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igogq425last Monday at 11:45 AM2 repliesview on HN

If you tried to back up your assumption with figures or with specific historical facts, you would see that it is wrong. It's not just about the fact that there was instability somewhere at some point, but about how it is being perpetuated. The countries you list above are very diverse. But what they all have in common, and what distinguishes them from countries in Latin America, is that there is a lot of ocean between them and the US. Admittedly, this also applies to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. But if we examine the question of what distinguishes these countries from the ones you list, it brings us back to the connection that was already pointed out above. I live in Germany and have had access to toothpaste my whole life. People my age in Cuba can still remember very well what it was like to have to do without toothpaste. Now ask your favorite LLM who temporarily prevented toothpaste from being imported into Cuba.


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stinkbeetleyesterday at 10:18 AM

The topic is about Latin America in general. Cuba is a very small and extreme outlier for several reasons so not very representative, I would say. It's certainly true that communist regimes from Cambodia to North Korea to Cuba have often been horrible for their people, whatever the root causes might be.

No, I'm talking about Latin America in general though. And yes it is certainly true there was colonialism, destabilization, economic coercion, and all that from large powers. I don't deny that. The examples I gave fit exactly the same description though. There was no "vast ocean" between the Ottoman Empire and Europe where it was throwing its weight around for centuries. Nor was there a vast (or any) ocean between China and colonial European powers, or later Japan.

So if "vast oceans" are part of your thesis, you are going to have to explain and define that far better, with a lot more supporting evidence and reason for your claims.

You can vaguely handwave and pontificate about differences between other examples and just assert without any real evidence or reasoning that must have been the cause of it. But like I said, that's just not scientific or even compelling in the slightest, really.

boxedlast Monday at 1:00 PM

Blaming Cubas struggles on the US without acknowledging that Cuba, for example, has labor camps for children, is kinda silly imo.

It's a brutal dictatorship very similar to Iran. Let's all keep that in mind.

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