-fledged blockade https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/02/un-experts-condemn-us-executive-order-imposing-fuel-blockade-cuba https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/02/un-experts-c... This is collective punishment and considered a war crime under Fourth Geneva Convention
- casey2 4mo agoCuba is a Criminal state, the smart ones already left for America several times, 10% of the population in 2022-2023. So many false tears shed for doing a 100th of what the Cuban government has done to it's own people. Iran, the Houthies, Cuba in the 60s etc none of them believed in free trade, infact they expropriated billions in American owned assets.
- thiagoharry 4mo agoAs a sovereign country, Cuba has the right to nationalize economic activity if it deems it necessary. It compensated all countries whose businesses were nationalized, such as Switzerland, France, and Canada. Except the United States, which refused the compensation and began attacking its neighbor.