I am also a big fan of Cuba, I've been there four times and tried to make sense of the US embargo of it, seeing the damage done by it, even losing my own business bank account to it (hence my whole business at the time) after trying to do business with Cuban dance companies, and I can't see any sense in it at all.
Actually I think the whole policy of embargo is incredibly stupid and self defeating, regardless of who is wielding it, and against whom.
Network theory, specifically Metcalfe's law explains why embargoes and any other kind of cancellation information / energy starvation are not just dumb but ultimately existential.
The Cuban covid vaccine was a spectacular achievement but not surprising given previous even more spectacular achievements like the treatment for ebola, that have subsequently been suppressed by Western business, press, and governments. Cuba has pioneered medical treatments for all kinds of things that the wider all for-profit world doesn't know much about, or want to know, because managing the symptoms of illnesses, perpetuating the illness, is good business for companies that can't find any other way to make profit. Profit is the energy lie directly responsible for planetary temperature rise, and we all know where that will end up, if it isn't changed, and "managing" the subsequent illness of the planet, both real and imagined, is also good business.
Embargos, sieges, energy denial, are all something indicative of a species with the capability, and maybe the destiny of self extinguishing.
I don't think there is any other life form that does this to itself, it looks maybe unique to humans, and is at the root of genocide.
Is it possibly related to profit?
Maybe.
Either way it's existential.
There can never be a truly sustainable world, as long as some of us think it's OK under some circumstances to energy starve other humans.
The ultimate outcome of it is extention of the whole species.
If you are familiar at all with what I write about, its a Systems Engineering study if what I call the global energy problem, and the only solution to it, a solar powered economy, it's seen by considering all things as physical energy, modeling the system as this.
Money is energy, information is energy, food and fuels are energy, we can convert them all at market and physical rates in order to analyse and Engineer all, in a system we might call Energyism, as opposed to capitalism, which seems necessary to move onto the next phase of humanity, if we are to move on at all, from dependence on the finite energy of Earth, to dependence instead on the relatively limitless Energy of the sun.
Notice where I appear to have said "Extention of the whole species" above, this was changed by for-profit platform algos from "Extinction of the whole species", that I actually wrote.
Where you observed that the Cuban embargo appears to be something on autopilot, I think you were right, but maybe missing that the entire pre-scripted extinction of humanity appears similarly on auto-pilot, because it literally is, it's automated at the root just by us being all for profit.
This is the root dishonesty at the heart of us self extinguishing as a species, as far as I can tell.
Its a negatively powered Ai that has been in control of us for thousands of years, and the only antidote looks like maybe a positive powered Ai.
I wrote about this a lot, but I know it can start to look insane when we are talking about positively and negatively powered Ai's, but how sane is a species in process of self extinguishing without most individuals even understanding why?