In 1984, Fidel Castro spoke at the opening of the 21st paediatric congress in Cuba. This was 25 years after the triumph of the Revolution. The details in the speech are inspiring, an organised society, with a revolutionary leadership and vision of what can be achieved when human need and development rather than profit and greed are the driving force. In February 2012, Rock around the Blockade sent a solidarity brigade to Cuba, hosted by the Union of Young Communists. We visited a maternity home, a children’s cancer unit and met with a group of family doctors (equivalent to our GPs). Reviewing Fidel’s speech today in 2012 and reflecting on our experiences on the brigade, we can clearly see how Cuba’s healthcare system has been driven by Cuba’s socialist revolution. It is no coincidence that Cuba’s healthcare in renowned around the world.
'We must break the blockade of information. There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation about Cuba throughout the world. They are very powerful and able confuse the international public; Cuba is not immune to that. It is because of the blockade of information that the work that RATB does is so important.'
Osmani Castro, Provincial Assembly Delegate
The US is collaborating with other imperialist countries to further tighten the economic blockade of Cuba; despite the opposition this is provoking in the region. On 25th October 2011, for the 20th consecutive time, the UN General Assembly voted 186-2 to end the blockade. The only country to support the US was Israel, which continues its own genocidal blockade of the Gaza strip. At the Bolivarian Alliance for the Latin Americas (ALBA) summit February 2012, a declaration was made against the blockade and Cuba's exclusion from the US-dominated OAS (Organisation of American States). When the OAS meeting came about in April, Rafael Correa of Ecuador boycotted the meeting in protest; leader after leader spoke out in opposition to the US veto of Cuba's presence. ALBA countries, and other leaders made it clear that without a radical change in the nature and structure of the summits, they would not attend again. Even arch-reactionary Pope Benedict XVI on his recent visit to Cuba criticised the: 'restrictive economic measures, imposed from outside the country' which 'unfairly burden the people.' With worldwide condemnation of imperialism's blockade, what does it mean for people on the ground in Cuba? The 'Justice for the Cuban 5' solidarity brigade visited Cuba this February, finding a country defiant and united in the face of this imperialist aggression.
By Rachel Francis for RATB
Left: After her death in 2007, Vilma Espin was voted the 'eternal president' of the FMC at their eighth congress, and the logo which is seen all over the country now bears her image.
Above: The brigade meets Mirtha Lopez and Caroline Amador at the FMC in Havana.
'We are always improving. We began in 1959 and we haven't finished.' Mirtha Lopez (FMC)
Mirtha Lopez, Caroline Amador, and other members of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) were clear; their mass organisation is driving equality forward at every level of society, and it must work hard to do so. The FMC, throughout the process of the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP), has focused its work in order to respond to the current needs of women and their communities. Members explained that their primary task is to defend the revolution, the process which enables society to work towards equality. Their deep and humbling commitment to building socialism and equality, their political will, is an inspiration and a crucial advance in changing society for women around the world.
Information taken from Wall Street Journal article ‘Bolivia seizes Spanish power firm’ published 1 May 2012
To commemorate 1 May International Workers Day, Bolivian President Evo Morales seized the local assets of Spanish power grid operator Red Eléctrica Corp. and ordered the armed forces to take over its installations, the latest move against Spanish corporate interests in Latin America.The declaration on Tuesday came on the heels of Argentina's move in April to seize a 51% stake in Argentine oil company YPF from Spanish oil major Repsol YPF SA, which had held a 57.4% stake.
Morales announced the move at the local electric company's headquarters in Bolivia's third city of Cochabamba, as part of a televised ceremony to commemorate May day. He accused the company of failing to invest enough.
By Tamara Pearson orginally published by www.venezuelanalysis.com on April 17th 2012
Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro Health Mission now involves 12,898 Cuban and Venezuelan doctors, 4,595 dentists, 7,772 nurses, 6702 community medical surgeries, 551 medical diagnostic centres, 580 rehabilitation rooms, 33 high technology centres, and 459 optometrist centres, according to Vice-president Elias Jaua. The mission, which provides free health consultations, exams and x-rays, rehabilitation therapy, medicine, specialised assistance, and preventative care, among others, celebrated the ninth anniversary of its creation in April 2012.
By Sam McGill, First published in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism 226 April/May 2012
‘Cuba faces two options – economic collapse, or updating the economy, building the only possible socialism in Cuba’. Noel Carrillo, Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba
Cuba has been subjected to a harsh economic and political blockade by the US for over 50 years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Special Period in the 1990s, Cuba has been in a state of economic crisis. The country lost 35% of its GDP and 80% of its trade overnight. Yet the revolution’s commitment to meeting the needs of its people has never wavered: not a single hospital or old people’s home was closed and no one starved.
Twenty years later Cuba is still living under the legacy of the Special Period and is not immune to the effects of the global economic crisis, yet socialist planning means that the Cuban people do not live at the whim of the markets; policy and spending are based directly on people’s needs, and so the crisis does not lead to food riots and oppression. In February 2012, 13 brigadistas from Rock around the Blockade spent two weeks learning about the challenges and achievements of the revolution.
By Murray Andrews first published in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 226 April/May 2012
‘ALBA, and especially CELAC, are the only things that may save Latin America.’ Orlando Borrego
On the brigade, it was made abundantly clear to us that internationalism is at the core of the revolution. The clearest illustration of this is Cuba’s central role in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and the Community for Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) – two regional organisations that aim to act as a counterweight to US imperialist control in the region.
By Elio Delgado Legon. First published in Havana Times
The story of children in Cuba during the revolutionary period begins with a dark chapter: “Operation Peter Pan” Based on one of many invented lies against the revolution, this was an operation organized and financed by the CIA and implemented with the complicity of some Catholic priests and Falangists. They invented the lie that the revolution was going to take away the parental rights of parents and that their children were going to be sent to Russia. They then drafted and circulated a supposed law that was “signed” but allegedly had not yet been announced. In this way they deceived many parents who sent their children to the United States. These mothers and fathers also believed in the promise that the Revolution wouldn’t last long and that the children would soon return. As a result of this operation, 14,000 children were removed from the country without their parents, many of them never to see their families again. I won’t dwell on the suffering and trauma caused to those children and their parents because that’s not my aim here and these details are widely known. What I want to emphasize is that everything was organized on the basis of several lies.
Over the weekend of 14 and 15 April, Rock around the Blockade held activities in London, Manchester, Newcastle in England as part of the international days of action for the Cuban 5 and to commemorate the Cuban victory at Playa Giron 51 years ago.
Much of the information reproduced below is taken from an article first published by Reuters on 15 April 2012
Unprecedented Latin American opposition to U.S. sanctions on Cuba left President Barack Obama isolated at the Organisation of American States (OAS) summit in Cartagena, Colombia on Sunday 15 April and illustrated Washington's declining influence in the region.
First published in Granma International Havana. April 11, 2012
The government of the United States has confiscated more than $493 million from Cuba since 2010, as part of the economic blockade imposed by Washington on the Caribbean nation. The amount was confirmed in a communiqué from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), attached to the U.S. Department of Treasure, which describes Cuba as a nation that sponsors terrorism. Using the same pretext, the United States government froze $223.7 million of Cuba's in 2009. The document, cited by Prensa Latina, indicates that U.S. authorities have additionally appropriated six properties belonging to the Cuban state in New York and Washington, D.C. The United States has maintained an economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba for more than 50 years, which has cost the country more than $975 billion and constitutes a violation of the United Nations Charter and all norms of international law.
First published on 9 April 2012 Liberation News
The governments of Ukraine and Cuba have announced an agreement to build a treatment center for cancer patients in Ukraine.The two countries are also discussing jointly producing medicines to treat cancer and other chronic diseases. The online news service Ukrinform.com reports that the Ukrainian government will fund the center, while Cuba's renowned Centro de Inmunología Molecular in Havana will provide the medical technology and expertise.
Francisco Escobar speaks to Rock Around the Blockade during the 2012 Justice for the Cuban 5 brigade to Cuba, February 2012. Francisco is a leading member of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) no 2 in Zone 90 of Boyeros municipality, Havana. He explains to the brigade, the role of the CDR's and their participation in the economic updates and guidelines that have been discussed nationwide over the last year.
“Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it. Ezra 10:4”
As reported across the main stream media, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger a.k.a Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba between 26 and 28 March. As expected counter-revolutionaries within Cuba, though negligible in both numbers and popularity, and right-wing reactionaries in Miami have tried to exploit this occasion for their miserable political agendas. We will never know whether the “dissidents” in Cuba hoped for a divine intervention backing them up in their actions during the papal visit to the island but all of their provocations have been an embarrassing flop.
Originally published on 30 March 2012
on Cubadebate René González is in Cuba
René González, one of the five anti-terrorist Cuban fighters unfairly given harsh prison sentences in the United States, arrived to Cuba on Friday on a family, private visit in the wake of authorization by a US judge to visit his gravely ill brother. According to information released by the TV news program, René arrived minutes after midday.
On February 24, René had filed through his lawyer an emergency motion before the South Florida District Court, requesting an authorization to visit his brother, seriously ill in Cuba. Nearly a month later, on March 19, Judge Joan Lenard, who have been handling the case of The Cuban Five since the start of their proceedings, authorized the trip for 15 days under certain conditions, including obtaining all US government travel permits needed.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 225 February/March 2012
Reporting on the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) of April 2011 and the approval of the Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution we said: ‘New measures and legislation will be announced in Cuba in the coming months as the guidelines are implemented. Although there will be no surprises, we can expect these to be met by the sensationalist exclamations about the advent of capitalism from the enemies of Cuban socialism’ (FRFI 221). This has indeed been the case with the bourgeois (and social democratic) media focusing on legislation implemented or anticipated to:
a) Permit the direct purchase/sale of privately-owned houses.
b) Permit the direct purchase/sale of privately-owned cars.
c) Authorise agricultural producers to sell direct to state-owned tourist entities (regulated under the national plan).
d) Provide loans from the state to non-state workers, farmers and people who need to repair their homes (previously only farming cooperatives had access to loans).
e) Permit trade between state enterprises and workers in the non-state sector (using bank transfers, not cash payments).
f) Allow those planning to leave Cuba to transfer their home ownership to relatives or co-habitants.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 225 February/March 2012
‘For how long are we going to be the backwards periphery, exploited and denigrated? Enough! Here we are putting down the fundamental building block for South American unity, independence and development. If we hesitate, we are lost!’ (Simon Bolivar)
On 2 December 2011 the 33 independent countries across the Americas – with the exception of the US and Canada – founded the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). CELAC is designed to counter the Organisation of American States, which the US has used as a tool for protecting its interests in Latin America since 1948. The new alliance is committed to promoting economic and social development across the region and undermining the unequal terms of trade with Europe and the US.
Rock Around the Blockade decided to call our February 2012 solidarity delegation to Cuba 'Justice for the Cuban 5 Brigade' in honor of the five brave Cuban prisoners of imperialism unjustly incarcerated in the US for the last 12 years. During the brigade we met with Kenia Serrano, president of the Cuban Insitute of friendship between peoples (ICAP) who gave us this message emphasising the need for a continued political campaign internationally to free the five.
Visit our campaigns section for more information on the Cuban 5
On Tuesday 14 February 2012, the year of the London Olympics, the Rock around the Blockade brigadistas visited a Cuban Institute for Sport and Recreation (INDER) project at Ho Chi Minh Park, Havana and presented the project with £650 of material aid including footballs, volleyballs, basketballs, football nets, bibs and gloves.
Interview with Luis Marron, former Political Councillor for the Cuban Embassy in Britain and representative from the Cuban Institute of Friendship between Peoples (ICAP)
Tuesday 7 February 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the commercial, economic, and financial blockade of Cuba by the United States. Over the years it has cost Cuba’s economy over $236 Billion.The US began issuing sanctions and a partial blockade in October 1960 when the Cuban government began expropriating the U.S. corporations that had controlled most of Cuba's resources and over half of its sugar production before the revolution. The expropriations ensured Cuba’s resources would be produced for the Cuban people and not for the profits of US conglomerates. As expected, any threat to the US hegemony in a region that they view as their ‘backyard’ would be met with severe actions. The initial refusal of US-owned oil refineries in Cuban to refine imported soviet oil was followed by the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) invasion, the Cuban missile crisis and continuous terrorist actions committed against the Cuban people by the US. The latter included the introduction of dengue fever to Cuba in 1981 and numerous failed attempts on Fidel Castro’s life.
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Cuba’s Children, Among the Happiest of the World By Elio Delgado Legon. First published in Havana Times The story of children in Cuba during the revolutionary period begins with a dark chapter: “Operation...Read More... -
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