Cuba

Met a Cuban IT technician today in Brazil, he came with his coworker to install my WiFi modem and stuff.

My dad knows I'm a filthy commie and said "hey he's from Cuba!" and I promptly said (to remain neutral as to not cause anything) "I'd love to go to Cuba, cause here in Brazil people either say it's hell on earth or heaven on earth, so I'd like to see it for myself". The Cuban guy, which was very likeable said "there's a politician here in Brazil who says the truth: every May 1st we were coerced into partaking in the May Day Parade or else we'd be screwed over in the future, there are many people in poverty, it's a dictatorship, the military high ups get mansions and the populace lives in squalor, the government makes incentives for the people to use dollars because the bureaucrats can use those to travel abroad etc".

Honestly, I do believe he's telling the truth, because he lived and grew there in a town close to Havana, I forgot the name. His dream was to move to the US, and as someone who worked there I told him " if you're not a qualified worker you're gonna have a bad time, there's lots of poverty, yadda yadda".

What to think of this? Every single metric I've seen of Cuba shows it's better than its Caribbean neighbours, in basically every way besides what those far right institutes say.

What I've gathered from the conversation is that every poor country is similar, from Burkina Faso to Burundi to Laos and Cuba. It's not really a fault of "socialism" but rather a fault of the global North-South dynamic and how it pushes global south countries to be like this as to provide cheap labour and commodities.

Any thoughts on this comrades? I'm sorry if I'm wrong on anything, my theory is not the best and neither is my practice. Thank you for your time.