Reflections of Fidel

I liked history, as most boys do. Wars as well, a culture that society sowed in male children. All the toys offered us were weapons.

In my childhood they sent me to a city where I was never taken to a movie theater. Television did not exist then, and there was no radio in the house in which I lived. I had to use my imagination.

In the first boarding school, I read with amazement about the Universal Flood and Noah’s Ark. Later on I came to the conclusion that maybe it was a vestige that humanity retained of the last climate change in the history of our species. It was possibly the end of the Ice Age, which is thought to have taken place thousands of years ago. (more…)

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge. Our doctors are working every day at 227 of the 237 communes of that country. On the other hand, no less than 400 young Haitians have been graduated as medical doctors in our country. They will now work alongside the reinforcement that traveled there yesterday to save lives in that critical situation. Thus, up to one thousand doctors and healthcare personnel can be mobilized without any special effort; and most are already there willing to cooperate with any other State that wishes to save Haitian lives and rehabilitate the injured.” (more…)

The news from the Danish capital gives a picture of chaos. After planning a conference with about 40 thousand people in attendance, the hosts find it impossible to honor their promise. Evo, the first of the two presidents of ALBA-member countries to arrive, stated some truths derived from the millennium-old culture of his people. (more…)

Significant events have taken place in our country lately.

On October 28, at 7:30 am, the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the physical disappearance of Camilo Cienfuegos; the sad event occurred one stormy evening as he was traveling in a light aircraft from Camaguey to the capital, along the north of Cuba.

He had fought his last victorious battle against the tyranny in Yaguajay, at the end of December 1958. The mausoleum was dedicated in that area where the remains of those who fell during the war in the Las Villas North Front or after January 1st, 1959 have been laid to rest; they will later be joined by those who fought with his Invading Column or connected with it in the center of the island, and who are still alive. Somebody then called him the Hero of Yaguajay and the title stuck to him. But he was more than that: he was the Hero of the Antonio Maceo Invading Column. The brave commander was advancing with his light column towards Pinar del Rio, and he would have reached its mountains if he had not received an order from the Sierra Maestra to stay in the center of the island and fight there with Che under his command. It was not necessary to put him at risk in that mission which was an incorrect interpretation of the historic circumstances. On January 2, he started with Che the historic march to the capital. There is so much to research and to reflect on that event!

Following a decision of the Party and the Government, as of this 50th Anniversary his steel silhouette shines together with that of the Heroic Guerrilla from the Revolution Square, guarding the statue of Our National Hero Jose Marti.

Also on October 28, at 9:00 in the morning, as fate would have it, the debate started on the resolution introduced by Cuba against the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the US to our homeland. Numerous leaders from Third World countries spoke moving words that gave testimony of their appreciation for the indomitable and supportive country that for half a century has faced the ruthless and genocidal empire which emerged in the proximity of our island. A great number of countries felt that Cuba’s resistance was a struggle for their own right to sovereignty.

The discreet and supportive work of our people from the first years of the Revolution, and its heroic resistance despite the United States cruel blockade, was not forgotten by the overwhelming majority of the 192 sovereign states of the world.

The irrefutable arguments of our Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez sounded like a terrible pounding in that room sitting at the very heart of New York, and very close to Wall Street.

For the first time in many years of debate, every UN member state took part in the discussion of the thorny and compromising issue.

Even the European allies –members of NATO– and the developed, consumer-oriented and rich countries that make up the European Community felt obliged to express their disagreement with the economic blockade of Cuba. Our foreign minister gave a vigorous reply to the justifying and plaintive remarks of the US representative.

When the President of the Assembly took a vote on the resolution, of the 192 states present only three delegations voted against Cuba: the United States and its ally in the Palestinian holocaust, Israel, and the island of Palau. An American lawyer with Israeli citizenship, the representative of Palau, –a 281.2 sq. miles territory in the Pacific Ocean which spent nearly fifty years under the Yankee administration– sided with the United States at the UN. Two other states abstained and 187 condemned the blockade.

However, as fate would have it, these were not the only remarkable events for Cubans that day. That evening marked the end of the visit to our Homeland of Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), accompanied by Mirta Roses, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Both represent the two most important international agencies taking responsibility for that crucial task. Last Tuesday I had the honor of meeting with them.

Since the issue of the A H1N1 influenza epidemic is of such great interest to every nation, especially those of the Third World, which have been the most affected by the consequences of plundering and exploitation, I asked them to make space in their tight schedule to have this meeting.

Despite the concern and efforts of our ministry of Public Health and its information programs intended for our people, I felt it could be advisable to delve into the epidemic subject.

Public health was one of the causes that made a Revolution necessary in Cuba. It is not my intention to relate the progress obtained which has turned us into the country with the largest number of medical doctors per capita in the world -an example of what can be done for other peoples even when this nation has been blockaded and attacked for half a century by the mighty empire. Our Homeland was not only the victim of a ruthless brain drain but also a target of biological aggressions by the US administration that not only used viruses and bacteria against plants and animals but also against the population. The dengue fever afflicted more than 300 thousand people. Actually, serotype 2 was introduced in Cuba and the hemisphere when it was not present as an epidemic in any other country.

Leaving out many data to make the story short, suffice it to remember in this Reflection that the dengue is transmitted by the mosquito but the A H1N1 influenza spreads more easily and directly through the respiratory tract.

Our people should know that at the end of World War I, an influenza epidemic took the lives of tens of millions of people at a time when the population of the planet hardly exceeded 1.5 billion. On the other hand, humanity had much less scientific and technical resources available than today.

This reality, however, should not lead us to be overconfident. When such epidemics break out, resources are needed to prevent and fight them, as it was the case with yellow fever, polio, tetanus and others, and the vaccines that for years have protected children and the population at large from many extremely harmful diseases.

Today, there are also other types of vaccines, especially those protecting the people from various flu viruses, which are given to those cases at greater risk due to permanent or temporary causes.

Our people should be mindful that it is more difficult to have vaccines against certain viruses because of their genetic mutations, as it is the case of those related to the A H1N1 flu and others.

The highly developed and rich countries have quite sophisticated and costly laboratories. Even Cuba, despite underdevelopment and the Yankee blockade, has been able to establish several labs for the production of vaccines and medications.

Internationally, there is a logical fear of the above-mentioned flu, given its dissemination capacity and its effects on certain more vulnerable persons. Aside from the aspects related to the international cooperation offered by our doctors, who have given Cuba great moral authority and prestige, I was interested in examining with the Director General of the WHO the issue of the A H1N1 epidemic. She confirmed to me that the difficulty with the vaccine is that laboratories with the capacity to produce them in Europe, the United States and Canada are turning out a much lower volume of vaccines than are required; there was a great demand in the developed nations and the first vaccines will not be available to the rest of the countries until the end of the year; at the same time, their prices show a marked growing trend. She has included Cuba among the countries which have been given a priority due to its international cooperation and its capacity to immediately vaccinate the most vulnerable through its network of hospitals.

Dr. Chan knows that wherever the Cuban doctors are, they will cooperate in the speedy vaccination of the people.

These are obviously positive news for our compatriots. However, we must bear in mind certain circumstances.

It will be several weeks or maybe two or three months before the first vaccines get here.

The main concern of the WHO is that the mutation capacity of the virus may quickly overtake the effect of the vaccines and then it would be necessary to start again the search for another effective vaccine. In my view, this determines the importance of an adequate network of medical services as we have in our country and of the systematic orientation to a population with high educational levels to obtain its cooperation in the relevant actions.

The lack of adequate medical services in many countries, including the United States where nearly 50 million people do not have access to medical care, raises considerably the number of potential victims. That country has declared a state of Health Emergency. Two days ago, I listened to a report that between November and March the A H1N1 flu could be the cause of 90 thousand deaths in the United States since winter favors the development of the epidemic. I wish such estimates are wrong and there is no such damage. With a population that is at least 27 times that of Cuba, it would be tantamount to over 3 thousand deaths in our country, and many million people in the world, in spite of the scientific breakthroughs.

The initial symptoms of the A H1N1 appeared in Mexico in the first quarter of the current year, and almost simultaneously in the United States and Canada. From there it extended to Spain, one of the first European countries where the epidemic spread.

When the current US President lifted the restrictions to Cuban Americans for travelling to Cuba, the epidemic had already extended to many states of the union. Thus, the four countries where the largest number of tourists and other travellers originate were precisely those where the epidemic had mostly spread in the world.

The first carriers of the virus here were travellers from overseas. Relatively few people were infected in our country and for months we had no virus-related deaths but as the virus extended to every province, mainly those with a higher number of relatives resident in the United States, it became necessary to purchase new laboratory equipment for the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute and to multiply our efforts, while still fighting dengue.

So, we were faced with the intriguing situation that, on the one hand, the United States authorized the travelling of the largest number of virus carriers while, on the other, it banned the acquisition of equipment and medication to fight the epidemic. Of course, I don’t think it was the intention of the US administration, but it is the reality resulting from the absurd and shameful blockade imposed to our people.

With the equipment purchased elsewhere we are in a position to know, with absolute precision, the total number of people affected by the epidemic and those whose death may be related to the presence of the virus.

Fortunately, in addition to the services and the well-trained medical personnel in our country, there is in the international market an antiviral medication particularly effective when given to the people with clear symptoms of carrying the virus and to those providing direct care to them.

We have that antiviral and also the necessary raw material to continue producing a similar amount to that available; additionally, we shall spare no effort to have the indispensable doses.

Even if many countries fail to provide the international agencies with the relevant information about the epidemic, for lack of networks of services and medical personnel, we know that our government is determined to communicate with absolute accuracy to such agencies the number of cases and deaths related to the epidemic, as we have always done with the public health data of Cuba.

Fortunately, our country has an extensive network of healthcare services. The possibility to provide immediate care to those afflicted by the disease is real; we also have a sufficient number of medical doctors with quality training, many of whom have fulfilled honorable and unforgettable internationalist missions.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 30, 2009
2:52 pm

If Obama was awarded the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite his being a native, and his having delivered on his promises.

For the first time, in both countries a member of their respective ethnic groups has won the presidency.

I had said several times that Obama is a smart and cultivated man in a social and political system he believes in. He wishes to bring healthcare to nearly 50 million Americans, to rescue the economy from its profound crisis and to improve the US image which has deteriorated as a result of genocidal wars and torture. He neither conceives nor wishes to change his country’s political and economic system; nor could he do it.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three American presidents, one former president and one candidate to the presidency.

The first one was Theodore Roosevelt elected in 1901. He was one of the Rough Riders who landed in Cuba with his riders but with no horses in the wake of the US intervention in 1898 aimed at preventing the independence of our homeland.

The second was Thomas Woodrow Wilson who dragged the United States to the first war for the distribution of the world. The extremely severe conditions he imposed on a vanquished Germany, through the Versailles Treaty, set the foundations for the emergence of fascism and the breakout of World War II.

The third has been Barack Obama.

Carter was the ex-president who received the Nobel Prize a few years after leaving office. He was certainly one of the few presidents of that country who would not order the murder of an adversary, as others did. He returned the Panama Canal, opened the US Interests Section in Havana and prevented large budget deficits as well as the squandering of money to the benefit of the military-industrial complex, as Reagan did.

The candidate was Al Gore – when he already was vice president. He was the best informed American politician on the dreadful consequences of climate change. As a candidate to the presidency, he was the victim of an electoral fraud and stripped of his victory by W. Bush.

The views have been deeply divided with regards to the choice for this award. Many people question ethical concepts or perceive obvious contradictions in the unexpected decision.

They would have rather seen the Prize given for an accomplished task. The Nobel Peace Prize has not always been presented to people deserving that distinction. On occasions it has been received by resentful and arrogant persons, or even worse. Upon hearing the news, Lech Walesa scornfully said: “Who, Obama? It’s too soon. He has not had time to do anything.”

In our press and in CubaDebate, honest revolutionary comrades have expressed their criticism. One of them wrote: “The same week in which Obama was granted the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Senate passed the largest military budget in its history: 626 billion dollars.” Another journalist commented during the TV News: “What has Obama done to deserve that award?” And still another asked: “And what about the Afghan war and the increased number of bombings?” These views are based on reality.

In Rome, film maker Michael Moore made a scathing comment: “Congratulations, President Obama, for the Nobel Peace Prize; now, please, earn it.”

I am sure that Obama agrees with Moore’s phrase. He is clever enough to understand the circumstances around this case. He knows he has not earned that award yet. That day in the morning he said that he was under the impression that he did not deserve to be in the company of so many inspiring personalities who have been honored with that prize.

It is said that the celebrated committee that assigns the Nobel Peace Prize is made up of five persons who are all members of the Swedish Parliament. A spokesman said it was a unanimous vote. One wonders whether or not the prizewinner was consulted and if such a decision can be made without giving him previous notice.

The moral judgment would be different depending on whether or not he had previous knowledge of the Prize’s allocation. The same could be said of those who decided to present it to him.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile creating the Nobel Transparency Prize.

Bolivia is a country with large oil and gas depots as well as the largest known reserves of lithium, a mineral currently in great demand for the storage and use of energy.

Before his sixth birthday, Evo Morales, a very poor native peasant, walked through The Andes with his father tending the llama of his native community. He walked with them for 15 days to the market where they were sold in order to purchase food for the community. In response to a question I asked him about that peculiar experience Evo told me that “he took shelter under the one-thousand stars hotel,” a beautiful way of describing the clear skies on the mountains where telescopes are sometimes placed.

In those difficult days of his childhood, the only alternative of the peasants in his community was to cut sugarcane in the Argentinean province of Jujuy, where part of the Aymara community went to work during the harvesting season.

Not far from La Higuera, where after being wounded and disarmed Che [Guevara] was murdered on October 9, 1967, Evo – who had been born on the 26th of that same month in the year 1959 – was not yet 8 years old. He learned how to read and write in Spanish in a small public school he had to walk to, which was located 3.2 miles away from the one-room shack he shared with his parents and siblings.

During his hazardous childhood, Evo would go wherever there was a teacher. It was from his race that he learned three ethical principles: don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t be weak.

At the age of 13, his father allowed him to move to San Pedro de Oruro to study his senior high school. One of his biographers has related that he did better in Geography, History and Philosophy than in Physics and Mathematics. The most important thing is that, in order to pay for school, Evo woke up a two in the morning to work as a baker, a construction worker or any other physical job. He attended school in the afternoon. His classmates admired him and helped him. From his early childhood he learned how to play wind instruments and even was a trumpet player in a prestigious band in Oruro.

As a teenager he organized and was the captain of his community’s soccer team.

But, access to the University was beyond reach for a poor Aymara native.

After completing his senior high school, he did military service and then returned to his community on the mountain tops. Later, poverty and natural disasters forced the family to migrate to the subtropical area known as El Chapare, where they managed to have a plot of ground. His father passed away in 1983, when Evo was 23 years old. He worked hard on the ground but he was a born fighter; he organized the workers and created trade unions thus filling up a space unattended by the government.

The conditions for a social revolution in Bolivia had been maturing in the past 50 years. The revolution broke out in that country with Victor Paz Estensoro’s Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR, by its Spanish acronym) on April 9, 1952, that is, before the start of our armed struggle. The revolutionary miners defeated the repressive forces and the MNR seized power.

The revolutionary objectives in Bolivia were not attained and in 1956, according to some well-informed people, the process started to decline. On January 1st, 1959, the Revolution triumphed in Cuba, and three years later, in January 1962, our homeland was expelled from the OAS. Bolivia abstained from voting. Later, every other government, except Mexico’s, severed relations with Cuba.

The divisions in the international revolutionary movement had an impact on Bolivia. Time would have to pass with over 40 years of blockade on Cuba; neoliberalism and its devastating consequences; the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the ALBA; and above all, Evo and his MAS in Bolivia.

It would be hard to try summing up his rich history in a few pages.

I shall only say that Evo has prevailed over the wicked and slanderous imperialist campaigns, its coups and interference in the internal affairs of that country and defended Bolivia’s sovereignty and the right of its thousand-year-old people to have their traditions respected. “Coca is not cocaine,” he blurted out to the largest marihuana producer and drug consumer in the world, whose market has sustained the organized crime that is taking thousands of lives in Mexico every year. Two of the countries where the Yankee troops and their military bases are stationed are the largest drug producers on the planet.

The deadly trap of drug-trafficking has failed to catch Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, revolutionary countries members of ALBA like Cuba which are aware of what they can and should do to bring healthcare, education and wellbeing to their peoples. They do not need foreign troops to combat drug-trafficking.

Bolivia is fostering a wonderful program under the leadership of an Aymara president with the support of his people. Illiteracy was eradicated in less than three years: 824,101 Bolivian learned how to read and write; 24,699 did so also in Aymara and 13,599 in Quechua. Bolivia is the third country free of illiteracy, following Cuba and Venezuela.

It provides free healthcare to millions of people who had never had it before. It is one of the seven countries in the world with the largest reduction of infant mortality rate in the last five years and with a real possibility to meet the Millennium Goals before the year 2015, with a similar accomplishment regarding maternal deaths. It has conducted eye surgery on 454,161 persons, 75,974 of them Brazilians, Argentineans, Peruvians and Paraguayans.

Bolivia has set forth an ambitious social program: every child attending school from first to eighth grade is receiving an annual grant to pay for the school material. This benefits nearly two million students.

More than 700,000 persons over 60 years of age are receiving a bonus equivalent to some 342 dollars annually.

Every pregnant woman and child under two years of age is receiving an additional benefit of approximately 257 dollars.

Bolivia, one of the three poorest nations in the hemisphere, has brought under state control the country’s most important energy and mineral resources while respecting and compensating every single affected interest. It is advancing carefully because it does not want to take a step backward. Its hard currency reserves have been growing, and now they are no less than three times higher than they were at the beginning of Evo’s mandate. It is one of the countries making a better use of external cooperation and it is a strong advocate of the environment.

In a very short time, Bolivia has been able to establish the Biometric Electoral Register and approximately 4.7 million voters have registered, that is, nearly a million more than in the last electoral roll that in January 2009 included 3.8 million.

There will be elections on December 6. Surely, the people’s support for their President will increase. Nothing has stopped his growing prestige and popularity.

Why is he not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

I understand his great disadvantage: he is not the President of the United States of America.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 15, 2009
4:25 PM

I would not have wished to utter any harsh criticism against any of the companies that manufacture medical equipment, whose profits do not derive from the production of weapons to kill, but from the combat of diseases, suffering and death. That is why I have always treated all of them with respect, and I liked to exchange with them about their scientific advances.

Something quite different is thinking bitterly about those countries which do not have these equipment; sadder still is the fact that a country from the Third World realizes that all its efforts are hindered because of a stupid measure imposed by a rich and powerful country on those who manufacture those equipment: to discontinue the supply of spare parts required for their use.

Cuban cardiology specialists both in Venezuela and in Cuba operate 28 Philips echocardiographs, without which an accurate and completely safe diagnosis would be impossible. For every one of them that goes out of order, five hundred patients will stop receiving that vital service every month.

In our country, cardiopathies account for the first cause of death; in Venezuela the situation is more or less the same. Defibrillators are the instruments par excellence that allow patients to recover from a cardiac arrest, from which they could die if they don’t receive urgent assistance. Of the 3,553 equipment bought from Philips, 2,000 were of this type, and were being used in the Cuban Polyclinics as well as in the Venezuelan ‘Barrio Adentro’ Diagnostic Centers.

The 12 different Philips equipment which were bought at a price of 72,762,694 dollars, were all indispensable to offer high-quality services in Cuba and in the ‘Barrio Adentro’ No.1 and No. 2 programs in Venezuela, which were being implemented with the participation of Cuban doctors and specialists. Those equipment were bought and paid for by our country, as had been previously agreed.

The Siemens equipment, with the exception of some that were sent to Bolivia, were operating in Cuba and in the two Venezuelan programs. The total cost of the equipment bought from that firm amounted to 85,430,000 dollars. In addition to the two aforementioned companies, others from Europe and Japan supplied important additional equipment for the 27 High-Tech Diagnostic Centers of ‘Barrio Adentro’ No. 2.

Philips does not question the data published. The complete discontinuation in the supply of spare parts started as from the end of the year 2006; almost three years have elapsed ever since.

That firm recognizes that the demands of the US government had been the reason behind the discontinuation of supplies until recently, when it paid a fine of 100,000 Euros, a ludicrous figure as compared to the 72 millions that were paid to that company for those equipment.

As far as we understood, there was no violation whatsoever of any of the rules imposed on the world by the empire. We were dealing with medical equipment, destined to save lives; those are not weapons.

In January, 2007, the Bush administration appointed John Negroponte -the scourge of the Nicaraguan people during the dirty war that was waged against that country, which began in 1981 from the Yankee base of Palmerola in Honduras- as Under-secretary of State. He had accumulated a sinister record during the wars of aggression against Vietnam and Iraq. He was the Director of the powerful National Intelligence Agency. He accompanied the US President at the White House Conference held by mid 2007, where so much was talked about education and health. They were both aware that our specialists offered their medical services using Philips equipment in Cuba and in Venezuela. They had exerted some pressures on the Dutch firm and managed to prevent this from supplying spare parts for those equipment.

Social programs in Venezuela emerged as a result of the Bolivarian Revolution. I do not need to praise the close historical links and the friendship ties that unite both peoples.

I already explained the decision taken by President Hugo Chavez which gave rise to our cooperation programs. Likewise, on the early days of 2007, he came across the idea of adding the ‘Barrio Adentro’ No. 3 program to the already existing ‘Barrio Adentro’ No. 1 and No. 2 programs. This new program would be carried out by Venezuelan doctors and the cost of the equipment would be covered by Venezuela.

Chavez, who knew very well about our experience in negotiating with the medical equipment manufacturing firms, and the excellent prices that we got, given the volume of the operations, asked our country to buy medical equipment, instruments and inputs hundreds of millions of dollars worth. The aim of such an investment was to incorporate a significant number of hospitals to the services that were being offered to the Venezuelan people through ‘Barrio Adentro’ No. 1 and No. 2 programs; all of these were in addition to the program in Cuba to train thousands of Venezuelan youths for them to become doctors ready to offer their services anywhere, both inside or outside the country. The graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine are an encouraging proof of their spirit of sacrifice. Even in Venezuela we were helping to train more than 20,000 students of Medicine.

Our staff made contact again with the best firms that supplied medical equipment, components and furniture, with the exception -of course- of the US companies, which were completely banned from sending even the tiniest supply to Cuba.

Although the medical equipment manufactured by that country are of quality, their prices are quite often abusively high. In the international market there are specialized firms whose equipment are considered to be the world’s best. It is perfectly possible to dispense with the US equipment if you want to avoid the risks of a criminal blockade like the one that has been imposed on Cuba for 50 years. In the hospitals of Japan, a country whose population records the highest average life rates, the overwhelming majority of the medical equipment is Japanese; the rest are imported from Europe or the United States.

In the most industrialized countries of the old Europe, where the health rates are also higher than those in the United States, hardly 30 per cent of the equipment come from Japan or the United States. They rather use European equipment. In Japan as well as in Europe, quality standards are much stricter that in the United States.

I am pleased to see that the strategy followed by the Cuban enterprise specialized in the purchase of medical equipment has strictly observed the principles established in previous purchases.

More than 50 well known firms were considered. I will just mention the ones that competed in quality and price. The biggest volume was negotiated with the German firm Siemens -73,910,000 dollars; Drager, 37,277,000 dollars; Toshiba, 36,123,000 dollars; Nihon Kohden, 30,516,000 dollars. We also signed contracts with Olympus, Karl Storz, Aloka, Carl Zeiss, Pressure, and others well known to our specialists. All of them are representative of the revolutionary progress that has taken place in the field of medical technology in the last 20 years.

Considering the standards of quality and price, we would have bought from the Dutch company Philips, which was considered and included among the most important firms, a total value of 63,065,000 dollars. But that moment coincided with the discontinuation of the supplies of spare parts for the equipment already bought from that firm which were operating in Cuba and in Venezuela. We had no other choice but to suspend the drafting of the contract.

Not all of the equipment of the total amount agreed have been received in Venezuela, but the number of equipment, instruments and components received are worth 271 million dollars. This situation forced Venezuelans and Cubans to make a special effort to fully develop the important ‘Barrio Adentro’ No. 3 program, which complements and articulates one of the most important social and human programs of the Bolivarian Revolution. Both countries are aware of that obligation.

In addition to that, we intend to make the necessary effort to take ‘Barrio Adentro’ No. 1 and No. 2 programs to unheard-of levels by incorporating more than 2,500 advanced students of Medicine who are being trained in Cuba, so that they, together with the General Comprehensive Medicine specialists who teach them classes, can join the ‘Barrio Adentro’ project.

Optimal medical assistance to patients was always the raison d’etre of the doctors’ offices, the Diagnostic Centers and other services in which Cuba participates. The response given by the Cuban health collaborators to my former Reflection has been excellent. No wonder they reaffirm that the imperialism will not win this battle against Barrio Adentro.

No one can compete today with the United States in the manufacturing and trade of weapons destined to war and destruction. They control two thirds of the world’s arms trade; those are the fruits of the Industrial Military Complex. Today, that imperial power, with less than 5 per cent of the world’s population, not only consumes 25 per cent of the fossil energy; it pollutes the atmosphere, destroys the environment, threatens the world with its extermination weapons and is the biggest arms trader and manufacturer. However, it can not guarantee health to almost 25 per cent of its people.

We will not refuse to deal with any company willing to manufacture or trade in medical technologies. We will gladly accept any rectification. Humanity has to cope with very difficult problems. I wish our species is not faced with disaster, and many of us could have a clear conscience for having done our best to prevent it.

Fidel Castro Ruz
September 10, 2009
3:11 p.m.

The United States owns the most patents in the world. It has stolen scientists from every country, developed or developing, who are undertaking research in a myriad of spheres, from the production of weapons of mass destruction to medicines and medical equipment. For that reason, the economic and technological blockade is not something that merely serves as a pretext for blaming the empire for our own difficulties.

Public healthcare is one of the most advanced fields in our country, despite the fact that the United States stole close to 50% of the doctors who had graduated from the only university in Cuba, a figure in excess of 5,000, many of whom lacked employment.

In that area, one of the most beautiful pages of international cooperation on the part of the Cuban Revolution was written, initiated thanks to a group of doctors who were sent to the recently-independent Algeria almost half a century ago. That policy has not ended, and in that highly humane field our country enjoys universal recognition.

No one supposes that it has been an easy task. The United States has done everything possible to prevent it from happening. During the time that has passed, it has made maximum efforts to sabotage it. It applied against Cuba all possible variants of its criminal economic blockade which, later on, in virtue of the Helms-Burton Act, acquired an extraterritorial nature during the administration of Bill Clinton.

When the socialist bloc collapsed and, months later, its principal bastion the Soviet Union disintegrated, Cuba decided to keep on fighting. By then, our people had acquired a high level of awareness and political culture.

In 1992, Hugo Chávez led a military uprising against the bourgeois oligarchic government of the Punto Fijo pact that had pillaged Bolívar’s homeland for more than three decades. He suffered imprisonment, just as we did. He visited Cuba in 1994 and years later, with the full support of his people, he assumed the presidency and initiated the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, soon had to confront the hostility of the United States, which planned the fascist coup d’état in 2002 that was defeated by the people and revolutionary military personnel. Months later, came the oil coup, creating the most difficult moment and one in which, once again, the leader, the people and the Venezuelan military were outstanding. Chávez and Venezuela offered us total solidarity in the midst of the Special Period and we have given them ours.

At that time, our country had no less than 60,000 specialized doctors, more than 150,000 experienced teachers and a people who had written brilliant internationalist pages. After the oil coup, the river of our cooperative workers in education and healthcare programs began to flow, and they cooperated with the Bolivarian Revolution in one of the most profound and rapid social programs undertaken in any Third World country.

I cite these precedents because they are indispensable when it come to judging the treachery of imperialism and comprehending the issue that I am tackling today: the abandonment and betrayal of Cuba and Venezuela by what was a well-known and relatively prestigious European multinational: the Dutch transnational Philips, which specializes in the manufacture of medical equipment.

I wrote a Reflection on this subject two years ago – July 14, 2007 – but I did not want to mention that company by name. I still held out the hope that the situation would be rectified.

We had cooperated with the Venezuelan people in order to create one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Tens of thousands of specialized doctors and other Cuban healthcare professional had lent their services there. President During one of his visits to Cuba, Hugo Chávez, satisfied with the work of the first contingents who traveled to Venezuela to work within Barrio Adentro – the program aimed at providing healthcare services in the country’s poorest urban and rural areas – asked us to create a program that could benefit every sector of Venezuelan society, working class, middle class or the rich. This led to the emergence of the Advanced Technology Diagnosis Centers; these would complement the task of the 600 Comprehensive Diagnosis Centers which, like polyclinics with a wide range of services, with their laboratories and equipment, would support the Barrio Adentro doctors’ offices. A significant number of rehabilitation centers would assume the humane task of attending to any patient with physical or learning disabilities.

In virtue of this request from the president, we acquired the relevant equipment for 27 Advanced Technology Diagnosis Centers distributed throughout the 24 states of Venezuela, three of which possess two each because of the size of their populations.

It is standard practice for us to always purchase medical equipment from the most prestigious and advanced companies at world level. We even try to ensure the participation of at least two of the most specialized companies in the supply of the most complex equipment.

In this way, the most sophisticated and costly medical imaging equipment, such as multi-slice computed tomography (CT), nuclear magnetic resonance, diagnostic ultrasound and other similar machines were purchased from the German firm Siemens and the Dutch company Philips. Neither of the two produces all of the equipment but they do manufacture some of the most complex and sophisticated equipment. Both are in competition with each other in terms of quality and price. We acquired diagnostic equipment from the two companies for Venezuela and for Cuba, where we were developing a similar plan for medical services that had received very few resources in the most difficult years of the Special Period.

For more than 10 different specialties, we acquired equipment from the two companies for services in the two countries. I will not mention those of the German firm Siemens, which met its commitments. I will confine myself to Philips; this company supplied equipment for 12 specialties sharing the provision of the most important and costly items with the other company: 15 40-slice CT machines, 28 0.23 Tesla Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machines, eight tele-command stations for Urology, 37 3D diagnostic ultrasound machines, two neurological angiograms, two cardiology angiograms, two polygraphs, one double-headed gamma camera, three single-head gamma cameras, 250 mobile X-ray machines, 1,200 non-invasive monitors and 2,000 cardioversion monitors.

In total, 3,553 machines at a value of $72,762,694.

I personally participated in negotiations with these two companies for these purchases.

The prices discussed for each piece of equipment implied significant price reductions, given the quantity – the items for both Cuba and Venezuela together – and the fact that they were to be paid for in cash. It would not be possible to urgently acquire the goods as required, particularly in that country, given the accumulated needs of the poorest sectors of its total population, which numbered 27 million people at that time.

The most complex equipment were destined for the Advanced Technology Centers, the less sophisticated and plentiful items for the Barrio Adentro Diagnosis Centers, although they were not the only ones to use this equipment. Almost all of them were purchased at the beginning of 2006.

I became seriously ill at the end of July of that year. Philips supplied items until the end of 2006. In 2007, it stopped completely: not a single item was supplied.

In March of that year, a Cuban delegation was sent to Brazil where the Philips headquarters for Latin America – the branch that negotiated with Cuba – is located. They began to explain their difficulties. The Bush government had requested detailed information on equipment supplied to Cuba by their company, alleging that some of them contained programs and, occasionally, components bearing a yanki patent, and Philips provided the information requested on the purchases made by Cuba and Venezuela. There had never been any problem with that before.

The director of Philips in Brazil textually informed the Cuban delegation: “There is brutal intransigence on the part of the U.S. government in relation to regulations regarding equipment and the request for permits with respect to Cuba.

“I know that the problem is affecting the Comandante’s plan. Our organization is being affected and threatened. All our organizations are very scared.” He immediately reiterated: “They are very scared.”

Finally, they added that they wished to cooperate and find solutions.

In mid-July 2007, in a so-called White House Conference on the Americas, Bush, the secretary of state, and other U.S. government leaders “talked nineteen to the dozen” according to an AP report, on issues of education and healthcare. It seemed unreal. They were promising to distribute healthcare services throughout Latin America.

They placed special emphasis on the Confort, a former aircraft carrier converted into the “biggest hospital boat in the world,” according to the report, which was to visit each country in this hemisphere south of the United States for 10 days at a time. That was their healthcare program. What they did not say at the time, was that, in Venezuela, they were sabotaging the most serious healthcare program ever proposed for a Third World country.

Despite the coincidence of the timing, at that moment I did not wish to directly tackle the Philips problem. The company had promised to resolve the problem the following March. I still held out the hope that it could be rectified.

I limited myself to writing in that very Reflection: “The problem is that the United States cannot do what Cuba is doing. On the contrary, it is brutally pressuring the manufacturing companies of the excellent medical equipment that is being supplied to our country to prevent them from replacing certain computer programs or providing some spare parts that are under U.S. patents. I could cite concrete cases and the names of the companies. It is repugnant…”

Despite Philips’ solemn promise to Cuba, the rest of 2007 passed by, as well as the whole of 2008 and half of 2009 without a single piece of equipment arriving from that company.

In June 2009, after paying a fine of 100,000 euros to the Barack Obama government, not so distant from the practices of his illustrious predecessor, Philips deigned to communicate that it was about to provide equipment for Cuba.

On the other hand, nobody has recompensed the Cuban people, or the Venezuelan patients of our doctors in the Barrio Adentro program and those attending the Advanced Technology Diagnostic Centers for the human damages that have occurred.

As is logical, we have not acquired a single piece of equipment from Philips since the last purchase in early 2006.

On the other hand, we have cooperated with Venezuela in purchasing medical equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars for its national healthcare network, with a wide range of sophisticated state of cutting-edge equipment from other prestigious European and also Japanese companies. I wanted to believe that that company would make an effort to meet its commitment.

Venezuela now possesses modern equipment in its public hospital network; the richest private clinics will only have been able to acquire some of them. Now, all the rest will depend on the country’s efficiency in its services. The Venezuelan president is seriously interested in achieving this objective. I believe that it will do so very well if it mitigates the Venezuelan custom of purchasing U.S. medical equipment, not on account of its quality – which is very good although with less demanding regulations than those of Europe – but because of what lies at the heart of the policy of this country, capable of blocking the supply of equipment as it did with Cuba.

Of course, we have dispatched to the Venezuelan Diagnosis Centers, the Advanced Technology Centers and others where our doctors are in attendance, equipment of known international makes such as Siemens, Carl Zeiss, Drager, SMS, Schwind, Topcon, Nihon Kohden, Olympus and other European and Japanese companies, some of which were founded more than 100 years ago.

Now that Bolívar’s homeland, which Martí asked to serve, is more threatened than ever by imperialism, the organization, work and efficiency of our efforts must be greater than ever; not just in the healthcare sector, but in all the fields of our cooperation.

Fidel Castro Ruz
September 6, 2009
7.17 p.m.

There are not two different opinions on the issue of A H1N1.

Without any hesitation whatsoever, I supported the decision adopted by the revolutionary government of Cuba as soon as I knew of the existence of the epidemic.

Our country is accumulating a body of experience in protecting the people in cases of disasters, epidemics and plagues or other similar situations of a natural, accidental or intentional nature.

Our unvarying policy of cooperation with other peoples has been equally confirmed.

The criticism made of the government of Cuba and the threat of reprisals that it contained was totally unjust. Moreover, we were presented as a nation hostile to the people of Mexico.

What determined the measures was not related to tourist travel, but to the close to 400 young Mexicans who are studying Medicine in the Jagüey Grande school, just like approximately 24,000 young people from Latin America, the Caribbean and other peoples of the world – some of them coming from small and distant countries in Oceania – who are so doing in other faculties.

Cuba does not steal brains or extract doctors from other nations to the detriment of the other country’s health services and the loss of countless lives, as is the case of the United States, the United Kingdom and other developed and rich countries.

The measure adopted by Cuba’s Civil Aviation states textually, “To temporarily suspend regular and charter flights operating between Cuba and Mexico, beginning at 24:00 on April 29, 2009.”
“Once the causes that have led to such decisions are over, air operations will be reestablished, with the interested parties being opportunely informed.”

The measure was implemented six days after the drastic decisions taken by the Mexican authorities to suspend the classes of 33 million students and implement other similar measures that we cannot judge because only the Mexican authorities who knew the real situation could do so.

Our measures likewise implied sacrifices for Cuba. But what mattered to our government was to protect the population within established regulations.

The epidemic has now spread extensively throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, Spain, Europe in general and dozens of other countries. Methods of protection linked to the new reality will have to be taken.

Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican secretary of foreign affairs, had really been making efforts recently to improve relations between her country and Cuba which, due to irresponsible leaders – whom for known reasons I prefer not to mention now – seriously deteriorated when George W. Bush sought pretexts make “preemptive attacks” on our homeland as one of the “60 or more dark corners of the world.”

The Mexican Foreign Ministry stated that, despite Fidel Castro’s criticisms, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla signed a statement noting his recognition of the Mexican authorities at the meeting in Prague of the Rio Group and the European Union.

What Bruno exactly did in Prague was correct. He met for as long as needed to listen attentively to the secretary and talked with her. For his part, he explained to her everything related to Cuba’s conduct. I shall not go into details about that conversation and the opinion of it transmitted to the Cuban ambassador in Mexico by an important official at the Mexican Foreign Ministry, in order to avoid complications.

I will only add that the meeting in Prague between Bruno and Patricia was respectful and frank. Our foreign minister affirmed to the secretary Cuba’s solidarity with her country and its will to cooperate with the Mexican people in confronting the epidemic.

Bruno spoke during the ministerial meeting of the Rio Group and the European Union to clearly explain Cuba’s position, the measures adopted by our government to protect its people; the epidemics introduced into our country, including that of hemorrhagic dengue which caused the death of 102 children; the “Reflections of Fidel;” the close unity of revolutionaries; and Cuba’s international cooperation in the field of public health.

Resorting to intrigues, lies and threats is an unmistakable sign that the ideological adversary is losing the battle.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 16, 2009
7:45 p.m.