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Seems that pre revolution it had 1/3 of USA gdp per capita. That is quite nice starting point and Cuba was destined to be rich. It had all the potential of Mexico without any of the problems.
How did Cuba have the potential of Mexico? The latter has had a large amount of industrialization and drug money. Did Cuba have something ability to more than a tourist economy or basically Florida? I also would assume some of their main cash crops that kept them at 1/3 US income pre-Revolution would be less true going forward.
Cuba being right next to the USA brings in lots of investment, they’re mineral rich, and they were probably destined to have at least some shipping income.
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Cuba has an estimated 5.5 million tons of nickel deposits (for reference, Indonesia has the most in the world, at 21 million), but produces less than 50,000 tons a year. They have the third largest deposits of cobalt in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if they have more minerals I don't see on a cursory google, since the Caribbean is a mineral-rich region. They also have chrome, copper, gold, zinc, etc. and possibly offshore oil. Not enough to fully bootstrap your economy off (Jamaica might get >80% of export value from bauxite, but you want to do better than Jamaica), but a good start for developing domestic industry in a non-Communist context.
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They would have always struggled with high fructose corn syrup undercutting sugar and the globalized economy undercutting everything else, but Cuba was the jewel of the Spanish Empire and their primary administrative center in the New World for centuries. That, combined with its close relationship with the US upon independence, should have set it up for success in the 20th Century. Modern Cuba (both pre and post revolution) had A LOT of European and American infrastructure and investment but pissed it all away.
I could easily imagine Cuba becoming one of those wealthy tax shelter/tourism islands, but large enough to have something of a real economy as well, if only a handful of things had gone differently.
HFCS didn't undercut cane sugar at world market prices until Chinese sugar demand picked up in the 21st century. HFCS replaced cane sugar in the US because massive sugar tariffs and subsidised corn created an artificial market. If that policy had involved crippling tariffs on the main export of a client state with a powerful lobby, it is not clear that the US would have done it.
If you remember the period when bringing back allegedly better-tasting Coca-Cola from Mexico was a thing, the reason for the difference was that Mexican coke used cane sugar and American coke used HFCS. In both cases, the Coca-Cola company unsurprisingly used the cheapest sweetener available.
One does not ‘bring back’ mexican coke, one pays a price premium for it in any store. It doesn’t make enough of a difference to really be worth it, but for those who would like to, you can simply pay more from normal mainstream retailers.
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So you're telling me that in an alternate timeline with capitalist Cuba, all coke would taste like Mexican Coke? Yet another reason to hate communism.
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