Export Ban Drives Cuba To Non-US Analytics Software To Boost Tourism

dkatana writes with some crucial lines from an article at InformationWeek: Currently Cuba receives around 2.8 million visitors every year, half of them from Canada. Mintur, the Cuban Tourist Ministry, estimates that if Americans were free to travel to Cuba today, the number of visitors would increase by two million the first year. Last year the Cuban government was interested in getting its hands on analytics software to process the data generated by visitors on social networks. ... Because of the existing ban on American companies supplying technology to Cuba, Havana had to look somewhere else and found SocialVane, a small Spanish company on the island of Menorca, which has been working with the local tourist sector to analyze issues, trends, and potentials of the tourism industry.

Comments

Re:That stuff take a while to forget

[gstoddart]

There's more to it than that. Far more.

Starting in 1901 when the US jammed the Platt Amendment into the Cuiban Constitution which America said entitles them to keep a naval base in Cuba (that's what Guantanamo is).

Carrying forward, the US was a backer of Batista, who was a petty little thug who did things like:

Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[5] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large multinational American corporations that had invested considerable amounts of money in Cuba.[5][6] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populaceâ"which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrationsâ"Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his anti-Communist secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people.[7][8] For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.[9]

But, as always happens, he was a thug and a dictator but friendly to US business interests. So America liked him.

Basically the Cubans were poor and starving under a terrible government who cared more about US interests than its own citizens.

The American Mafia is largely whose stuff was nationalized:

In the 1950s, Havana served as "a hedonistic playground for the world's elite", producing sizable gambling, prostitution and drug profits for American Mafiosos, corrupt law-enforcement officials, and their politically elected cronies.[38] In fact, drugs, be it marijuana or cocaine, were so plentiful at the time that one American magazine in 1950 proclaimed "Narcotics are hardly more difficult to obtain in Cuba than a shot of rum. And only slightly more expensive."[38]

In a bid to profit from such an environment, Batista established lasting relationships with organized crime, notably with American mobsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, and under his rule Havana became known as "the Latin Las Vegas."[39] Batista and Lansky formed a friendship and business relationship that flourished for a decade. During a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in the late 1940s, it was mutually agreed that, in return for kickbacks, Batista would give Lansky and the Mafia control of Havana's racetracks and casinos.[40]

So, let's not pretend that Cuba wasn't already under a corrupt dictatorship under which the citizens suffered hugely.

I'm not defending everything Castro did, but everyone likes to conveniently the history of American supported dictators allowing American organized crime to treat the nation as their own private playground.

Batista and the crooks really needed to go. And I'm afraid I have little sympathy for them.

Americans like to act like Castro overthrew a benign government, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Don't just look at the last 50 years, look at the last 100.

Re:That stuff take a while to forget

[gstoddart]

Anyway, I just related the textbook version; I wasn't aware of any US military deployments in Cuba (besides them leasing the Guantanamo Bay facility)

Leasing? America is NOT "leasing" Guantanamo in any legitimate use of that word.

America jammed the Platt Amendment into Cuba's Constitution at the end of a war, which unilaterally said "we get to keep a navy base here" ... in effect "we own joo, bitches".

Cuba has never cashed the checks, has repeatedly said they don't consent to Guantanamo, and don't want the Americans there.

Guantanamo is basically a forcible military presence in a foreign country.

It sure as fuck isn't 'leased' in any honest meaning of 'lease'.