Occupy Cuba

Today in class, we talked a lot about how to ask good questions to prompt more interesting blog posts.  After the reading that I just did, I can think of a few questions that I could write a lot about.  The reading was a brief history of the United State's involvement in Cuba over the past 100 years or so.  And my #1 question is... Based on our past interactions with Cuba, what would happen if we dropped all travel restrictions and bad feelings about the country and its people?

First, I want to talk about a few things from the reading.  I didn't realize how quickly our relationship with Cuba changed from really good to really bad.  We first went into Cuba to HELP them fight against the Spanish.  Then, when we beat the Spanish, we were like

"Oh by the way, we're staying here."

And we MADE them put the Platt amendment in their constitution which basically said that we could have three military bases and a few ports IN Cuba and they couldn't do anything about it.  In fact, we still have one of them left called Guantanamo Bay.  In fact, I'd love to spend a whole class period talking about Guantanamo Bay, why we have it, what we do there, and things like that.  It's a really interesting topic.  Anyway, from a little extra research that I did, I found out the Las Vegas was basically created because Americans couldn't go to Cuba anymore to do their gambling and partying.  So I've brainstormed a few things that might happen if we WERE to open Cuba back up the the United States.

• HUGE development all over the country by wealthy Americans
• Minor decrease in visitors to Las Vegas
• Major decrease in visitors to other surrounding caribbean countries and islands
• Lots of job opportunities for the people of Cuba in the field of tourism and hospitality
• Big update in Cuban supplies (like cars and other materials)

These are just a few things.  I think it'd be really fun to have this as a class activity, and we could put all of our lists together and discuss which ones really belong and why.