None of those things should be illegal. It is really annoying to see how a leader class kills people of hunger and make everything illegal so that now everyone is a criminal for trying to survive.
The former has access to foreign currency with a real value. The later can hope to maybe get an exit visa (the government will loan it's "doctors" to foreign regimes in exchange for real currencies).
It was always my understanding that while Cuba lacks a lot of things that many other countries take for granted, that the quality of its doctors was outstanding. I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of the pandemic.
Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under a false impression for all this time?
Annecdotal evidence, but an acquintance of mine (who is an MD) encountered Cuban "doctors" in South America and wasn't impressed at all.
> I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of the pandemic.
The thing is that Cuba made a lot of claims about their handling of the pandemic, but as with every communist country out there it's hard to really know what's really going on.
Sure isn't.
Food and medicine shortages due to COVID-19 caused the biggest anti Castro regime protests since the 90's [0] [1]. Thanks to the communist regime people are back to starvation. Even the government was forced to acknowledge it because it got so big.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Cuban_protests
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/11/americas/cuba-protests/index....
Certainly the economy took a hit, and this is true everywhere in the world, but starvation? I'd like to see a source for that, as you haven't provided any. Typically, what happens in situations where island countries cannot acquire foreign currency, is that they cannot import specialty foods, and have to rely on local, low-quality and repetitive sources of nutrition. But it is very unlikely for actual starvation to happen.