Really disappointed in all the leftists who are opposing the protests in Cuba, or spreading bogus conspiracy theories about the protestors being CIA-backed colonialist pawns. And sadly, it's not just the overt Marxist-Leninist tankies, but a lot of misguided democratic socialists and anarchists too, and even some progressive liberals.
I'll say the same thing I said when Leftists were shitting on the Hong Kong protests a few years back: If you're taking the side of a repressive authoritarian government over the country's actual citizens, then you can't meaningfully claim to be on the side of freedom and liberation anymore.
And before anyone starts arguing "but what about the US sanctions?!," I agree that the sanctions are bad, that we should remove them as soon as possible, and that the Biden administration deserves criticism for keeping them in place. None of that means that the Cuban government is any less horrible.
It's also ridiculous to solely blame U.S. sanctions for Cuba's many economic problems, considering there are 194 other nations in the world that are willing to trade with them, including close neighbors like Canada and Mexico. The Cuban government itself deserves the overwhelming majority of the blame for the country's failings.
A lot of leftists seem to act like we're blockading Cuba and preventing anyone from trading with them. They talk as if Cuba is completely isolated from the world like North Korea, which is absolute nonsense.
The truth is that Cuba has a TON of trade with other countries, particularly in the Americas. As big as the United States is, we're still just a single country, and there's absolutely no way that missing out on trade with one country (however wealthy it may be) could make that much of a difference. Especially since they can get the vast majority of U.S. goods through trade with Canada at only a slight markup.
Cuba's economic problems are the Cuban government's fault, plain and simple.