Your point concerning civil liberties in Cuba is well taken and elementary to anyone living in the United States or OECD. There are and always have been significant sectors of the Left that have been generally critical of this (usually, however, in a manner that takes into account the international environment and institutional history ).
However equally elementary to any informed observer is the difference between life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy etc. I can refer you to several Human Development reports if you are interested as I feel that anecdotal evidence or sociological surveys will impress you little.
The comparison not only holds in the case of Mexico(?), Puerto Rico (I think you must be rather uninterested or uninformed about the history or relative well- being here)and even Costa Rica(the Switzerland of Latin America. I am certain that you are aware of plenty of statistical sources as well as North American anecdotes.
Regards
Brad De Long wrote:
>
> >
> >P.S. The base line for comparing Cuba's political and economic
> >development isn't Berkeley California. Given the role of US imperialism
> >and Cuba's position in the world-economy as an agricultural periphery a
> >more realistic comparision is between Cuba and Haiti. Warts and all Cuba
> >is a much better place to live than Haiti.
> >
> >Sean Noonan
> >seanno at ksu.edu
>
> Why Haiti rather than Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, or Mexico? It's certainly
> the case that if Cuba's alternative destiny after 1958 was that of Haiti
> (or Guatemala), then Fidel Castro is God's Gift to Cubans. But I think that
> Cuba's destiny in the absence of Castro was unlikely to be that bleak...
>
> Brad DeLong