It’s time again for the international community to remind the United States how absurd and futile their blockade of Cuba is. The vote to condemn the blockade is a UN affair (equally as absurd and futile perhaps, since the Cuba policy is largely a US domestic issue and UN votes are notoriously toothless) – the 20th of its kind. Last year, 185 countries condemned the blockade, with 2 nations dissenting: the USA and Israel (surprise! surprise!).

Since I’m from the Estados Unidos (more fittingly known as ‘Estamos Jodidos,’ or the independent republic of ‘We’re Screwed’), very few friends have visited me here on the “wrong side” of the Straits (see note 1). The lengths the US goes to keep Cuba down makes me indignant, but also sad since my peeps haven’t been able to experience this place for themselves and draw their own conclusions as to how good (or not so) things are in my world.

The two hurricanes that have ripped through Cuba over the past week have received less than a passing blink from international news organisations. This is in stark contrast to the mountains of press coverage devoted to the evacuation of New Orleans this month. Then again, the American-Cuban relationship has never been balanced.

The world might shout loudly about Fidel Castro’s official resignation. Here, in Havana however, the news has been received with barely a glimmer of interest. The muted celebrations trumpeted on the front pages of the Miami Herald have had no replica here. The Message from the Commander in Chief (Comandante en Jefe) has been stamped across the whole front page of Granma, the official state newspaper, but there is otherwise neither much coverage nor much commentary.

Doctors for export; altruism; humanism; or plain old politics; whatever you call it, Cuba´s massive international health program helps the bottom billion. These are the world´s poorest and most desperate, to whom prevention, simple interventions, or vaccines can mean the difference between life and death.

Americans who ask what Cuba will be like when it opens to foreign investment may be in danger of missing the boat. Visitors may not notice that they land at an airport financed by a Canadian banking consortium, take a Mercedes taxi to a hotel built by a French construction group and part owned by a Spanish hotel chain.

Even Conservatives in Western Europe are inclined to be scornful of the American economic embargo of Cuba, perhaps the longest running political tantrum in recent history. But Americans for their part might well ask whether the European Union´s own policy of “constructive engagement” has been any more effective in achieving what they both say they want, which is to bring democracy to Cuba.