Ecuador's Correa extols the Cuban revolution

From Granma.cu

"This marvelous people, the Cuban people, a heroic people, has taught the world that Revolution has a destiny"

Speech by His Excellency Mr. Rafael Correa Delgado, president of the Republic of Ecuador, at the commemoration event for the 50th anniversary of the entry of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro into Havana, at Ciudad Libertad, January 8, 2009

Dear Comandante,

President Raúl Castro Ruz, I expect that compañero Fidel is watching us and so an immense Latin American and solidarity-filled embrace for him (Applause)

Dear commanders, combatants of this heroic gesture: the Cuban Revolution, the liberation of Cuba, the most significant milestone in the history of Latin America in the 20th century and an example for the entire world;

Dear officials of the Cuban government;

Ministers and officials from the Ecuadorian government who are accompanying me on this visit;

Representatives of the media;

Dear sisters and brothers from Cuba, Ecuador, Latin America and the rest of the world, for each and every one of you, a warm embrace (Applause):

Today, January 8, 2009, when – at the invitation of the Cuban Revolution – we are here representing the Ecuadorian people and their Citizen’s Revolution, it is worth asking the question: When did the Cuban Revolution begin?

Perhaps on July 26, 1953, when Fidel, leading the Centenary Generation, etched the name of the Moncada Garrison into history?

Maybe it was on November 25, 1956 when the Granma set sail from Veracruz carrying 82 guerrillas?

Or perhaps it was long before that, in the early hours of April 11, 1895, when José Martí and his group of compatriots disembarked at Playitas de Cajobabo in order to begin the Necessary War and bring the yoke of Spanish colonialism to an end?

Perhaps it would be better to think that this Revolution, the hope and fate of Our America, began in the struggles against colonialism, alongside the major reference of our emancipatory vocation, symbolized by the Liberator Simón Bolívar.

Because Manuela Sáenz and Antonio José de Sucre; José Martí and Emiliano Zapata; Eloy Alfaro and Augusto César Sandino; Manuel Rodríguez and José Carlos Mariátegui; Antonio Maceo and Máximo Gómez, and all the compatriots of the continent devoted their lives to the liberation of our Great Homeland harbored by the image and flag of Bolívar.

We should acknowledge then, that the Revolution began when Fidel…Raúl, Che, Haydée, Camilo, and the Cuban revolutionaries followed the path and the profound footprints of a historic struggle.

Following in these footprints meant and continues to mean, at whatever moment in time, being honest, being transparent and always telling the truth, just as the Liberator did when he said:

"Blessed is he who, running between the obstacles of war, politics and public misfortunes, preserves his honor intact."

Fifty years ago, in this very same place, Fidel said:

"I believe that this is a decisive moment in our history: the dictatorship has been defeated. The joy is immense. But there is still much to be done. Let us not deceive ourselves by believing that everything will be much easier from now on; the future will perhaps be much more difficult."

"Telling the truth is the first duty of every revolutionary," stated Fidel. "Deceiving the people, stirring up deceptive illusions will always bring the worst consequences, and I believe that we have to warn people against excessive optimism.

"How did the Rebel Army win the war? By speaking the truth. How did the dictatorship lose it? By lying to the soldiers.

(…) "And for this reason, I want to begin – or rather, continue – with the same system: always telling the truth to the people," stated Fidel, in this very same place, exactly fifty years ago.

This ethical torch, and the greatest devotion to the legitimate aspirations of the peoples of Cuba and Latin America has permitted this Revolution to remain in force, with pride and dignity, in the defense of the most prized assets pursued by the people: freedom and sovereignty.

This marvelous people, the Cuban people, a heroic people, has taught the world that Revolution has a destiny. That it is a process of the spirit, that it is forged by human spirit and that, once underway, there is no power that is capable of stopping it, however powerful it believes itself to be.

Today, fifty years later, that distant January 1, 1959, or that January 8 half a century ago, are already glorious dates for every revolutionary movement around the world. But they would not be if the movement that culminated in it had been conceived simply as the climax of the insurrection against injustice, despotism and corruption.

The fight against that injustice, that despotism and against corruption is an eternal one, and will never end.

It is for this reason that the January 1st and 8th of 50 years ago are glorious…And they are majestic, because from that moment onward, the Cuban people have taught the world that a revolution is constructed from the dawn of every day, and also, based on the teaching left to us by every error made.

This process is exemplary because it was capable of achieving real national independence, freedom, sovereignty and the self-determination of the Cuban people.

This process is extraordinary because it secured the reestablishment of human rights for all Cuban men and women. It is the recognition that the first constitutional right of all human beings is their full dignity. The Cuban Revolution made real the declaration of its leaders: the Cuban people know that no compatriot will be left to his or her own fate under any circumstance whatsoever.

The Cuban Revolution has no skeletons hidden in the closet of its history, and has never practiced torture or "disappearances."

The Cuban Revolution has eliminated racial and gender discrimination, and at the same time has defended the rights of children and the widespread protection of the rights of the Cuban family.

Cuba’s declaration in 1961 as the First Illiteracy-Free Territory in America continues to be an example for our peoples, and that same conviction transformed garrisons into schools, and told the Cuban people: "Read, don’t just believe", thus democratizing access to the world of the written word and its phantoms.

Cuba increased by more than eleven times the number of doctors it possessed. From the 6,286 doctors in 1958, the country came to have 72,416 in 2007; in other words, one for every 155 inhabitants. Cuba is the country with the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, and Latin America has been the beneficiary of a responsible policy, deeply-rooted in humanism and solidarity.

We have witnessed, with Latin American pride, the practice of a principled foreign policy, based on the pillars of international law: equality among nations, self-determination and mutual respect, as well as on the defense of social justice and the dignity of all human beings on the planet, particularly with respect to the rights of the peoples of the Third World.

From this Latin American territory, we come to express our most profound solidarity with the Cuban revolutionary process.

From the Equator, from this territory that harbored the Bolivarian struggles, we have come to the Ciudad Libertad to express our jubilation at these past fifty years. And we do so with the same conviction that led us to establish, in our own land, one of the most advanced constitutions in Latin America.

We have come from this continent reinforced and revived by the social memory that is permitting us to settle the scores of history.

This settling of scores begins with the genuine vindication of the indigenous population, pillaged, exploited, humiliated, offended and, paradoxically, also used and manipulated. For that reason, today, the Ecuadorian state is pluri-national, it is intercultural, and pursues equality in its diversity; in other words, the most authentic execution of true democracy…In the same way, with the African-Ecuadorian people which, like the Cuban people, are the drum and the flag of our homeland.

Many years ago, two of my people’s democrats, Eloy Alfaro and Federico Proaño, were the subject of a tribute by José Martí.

Alfaro, according to the Cuban national hero, was one of the few Americans by creation and, his combatants from the coast, the guerrillas, brothers of the Mambises, founded this Ecuadorian land which today is emerging and rising up.

With respect to our insurgent fighter Federico Proaño, Martí said:

"For the enemies of human’s free will, and for his clear occupation in America, Proaño had nothing more than tooth and nail. And his pen, refined and fierce, outlined with one stroke, illuminated from an uproar, hammered from a pillory,

opened up like two wings, before the majesties of humans and nature."

And history continues. The Cuban Revolution had an Ecuadorian martyr, journalist and patriot Carlos Bastidas Argüello, murdered in May 1958 by Batista’s henchmen…

We pay tribute to Carlos Bastidas today, for being the dignified representative of the pride and sacrifice of our peoples (Applause).

And, in tribute to this Revolution, cemented in the most noble principles deposited throughout the history of humanity: solidarity, universality, unity, independence and, above all, dignity, today we are calling for and demanding…an end to the criminal blockade, premeditated ethnocide by the same powers as always (Applause); those same powers which have subjected to the most perverse injustice René González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González, patriots who, perhaps as a form of consolation, and as Silvio Rodríguez has said: "We must understand what they are suffering, they are the cruel swipes of a beast against an unbearable light" (Applause).

Fortunately, today Latin America does not belong to any empire. We, the heirs of José Artigas, José de San Martín, Rosa Campuzano, Miguel de Hidalgo, and also Rigoberta Menchú, Camilo Torres, Leonidas Proaño, Hebe de Bonafini and Chico Mendes, do not believe in one sole form of thinking, because our identity has the face of each and every one of us.

We honor the essence of the Cuban Revolution, considering it transcendental to the evolution of humanity.

Because we believe that its principles are fundamental in order to secure the well-being of our peoples.

On honoring this Revolution, we reiterate the words spoken fifty years ago by Comandante Fidel Castro, words that, today, we make our own:

"From this moment, the lavish receptions and ovations are over; from now on…it’s work. Tomorrow will be a day the same as any other, and every other one like it, and we will become used to freedom."

We, from our Andean Ecuador, from Guayas to Chimborazo, from the homeland of Alfaro and Manuelita, join these festivities for justice and dignity.

We, in the greatest execution of sovereignty, denounce as you do, an illegitimate, illegal and immoral foreign debt (Applause).

For us…socialists of both the mind and the heart, revolution will never be sorrowful, it will always be a fiesta, because it will be a celebration of equality between men and women; because it will be an exercise of solidarity between human beings and the earth.

And so, we will celebrate the Cuban Revolution with the words of poet Fayad Jamís:

"For this freedom

of song in the rain,

we will have to give everything,

until our shadows

and it will never be enough."

With the protective shadow of Bolívar and Martí…

With this renascent entry of Fidel into the Ciudad Libertad…

And with the memory of Che, we say, with dignity and with all our heart…

¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

¡Viva Cuba! (Cries of: "¡Viva!")

¡Viva Ecuador! (Cries of: "¡Viva!")

¡Viva América Latina! (Cries of: "¡Viva!")

(Applause.)

Cuba, 50 years on ... and the same challenge of making a revolution

By Lázaro Barredo Medina

Granma International -- October 30, 2008 -- "The dictatorship has been defeated. The joy is immense. And yet, there still remains much to do. We won’t deceive ourselves by believing that everything will be much easier from now on; perhaps it will be much more difficult." This is what Commander in Chief Fidel Castro told the people on January 8, 1959, the day of his entry into Havana. Many people could never imagine the immense challenge that they would live to experience.

Suffice it to say that just a few days later, Fidel proclaimed the right to self-determination in terms of relations with the United States and immediately, the aggressions, attempts on his life and anger on the part of US politicians began, evidence of which can be seen in speeches and articles of the time, as in an editorial of Time magazine, the mouthpiece of the most conservative sectors, entitled: "Fidel Castro’s neutralism is a challenge for the United States."

But the Cuban people could not be neutral in the face of the United States. The triumph of the Revolution that January 1959 signified for the Cuban nation, for the first time in its history, the real possibility of exercising the right to self-determination. From that moment on, neither the US president, Congress nor its ambassadors could continue making decisions on what could or could not be done in Cuba. The bitter dependence had been brought to an end; a dependence that saw US governors and ambassadors enjoying a degree of power in Cuba that was far greater than the actual power that they had – with respect to decision-making – within the US federal government or in relation to any of the 50 states that make up the USA.

When full national independence was achieved, the Revolution began to exercise that right by immediately applying the program that Fidel had announced during the Moncada trial of 1953 and which is contained in his historic self-defence speech History Will Absolve Me.

Dependence on US ends

Cuba established the economic and social regime that it believed was most just and established a socialist state with participatory democracy, equality and social justice. The country’s economy was characterised by limited industrial development, essentially depending on sugar production and a latifundia agricultural economy, where landowners controlled 75% of the total arable land.

Most of the country’s economic activity and its mineral resources were managed by US capital, which controlled 1.2 million hectares of land (a quarter of the productive territory) and most of the sugar industry, nickel production, oil refineries, the electricity and telephone services and the majority of bank credits. Likewise, the US market controlled approximately 70% of Cuban imports and exports, within a system of highly dependent volumes of exchange: in 1958, Cuba exported products worth 733 million pesos and imported 777 million pesos worth of goods.

The prevailing social picture was characterised by a high unemployment and illiteracy, a precarious healthcare, social welfare and housing system for the vast majority of the population, as well as abysmal differences in living conditions between urban and rural populations. There was a high degree of polarisation and unequal distribution of income; in 1958, 50% of the population earned just 11% of total income, while a 5% minority controlled 26%. Racial and gender discrimination, begging, prostitution and social and administrative corruption were widespread.

Addressing the social and economic problems in Cuban society could no longer be put off and could only be resolved if the Cuban people had control of their own wealth and natural resources. Thus, using the 1940 constitution and in line with international law, Cuba exercised its right to take control of these resources and assumed total responsibility for this action. The island paid compensation to all nationals from third countries (Canada, Spain, Britain, etc.) with the exception of US nationals, given that that government rejected the provisions outright and transformed the Cuban government’s decision into a pretext for unleashing a war unprecedented in the history of bilateral relations between the two nations.

Not only did the Revolution hand over land to campesinos who, up until then, had been subjected to semi-feudal conditions of production and forced to live in extreme poverty, but it also determined that that all the country’s resources should be allocated to national economic development and improving the material and living conditions of the population. To give just one example, in the 1980s alone, approximately 60 billion pesos were allocated to the construction of productive and social facilities.

Industrialisation

The process of industrialisation underway paved the way for economic and productive diversification. Under the Revolution and up until the economic crisis which began with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist bloc between 1989 and 1991 – what we in Cuba call the ``Special Period'' – the country’s capacity for producing steel grew 14-fold, fertiliser increased six-fold, the oil-refining industry quadrupled (not counting the new refinery in Cienfuegos), the textile industry grew seven-fold, tourism three-fold, to mention but a few. The state also created complete new industries such as machinery, mechanics, electronics, the production of medical equipment, a pharmaceutical industry, construction materials, a glass industry and ceramics, as well as making investments to increase and upgrade the sugar, food and light industries. In addition to these endeavours, we have the development of biotechnology, genetic engineering and other branches of science.

The country has also made great efforts in terms of improving its infrastructure. Electricity generation has risen eight-fold and water storage capacity has increased 310 times, from 29 million cubic metres in 1958 to nine billion-plus cubic metres today. There has been diversification with respect to roads and freeways and modernisation of ports and other areas. Social needs have been covered fairly well, except for housing, which has been Cuba’s biggest problem.

Social progress

The progressive growth and diversification of productive potential and the application of a widespread social program has allowed the nation to confront the problem of unemployment. In 1958, with a population of 6 million inhabitants, approximately one third of the economically active population was unemployed. Of this figure, 45% of the unemployed lived in rural areas while, out of 200,000 women in work, 70% were employed as domestic servants. Today, with 11 million inhabitants, the number of people in work is in excess of 4.5 million. More than 40% of workers are women and today they represent more than 60% of the nation’s technical and professional sectors.

In 1958, the number of illiterate and semi-illiterate people in Cuba stood at 2 million. The average academic level of 15-plus-year-olds was third grade, more than 600,000 children did not attend school and 58% of teachers were unemployed. Just 45.9% of school-age children were enrolled and half of them did not attend classes. Only 6% of those enrolled finished elementary education. Universities were available to just 20,000 students.

The education sector received immediate attention from the revolutionary government. Its first task was to develop a mass literacy campaign with the participation of the population. An extensive network of schools was constructed throughout the country and more than 300,000 teachers and professors were in full-time employment in this sector. The average academic level for 15-plus-year-olds rose to ninth grade. One-hundred per cent of school-age children are enrolled in schools, some 98% complete elementary education and 91% complete junior high. One in every 11 citizens is a university graduate and one in eight has technical-professional qualifications. There are 650,000 students in the country’s universities today and all education is free of charge. Education and vocational skills are also guaranteed for 100% of children with physical or mental disabilities, who attend special schools.

The precarious situation in 1958 with respect to public health was characterised by an infant mortality rate of 60 per 1000 live births and a maternal mortality rate of 118 per 10,000. The mortality rate for those suffering from gastroenteritis was 41.2 per 100,000, and from tuberculosis, 15.9 per 100,000. In rural areas, 36% of the population suffered from intestinal parasites, 31% from malaria, 14% from tuberculosis and 13% from typhoid. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 58.8 years.

Around 61% of hospital beds and 65% of the nation’s 6500 doctors were concentrated in the capital. In the other provinces, medical coverage was one doctor for every 2378 inhabitants and there was just one hospital for all the country’s rural areas.

Today, healthcare is free of charge and Cuba has more than 70,000 doctors, providing coverage of one for every 194 inhabitants. Almost 30,000 of them are providing services in more than 60 different countries. A national network of more than 700 hospitals and polyclinics has been created. Thanks to a widespread vaccination campaign (every child currently receives vaccines against 13 different illnesses) diseases such as polio, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, rubella, mumps and hepatitis B have been almost entirely eradicated. The infant mortality rate is now 5.3 for every 1000 live births and life expectancy exceeds 77 years.

There is also a series of advanced medical services that are not considered as "basic" in the international arena, and are provided completely free of charge, such as intensive care units in pediatric and general hospitals, cardiovascular surgery, transplant services, special perinatal care, treatment for chronic renal failure, and special services for occupational and physical rehabilitation.

Democracy

The revolutionary state did not focus its attention solely on economic and social measures. It also embarked on efforts to establish an internal legal system to facilitate the right to self-determination via the population’s direct participation in discussions, analyses and the passing of the country’s principal laws. The most notable of these was the 1976 constitution, supported by 97% of Cubans aged 16 and over through a referendum, as well as other momentous laws like the Penal Code, the Civil Code, the Family Code, the Children and Young People’s Code, the Labour and Social Security Code and many others.

Likewise, the self-determination of the Cuban people is expressed through the right to defend the nation against foreign aggression. Today, more than four million Cubans – workers, campesinos and university students – are organised in militia groups have access to weapons in their campuses, factories and in rural areas.

US aggression

However, since 1959, Cuba has had to confront the hostility of ten US administrations that have attempted to limit its right to national self-determination through the use of aggression and the unilateral imposition of a criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade.

One of the universally accepted principles of international law is that state cannot be allowed to coerce another in order to deny it the right to exercise its sovereign rights. Article 24 of the UN Charter states that, in the context of international relations, nations must refrain from using threats or force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

Over the past 45 years, the United States has prohibited any trade with Cuba, including foodstuffs and medicines; it cancelled the Cuban sugar quota; prohibited its citizens from travelling to Cuba via the imposition of heavy sanctions; prohibited the re-export of US products or items containing US components or technology to Cuba from third countries; prescribed that banks in third countries should maintain Cuban bank accounts in US dollars or use that currency in their transactions with Cuba; has systematically intervened to prevent or hinder trade with or financial assistance to Cuba on the part of governments, institutions and citizens from other countries and international organisations.

In the 1960s these reprisals forced Cuba to structurally reconstitute its economic relations and establish its essential markets in countries in the former East European bloc – specifically in the Soviet Union – which meant that the country had to embark on an almost total re-conversion of its industrial technology, means of transport, and provisions, etc.

When Cuba lost its natural markets in Eastern Europe, the US government intensified its blockade via the 1992 Torricelli Act, which used the pretext of "democracy and human rights" to prohibit US subsidiaries located in third countries and subject to the laws of those nations from engaging in commercial or financial operations with Cuba (particularly in respect to food and medicines), and punishing these by prohibiting the entry into US ports for 180 days of vessels transporting goods to or from Cuba or on behalf of Cuba, measures that – given their extraterritorial nature – do not just prejudice Cuba but also harm the sovereignty of other nations and the international freedom of transportation.

On March 12, 1996, the US government passed the Helms-Burton Act, further aggravating relations between the two countries and assuming the right to sanction citizens of third countries in US courts, as well as determining their expulsion or denying them and their families entry visas into the United States, with the aim of hindering Cuba’s efforts to recover its economy and hampering its possibilities of securing a greater insertion in the international market. That was also a way of attempting to pressure the Cuban people into relinquishing their efforts of self-determination.

More recently, it has adopted the Bush Plan, an attempt to transform Cuba into a colony through an annexationist program and the intention to intervene via a pretext of "transition", a scenario in which the US State Department would entrust one of its leaders as "governor", when the Cuban revolutionary state disappears. This plan, with which US President George W. Bush decided "to precipitate the day when Cuba becomes a free country", has intensified the blockade and pressure on the Cuban people by repressing family relations between Cubans resident in the United States and their families on the island; grants million-dollar resources to terrorist groups in Miami, as well as to mercenary subordinates in the US Interests Sections in Havana; and promotes formulas to destabilise the country and redouble international pressure on the island.

US terrorism

That hostility on the part of the US has included other notorious manifestations of aggression, ranging from the military aggression through the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the dirty war carried out by counterrevolutionary gangs heavily supplied by the US CIA, bacteriological warfare on agricultural crops (sugar, tobacco and citric fruits), animals (swine fever) and humans (hemorrhagic dengue), to sabotage plans, bombings using pirate planes and assassination attempts on the country’s principal leaders.

The actions of terrorist organisations executing military attacks on Cuba from US territory are notorious, and are publicised and fomented by the Miami media. Groups are constantly recruiting adventurers who are willing to head off to Cuba as agents and saboteurs, who openly declare that they have no fear whatsoever of being brought to justice in US courts.

That is why Cuban patriots have had to leave aside their personal interests to serve those of the nation, even sacrificing their family relationships, in order to infiltrate the ranks of those terrorist groups in order to discover their activities and, with this information, prevent the bloodshed of Cuban and US people. They are willing to pay the price of the political irrationality of the US government, as is the case of the five Cuban heroes unjustly incarcerated in US jails for combating terrorism.

The above is compounded by the heavy military mechanism created by the United States around Cuba and its constant tension-generating activities, as well as the illegal occupation of the Guantánamo Naval Base on Cuban territory (today converted into a horrific prison camp), a part of Cuba rented out by force to the United States in the early 20th century and which the US government refuses to return.

In the early 1990s, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, isolated and reviled by the international reaction, Cuba absorbed the terrible blow of losing the bulk of its markets in a matter of months and an abrupt descent in its gross domestic product. But the island confirmed that it shone with its own light and that it had never been a satellite of anyone, given that it was able to face that juncture on account of the extraordinary resistance of the majority of Cubans, who have acted on the basis of authentic motivations, values and ethical principles.

Challenges of the revolution

The Cuban people have made a conscious decision to support the country’s leadership, not only because they identify the system with their own interests, but also because of the responsible manner in which the state took on the crisis, reorganised its forces and designed a recovery strategy, despite the US blockade and conditions imposed by its European allies.

The sacrifices provoked by that situation have been hard, but it has been possible to endure them because of the undisputed social advances attained, because of the confidence deposited in the country’s leading institutions and because of people’s appreciation that their government is not a decadent one or one that is in management crisis or lacking in strategies, but has confirmed that the population has remained at the centre of all its work, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Fifty years have gone by and the liberation process has reached this point following the same direction indicated that night, 50 years ago, when Fidel, speaking to the huge crowd awaiting him in what was the dictatorship’s headquarters, affirmed that everything could be more difficult in the future, because we would have to fight to make the Revolution.

That is the challenge of the struggle currently underway to eradicate vices and exalt virtues, with Fidel as a soldier of ideas serving as a compass in the fight for freedom and independence.

Cuba’s enemies are backing their all on the opposite of that. In this world, where politics is a caricature, they cannot comprehend that, in its thinking and action, this revolution is a process of continuity, and that Fidel will continue to be the leader of the Revolution of today and tomorrow, because, beyond responsibilities and titles, he will continue to be the counsellor of ideas to which we will always have recourse.

Cuba: book launch, film, and Cuban trade unionist

Cuba:
book launch and film screening

Featuring presentations by:
Gilda Chacon Bravo
(Cuban Federation of Workers - CTC)
Tim Anderson
(Sydney Uni academic & Cuba solidarity activist)
Noreen Navin
(Socialist Alliance; member of NSW Teachers Fed)

And featuring:
The Doctors of Tomorrow
(Tim Anderson's new film about Cuba's role in training East Timorese doctors)

2pm Sat 9 Aug
Resistance Centre,
23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale.

While the US still attempts to demonise the gains of the Cuban revolution, the revolution remains an inspiration for millions of people around the world for its anti-imperialist struggle and social gains, both of which it has sought to extend globally.

Tim Anderson's new documentary The Doctors of Tomorrow gives light to the East Timor-Cuba health cooperation program. Since the 2003 Non-Aligned Summit, then Cuban President Fidel Castro and Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao made an agreement: Cuba would provide the newly independent nation with volunteer doctors. The aim was to not only meet the Timorese people's immediate health needs, but also create the means for East Timor to become self-sufficient in quality health care provision.

Today, Cuba has 300 volunteer doctors in East Timor and provides 1000 medical scholarships. In contrast, Australia, a much wealthier and closer neighbour, provides training for just six doctors and 15 nurses in Timor.

This forum will also launch the new booklet How The Workers and Peasants Made the Revolution by Chris Slee. It explains how the Cuban revolution was a victory for a mass people's movement led by workers and peasants and not simply the collapse of the brutal, US-backed Batista regime. This booklet answers the distortions advanced by some sections of the left who misrepresent the dynamics of the Cuban revolution.

Presented by Resistance & the Democratic Socialist Perspective.

Cuba: Fidel soldiers on

For the past week, the international media has been in paroxysms with the anouncement on February 19, in a measured, sober letter from Fidel Castro, that he would not be contesting the presidency of Cuba, due to be decided on February 24. The Wombats have been astounded with the reaction. No, really.

It was an amazing day in Miami, where all the wonder of nature were on show: there were no earthquakes, meteor showers, signs form God or tidal waves. No glorious rapture took the Miami Mob back to Cuba to return them and their gangsterism to power in the small island country. Time didn't stop. There weren't even the massive spontaneous street-parties where everyone speculated about the fact (which their cousin's wife's grandmother's brother who used to sell bananas in Vedado in 1947 KNOWS is true, because he was THERE) that Fidel actually died in a fishing accident in 1982, and the Soviets provided the regime with a wax dummy.

Worse yet for the wannabe fascists in Florida, there weren't even any protests or outbursts of joy in the streets of Cuba. In fact, when the western media descended like vultures onto the sidewalks of Havana, most them could only find ... well, sorrow, and a sad acceptance that the day had to come when Fidel would step aside.

In fact, Fidel stepped aside almost 19 months ago, in order to undergo life-threatening intestinal surgery for diverticulitis, and handed over the top job to his younger brother Raul, and the country didn't stop then either. The Cuban people didn't stop, but they did express concern and worry about (not the state of the country) but the health of Fidel, who they hold in the deepest regard.

If anything, the announcement only confirms Fidel in the role he has been playing, of leading by example, but also of creating space so that others can learn how to lead as well. It's a role he's had, not only for the past 19 months, but for decades beforehand, as generation after generation of Cuban youth has been encouraged to step forward and lead the revolution, from the ground up (not top-down, as Cuba's critics imagine, their minds filled with the "big-man" version of history that dominates individualistic, egoistic, capitalist society).

So, on Sunday, February 24, Raul Castro was elected president of Cuba. Once again, no bangs, no supernovas, no Second Comings or capitalist restorations - despite the pangs and Norwegian-Blue-pining-for-the-fjords of the capitalists across the Keys. No great schism between Raul Castro and Carlos Lage. No military coup and sudden economic changes "with Chinese characteristics".

No, life goes on in Cuba, where they are in the middle of a massive public debate about the future of Socialist Cuba (not anyone else's version, patented in Tampa, Fl. on the Potomac, or in Silicon Valley) where 1.3 million proposals for change have come out of 215,687 open public meetings - in communties, workplaces, and universities - over the past year. The newspaper of the Communist Youth - Juventud Rebelde - joins Fidel (who continues to write his newspaper articles for Granma under the title "Reflections by comrade Fidel") as "Public Critic Number 1" of the problems and shortfalls of Cuban society, of the corruption, the bureacracy and the ineptitude that places the revolution in jeopardy.

The Cuban revolution continues to inspire millions around the world by its ability toproduce the bets of humanity, when facing the worst of us only 90 miles from its shores. And, as the only country which the World Wildlife Fund regards to be developing in a manner sustainable for the continuation of life on earth, we all continue to have a lot of things ot learn from the Jewel of the Caribbean.

Of course, Fidel himself continues in politics too (don't let the media let you think he's retired, or dead, or anything - he's only 81 you know. Plenty of years to go yet.), as First Secretary of Communist Party, as an elected member of the National Assembly, and, most importantly, as one more, very necessary, "soldier in the Battle of Ideas" that confronts us all, at every turn of the struggle for socialism against barbarism and for the future of humanity.

Gracias Fidel, nuestro camarada de luz en la lucha por el futuro socialista.
Hasta la victoria siempre! Socialismo o muerte! Venceremos!
Condenarmos, no importa. La historia nos absolvera!