Devastating embargo

After acknowledging that the World Wildlife Fund recognizes Cuba as the only country to achieve sustainable development, Sam Kilanowski wrote, “That must be because Cuba’s population is declining, decreasing by 32,000 since 2018 and projected to continue to decline; by 41 percent in total by 2100.”

Like many countries, such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore, Cuba’s fertility rate is declining, as has been the case since the 1970s. www.statista.com/statistics

And, yes, one of the many complex reasons is that thousands of young people have left Cuba in recent years. The underlying reason for their migration is the unjust and inhumane US embargo which has stagnated the economy and economic opportunity.

Other factors include a severe housing shortage related to the embargo, a reduced economic value of children, and unfettered access to reproductive services, including contraceptives and abortion on demand. That latter circumstance is born of Cuban society’s abiding respect for a woman’s right to choose, something many American women can only dream of.

Still another component closely related to Cuban women’s institutionalized right to choose is that women constitute 66% of Cuba’s workforce and 70% of its professionals.

So, a subset of Cuba’s declining population is that, in Cuba, patriarchy has, thankfully, taken a backseat. As a result, Cuban women are much less dependent upon men.

(Related reading: Friedrich Engels’ “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.”)

Although achieving sustainable development isn’t directly related to Cuba’s declining fertility rate, it is, paradoxically, a social contradiction most often associated with more prosperous societies, as the website above illustrates.

So, compassionate people can well imagine what Cuba could do relative to fertility and all other living standards if not for the devastating embargo imposed by the grotesque monstrosity known as the United States. http:// www.slp.org/

Guy Marsh Lancaster