I guess this is technically a subtweet, but it's really for educational purposes:

When someone starts talking about all the positive outcomes Cuba has seen from communism, like infant mortality rates, literacy, HIV/AIDS, prenatal healthcare/parental leave, it sounds real nice.

This is one of those times when it's important to talk to people with lived experience of communism, or their descendants.

I happen to live with a Cuban woman, so I asked her to speak on it.

For context: almost all of her paternal family still lives in Cuba. We were able to visit them a few years ago. We didn't see the tourist side of Havana. We saw real life.

And if you know about Cuban culture from Miami, what you're getting there is sentimentality.

What you get in South Florida is a memory of the 50s, before Castro. Cubans in Cuba barely remember the things many Cuban-Americans hold so dear about the culture.

My wife says: People who frame Cuban outcomes positively tend to have socialist/leftist leanings and scare Cubans into voting Republican, because Cubans are traumatized by communism.

The Republican leanings of Cubans do make some kind of twisted sense, with context.

The whole thing is more complex and nuanced than positive outcomes, as we see them from the US.

Cubans have no personal freedoms. They couldn't own private property until a few years ago. They couldn't practice religion until ~2007. People with HIV/AIDS are quarantined.

There's still very much a hierarchy of haves/have nots. Food is rationed. Everyone gets something, but people who work for the government get more—and it's still not a lot. The most basic items are very expensive if you're buying them on your own.

To close, Fel says: "It's a pretty fucked system."

And when one of those Castro/Che loving folks comes back at you to criticize your anecdotal data because they got there’s from an NGO, it’s worth remembering that anecdotes come from lived experience. The best science asks questions based on lived experience.

Both are worth of a critical lens—one no more or less than the other. In an ideal world, they would work in tandem.

If you can throw around fancy NGO stats, you’d better be able to contextualize them in history and back up your perspective. Otherwise, the stats are empty.

So, when someone’s talking about all those great Cuban outcomes and ignoring the less great ones, what do they know about the revolution, the mass exodus from Cuba, the artists & queers harmed, Operation Peter Pan, the Mariel Boatlift, the Bay of Pigs, wet foot/dry foot policies?

My anecdotes come from my wife, who is a 1st gen American on her dad’s side & 2nd gen on her mom’s side. Her dad was on those boats trying to get his family to safety. I can’t remember the order of events, but he lost an eye. He was imprisoned.

But sure, discount the anecdote.

I’m just thinking about the folks who say these things. Many of them would never have lived to see all these great outcomes they tout about communist Cuba.

Because they would have been killed.

How many people need to die to get the US to all these shiny outcomes? Are the “progressives” touting Cuban communism willing to sacrifice themselves?

I guess I need to clarify: this thread is to say that we need to be critical of everything and look at BOTH sides. Cuba should not be our example of what we want a future US to look like when we tear it all apart.

And the point is also that lived experience, again, is crucial. You cannot be an American communist who has never been touched by the devastation wrought by Cuban communism and even begin to pretend you have a single fucking clue.

I do not have lived experience, but I have access to folks who do. And I have ears I can use to listen. I have the experience of growing up in Miami and being CONFUSED about the existence of Cuban Republicans. I married a Cuban woman—we have family in Cuba.

I have a stake in trying to understand what happened with Cuba and the US, because it affects my family. Because Cubans voting Republican affect ALL of us, especially those of us who disagree wholeheartedly. Because context is HUGE.

Take it as an anti-communist rant and unfollow if you want. Or actually read the content and engage with its messiness. But don’t act as if Cuba is some shining beacon worth emulating unless you’ve SEEN the outcome firsthand.