{"id":12983,"date":"2009-07-26T08:23:26","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T13:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=12983"},"modified":"2009-07-26T08:23:26","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T13:23:26","slug":"castro-calls-for-more-sacrifice-from-cubans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=12983","title":{"rendered":"Castro calls for more sacrifice from Cubans"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Cuba’s Revolution Day, president Raoul Castro celebrated by telling Cubans that they need to be prepared for for more sacrifices. In a country where bicycles and horse-drawn carts are more often used than automobiles and where citizens make about $20\/month, It’s difficult to imagine what more they might be able to sacrifice. <\/p>\n

\n

Castro already has implored Cubans for more time as he implements “structural changes” to a struggling economy controlled more than 90 percent by the state. He also has said he’d be willing to meet with U.S. leaders over any issue \u2014 including the country’s political prisoners and human rights record.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, Al Jazeera<\/a> doesn’t see Cuba the way the rest of us see it;<\/p>\n

The Cuba that Fidel Castro took over in 1959 was a grossly unequal place, arguably in a near feudal state.<\/p>\n

A small group of land-holding elite controlled most of the wealth. Illiteracy ran high, especially in rural areas, and health indicators were awful.<\/p>\n

Correcting all of this via a socialist economic model was Fidel Castro’s goal.<\/p>\n

In the ensuing decades, Castro’s governments did make huge strides.<\/p>\n

Cuba’s literacy rates are among the highest in the world. Some health indicators surpass those in developed countries. And Cuba today is a much more egalitarian place than it ever was.<\/p>\n

As significantly, Castro succeeded in consolidating what was already a strong strain of Cuban nationalism, dating back to the country’s independence struggle from Spain and US occupation at the beginning of the 20th century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, the US occupied Cuba – I’d suggest that the Al Jazeera “google” the Platt Amendment. The Platt Amendment was added to Congress’ declaration of war against Spain in Cuba declared that the US would limit their actions in Cuba to liberating the island from Spain and forbade that the US would occupy the nation. <\/p>\n

Don’t feel bad, though. I had to remind my Latin American History professor about the Platt Amendment during one of his tirades against US imperialism in Cuba, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Cuba’s Revolution Day, president Raoul Castro celebrated by telling Cubans that they need to be … Castro calls for more sacrifice from Cubans<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}