OMNI
CUBA NEWSLETTER #5,
March 8, 2020
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a CULTURE OF PEACE and Justice.
(#1 Feb. 4, 2011; #2 Oct. 21, 2012; #3
Nov. 29, 2014; #4 , January 16, 2015).
Please forward.
CONTENTS
History
Jane
Franklin, Cuba and the U.S. Empire. 2016.
Tony Perrorret. “Cuba Libre.” Victorious Castro on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Tony Perrorret. “Cuba Libre.” Victorious Castro on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Two
Histories 2018
Brown, Cuba’s
Revolutionary World
Krujit, Cuba
and Revolutionary Latin America
Castro
and Obama
From
Obama to Trump
Trump,
Venezuela, Cuba
International
Solidarity with Cuba
US
Oppression of Cuba
Lamrani,
The Economic War against Cuba
ANSWER,
US Counter-Revolution v. Cuba
Trump
Administration Examples
v. Scientific and Medical Cooperation
Declining Fuel Supplies from Venezuela
Limiting Travel
Expels 2 Cubans, Restricts Others
Right Wing Latin US Allies Expel Medical
Missions
Other US Sanctions Proliferate v. People to
People, Banking, etc.
Blockades Lethal to Children, Elderly, the
Sick
US
Blockade of Cuba Almost 60 Years
US Media
v. Cuba
Lamrani,
Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of
Impartiality
Cuba’s
Achievements
Kirk,
Healthcare Without Borders
Fitz,
“Cuba’s Medical Mission”
Randall,
Exporting Revolution: Cuba’s Global
Solidarity
Lockwood,
Trade Between Arkansas and Cuba
Heathcott,
Expanding Agricultural Trade
Gillette,
Cuba Rebuilding Its Railway System
Cuba Newsletter #4
TEXTS
HISTORY OF US/CUBA RELATIONS
Cuba and
the U.S. Empire: A Chronological History
by
The 1959 Cuban Revolution remains one of the signal events of
modern political history. A tiny island, once a de facto colony of the United
States, declared its independence, not just from the imperial behemoth ninety
miles to the north, but also from global capitalism itself. Cuba’s many
achievements—in education, health care, medical technology, direct local
democracy, actions of international solidarity with the oppressed—are globally
unprecedented. And the United States, in light of Cuba’s humanitarian efforts,
has waged a relentless campaign of terrorist attacks on the island and its
leaders, while placing Cuba on its “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.
In this
updated edition of her classic, Cuba
and the United States, Jane Franklin depicts the two countries’ relationship from the
time both were colonies to the present. We see the early connections between
Cuba and the United States through slavery; through the sugar trade; Cuba’s
multiple wars for national liberation; the annexation of Cuba by the United
States; the infamous Platt Amendment that entitled the United States to
intervene directly in Cuban affairs; the gangster capitalism promoted by Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista; and the guerrilla war that brought the
revolutionaries to power.
A new
chapter updating the fraught Cuban-U.S. nexus brings us well into the 21st
century, with a look at the current status of Assata Shakur, the Cuban Five,
and the post-9/11 years leading to the expansion of diplomatic relations.
Offering a range of primary and secondary sources, the book is an outstanding
scholarly work. Cuba and
the U.S. Empire brings new meaning to Simón Bolívar’s
warning in 1829, that the United States “appears destined by Providence to
plague America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”
Whether one
reads it as a history, or keeps it handy as a ready reference…this is a book
that no serious student of U.S.-Cuba relations can afford to be without. —Philip Brenner, American University
A marvelous
work that puts the U.S. government’s outrageous aggression into stark and
stunning context. —John Marciano, State
University of New York
This
chronology provides scholars with an essential and long overdue research tool. —Louis A. Pérez, Jr., University of North
Carolina
Indispensable
does not begin to describe how important Jane Franklin’s book has been for all
of us involved in the efforts to change U.S. policy towards Cuba. It has been
number 1 on Marazul’s recommended list of books for all our travelers since it
first came out. Its chronology, cross-referenced index, and its ability to
place in historical context all aspects of U.S.-Cuban relations has meant that,
at least in this case, our side—and not the Empire—has written the history! —Bob Guild, Marazul Charters, Inc.
Informed and informative, and absolutely timely in view of the
current reconciliation efforts of the Obama administration with the current
Cuban government, Cuba
and the U.S. Empire: A Chronological History is a very highly
recommended addition to community, college, and university library
International Studies collections.
When Fidel Castro Charmed the United States
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Jan 28, 2019, 8:47 PM (17 hours ago)
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SEE SOURCE
AT END
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The Cuban Sphere
Two new histories capture the role Cuba played in the
revolutions and counterrevolutions of Latin America. By Patrick Iber. The Nation, February
21, 2018. www.thenation.com/article/in-the-cuban-sphere/
In February 1962, Fidel
Castro spoke the words of the Second Declaration of Havana before a crowd of
nearly 2 million in the Plaza de la Revolución: “To the accusations that Cuba
wants to export its revolution, we reply: Revolutions are not exported, they
are made by the people…. What Cuba can give to the people, and has already
given, is its example.” Castro led a country of only 6 million in the process
of building a more egalitarian society and economy. But his ability to carry
out those plans depended on successfully managing and defeating external and
internal threats. Already in 1959, Cuba had sponsored expeditions to try to
topple hostile dictatorships. In the decades to come, it would begin to operate
with the ambitions of a great power. Sometimes it did inspire other Latin
American revolutionaries by its example. It also—contrary to Castro’s
declaration—trained and exported soldiers throughout Latin America and Africa
in an effort to spread its vision of revolution around much of the southern
half of the world.
IN THIS REVIEW
CUBA’S REVOLUTIONARY WORLD
CUBA AND REVOLUTIONARY LATIN AMERICA: AN ORAL HISTORY
For some, Cuba in the
1960s and ’70s is the very model of anti-imperialist internationalism and
revolutionary solidarity. For others, its efforts to expand revolution beyond
its borders helped to destabilize Latin America and strengthen
counterrevolutionary forces, clearing a path for many of the region’s
right-wing dictatorships. Two new books, Jonathan C. Brown’s Cuba’s Revolutionary World and
Dirk Kruijt’s Cuba and Revolutionary Latin
America, grapple with this complex legacy. But while Brown and
Kruijt start with the same set of questions, they reach essentially opposing
conclusions: Brown finds that Cuba’s foreign policy damaged democracy
throughout the hemisphere, while Kruijt argues that it helped sustain it.
Scholars
working to understand the international legacy of the Cuban Revolution face two
related challenges. The first is that the subject is highly politicized: Both
the US and Cuban governments have self-serving stories to tell about their role
in Latin America’s wave of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. Even before
Castro came to power, the United States saw the Cuban Revolution as a threat to
its national interests, and it often sought to delegitimize other guerrilla
struggles by claiming they were merely the result of Cuban meddling. Cuba,
meanwhile, has sometimes gone to great lengths to deny its involvement in these
uprisings, but it’s clear that the country did indeed play a role in many of
the insurgencies that sprang up throughout Latin America in the 1960s, ’70s,
and ’80s. For Cuba, it would have been a breach of solidarity for the country
not to have been active across the region.
This
politicization of Cuba’s foreign policy leads to the second problem: Neither
the US intelligence apparatus nor the Cuban government has fully released the
documents relating to its actions in Latin America. Scholars, therefore, need
to work without the full range of sources they would normally like to consult
for such a complex and contentious topic. It also makes Cuba scholarship
something of a Rorschach test, because the lack of documentation means that
people often fill in the gaps with their own assumptions about the
international legacy of the revolution.
Brown
and Kruijt have solved the problem of this absence in entirely different ways. Brown relies primarily on the US government’s documentation of Cuba’s
revolutionary actions—which is more readily available than the CIA’s
accounts of its own covert actions to counter Cuban influence. Kruijt, by contrast, relies on interviews:
roughly 70 with Cubans, and 20 with revolutionaries from other Latin American
countries. In spite of their fundamental disagreement over Cuba’s contributions
to democracy in the hemisphere, their books are complementary, each adding to
our understanding of the dynamics and consequences of Cuba’s foreign policy.
Their differences owe primarily to their underlying understandings of
democracy, with Brown’s analysis resting on a fundamentally liberal-democratic
framework, and Kruijt’s proving more sympathetic to radical redefinitions of
the democratic idea.
Cuba’s revolution was a profound
disjuncture, in both Cuban and world politics. After Cuba became independent
from Spain in 1898, the country’s sovereignty was compromised by the Platt
Amendment to the Cuban Constitution, which gave the United States the right to
intervene in Cuban affairs to quell threats, including threats to property.
Even after the amendment was abrogated in 1934, US diplomatic pressure
prevented dramatic economic reforms in the country. Cuba’s elected governments
were venal and corrupt, and were finally replaced by the brutal dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista in 1952. American ownership of key infrastructure crowded out
Cuban businesses, while vice tourism, especially from the United States, shaped
the urban landscape of Havana. Cuban revolutionary nationalism emerged to
counteract all of these overlapping problems; equality at home required Cubans
to break from their unhealthy relationship with the United States.
Reader
Supported News | 29 March 16
FOCUS: Fidel Castro | Brother Obama
Fidel Castro, Granma (the newspaper of Castro’s Communist Party)
Castro writes: "We don't need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because our commitment is to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet."
READ MORE
Fidel Castro, Granma (the newspaper of Castro’s Communist Party)
Castro writes: "We don't need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because our commitment is to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet."
READ MORE
Órgano
oficial del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba.
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Deportes - Edición
impresa - Cuba - Mundo - Cultura - Opinión - ...
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Granma Internacional.
Republic of Cuba. Havana Year 17 Nro ...
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Cuba's President and
Prime Minister led a meeting of the ...
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Órgano oficial del
Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba.
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An annual review of
work carried out in 2019 by Cuba's 13 social ...
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FROM OBAMA TO TRUMP
Is Normalization With Cuba Irreversible?
That was one of Obama’s goals in his recent trip—and he made huge progress,
charming the Cuban public and establishing a rapport with Raúl Castro.
The day after
President Obama ended his historic trip to Havana, Cubans turned on their TV
sets and watched his surprise guest appearance in a skit on the popular weekly
show Vivir del Cuento (Live by Your Wits). The show’s star,
Pánfilo—a character created by Cuban comedian Luis Silva—is playing dominoes in
his humble apartment against two friends, complaining that he needs a teammate.
Lo and behold, the president of the United States walks in. “¿Qué
bolá?” Obama says, Cuban slang for “What’s happening?” After
chanting “Obama, Obama, so nice you came to Havana,” Pánfilo asks the
president how his visit is going.
(Continued at link above)
Charles
Krauthammer. “Incident in Hangzhou.” NADG (9-12-16). A severe attack on Obama’s weakness in
foreign policy that allowed China and Russia to treat himself and the USA with
disdain. He even sneers at Obama’s
nuclear deal with Iran as useless.
Warrior Krauthammer, a regular columnist for the NADG for several years,
would have admired Trump.
Peter Korbluh. “Is Cuba
Next? Venezuela Isn’t the Only Target on
Trump’s List.” The
Nation Feb. 25/March 4, 2019.
Homage to OSPAAAL, the organisation of solidarity for
the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. mronline.org (8-3-19).
Dear
Friends, Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute of
Social Research. A few days ago, the 9th Asia Pacific Regional Conference
of Solidarity with Cuba came to a close. At the final meeting, Prachanda–the
co-chair of the Nepal Communist Party–articulated a sentiment that is
shared by billions of people around the world. Cuba, he said, ‘is […]
US OPPRESSION, SANCTIONS, BLOCKADES
The Economic War Against Cuba: A
Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade by Salim Lamrani; Prologue by Wayne S. Smith.
Foreword by Paul Estrade. Translated by Larry Oberg. MR Admin
$12.75 – $75.00
It is impossible to fully understand Cuba today without also
understanding the economic sanctions levied against it by the United States.
For over fifty years, these sanctions have been upheld by every presidential
administration, and at times intensified by individual presidents and acts of
Congress. They are a key part of the
U.S. government’s ongoing campaign to undermine the Cuban Revolution, and stand
in egregious violation of international law. Most importantly, the sanctions
are cruelly designed for their harmful impact on the Cuban people.
In this concise and sober account, Salim Lamrani explains
everything you need to know about U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba: their
origins, their provisions, how they contravene international law, and how they
affect the lives of Cubans. He examines the U.S. government’s own official
documents to expose what is hiding in plain sight: an indefensible, vicious,
and wasteful blockade that has been roundly condemned by citizens around the
world.
Salim Lamrani is a treasury of powerful
factual information. —Howard Zinn,
author, A People’s History of the United States.
Lamrani brings forth
valuable insight, much needed information, and honest judgment while exposing
the economic aggression perpetrated by U.S. leaders against the people of Cuba. —Michael Parenti, author, The Face of Imperialism.
Professor Lamrani’s
brilliant study provides the most comprehensive and systematic exposition and
critique of Washington’s extraterritorial application of sanctions against
Cuba—it documents the human cost and the criminal intent. —James Petras, Bartle Professor Emeritus of
Sociology, Binghamton University
An excellent summary of
the American economic sanctions against Cuba, the manner in which they have
been imposed for more than a half century and the harm they cause the Cuban
people. —Wayne S. Smith, senior fellow
and director of the Cuba Project, Center for International Policy; former head,
U.S. Interests Section in Havana
Salim Lamrani is
Docteur ès Études Ibériques et Latino-américaines at the University of Paris-
Sorbonne Paris IV, and associate professor at the University of La Réunion. As
a widely published French journalist, he specializes in Cuban-American
relations. Besides being a regular guest lecturer in France, Lamrani has
lectured widely around Europe, Latin America, and the United States, and has
spoken in the company of Noam Chomsky, Ken Livingstone, Ignacio Ramonet, and
Howard Zinn, among others. He is also a commentator for Radio Miami in Florida
and Opera Mundi in Brazil.
Paul Estrade is
professor emeritus at the University of Paris VIII and a recognized expert on
contemporary Hispanic Caribbean history. He is considered the most
knowledgeable French scholar of the works of José Martí, the Cuban national
hero, and Ramon Emeterio Betances, the principal figure in the Puerto Rican
independence movement against the Spanish Empire.
Wayne S. Smith, a
professional diplomat, has been an associate professor at Johns Hopkins
University since 1985 and director of the Cuba program at the Center for
International Policy in Washington, D.C. since 1992. He is considered the
premier U.S. specialist on relations between Cuba and the United States. Smith
received a PhD from George Washington University and has served in diplomatic
posts in the Soviet Union, Argentina, and Cuba, where he witnessed the victory
of the Cuban Revolution firsthand. In 1961, he was appointed by President John
F. Kennedy as Executive Secretary of the Working Group on Latin America, and
from 1979 to 1982 he served as head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba.
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Dec. 17, 2014, was a historic day for Cuba. On that morning,
the three remaining Cuban Five members in U.S. prison flew home to freedom.
At the same time, Alan Gross, an American who was arrested in Cuba five years
ago and convicted for illegally bringing into Cuba undercover communications
equipment, was returned to the United States. From ANSWER 1-13-15
Read
Article | Share:
|
U.S.-Cuba relations said to hit scientific, medical cooperation
by
CLAUDIA TORRENS The Associated Press | May 30, 2019
NEW YORK -- The degradation of relations between the U.S. and
Cuba under President Donald Trump has begun to cut into scientific and medical
cooperation on issues such as treatment of infectious diseases and coral reef
preservation.
Cuba faces worsening fuel shortage as supply from Venezuela dwindles
by ANDREA
RODRIGUEZ AND MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN The Associated Press | September 21, 2019
HAVANA -- A fuel shortage blamed on President Donald Trump's
administration has turned filling a tank in Cuba into an ordeal even for a
country used to waiting in lines
U.S. again limits travel to Cuba in bid to cut off money to island
by
MATTHEW LEE and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN The Associated Press | June 5, 2019 (ADG 6-5-19)
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's administration Tuesday
ended some forms of U.S. travel to Cuba, banning cruise ships and a heavily
used category of educational travel in an attempt to cut off cash to the
island's communist government.
U.S. expels 2 Cubans, restricts others
WASHINGTON — The U.S. is expelling two Cuban diplomats and is
restricting travel of members of Cuba’s permanent mission to the United Nations
days before world leaders gather for the annual U.N. General Assembly.
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mronline.org
(6-12-19)
Yesterday the U.S. Treasury
Department added to sanctions announced April 17, and the activation of Title
III of the Helms-Burton Act, the prohibition of “people to people” cultural and
educational trips, plus others related to travel and transportation services,
remittances, banking, commerce, and telecommunications.
Mronline.org
(2-13-20)
It
deliberately affects defenseless civilians, such as children, the elderly and
the sick. The US blockade against Cuba is the most severe and prolonged applied
against any country, but it is estimated that one third of the world’s
population suffers its effects: there are more than eight thousand sanctions in
39 countries.
Looking at
Change: U.S. and Cuba, blockade and revolution. Mronline.org (3-8-20)
The
U.S. blockade of Cuba is like the sun; neither will disappear soon. But
different: the U.S. politicians and people are aware of the sun, but may have
forgotten about the Cuba blockade. It’s persisted for almost 60 years, basically unchanged. The following is about
change.
US MEDIA VS. CUBA
Cuba, the Media, and
the Challenge of Impartiality
by
Salim Lamrani;
foreword
by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Larry Oberg.
MONTHLY REVIEW, 2015. 160 pages.
In this concise
and detailed work, Salim Lamrani addresses questions of media concentration and
corporate bias by examining a perennially controversial topic: Cuba. Lamrani argues that the tiny island nation
is forced to contend not only with economic isolation and a U.S. blockade, but
with misleading or downright hostile media coverage. He takes as his case
study El País, the most widely distributed Spanish daily. El País (a property
of Grupo Prisa, the largest Spanish media conglomerate), has editions aimed at
Europe, Latin America, and the U.S., making it a global opinion leader.
Lamrani wades
through a swamp of reporting and uses the paper as an example of how media conglomerates
distort and misrepresent life in Cuba and the activities of its government. By
focusing on eight key areas, including human development, internal opposition,
and migration, Lamrani shows how the media systematically shapes our
understanding of Cuban reality. This book, with a foreword by Eduardo Galeano,
provides an alternative view, combining a scholar’s eye for complexity with a
journalist’s hunger for the facts.
Critics of the
Cuban Revolution often point to a lack of freedom of the press as proof of
totalitarianism. In this illuminating book, Salim Lamrani thoroughly
demonstrates how Spain’s prestigious newspaper of record, El País, consistently
misinforms about Cuba, vilifying its leaders and praising its most transparent
detractors. Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality is brilliant and
important—for understanding Cuba and for understanding the challenges to truth
in information. —Margaret Randall,
author, Che On My Mind
Salim Lamrani
is a treasury of powerful factual information.
—Howard Zinn,
author, A People’s History of the United States
Praise for The
Economic War Against Cuba:
Lamrani brings
forth valuable insight, much needed information, and honest judgment while
exposing the economic aggression perpetrated by U.S. leaders against the people
of Cuba.
—Michael
Parenti, author, The Face of Imperialism
Professor
Lamrani’s brilliant study provides the most comprehensive and systematic
exposition and critique of Washington’s extraterritorial application of
sanctions against Cuba—it documents the human cost and the criminal intent.
—James Petras,
Bartle Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Binghamton University
CUBA’S ACHIEVEMENTS
HEALTHCARE WITHOUT BORDERS:
UNDERSTANDING CUBAN MEDICAL INTERNATIONALISM
UNDERSTANDING CUBAN MEDICAL INTERNATIONALISM
JOHN M. KIRK
Series: Contemporary Cuba
Share:
"Kirk's invaluable
study reveals to us, for the first time, the range and character of Cuba's
remarkable achievements, which should be an inspiration and a model for those with
far greater advantages."--Noam Chomsky, author of Manufacturing
Consent
"Invaluable. Provides ample, detailed, and clear evidence of the whole evolution of medical internationalism within Cuban foreign and social policy, going well beyond the headlines to trace that evolution carefully and honestly."--Antoni Kapcia, coeditor of The Changing Dynamic of Cuban Civil Society
"Offers a textured and nuanced assessment of a complex politico-cultural phenomenon."--Louis A. Pérez, author of The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past
Cuba has more medical personnel serving abroad--over 50,000 in 66 countries--than all of the G-7 countries combined, and also more than the World Health Organization. For over five decades, the island nation has been a leading force in the developing world, providing humanitarian aid (or "cooperation," as Cuba's government prefers) and initiating programs for preventative care and medical training.
In Healthcare without Borders, John Kirk examines the role of Cuban medical teams in disaster relief, biotechnology joint ventures, and in the Latin American School of Medicine--the largest medical faculty in the world. He looks at their responses to various crises worldwide, including the 1960 earthquake in Chile, the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the subsequent cholera outbreak, and the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Kirk issues an informative and enlightening corrective for what he describes as the tendency of the industrialized world's media to ignore or underreport this medical aid phenomenon. In the process, Kirk explores the philosophical underpinnings of human rights and access to medical care at the core of Cuba's medical internationalism programs and partnerships.
John M. Kirk is professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Dalhousie University. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Canada-Cuba Relations: The Other Good Neighbor Policy, Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals, and Culture and the Cuban Revolution.
"Invaluable. Provides ample, detailed, and clear evidence of the whole evolution of medical internationalism within Cuban foreign and social policy, going well beyond the headlines to trace that evolution carefully and honestly."--Antoni Kapcia, coeditor of The Changing Dynamic of Cuban Civil Society
"Offers a textured and nuanced assessment of a complex politico-cultural phenomenon."--Louis A. Pérez, author of The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past
Cuba has more medical personnel serving abroad--over 50,000 in 66 countries--than all of the G-7 countries combined, and also more than the World Health Organization. For over five decades, the island nation has been a leading force in the developing world, providing humanitarian aid (or "cooperation," as Cuba's government prefers) and initiating programs for preventative care and medical training.
In Healthcare without Borders, John Kirk examines the role of Cuban medical teams in disaster relief, biotechnology joint ventures, and in the Latin American School of Medicine--the largest medical faculty in the world. He looks at their responses to various crises worldwide, including the 1960 earthquake in Chile, the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the subsequent cholera outbreak, and the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Kirk issues an informative and enlightening corrective for what he describes as the tendency of the industrialized world's media to ignore or underreport this medical aid phenomenon. In the process, Kirk explores the philosophical underpinnings of human rights and access to medical care at the core of Cuba's medical internationalism programs and partnerships.
John M. Kirk is professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Dalhousie University. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Canada-Cuba Relations: The Other Good Neighbor Policy, Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals, and Culture and the Cuban Revolution.
Other JOHN KIRK Books
Culture and the Cuban Revolution: Conversations in Havana
Between God and the Party: Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Cuba
Culture and the Cuban Revolution: Conversations in Havana
Between God and the Party: Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Cuba
Cuba’s Medical Mission
http://monthlyreview.org/2016/02/01/cubas-medical-mission/
by February
29th, 2016.
John M. Kirk, Health
Care without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism (Gainesville, FL: University Press of
Florida, 2015), 376 pages, $79.95, hardback.
When the
Ebola virus began to spread through western Africa in fall 2014, much of the
world panicked. Soon, over 20,000 people were infected, more than 8,000 had
died, and worries mounted that the death toll could reach into hundreds of
thousands. The United States provided military support; other countries
promised money. Cuba was the first nation to respond with what was most needed:
it sent 103 nurses and 62 doctors as volunteers to Sierra Leone. With 4,000
medical staff (including 2,400 doctors) already in Africa, Cuba was prepared
for the crisis before it began: there had already been nearly two dozen Cuban
medical personnel in Sierra Leone. Since
many governments did not know how to respond to Ebola, Cuba trained volunteers
from other nations at Havana’s Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine. In
total, Cuba taught 13,000 Africans, 66,000 Latin Americans, and 620 Caribbeans
how to treat Ebola without being infected. It was the first time that many had
heard of Cuba’s emergency response teams.… The Ebola experience is one of many
covered in John Kirk’s new book Health Care without Borders: Understanding
Cuban Medical Internationalism.
Exporting Revolution: Cuba’s Global Solidarity
In
her new book, Exporting Revolution, Margaret Randall
explores the Cuban Revolution's impact
on the outside world, tracing Cuba's international outreach in health care,
disaster relief, education, literature, art, liberation struggles, and sports.
Randall combines personal observations and interviews with literary analysis
and examinations of political trends in order to understand what compels a
small, poor, and underdeveloped country to offer its resources and expertise.
Why has the Cuban health care system trained thousands of foreign doctors,
offered free services, and responded to health crises around the globe? What
drives Cuba's international adult literacy programs? Why has Cuban poetry had
an outsized influence in the Spanish-speaking world? This multifaceted
internationalism, Randall finds, is not only one of the Revolution's most
central features; it helped define Cuban society long before the Revolution.
About The Author(s)
Margaret
Randall is the author of dozens of books of poetry and prose, including Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression and Che on My Mind, and the editor of Only the Road / Solo el Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry,
all also published by Duke University Press.
AND HOPES FOR TRADE
Arkansan sees path for Cuba trade bill; Crawford measure stalled in
past, but key dissenters have since departed
“I think our chances of moving our Cuba trade bill have
increased tremendously, so we’re going to make that a priority issue,” said
U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark. “It’s widely supported.”
Presidential politics is a wild card, however. The White House
last month signaled that it may adopt a harder line with Havana.
During the previous session of Congress, Crawford sponsored the
Cuba Agricultural Exports Act, which would have allowed farmers and others to
extend credit “to Cuba or to an individual or entity in Cuba.” The legislation
also would have enabled Americans to invest in nongovernmental agricultural
enterprises there….(continued)
Island market
Expand
Arkansas-Cuba trade
by Gary
Heathcott Special to the Democrat-Gazette | September 27, 2019
An important U.S.-Cuba business conference, critical to opening
markets for American farmers, took place in and around Havana, Cuba, recently.
DESPITE
THE US REPRESSION, HOPE FOR A RAILWAY
Cuba
tries to revive its once-great railway network
By
CHRISTOPHER GILLETTE.
(ADG 5-24-19)
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s railway system is undergoing a major
overhaul, with the government pushing a program to revamp the decrepit and
aging network with new cars and locomotives in the hope of restoring a rail
service that was once the envy of Latin America.
Contents
of Cuba Newsletter #4
Robert Naiman,
End Embargo Petition
Common Dreams, Prupis,
US and Cuba Restore Diplomatic
Relations
Relations
Rubio Condemns
Obama’s Ignorance
Cuba Releases
Political Prisoners But without Accepting the
Allegation
US Political
Prisoners, Google Search
The Nuclear Resister Networking Anti-Nuclear and Anti-
Nuclear Political Prisoners
Dick Bennett, Political Prisoners and Trials
All Latin
America Cheering
History of US
Interventions in Latin America
VFP, It’s Only
the First Step, Calls for Additional Changes
Castro Wins
Confucious Peace Prize
Books Reviewed
in Preceding Cuba Newsletters
Contents of
Earlier Cuba Newsletters
END CUBA NEWSLETTER #5
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