Maggie's Farm

Mujica delivers Obama message to Castro: 'let's talk about lifting the trade embargo.”

POU and POTUS should read Michael Totten's Letter from Cuba: To Embargo or Not, which was linked to at Maggie's Farm.

Cuba can purchase food and medicine from the US- for cash. Unfortunately for Cuba, its productive capacity has been so atrophied by a half century of Fidelista style communism that it has little to sell. Its sugar industry, for example, is a shadow of its former self. There is no "free trade" with Cuba- its totalitarian government tightly controls trade. The lion's share of salaries paid to Cuban employees in foreign "owned" tourist hotels goes to the Cuban government, leaving Cuban employees of those hotels with $20-30 per month.

Pepe Mujica was a wannabe Fidel from way back.
Pepe Mujica wanted to turn Uruguay, often called the Switzerland of South America for its generous social welfare programs which had been in place in Uruguay since the 1930s, into the Cuba of South America. The irony here is that one reason for supporting Cuban style totalitarianism is for its allegedly high social welfare indicators- life expectancy, infant mortality. Uruguay has been at or near the top of such social welfare indicators in Latin America since well before Castro took power in 1959. You're at the top, but you need Cuban-style totalitarianism to improve. Granted, Pepe Mujica apparently no longer believes that, but he was once willing to take up the gun to enforce such irrational thinking.

While Pepe Mujica appears to no longer be a wannabe totalitarian, he still believes that "there are no enemies on the left." Thus his being buddy buddy with the Castros and his refusal to condemn Venezuela's political repression. Mujica spent about 15 years in prison, and was tortured while in prison, but sees no need to speak out for political prisoners when leftist regimes such as Cuba or Chavezuela are doing the imprisoning. After all, "there are no enemies on the left."