• Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

    Photo: Headshot of Rich Barlow, an older white man with dark grey hair and wearing a grey shirt and grey-blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 4 comments on Cuba Gets a New Normal

  1. Paul Hare, as so many others, appears to forget the system that was in play prior to 1960 in Cuba, before Cuba’s revolution. It was substantially American big business dominated, usually exploited country with heavy emphasis on vice-economics (gambling casinos, e,g,), monoculture farming, accumulated wealth moving out of the country to foreign nations/individuals, and a generally oppressive often US-supported supported leadership (Batista, et al). From the perspective of what is healthy for the future of humankind on earth and for a healthy earth upon which we all depend, Cuba has become an important contributor in recent years. Their agricultural efforts, allowing farmers to promote seed diversity, organic farming, reduced chemical fertilizers, and more traditional non-heavy machinery farming have made it world-recognized as a leader in sustainability. Their health care and educational systems are extraordinary by any reasonable standard. Hare sees the “opportunities for big business will be enormous.” This may not be a plus at all, but a threat to their great strides of their strongly rural economy and certainly a threat to the planet’s future health. Yes, for sure some good things will emerge, but it is too narrow a perspective to ignore key parts of Cuba’s history and moreover pretend, as we often do, that we humans with our “growth” thinking are somehow divorced from the earth’s systems and natural restrictions.

  2. What the Castro regime wants is what they view as reparations

    in other words everything they can get while giving nothing.

    The Castros especially want ‘credit’ from the US government

    credit which as usual with them will not be repaid.

  3. When people talk about how “isolated” Cuba is, they seem to forget that Cuba has maintained normal relations with almost every other country on earth for quite a while.

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