LOL! They would be devastated!

An interesting aside: In Cuba anyone can afford to go to college...because it's free. The young people I knew in Cuba said that the main impediment toward getting a higher education was the general shortage of cash, meaning you might not have enough spare time left over from work to take advantage of the free higher education, because you were too busy earning enough to just support yourself on a daily basis, and perhaps the seniors in your family...plus, the books and paper, etc were expensive.

Another aside: Before Castro a majority of Cubans were very poor, without medical care, and illiterate. Within 3 years after Castro there was almost 100% literacy on the island (and has been ever since), there was good free medical care everywhere, and things were considerably better for the average person. Since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact the economy has weakened greatly, and most Cubans are again very poor, but they still have good schools and good medical care.

In a general sense, Cuba struck me as the most classless and the least racist society I have every witnessed (this was about 3 years ago).

And yet, there are certainly people who want to get out...like the ones who converted a car into a boat the other day and tried to drive across the sea to Florida! There are numerous reasons for that...just like there are numerous reasons for people all over Latin America to want to get to North America. Cuba is no special exception to that...it's just the one that happens to be directly across the strait from Florida. But it is the only one that's being embargoed and treated like a pariah by the USA...

Why? Because Castro won't follow orders from Washington, that's why. That makes him an outlaw in the eyes of America. He has never been forgiven for kicking out the big corporations that ran Cuba before the revolution. It's all a question of moneyed interests. You cross those guys and you are out in the cold...or dead. Castro has managed to stay alive longer than anyone might have expected in 1960.

- LH