How Cuba Survived and Surprised in a Post-Soviet World
- 3 years ago
in 1991 the Soviet Union disbanded and Cuba lost its ally that it relied on so heavily to effectively prop up its struggling economy
in the period between 1989 and 1992 the Gross domestic product of Cuba dropped by over 35% and that's based on very generous figures released by the Cuban Communist Party
the situation was not good at all , what made this all worst is that even if Cuba could rekindle some of those old friendships and start trading again the price of sugar had plummeted around this time as more and more countries started using corn syrup instead of cane sugar , Sugar had done well from 1985–90 and crashed precipitously in 1990–91 and did not recover for five years.
so it was not a great time for them to be moving out on their own , unfortunately throughout the 1990s Cuba followed a very similar path to that of North Korea , another country that was cut off from foreign aid when the Soviet Union crumbled away
there was widespread unemployment and starvation and increasingly strong military presence and a reliance on debt to keep their head above water
but how they differed was ? the way that they reacted to this adversity North Korea basically hunkered down and gave the big middle finger to the outside world only occasionally popping out to beg for foreign aid ,
but Cuba kind of admitted defeat in a sense and tried to turn everything around , they open themselves up to tourism they started allowing foreign investment they liberated people to start their own businesses , authorizing self-employment for some 150 occupations and perhaps most bizarrely of all they legalized USa currency
private businesses with private profit was certainly not on the Communist menu , and using the $ to trade in Cuba was like a vegan Expo using beef jerky
Every year the United Nations holds a vote asking countries to choose if the United States is justified in their economic embargo against Cuba and whether it should be lifted. 2016 was the first year that the United States abstained from the vote
Due to the continued growth of tourism, growth began in 1999 with a 6.2% increase in Gross domestic product . Growth then picked up, with a growth in Gross domestic product of 11.8% in 2005 according to government figures.
In 2010 Fidel Castro, in agreement with Raúl Castro's reformist sentiment, admitted that the Cuban model based on the old Soviet model of centralized planning was no longer sustainable. The brothers encouraged the development of a co-operative variant of socialism - where the state plays a less active role in the economy - and the formation of worker-owned co-operatives and self-employment enterprises
In 2007 the Cuban economy grew by 7.5%, higher than the Latin American average. Accordingly, the cumulative growth in Gross domestic product since 2004 stood at 42.5%
Raul Castro's regime began a concerted effort to restructure and to ask for forgiveness of loans and debts with creditor countries, many in the billions of dollars and long
in the period between 1989 and 1992 the Gross domestic product of Cuba dropped by over 35% and that's based on very generous figures released by the Cuban Communist Party
the situation was not good at all , what made this all worst is that even if Cuba could rekindle some of those old friendships and start trading again the price of sugar had plummeted around this time as more and more countries started using corn syrup instead of cane sugar , Sugar had done well from 1985–90 and crashed precipitously in 1990–91 and did not recover for five years.
so it was not a great time for them to be moving out on their own , unfortunately throughout the 1990s Cuba followed a very similar path to that of North Korea , another country that was cut off from foreign aid when the Soviet Union crumbled away
there was widespread unemployment and starvation and increasingly strong military presence and a reliance on debt to keep their head above water
but how they differed was ? the way that they reacted to this adversity North Korea basically hunkered down and gave the big middle finger to the outside world only occasionally popping out to beg for foreign aid ,
but Cuba kind of admitted defeat in a sense and tried to turn everything around , they open themselves up to tourism they started allowing foreign investment they liberated people to start their own businesses , authorizing self-employment for some 150 occupations and perhaps most bizarrely of all they legalized USa currency
private businesses with private profit was certainly not on the Communist menu , and using the $ to trade in Cuba was like a vegan Expo using beef jerky
Every year the United Nations holds a vote asking countries to choose if the United States is justified in their economic embargo against Cuba and whether it should be lifted. 2016 was the first year that the United States abstained from the vote
Due to the continued growth of tourism, growth began in 1999 with a 6.2% increase in Gross domestic product . Growth then picked up, with a growth in Gross domestic product of 11.8% in 2005 according to government figures.
In 2010 Fidel Castro, in agreement with Raúl Castro's reformist sentiment, admitted that the Cuban model based on the old Soviet model of centralized planning was no longer sustainable. The brothers encouraged the development of a co-operative variant of socialism - where the state plays a less active role in the economy - and the formation of worker-owned co-operatives and self-employment enterprises
In 2007 the Cuban economy grew by 7.5%, higher than the Latin American average. Accordingly, the cumulative growth in Gross domestic product since 2004 stood at 42.5%
Raul Castro's regime began a concerted effort to restructure and to ask for forgiveness of loans and debts with creditor countries, many in the billions of dollars and long