[News] 162 Attacks on Cuban Doctors in Venezuela Ignored by Media

Wed Apr 30 17:38:51 EDT 2014

  162 Attacks on Cuban Doctors in Venezuela Ignored by Media

<http://venezuelanalysis.com/printmail/10651>http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10651
<http://venezuelanalysis.com/print/10651>

By Jose Manzaneda-- Cuba Informacion, April 28th 2014

In the last two months 162 aggressions against Cuban doctors in 
Venezuela have been registered. A few days ago, the Venezuelan 
government gave a medal to two of these people, who were almost burnt 
alive during an opposition attack on a medical centre in Lara state (1).

These attacks are the result of a huge campaign against Cuba created by 
the private Venezuelan media -- 80% of the media in Venezuela, and 
totally opposition (2). The campaign has then been broadened by ally 
international mass media. Over the last two months the message of the 
supposed Cuban interference in Venezuela has intensified (3). The almost 
daily publication of rumours, accusations without any basis, and 
testimonies -- some quite insane (4) -- of supposed ex intelligence 
agents (5) have lead many people to firmly believe that it is the Cuban 
government which makes the main political decisions in Venezuela, or 
that the Cuban doctors are in reality, agents or spies (6).

In Venezuela there are over 30,000 Cuban doctors (7). They treat around 
11 million people, mainly in the working class barrios which, years ago, 
lacked the most basic health services.  Even though the doctors were 
first deployed on a large scale in 2003 with the inauguration of the 
Mission Barrio Adentro, the first doctors had already arrived in 1999 as 
humanitarian personnel after the grave floods in Vargas state (8).

But the violent attacks against Cuban personnel aren't new (9). They 
have been happening for over ten years, in each destabilisation 
offensive by the opposition. In April 2013, after Nicolas Maduro's 
electoral victory, 25 doctors' surgeries where Cubans worked were 
attacked (10). Curiously, in October that year, the Spanish daily El 
Pais published a report on attacks on overseas volunteer workers and 
collaborators (11). It spoke of 274 victims of some kind of aggression. 
But it made no mention of the attacks on Cuban staff. Or of Venezuela. 
The volunteers it mentioned were from, exclusively, the so called first 
world, in accordance with the habitual neo-colonial mentality of the 
Western media. It is something that is better understood once the source 
of the information is known: the so called Aid Worker Security Database, 
a project financed by USAID and other Western institutions. On its 
website, in the section dedicated to media references, there also isn't 
a single reference to attacks on Cubans (13).

This same mentality is what leads the media to ignore the huge programs 
of cooperation between countries of the South (developing or third world 
countries) that Cuba is leading. Just in terms of health, 50,000 
professionals from the island are developing assistance programs to 
disadvantaged populations in 66 countries (14). So of course, the same 
media that has never reported on this Cuban cooperation of an 
extraordinary size, has specialised sections on "cooperation" basically 
dedicated to praising the work -- in many cases anecdotal- of certain 
European NGOs (15).  One example: in April this year the Spanish daily 
El Mundo published a whole page on support for an orphanage in Haiti 
which cares for forty children (16). But that newspaper has never once 
published anything about the fourteen years of Cuban cooperation in 
Haiti, which has seen 320,000 people become literate and 367,000 people 
operated on, to just cite two figures (17).
In the last few weeks, El Pais has published reports and articles that 
try to denigrate the solidarity work of Cuba in Venezuela (18) (19). In 
contrast, during the same period, it published at least three works, in 
propagandistic code, about the support by Queen Sofia [of Spain] for 
Spanish cooperation projects in Guatemala -- projects with a limited 
impact, if we compare them to the Cuban programs in Venezuela (20) (21) 
(22).

The thing is, Cuba's cooperation in Venezuela, and in other countries, 
makes the schemes built up by Western media shaky. Cuba doesn't 
undertake mere help. It contributes to the construction of long lasting 
public health systems in other countries of the South (23). Health 
systems which generally were abandoned or unattended to by decades of 
neoliberalism and state budget cut policies. And that's where the 
explanation lies -- the clear ideological route -- of so many slander 
campaigns against Cuban solidarity in the world.

/Translation by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com/

(1) 
http://islamiacu.blogspot.com.es/2014/04/fascismo-xenofobo-la-carta-162.... 
<http://islamiacu.blogspot.com.es/2014/04/fascismo-xenofobo-la-carta-162.html>

(2) 
http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2014/04/07/medios-de-comunicacion-y-... 
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2014/04/07/medios-de-comunicacion-y-terrorismo-en-venezuela/>

(3) 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ultimas_noticias/2014/03/140316_ultnot_venezu... 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ultimas_noticias/2014/03/140316_ultnot_venezuela_marchas_cuba_jgc.shtml>

(4) 
http://diariocorreo.pe/ultimas/noticias/8552674/denuncian-llegada-a-vene... 
<http://diariocorreo.pe/ultimas/noticias/8552674/denuncian-llegada-a-venezuela-de-equipo-elit>

(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCmH68dVrvM

(6) 
http://www.abc.es/internacional/20130313/abci-venezuela-cuba-cubazuela-2... 
<http://www.abc.es/internacional/20130313/abci-venezuela-cuba-cubazuela-201303122116.html>

(7) http://venezuelasocialista.avn.info.ve/

(8) 
http://www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve/politica/colaboracion-medica-cubana-h... 
<http://www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve/politica/colaboracion-medica-cubana-ha-salvado-casi-2-millones-vidas-venezuela/>

(9) http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n227498.html

(10) 
http://www.minci.gob.ve/2013/04/sader-fueron-25-los-cdi-y-consultorios-p... 
<http://www.minci.gob.ve/2013/04/sader-fueron-25-los-cdi-y-consultorios-populares-los-asediados-durante-hechos-de-violencia/>

(11) 
http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/10/20/actualidad/1382289380_762... 
<http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2013/10/20/actualidad/1382289380_762529.html>

(12) https://aidworkersecurity.org/

(13) https://aidworkersecurity.org/citations

(14) 
http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2014-03-25/cuba-tiene-medicos-por-todo-el-mund... 
<http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2014-03-25/cuba-tiene-medicos-por-todo-el-mundo>

(15) http://elpais.com/tag/cooperacion_desarrollo/a/

(16) http://www.elmundo.es/baleares/2014/04/13/534a6c08268e3eea6d8b456e.html

(17) 
http://www.cubadiplomatica.cu/haiti/ES/Cooperación/tabid/25659/currentpage/6/Default.aspx

(18) 
http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/03/28/actualidad/1396... 
<http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/03/28/actualidad/1396026665_272257.html>

(19) 
http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/04/19/actualidad/1397... 
<http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/04/19/actualidad/1397936093_048585.html>

(20) 
http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/03/16/actualidad/1394996046_415... 
<http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/03/16/actualidad/1394996046_415509.html>

(21) 
http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/03/21/actualidad/1395363919_375... 
<http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/03/21/actualidad/1395363919_375774.html>

(22) 
http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/03/20/actualidad/1395340774_953... 
<http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/03/20/actualidad/1395340774_953433.html>

(23) 
http://www.gloobal.net/iepala/gloobal/fichas/ficha.php?id=10426&entidad=... 
<http://www.gloobal.net/iepala/gloobal/fichas/ficha.php?id=10426&entidad=Textos>

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