[Pheddytrourry]

his narrative could be summed up as a David versus Goliath story, with Cuba playing the role of the rock-slinging shepherd and the U.S. that of the heartless giant. Washington feeds this myth by maintaining an economic embargo on Cuba that gives the regime a ready-made excuse as to why the revolution has failed its people...
The U.S. holds its own myths about the Caribbean's largest island, too. Chief among them is the old saw that the embargo gives Washington some leverage over events in Havana. The (rather wishful) thinking is that the U.S. should not unilaterally lift the trade restrictions because it can be an effective tool down the road in prompting the Cuban government to undertake reforms. That, too, is mostly wrong. If anything, many in Cuba believe Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raúl, are terrified the U.S. will scrap the embargo and take away their best public-relations tool...In many parts of the world, the story of the Cuban revolution goes like this: Fidel Castro overthrew a U.S.-backed dictatorship that had turned Cuba into a playground for the rich while the majority poor suffered abject poverty.
While there is a grain of truth to that story, much of it is wrong. Like all Latin American countries at the time of the revolution, Cuba had grinding poverty in some areas of the countryside. But relative to the rest of the region, Cuba was one of the most developed countries, with a large middle class and a well-unionized working class. Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1,000 live births in 1957 was the lowest in Latin America and the 13th-lowest in the world, ahead of France, West Germany and Japan, according to U.N. data. In 1959, 76 out of every 100 Cubans could read and write, the fourth-highest literacy rate in Latin America. (In 2000, Cuba's literacy rate was up to 96%, a statistic often used as evidence of Cuba's advancement under the revolution, but Cuba's high starting point is often overlooked.)
So why did so many Cubans support the revolution? Because most Cubans, rich and poor, despised dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had interrupted Cuban democracy through a military coup in 1952 and ruled with corruption and brutality. The revolution's stated goal was the restoration of democracy.
...To its credit, Cuba's revolutionary government has given free education and health care to everyone. As a result, Cuba has produced more university graduates per capita than virtually any other Latin American nation. One such success story is María Zarragoitía, a 58-year-old professor at the prestigious University of Havana. Her mother was an illiterate Spanish immigrant who worked as a maid before the Revolution.
Unlike most Cubans, Ms. Zarragoitía can travel through academic exchanges and has two children who have studied abroad. She says her son in Mexico, who is studying for a master's degree, feels better prepared than his peers there; however, her niece in France finds she is far behind. "That's really not so surprising," Ms. Zarragoitía says. "France is a first-world country and we are third world."
One question whose answer could be crucial to the future of the country: Will students studying abroad return to Cuba, and to a system whose topsy-turvy economics mean that it's financially much better to be employed as a waiter in a tourist hotel than as a doctor at a hospital or a professor at a university? Teacher salaries are so low that Cuba has a teacher shortage, forcing some schoolchildren to take "tele-classes," where instruction is served up on videotape in a room full of noisy students. "They have a professor on hand in case anyone has any doubts about what we're seeing on the video, but since no one even watches, no one ever has any doubts," says an 18-year-old student named Jessica...
Cuba's health-care system is in the same boat: universal access but very poor quality. Cuban doctors are considered well trained by Latin American standards. Foreigners who come to the island for treatment pay cash and suffer no lack of medicines, but ask any Cuban who has set foot in a hospital and he or she will tell you there are severe shortages of medicines and equipment; hospital patients often have to bring their own sheets. In operating rooms, sutures are in short supply and anesthesia is scarce. Medical care has gotten much worse, Cubans say, partly because as many as 30,000 doctors are working in Venezuela, the island's main economic benefactor. Cuban Myths Will Test Obama - WSJ.com