>>I could buy the argument that the embargo caused measurably lower growth, but the poverty has other causes.
Quite a few citations have been provided contrary to your view and my impression had been that everybody from Obama to the Pope to the UN associated the embargo with poverty... but if you have better information, then lets see it.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
