<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container content-width3" style="--font-size:20px;">
<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/09/hitting-at-cuban-doctors-and-at-human-solidarity/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/09/hitting-at-cuban-doctors-and-at-human-solidarity/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Hitting at Cuban Doctors and at Human
Solidarity</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/gaguwe/"
rel="nofollow">W. T. Whitney</a> - December 9, 2019</span></div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4 reader-show-element"
dir="ltr">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div itemprop="articleBody">
<p><em>News item</em>: Three rightwing Latin American
governments have forced out Cuban doctors working in
their countries. Over 8000 of them departed from Brazil
in late 2018 and 382 doctors left Ecuador in
mid-November, 2019. Some 700 Cuban doctors exited
Bolivia after the coup there on November 10. Brazilian
President Bolsonaro alleged that Cuban doctors were
incompetent. In referring to money paid by Brazil for
their services and retained by Cuba’s government,
Bolsonaro accused the Cuban government of enslaving
them. Governments in Ecuador and Bolivia claimed the
Cubans doctors had supported their political opponents.</p>
<p><em>News item</em>: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
recently applauded the interim Bolivian government’s
decision to expel Cuban doctors working there. Between
1996 and 2016, the U.S. government pursued its “medical
parole” program. Cuban doctors working abroad were
provided with assistance encouraging them to abandon
their posts and move to the United States. President
Obama ended the program in January 2017. U. S. Senators
Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Robert Menéndez demanded
recently that it be restored.</p>
<p>U.S. interference with Cuban medical assistance to
other countries is part of its long campaign – joined by
rightwing allies in Latin America – to undo the Cuban
Revolution. It’s reasonable to assume that in looking
for targets to hit, Cuba’s enemies would select aspects
of Cuba’s revolution essential to its purpose or to its
survival.</p>
<p>Dedication to human solidarity has defined Cuba’s
revolutionary movement from the start. Cuba has achieved
superior indicators of health outcome at home and has
responded to the health care needs of peoples abroad.
These efforts, widely known and much admired,
established Cuba as a model for the world in its
practice of human solidarity. The doctors working abroad
are highly visible agents of solidarity. They are joined
by Cuban teachers, literacy specialists, sports experts,
technicians, and engineers.</p>
<p>Cuba’s solidarity efforts, particularly medical
solidarity, are unique and on that score might lead
Cuba’s enemies to suppose that they contribute to the
durability of the Cuban Revolution. The remedy, they
perhaps reason, is to remove the doctors. After all,
socialist revolutions making up the Soviet Bloc never
carried out Cuba’s kind of outreach – and they
disappeared.</p>
<p>Additionally, those benefiting from the Cuban doctors’
outreach are marginalized and working peoples. The
relationship involves interaction among fellow victims
of capitalist or colonialist excess. Joined together as
a social class, they are, in effect, obeying the
founders of scientific socialism. Workers of the world
really have been uniting. Even the appearance of
facilitating such a process could mean another back mark
for the doctors.</p>
<p>The primary complaint about them, however, relates to
their solidarity work itself, which is at the core of
Cuba’s revolutionary purpose. Jose Marti put it there;
he was “central to Cuba’s history and … the embodiment
of the nation’s identity” (Granma newspaper). Cuban
revolutionaries have treasured that slogan of Marti
which says: “Homeland is humanity” (<em>Patria es
humanidad</em>). The title for his speech in Tampa,
Florida in 1891 was “With All and for the Good of All.”
So Cuba’s adversaries are disrespecting Marti’s legacy
when they meddle with the doctors.</p>
<p>Ernesto Che Guevara likewise elevated solidarity. He
taught that individuals must participate in history, be
an agent of change. But to do so they must attend to
their own consciousness. The Revolution, Guevara
envisioned, would be a school where students take on
values, ethics, and “love.” Cubans, newly aware, would
thus be motivated to act voluntarily for the common
good.</p>
<p>The Cuban doctors symbolize important revolutionary
ideals and thus are superb targets for forces already
overflowing with wrath at the Cuban Revolution. In the
current era of turbulence in Latin America, pretexts are
readily at hand. The sheer size of that Cuban solidarity
project probably alarms them too. Analyst Wilkie Delgado
Correa recently offered figures that are staggering.</p>
<p>As he reports: since 1963 Cuban doctors have worked in
164 countries. Non-Cubans graduating as doctors in Cuba
(1966-2017) totaled 33, 974. Originating from 135
countries, they include 28,538 graduates (2005 – 2017)
of Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine, among them
5135 Bolivians, 2071 Ecuadorians, and “more than 1000”
Brazilians. In 2017 Cubans were teaching at 7 foreign
medical schools. Cuba’s “Operación Milagro” has provided
2.9 million people from 34 countries with no-cost eye
operations. Since 1963, Cuban doctors abroad have
engaged in 1,667,248,707 patient visits; they’ve
performed 12,188,554 surgeries.</p>
<p>One U.S. purpose in harassing these Cuban doctors
blends into the main rationale for the U.S. economic
blockade, which is to deprive Cubans and their
government of money. Some of governments hosting Cuban
doctors pay for their labor with money sent to Havana.
(The Cuban government pays the doctors, while retaining
a good portion of the funds.) If the doctors depart, the
money stops.</p>
<p>Very likely the doctors’ service to the Revolution as
emissaries of solidarity irritates reactionaries more
acutely than their role in generating money for the
Cuban government. Not only do they epitomize
revolutionary purpose, but they are succeeding in an
area where the United States is failing. And the world
is watching.</p>
<p>Recently an epidemiologic report established that life
expectancy has been dropping for U.S. adults in their
middle years. Earlier reports show that black babies in
the United States die at twice the rate of white babies.
All U.S. babies, taken together, are considerably more
likely to die in their first year of life than Cuban
babies.</p>
<p>What remains now is to provide some documentation
relating to opinions put forth here. The excerpts
appearing below, taken from two accounts, were
translated by the author.</p>
<p><strong>1. Luis Varese observed Cuban doctors at work
in Latin America</strong>.</p>
<p><em>Trained as an anthropologist and originally from
Peru, Varese served as representative of the United
Nations High Commissioner on Refugees </em><strong><em>(</em></strong><em>UNHCR),
working mostly in Ecuador. </em></p>
<p>“On May 31, 1970 an earthquake and then floods cut down
the lives of more than 70,000 Peruvians in Ancash
Department, Peru. In just a few days, almost hours, five
field hospitals with Cuban doctors were on the ground in
five provinces devastated by the earthquakes … Fidel and
150,000 Cubans donated blood to the surviving brothers
and sisters of this tragedy. …</p>
<p>“[After the earthquake] 46 years later, in Pedernales
[Ecuador], I saw the same faces, the same eyes, the same
looks of appreciation for the Cuban doctors who were
there doing what they could, offering care and medical
attention to those who needed it. They did so with
professionalism, efficiency, the right equipment, and
above all with the great, caring humility that
characterizes them …</p>
<p>“In 1988 I lived with some of my family in Puerto
Cabezas, Nicaragua, where I worked as a consultant for
UNHCR. The only doctors in the area were the Cuban
doctors, plus a few local doctors, either
African-descended or Miskito … It was the time of “low
intensity warfare” and the Nicaraguan counterrevolution,
and there were very few Nicaraguan doctors enthused
about going into the conflict zone, but we saw the Cuban
doctors working there. We were their patients too,
especially after one of my sons fell gravely ill with
malaria …</p>
<p>“In 1990 in Managua when President Violeta Chamorro was
governing, my youngest son contracted a middle ear
infection … It was a Cuban doctor who finally assessed
him and determined that the infectious process could be
turning into meningitis. He arranged for his transfer to
Havana. They took care of him in the pediatric hospital
there and saved his life. He was five months old and for
135 days had cried with fever and pain …</p>
<p>“In 1995, working with UNHCR, we were in charge of the
voluntary repatriation of 12,000 Guatemalan refugees
[from southern Mexico] to Quiché province in Guatemala.
In the remote settlements there, the only doctors on
hand were the Cubans. There was no electricity and not
much potable water. The job of ACNUR was to improve the
living conditions of the people returning, Because of
the Cuban doctors, children, women, and men arriving in
these barely accessible areas received comprehensive
care … Years later I returned and still there were no
Guatemalan doctors. In the villages of Quiché there were
only Cubans …</p>
<p>“Later I worked for the United Nations in Haiti and
again I found Cuban doctors working with that immense
humanitarian vocation under the most difficult condition
in that country. With shared dedication, they were
cheerful, full of life, and ready to communicate their
enthusiasm. They of course gave evidence of advanced
scientific and professional training …</p>
<p>“During the earthquake of April 16, 2016 [in Ecuador]
the first “foreigners” (if one can call them that in Our
America) to arrive at the Manta airport were the Cuban
doctors, and I know that because two of my sons were
part of the coordination team at the airport.”</p>
<p>2. <strong>Fidel Castro talks about doctors and
solidarity</strong></p>
<p><em>Wilkie Delgado Correa, a cardio-vascular
physiologist, academician, and political
writer recently surveyed Fidel Castro’s views on
medical care and solidarity. The following excerpts
were taken from speeches before graduating medical and
dental students and at the opening of a new science
center.</em></p>
<p><strong>Cuba needs health care</strong> — On October
17, 1062, Castro pointed out that if basic health care
is needed in the cities, “awareness of that need is much
greater in the countryside where they never have
hospitals, dentists, or doctors. The question precisely
is: how do we attend to this necessity of the people? …
Everything that interests the people is of fundamental
concern to revolutionaries, who work for that and only
that… The people quite reasonably bring up the question
of medical care and health care.” Castro elsewhere
mentioned that, “[A] great purpose will be fulfilled:
that of passing from curative medicine to preventative
medicine, that of keeping citizens from getting sick.”</p>
<p><strong>Health for other peoples; it takes a revolution</strong> –
In that same address, Castro says: “[W]e may even do
something to help other countries, although it may be
more symbolic than anything else. Let’s take the case of
Algeria. Most of the doctors were French and most of
them left. The health care situation there is really
tragic. That’s why, talking with the students today, we
told them that we need 50 voluntary doctors … to go to
Algeria to help the Algerians<strong> … </strong>“</p>
<p>“We are certain that more will offer themselves as an
expression of the spirit of solidarity of our people
with peoples who are friends and who are worse off than
we are. We said years, but years will pass and we can
envision 40 or 50 thousand university students and young
people graduating … because the revolution can do that …
and it’s only a revolution that can accomplish those
feats …Today we celebrate ourselves as revolutionaries.
But the revolution isn’t just about coming up with
ideas; it carries them out. The Revolution is not about
theory. It’s about deeds above all else.”</p>
<p><strong>Peoples of the world can expect solidarity</strong> —
On June 18, 1965, Castro noted that, “We might limit
ourselves to attending to our own necessities. But the
reality of today’s world shows that ties among peoples
inevitably grew stronger, especially among revolutionary
peoples – and among underdeveloped peoples … Other
countries besides Algeria need technically-trained
people. So, how many do we prepare? We simply prepare as
many as we need ourselves and as many as other fraternal
peoples happen to need …”</p>
<p>“If it’s given to us to institute mass education and
succeed in preparing masses of technical people at all
levels, how are we to forget those peoples that still
live in the midst of oppression, ignorance, and
illiteracy? [We think about] the needs of other peoples
where there are millions and the numbers of doctors
among them [are few]. That’s because imperialism and
colonialism, among other things, block the way to any
kind of cultural and technical improvements for
exploited peoples. They treat human beings like animals,
as cheap labor. In no way will they be interested in
developing the intelligence of those peoples.”</p>
<p>“That’s why when it’s a question of knowing how much of
anything we need to prepare, we have only one answer: as
much as possible! Everyone has needs, and if we don’t
need something for ourselves, others who are needier can
use it. And we have to prepare ourselves to make good on
our obligations to other peoples. Otherwise, our concept
of human solidarity would be framed within the minuscule
sphere of our national borders and national interests.”</p>
</div>
<p> <em><strong>W.T. Whitney Jr.</strong> is a retired
pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.</em>
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>