What I find hilarious is the number of people who believed opening up or ending the embargo would somehow rescue a communist economy.
Cuba wasn't/isn't dirt poor because we had an embargo on most goods...it was a miserable, dirt poor country because it has a communist command economic system. Cuba was free to trade with every other country in the world. The Soviet Union gave it billions of rubles it, the Soviet Union, could ill afford because of its own awful communist economic system.
Simply alllowing free trade with Cuba won't solve its economic problems anymore than our trading with the old Soviet Union solved its miserable economic problems. Getting rid of the Castros and communism while installing a market economy will salvage Cuba's economy.
