The nine-year-old girl who died was born on the same day the Twin Towers were destroyed and was an outstanding student. Her mother declared that there has to be a stop to such hatred.

A painful reality came to my mind, which surely would concern many honest U.S. citizens who have not been poisoned by lies and hatred. How many of them know that Latin America is the region with the greatest inequality in the distribution of wealth in the world? How many have been informed of the rates of infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy, medical services, child labor, education and poverty prevalent in other countries of the hemisphere?

I will confine myself to merely noting the level of violence, starting with the detestable event which took place yesterday in Arizona as a starting point.

I have already indicated that every year hundreds of thousands of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants, driven by underdevelopment and poverty, make their way to the United States and are arrested, often even separated from their close family members, and returned to their countries of origin.

Money and merchandise can cross the border freely, but, I repeat, not human beings, no. Drugs and weapons, on the contrary, cross unceasingly in one direction or the other. The United States is the largest consumer of drugs in the world and, at the same time, the largest supplier of weapons, symbolized by the gunsight cross-hairs published on Sarah Palin’s website and the M-16 on ex- marine Jesse Kelly’s election posters with the subliminal message to fire the full barrel.

Is U.S. public opinion aware of the level of violence in Latin America associated with inequality and poverty?

Why is the relevant information not released?

An article by Spanish journalist and author Xavier Caño Tamayo, published on the ALAI website, offers some facts that U.S, citizens should know.

Although the author is skeptical about the methods currently being used to defeat the power gained by the big drug traffickers, his article provides information of unquestionable value which I will try to summarize within a few lines.

“… 27% of violent deaths in the world occur in Latin America, although its population represents less than 9% of the planet’s total. Over the last 10 years, 1.2 million people have died violently in the region.

“Violent slums occupied by military police, murders in Mexico, disappearances, assassinations and massacres in Colombia […] the highest murder rate in the world is in Latin America.

“How can such a terrible reality be explained?

“The answer is provided in a recent study by the Latin American Social Science Foundation. The report shows how poverty, inequality and lack of opportunity are the fundamental sources of violence, although trafficking in drugs and handguns act as accelerators of murder crimes.

“According to the Ibero-American Organization of Youth, half of Latin American young people aged 15 to 24 are without work and have little chance of finding any. [...] According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the region has one of the highest rates of informal employment among youth and one in four Latin American youths is not working or studying.

“According to ECLAC, in the last few years, poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America has affected and is affecting 35% of the population, almost 190 million Latin Americans. And, according to the OECD [Cooperation and Economic Development Organization], some 40 million more citizens have succumbed or will succumb to poverty in Latin America before the end of this 2010.

“According to the United Nations, poverty exists when people cannot satisfy basic needs in order to live with dignity: adequate nutrition, potable water, decent housing, essential medical care, basic education… the World Bank quantifies this poverty, adding that those facing extreme poverty survive on less than $1.25 a day.

“According to a report on world wealth in 2010 published by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, the fortunes of the Latin America rich […] grew 15% in 2009 […] in the last two years, the fortunes of the Latin America rich grew more than in any other region of the world. There are 500,000 rich, according to the report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch. Half a million, as opposed to 190 [...] if so few have so much, many are in need of everything.

“… There are other ways to explain violence in Latin America [...] poverty and inequality are always related to death and pain. [...] Is it an accident that [...] 64% of the eight million who died as a result of cancer in the world lived in regions with the lowest income, where only 5% of the funds dedicated to cancer are spent?

“In your heart and looking us in our eyes, could you live on $1.25 a day?” Xavier Caño concludes his article.

The news of the massacre in Arizona is filling today’s pages of the main U.S. media today.

Specialists at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson are cautiously optimistic. They have praised the work of emergency personnel who saw to it that the Congresswoman was treated within 38 minutes of the shooting. Such information was available on the Internet between 6:00 and 700pm this afternoon.

According to these reports, “The bullet entered the forehead, very close to the brain, on the left side of the head.”

“She can follow simple directions, but we know that inflammation of the brain could cause a turn for the worse,” they stated.

They explain the details of every one of the steps taken to control her respiration and reduce pressure on the brain. They add that her recovery could take weeks or months. Neurosurgeons in general and experts in the field, will follow with interest the information released by the medical team.

Cubans follow health issues closely, are usually well informed and are will also be pleased by the success of those doctors.

On the other side of the border, we know the extremes to which violence has escalated in the adjoining Mexican states, where there are also excellent doctors. Nevertheless, it is not unusual for drug traffickers, equipped with the most sophisticated weapons produced by the U.S. war industry, to enter operating rooms to finish off their victims.

The infant mortality rate in Cuba is less than 5 for every 1,000 live births; and the victims of violent acts, less than 5 for every 100,000 residents.

Although it belies our modesty, it is our bitter responsibility to indicate for the record that our blockaded, threatened and slandered country has demonstrated that Latin American peoples can live without violence and without drugs. They can even live, as has transpired for more than half a century, without relations with the United States. The latter, we have not demonstrated; they have done so.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 9, 2011
7: 56 p.m.

The post Without Violence, Without Drugs appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

The United Nations Organization, at the instigation of the United States, the creator of poverty and chaos in the Haitian Republic, decided to send into Haiti its forces of occupation, the MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) which, by the way, introduced the cholera epidemic into that sister nation.

For his part, in early January 2009, the Secretary General of the OAS decided to appoint a Brazilian intellectual, Ricardo Seitenfus, his personal representative in Haiti. At that time Seitenfus was working in his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Seitenfus enjoyed well deserved prestige in diplomatic and government circles in the Haitian capital on account of the seriousness and frankness with which he approached problems. In 1993, he had written a book entitled, Haiti: the Sovereignty of Dictators. He visited Haiti for the first time that year.

Two days ago, on December 25, the news agencies circulated the information that the OAS special representative had been abruptly dismissed from his post.

What prompted that drastic measure?

Interviewed a few days ago by Le Temps daily in Switzerland, Seitenfus replied to various questions from that newspaper, expounding his points of view with sincerity.

In a succinct synthesis I shall explain textually what happened according to information provided via Internet and translated from the French.

The first question from Le Temps was:

“In your view, 10,000 Blue Berets in Haiti is a contra-productive presence?

Ricardo Seitenfus’ reply:

“The system of dispute prevention within the framework of the UN system is not adapted to the Haitian context. Haiti is not an international threat. We are not in a civil war situation. […] the Security Council […] imposed the Blue Berets in 2004, after the departure of President Aristide. […] For the UN it was a question of freezing power and transforming Haitians into prisoners on their own island.”

“What is it that is impeding normalization in the Haitian case?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: For 200 years, the presence of foreign troops has alternated with that of dictators. It is force that defines international relations with Haiti and never dialogue. Haiti’s original sin, on the world stage, is its liberation. The Haitians committed the unacceptable in 1804: a treasonous crime for an impatient world. The West was then a colonialist, racist world of slavery, which based its wealth on the exploitation of conquered lands. Thus, the Haitian revolutionary model made the great powers fearful. The United States did not recognize the independence of Haiti until 1865 and France demanded the payment of a ransom in order to accept that liberation. From the beginning, its independence was compromised and the country’s development impeded. […] Nothing is being resolved, things are worsening. They want to make Haiti a capitalist country, an export platform for the American market; that is absurd. […] There are elements in this society which have managed to prevent violence from expanding unrestrained.”

Question 3.

“Is it not surrendering to see Haiti as a nation that cannot be assimilated, whose only future is to return to traditional values?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: One part of Haiti is modern, urban and oriented abroad. The number of Haitians living outside of its border is estimated at four million. It is a country open to the world. […] More than 90% of the education system and health are in private hands. The country does not have the public resources to make an official system function in a minimal manner. […] The problem is a socioeconomic one. When the unemployment rate has reached 80%, deploying a stabilization mission is intolerable. There is nothing to stabilize…”

Question 4.

“Haiti is one of the countries to receive most aid from the world; however, the situation has merely deteriorated over the last 25 years. Why?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: Emergency aid is effective; but when it returns to structural aid, when this replaces the state in all its missions, that brings about a lack of collective responsibility. […] The January 12 quake and subsequently the cholera epidemic have only accentuated this phenomenon. The international community is of the sentiment that every day it has to redo what it completed the day before. […] With the misfortune of January 12, I had the hope that the world was going to understand that it was mistaken over Haiti. […] Instead of striking a balance, even more soldiers were sent in. There is a need to build, to erect dams, to participate in state organization, in the judicial system. The UN says that it has no mandate for that. Its mandate in Haiti is to maintain the peace of the graveyard.”

Question 5.

“What role are the NGOs playing in this failure?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: Since the quake, Haiti has turned into an inevitable crossroads. For the transnational NGOs, Haiti has been transformed into a location of forced passage. I would even say something worse than that: of professional training. […] An evil or perverse relation exists between the strength of the NGOs and the debility of the Haitian state. Some NGOs only exist due to the Haitian misfortune.”

Question 6.

“What errors have been committed since the quake?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: In the face of the mass import of consumer goods to feed homeless people, the situation of Haitian agriculture has worsened. The country is offering free rein to all humanitarian experiments. It is unacceptable from the moral point of view to consider Haiti as a laboratory. The reconstruction of Haiti and the promise of $11 billion that we assigned is arousing envy. […] The Cuban doctors that Cuba is training… close to half… who should be in Haiti… are currently working in the United States, Canada or in France.”

Question 7:

“Haiti is unceasingly described as the edge of the world, do you see the country as a concentrate of our contemporary world?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: it is the concentrate of our dramas and the failures of international solidarity. We are not rising to the challenge. The world press comes to Haiti and describes the chaos. […] For it, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. You have to go to Haitian culture, you have to go the native land. […] Nobody takes the time nor has the desire to try and understand what I would call the Haitian soul.”

Question 8.

“In addition to the recognition of failure, what solutions are you proposing?

“Ricardo Seitenfus: In two months, I will have completed my two-year mission in Haiti. In order to remain here and not feel overwhelmed by what I see, I had to create a series of psychological defenses for myself. I would have liked to continue being an independent voice despite of the burden of the organization that I represent. […] On January 12 I learned that there is an extraordinary potential of solidarity in the world. And one must not forget that, in the first few days, it was Haitians who, totally on their own, with empty hands, who tried to save their nearest. […] We have to think simultaneously of offering export opportunities to Haiti and also of protecting this family agriculture which is essential for the country. Haiti is the last paradise of the Caribbean as yet unexploited by tourism, with 1,700 kilometers of virgin coast. […] Two hundred years ago, Haiti illuminated the history of humanity and that of human rights. Now it is necessary to give the Haitians an opportunity to confirm their vision.”

One may or may not be in agreement with each and every one of the words of Brazilian Ricardo Seitenfus, but it is unquestionable that he voiced scathing truths in his replies.

I consider it appropriate to add, and also to clarify:

Our country not only sent hundreds of doctors to the neighboring sister people of Haiti, but has also sent thousands of them to other Third World peoples, particularly in situations of natural disaster, and has contributed to the training of tens of thousands of doctors in our homeland and abroad.

Medical cooperation with Haiti began 12 years ago, on December 4, 1998.

When the dictatorship of Duvalier and the Tonton Macoutes – imposed for decades by the United States – ceased to exist and a popularly elected government assumed the leadership of Haiti, Cuba sent 100 doctors to provide services in that country, and the first contingent of young Haitian high school graduates transferred to Cuba to begin their studies in Medicine in 1999.

Then, in 2001, we initiated collaboration with the University of Medicine created by President Jean Bertrand Aristide, to which we sent professors who also worked as doctors in the service of the Haitian people. When the yankees promoted a coup d’état, and the School of Medicine was converted into a headquarters for the coup leaders, approximately 270 students there were transferred to Cuba with the professors and continued their studies in our homeland.

The Cuban Medical Mission, nevertheless, continued providing its humanitarian services in Haiti, which had nothing to do with the internal political problems of a country under the occupation of coup soldiers, yankee troops or the MINUSTAH forces.

In August of 2005, the first 128 Haitian sixth year medical students returned to their country for their residencies, to work alongside the Cuban doctors providing services in Haiti.

From the second semester of 2006 through the second semester of 2010, 625 young Haitian doctors have graduated, whom we hold in extremely high regard. Of these, 213 are working in Haitian government medical institutions; 125 in Cholera Medical Control Centers or in the brigades going into the sub-communes, alongside Cuban and Latin American doctors graduated from ELAM who are combating the cholera epidemic; 72 are working in NGO and private medical centers; 20 in the so-called Mixed Centers; 41 are continuing their studies in a second specialty in Cuba; 27 recent graduates are already in Haiti awaiting placement; 14 are not working due to personal issues like pregnancy and motherhood; the location of another four is unknown; and one is deceased.

Finally, 104 are working abroad, basically in Spain, United States, Canada and France; one in Switzerland, and four in Latin American countries.

It would be incorrect to pass judgment on any of them given that their country is extremely poor, lacked resources and employment, and there is absolutely no confirmation of any of them refusing to serve their country. They are medical resources much in demand, cradled in Haiti and Cuba.

The official figure of cholera related deaths has risen to 2,707, giving a mortality rate of 2.1%.

For three consecutive days not one cholera patient among those treated by the Cuban Medical Mission has died. The mortality rate has already gone down to 0.57 out of the 47,537 patients treated by them. The epidemic could be eradicated, thus avoiding its becoming endemic.

In tomorrow’s “Roundtable” at 6:00pm, we will be hearing fresh and interesting news on the battle against cholera in Haiti, and voices with important news and authority on the subject.

I shall continue on Tuesday the 28th with the second point.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 27, 2010
5:12 p.m.

The post The Battle Against Cholera appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

The first impression, if one doesn’t get any additional information, is that this deals with a rumour born out of the hatred caused by any occupying army.

How could this be proven? Many of us were not aware of the characteristics of cholera and how it is transmitted. A few days later the protests ceased in Haiti and nobody said anything else about the matter.

The epidemic followed its inexorable course, and other problems, such as the risks from the electoral battle, took up our time.

Today we are getting reliable and believable news about what really happened. The Haitian people had reason aplenty to express their indignant protests.

The AFP news agency textually reported that: “The renowned French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux led research in Haiti last month and came to the conclusion that the epidemic was generated by an imported strain and spread from the Nepalese base” of the MINUSTAH.

Another European agency, EFE, reported that: “The origin of the disease is in the small town of Mirebalais, in the centre of the country, where Nepalese soldiers had set up their camp, and it appeared a few days after their arrival, thus proving the origin of the epidemic…”

“Up to the present time, the UN Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has denied that the epidemic entered along with the blue helmets.”

“…French doctor Renaud Piarroux, considered to be one of the main specialists in the world in the study of the cholera epidemic, leaves no doubts about the origin of the disease…”

“The study was ordered by Paris at the request of Haitian authorities, a French diplomatic spokesman declared.”

“…the appearance of the disease coincides with the arrival of Nepalese soldiers who, moreover, come from a country where there is a cholera epidemic.

“There is no other way to explain the sudden and powerful outbreak of cholera in a small town with a few dozen inhabitants.

“The report also analyzes the way the illness spreads, since the fecal waters in the Nepalese camp were draining into the same river from which the townspeople were getting their drinking water.”

The most surprising thing, according to the abovementioned agency, the UN did was to “…send a research mission into the Nepalese camp, and it concluded that it couldn’t be the origin of the epidemic.”

Haiti, in the midst of the destruction by the earthquake, the epidemic and poverty, cannot now dispense with an international force cooperating with a nation ruined by foreign interventions and the exploitation of the transnationals. The UN not only must fulfill the elementary duty of fighting for reconstruction and development in Haiti, but also of mobilizing the necessary resources to eradicate an epidemic which threatens to spread to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, Latin America and other similar countries in Asia and Africa.

Why did the UN insist on denying that MINUSTAH brought the epidemic to the Haitian people? We are not blaming Nepal which in the past was a British colony, and whose men were used in their colonial wars and today seek employment as soldiers.

We inquired among the Cuban doctors who are today providing their services in Haiti and they confirmed to us the news transmitted by the abovementioned European news agencies with remarkable precision.

I make a brief summary of what was communicated to us by Yamila Zayas Nápoles, a specialist in comprehensive general medicine and anesthesiology, director of a medical institution with 8 basic specialties and the diagnostics of the Cuba-Venezuela Project inaugurated in October 2009 in the urban area of Mirebalais with 86,000 inhabitants in the North Department.

On Saturday October 15, 3 patients were admitted with symptoms of diarrhea and acute dehydration: on Sunday the 16th , 4 more were admitted with similar characteristics, but all from the same family, and they made the decision to isolate them and communicate what happened to the mission; on Monday the 17th, 28 patients were admitted, surprisingly, with the same symptoms.

The Medical Mission urgently sent a group of epidemiologists who took blood, vomit, stool samples and information that was sent immediately to the national Haitian laboratories.

On October 22nd the labs informed that the isolated strain corresponded to the one prevalent in Asia and Oceania, the most severe type. The UN blue-helmeted Nepalese unit is located on the banks of the Artibonite River which flows through the small town of Méyè, where the epidemic broke out, and Mirebalais, where it spread later very quickly.

Despite the sudden form in which cholera appeared in the small but excellent hospital that is at the service of Haiti, of the first 2,822 patients initially looked after in its isolation areas, only 13 people died, for a death rate of 0.5%; later on, when the Cholera Treatment Centre was created separately, of 3,459 patients, 5 of the very serious cases died, for a rate of 0.1%.

The total figure for persons ill from cholera in Haiti today, Tuesday December 7th, comes to 93,222 persons, and the death rate reached 2,120. Among those looked after by the Cuban Mission it went to 0.83%. The death rate in the other hospital institutions it is 3.2%. With experience acquired, proper measures and the reinforcement of the Henry Reeve brigade, the Cuban Medical Mission, with the support of Haitian authorities has offered the assistance to any of the 207 isolated subcommunes, so that no Haitian citizen is lacking care in confronting the epidemic, and many thousands of lives can be saved.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 7, 2010
6:34 p.m.

The post Minustah and the Epidemic appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

The current period in Haiti is grave, and the urgently required aid is little. Every year, our agitated world invests $1.5 trillion in arms and wars; Haiti – a country which less than one year ago suffered the brutal earthquake that resulted in 250,000 dead, 300,000 injured and enormous destruction – according to expert calculations, requires $20 billion for its reconstruction and ascending development, just 1.3% of what is spent in one year to those ends.

But now, it is not about that, which would constitute a simple dream. The UN is not only appealing for modest economic aid that could be resolved in a few minutes, but also for 350 doctors and 2,000 nurses, not possessed by the poor countries and whom the rich countries generally snatch from the poor ones. Cuba responded immediately, volunteering 300 doctors and nurses. Our Cuban Medical Mission in Haiti is treating close to 40% of those affected by cholera. In the wake of the call from that international organization, they rapidly took on the task of discovering the concrete causes of the high mortality rate. The low mortality rate of the patients whom they are treating is less than 1% – is reducing and will continue reducing every day – as compared to the 3% of persons treated in other health centers operating in the country.

It is evident that the number of deaths is not confined to the 1,800-plus people recorded. That figure does not include those who die without having gone to the existing doctors and heath centers.

Inquiring into the causes of those arriving in the most serious condition at the centers combating the epidemic and treated by our doctors, they observed that they came from the most distant sub-communes with the least communication. Haiti’s land surface is mountainous, and many isolated points can only be reached by moving over rugged ground.

The country is divided into 140 urban or rural communes, and 570 sub-communes. In one of the isolated sub-communes, where approximately 5,000 live – according to the Protestant pastor there – 20 people had died as a result of the epidemic without having attended a health center.

According to urgent investigations on the part of the Cuban Medical Mission in coordination with the national health authorities, it has been confirmed that 207 Haitian sub-communes in the most remote areas lack access to the centers fighting cholera or providing medical attention.

The abovementioned United Nations meeting ratified the need highlighted by Ms. Valerie Amos, UN Under-secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, who made an urgent two-day visit to the country and calculated the figure of 350 doctors and 2,000 nurses. It was necessary to know the human resources existing in the country in order to calculate the number of personnel needed. That factor also depends on the hours and days devoted by the personnel fighting against the epidemic. One important fact to bear in mind is not only the time that they devote to their work, but the hour. The analysis of the high mortality rate reveals that 40% of deaths take place in nighttime hours, which points to affected patients not receiving the same attention to their disease during those hours.

Our mission estimates that the optimum use of personnel would reduce the abovementioned total. By mobilizing the available human resources of the Henry Reeve Brigade and the ELAM graduates that it has, the Cuban Medical Mission is convinced – even in the midst of the tremendous adversities originating from the earthquake destruction, the hurricane, unforeseeable heavy rainfall and the poverty – that the epidemic can be dominated and the lives of thousands of people who will inexorably die in the current circumstances, can be saved.

Sunday 28th was the date of elections for the presidency, the totality of the Chamber of Representatives and part of the Senate, a tense and complex event that seriously concerned us, given that it is related to the epidemic and the traumatic situation in the country.

In his statement on December 3, the UN secretary general stated textually: “Whatever the complaints or reservations about the process, I urge all political actors to refrain from violence and to start discussions immediately to find a Haitian solution to these problems – before a serious crisis develops,” an important European news agency reported.

According to the same news agency, the secretary general appealed to the international community to complete the handover of $164 million, of which only 20% has been forthcoming.

It is not right to direct oneself to a country like someone who is scolding a little child. Haiti is a country that, two centuries ago, was the first in this hemisphere to end slavery. It has been the victim of all kinds of colonial and imperialist aggressions. It was occupied by the government of the United States barely six years ago after the latter promoted a fratricidal war. The existence there of a foreign occupation force, in the name of the United Nations, does not deprive that country of the right to respect for its dignity and its history.

We consider the position of the UN secretary general in appealing to Haitian citizens to avoid confrontations among themselves as correct. On November 28, at a relatively early hour, the opposition parties endorsed a call for street protests, thus provoking demonstrations and creating notable confusion within the country, particularly in Port-au-Prince; but, above all, outside of the country. Nevertheless, both the government and the opposition managed to avoid acts of violence. The following day the nation was calm.

The European agency stated that Ban Ki-moon had stated in relation to “last Sunday’s elections in Haiti […] that the ‘irregularities’ registered ‘now seem more serious than initially thought.’

Anyone who has read all the news coming in from Haiti and the latest statements of the main opposition candidates would find it impossible to understand that the person appealing for averting fratricidal fighting in the wake of the confusion created among voters in the run-up to the results of the count which will determine the two rival candidates in the January elections, is now saying that the problems were more serious than he initially thought, which is tantamount to fuelling the flames of political antagonisms.

Yesterday, December 4, was the 12th anniversary of the arrival of the Cuban Medical Mission in the Republic of Haiti. Since them, thousands of Cuban public health doctors and technical personnel have been providing services in Haiti. We have experienced with its people times of peace, or of war, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones. We will be with them in these times of intervention, occupation and epidemics.

The president of Haiti, the central and local authorities, whatever their religious or political ideas, know that they can count on Cuba.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 5, 2010
8:12 p.m.

The post Duty and the epidemic in Haiti appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

However, at this moment, our country is immersed in a battle against cholera in Haiti which, in its way, is becoming a threat for the rest of nations of Latin America and others in the Third World.

In the midst of the consequences of an earthquake that killed or wounded more than half a million people and caused enormous destruction, the epidemic broke out and, almost immediately, was aggravated by the calamity of a hurricane.

The number of persons affected by the disease rose yesterday, November 29, to 75,888, of whom 27,015 have been treated by the Cuban Medical Brigade, with 254 deaths, or 0.94%. The other state hospital facilities, NGOs and private, treated 48,875 people, of whom 1,721 died, indicating 3.03%.

Today, November 30, the Cuban Medical Mission which, incidentally, includes 201 graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine, treated 521 cholera patients, adding up to a total of 27,536.

Last Sunday, November 28, 18 people in a very critical condition arrived at the Cholera Treatment Center attached to the community reference hospital located in the L’Estère commune in Artibonite Department. They had come from a sub-commune called Plateau, and were immediately treated by the 11 doctors and 12 nurses from the Cuban Medical Brigade working there. Fortunately, they were able to save the lives of all of them.

On Monday 29th, 11 more patients arrived from the same sub-commune, among them, a child of five whose parents had died of cholera. Once again, their lives were saved.

Given that situation, Dr. Somarriba, head of the Medical Mission, decided to send an all-terrain vehicle with five doctors, two women nurses, one male nurse and a recovery therapist to the sub-commune, with the necessary resources for urgent attention to cases.

Of the five doctors, four are ELAM graduates: a Uruguayan, a Paraguayan, a Nicaraguan, a Haitian, and the head of the Cuban brigade in Artibonite department.

To reach the commune, they drove six kilometers by road, six more by causeway and, finally another two kilometers over rugged ground with all the equipment and resources on board to reach the commune.

Plateau is situated among five mountains with modest homes grouped at three points; the number of inhabitants is estimated at close to 5,000. There are no streets, nor electricity, nor businesses, as they informed us, and only one Protestant church.

The extremely poor population basically devotes itself to cultivating peanuts, corn, beans and squash.

When they reached Plateau, the church pastor offered to organize a treatment center within the church itself, with six cots and four pews of the faithful, which would allow the emergency admittance of 10 people.

Today eight were admitted, three in critical condition.

The neighbors say that around 20 people have died. That information does not appear in the official count of the dead. During the night they will work using the lamps they brought with them.

The Mission decided to set up a Cholera Treatment Center in that remote community, which will have 24 beds. All the resources will be sent tomorrow, including a generating plant.

They also informed that photo reporters came to the commune to see what was going on.

There were no deaths today, and another center, more to the north, has been opened, making for a total of 38 cholera treatment centers and units.

I am relating the case to explain the circumstances and methods of those waging the battle there against the epidemic which, with dozens of deaths every day, is already approaching 2,000 fatal victims.

With the working methods being implemented and the programmed reinforcement, it is unlikely that the number of dead will continue at the previous rate.

Knowing the passion with which the traditional electoral processes develop, aside from the typical abstentionism that characterizes many of them, we were concerned about what might happen in Haiti in the midst of the destruction and the epidemic. One basic and never violated principle is respect for the laws, parties and religious beliefs of the countries in which our doctors or the Henry Reeve Brigade are providing services.

Nevertheless, we were concerned about versions widely circulated by the international media presenting a scenario of generalized violence in the country, which was far from being the reality. The international observers were surprised at that news being divulged abroad, when in reality, for them, the events that did take place were isolated ones, affecting only a reduced percentage of citizens who exercised their vote.

The very leaders who called the people out onto the streets understood that, in the midst of the tragic situation in the country, it was not right to undertake actions that could provoke violent confrontations that would make it impossible to control and defeat the epidemic. If that objective is not achieved, it could become endemic and give rise to a health disaster in Haiti and a constant threat to the Caribbean, as well as to Latin America, where millions of poor people are accumulating in cities in growing numbers; and also for many other poor nations of Asia and Africa.

Moreover, do not ever forget that Haiti must be reconstructed from its foundations, with the help and cooperation of all. That is what we hope for its noble and selfless people.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 30, 2010
9:34 p.m.

The post News on cholera in Haiti appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with sympathy the African-American candidate’s victory over that country’s extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor’s genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of the 50% of Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.

Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000 soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.

The current administration’s militarist policies, its plunder of natural resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.

The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the international community – which had given credit to his promise to cooperate in the fight against climate change – was another act that disappointed many people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet words of its president beforehand.

It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the egotistic policies of that colossal empire.

In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle, and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists, that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed. Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.

On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing, agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in which the human species that inhabits it – which emerged less than 200,000 years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life emerged on the planet – is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.

Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government, the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world’s nations, when the increase in temperatures – beyond the critical limits that are in sight – is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen years, leaving underwater all of the world’s port facilities and the lands where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and works.

Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for them not to know it.

I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the government’s position vis-à-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who are limiting the administration’s faculties. It would be worse if those who engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not clouding his intelligence.

In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American, Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to their countries.

The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies. They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?

The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti – the poorest country in Latin America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that involved the death of more than 200,000 people – and the terrible economic damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.

The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being the model for humanity he extols.

Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral victory.

Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.

The problems of our era are far more serious still.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing the large U.S. banks – the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for the financial chaos on the planet – to be kept afloat by the government of that country in each one of the system’s frequent and growing crises.

The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of gold, something more than 25% of the world’s reserves of this metal, a figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP, like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country have taken over a considerable part of the world’s wealth, and which sustain that nation’s consumer society.

Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the principal Internet networks.

Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity in an exceptional dilemma.

Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but, in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.

A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second – if there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of that sun.

The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.

The new laws of science – based on Einstein’s theories on energy and matter and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and infinite stars or other hypotheses – have given way to profound changes in fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying theologians’ attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision holística del Universe (The Artist’s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe), launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.

Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and even in philosophy and theology.

The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama’s thinking on the compatibility of consumer societies with science.

Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty – at least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.

The post Health reform in the United States appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

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.

As one might imagine, later I avidly read the histories of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hannibal, Bonaparte and, of course, any book that came into my hands on Maceo, Gómez, Agramonte and other great soldiers who fought for our independence. I did not possess sufficient culture to understand what lay behind history.

Later on, I centered my interest in Martí. In reality I owe my patriotic sentiments to him and the profound concept that “Homeland is humanity.” The audacity, the beauty, the value and the ethics of his thinking helped to convert me into what I believe I am: a revolutionary. Without being a follower of Martí one cannot be a follower of Bolívar; without being a follower of Martí and Bolívar, one cannot be a Marxist and, without being a follower of Martí, Bolívar and a Marxist, one cannot be anti-imperialist; without being those three things a Revolution in Cuba in our epoch could not have been conceived.

Almost two centuries ago, Bolívar wanted to send an expedition under the command of Sucre to liberate Cuba, which really needed it, in the 1820s, as a Spanish sugar and coffee colony, with 300,000 slaves working for their white owners.

With its independence frustrated and converted into a neo-colony, the full dignity of human beings could never be attained without a revolution that would end the exploitation of people by other people.

“…I want the first law of our republic to be the veneration of Cubans for the full dignity of human beings.”

With his thinking, Martí inspired the valor and conviction that led our [26th of July] Movement to the assault on the Moncada Garrison, which would have never entered our heads without the ideas of other great thinkers like Marx and Lenin, who made us see and understand the very distinct realities of the new era that we were experiencing.

Throughout centuries, the odious latifundia ownership and its slave workforce, preceded by the extermination of the former inhabitants of these islands, was justified in the name of progress and development.
Martí said something marvelous and worthy of Bolívar and his glorious life:
“…what he did not leave done, remains undone to this day: because Bolívar has still much to do in America.”

“Let Venezuela show me how to serve her: she has a son in me.”

In Venezuela, as others did in the Caribbean, the colonial power planted sugar cane, coffee, and cacao, and likewise took men and women from Africa as slaves. The heroic resistance of its indigenous peoples, using nature and the vast Venezuelan soil, prevented the annihilation of the original inhabitants.

With the exception of one part of the northern hemisphere, the vast territory of Our America remained in the hands of two kings of the Iberian Peninsula.

Without fear it can be affirmed that, for centuries, our countries and the fruits of the labor of our peoples have been plundered and continue being plundered by the large transnational corporations and the oligarchies that are in their service.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in other words, for almost 200 years after the formal independence of Ibero-America, nothing changed in essence. The United States, starting with the Thirteen English colonies that rebelled, expanded west and south. It purchased Louisiana and Florida, snatched more than half of its territory from Mexico, intervened in Central America and took possession of the area of the future Panama Canal, which would link the great oceans east and west of the continent via the point where Bolívar wished to create the capital of the largest of the republics that would be born from the independence of the nations of America.

In that epoch, oil and ethanol were not traded in the world, nor did the WTO exist. Sugar cane, cotton and corn were cultivated by slaves. Machines were still to be invented. Industrialization based on coal was strongly advancing.

Wars gave impulse to civilization, and civilization gave impulse to wars. These changed in nature, and became more terrible. They finally became world conflicts.

Finally, we were a civilized world. We even believed in it as a question of principles.

But we do not know what to do with the civilization attained. Human beings have equipped themselves with nuclear weapons of unbelievable accuracy and annihilation potency while, from the moral and political point of view, they have ignominiously retrogressed. Politically and socially, we are more underdeveloped than ever. Automatons are replacing soldiers; the mass media, educators, and governments are beginning to be overtaken by events without knowing what to do. In the desperation of many international political leaders one can appreciate an impotency in the face of the problems that are accumulating in their offices and steadily more frequent international meetings.

In those circumstances, an unprecedented disaster is taking place in Haiti, while on the other side of the planet, three wars and an arms race are continuing their development, in the midst of the economic crisis and growing conflicts, which is consuming more than 2.5% of the global GDP, a figure with which all the Third World countries could be developed in a short period of time and possibly evade climate change by devoting the economic and scientific resources that are essential to that objective.

The credibility of the world community has just received a harsh blow in Copenhagen, and our species is not demonstrating its capacity for surviving.

The tragedy of Haiti allows me to expound on this point of view based on what Venezuela has done with the countries of the Caribbean. While the large financial institutions vacillate over what to do in Haiti, Venezuela did not hesitate for one second to cancel that country’s economic debt of $167 million.

Throughout close to one century the major transnationals extracted and exported Venezuelan oil at infinitesimal prices. Over the decades, Venezuela became the largest world exporter of oil.

It is known that when the United States spent hundreds of billions on its genocidal war on Vietnam, killing and mutilating millions of the sons and daughters of that heroic people, it also unilaterally broke the Bretton Woods Agreement by suspending the conversion of gold into dollars, as the agreement stipulated, and launching the cost of that dirty war on the world. The U.S. currency was devalued and the hard currency income of the Caribbean countries was not sufficient to pay for oil. Their economies are based on tourism and exports of sugar, coffee, cacao and other agricultural products. A stunning blow threatened the economies of the Caribbean states, with the exception of two of them that are exporters of energy.

Other developed countries eliminated preferential tariffs for Caribbean agricultural exports, like bananas; Venezuela made an unprecedented gesture: it guaranteed the majority of those countries secure supplies of oil and special payment facilities.

On the other hand, nobody was concerned about the destiny of those peoples. If it were not for the Bolivarian Republic a terrible crisis would have hit the independent states of the Caribbean, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. In the case of Cuba, after the USSR collapsed, the Bolivarian government promoted an extraordin
ary growth in trade between the two nations, which included the exchange of goods and services, which permitted us to confront one of the harshest periods of our glorious revolutionary history.

The finest ally of the United States and, at the same time the basest and vilest enemy of the people, was the fraudster and simulator Rómulo Betancourt, president-elect of Venezuela when the Revolution triumphed in Cuba in 1959.

He was the principal accomplice of the pirate attacks, acts of terrorism, aggressions against and the blockade of our homeland.

When Our America most needed it, the Bolivarian Revolution finally broke out.

Invited to Caracas by Hugo Chávez, the members of the ALBA committed themselves to lend maximum support to the Haitian people at the saddest moment in the history of that legendary people, who carried out the first victorious social Revolution in world history, when hundreds of thousands of Africans, in rising up and creating in Haiti a republic thousands of miles away from their native lands, undertook one of the most glorious revolutionary actions of this hemisphere. In Haiti, there is African, Indian and white blood; the Republic was born from the concepts of equality, justice and liberty for all human beings.

Ten years ago, at a point when the Caribbean and Central America lost tens of thousands of lives during the tragedy of Hurricane Mitch, the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) was created in Cuba to train Latin American and Caribbean doctors who, one day, would save millions of lives, but especially and above all, would serve as an example in the noble exercise of the medical profession. Together with the Cubans, dozens of young Venezuelans and other Latin American graduates of ELAM will be in Haiti. News has arrived from all corners of the continent of many compañeros who studied at ELAM and now want to collaborate with them in the noble task of saving the lives of children, women and men, young and old.

There will be dozens of field hospitals, rehabilitation centers and hospitals, in which more than 1,000 doctors and students in the final years of medical school from Haiti, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and other sister countries will be providing services. We have the honor of already being able to count on a number of American doctors who also studied in ELAM. We are prepared to cooperate with those countries and institutions which wish to participate in these efforts to provide medical services in Haiti.

Venezuela has already contributed tents, medical equipment, medicine and foodstuffs. The Haitian government has given full cooperation and support to this effort to bring health services free of charge to the largest possible number of Haitians. It will be a consolation for everybody in the midst of the greatest tragedy that has taken place in our hemisphere.

Fidel Castro Ruz

February 7, 2010
8:46 p.m.

The post The Bolivarian Revolution and the Caribbean appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

“The head of our medical brigade has informed that the situation is difficult but we are already saving lives.”

Hour after hour, day and night, the Cuban health professionals have started to work nonstop in the few facilities that were able to stand, in tents, and out in the parks or open-air spaces, since the population feared new aftershocks.

The situation was far more serious than was originally thought. Tens of thousands of injured were clamoring for help in the streets of Port-au-Prince; innumerable persons laid, dead or alive, under the rubbled clay or adobe used in the construction of the houses where the overwhelming majority of the population lived. Buildings, even the most solid, collapsed. Besides, it was necessary to look for the Haitian doctors who had graduated at the Latin American Medicine School throughout all the destroyed neighborhoods. Many of them were affected, either directly or indirectly, by the tragedy.

Some UN officials were trapped in their dormitories and tens of lives were lost, including the lives of several chiefs of MINUSTAH, a UN contingent. The fate of hundreds of other members of its staff was unknown.

Haiti’s Presidential Palace crumbled. Many public facilities, including several hospitals, were left in ruins.

The catastrophe shocked the whole world, which was able to see what was going on through the images aired by the main international TV networks. Governments from everywhere in the planet announced they would be sending rescue experts, food, medicines, equipment and other resources.

In conformity with the position publicly announced by Cuba, medical staff from different countries -namely Spain, Mexico, and Colombia, among others- worked very hard alongside our doctors at the facilities they had improvised. Organizations such as PAHO and other friendly countries like Venezuela and other nations supplied medicines and other resources. The impeccable behavior of Cuban professionals and their leaders was absolutely void of chauvinism and remained out of the limelight.

Cuba, just as it had done under similar circumstances, when Hurricane Katrina caused huge devastation in the city of New Orleans and the lives of thousands of American citizens were in danger, offered to send a full medical brigade to cooperate with the people of the United States, a country that, as is well known, has vast resources. But at that moment what was needed were trained and well- equipped doctors to save lives. Given New Orleans geographical location, more than one thousand doctors of the “Henry Reeve” contingent mobilized and readied to leave for that city at any time of the day or the night, carrying with them the necessary medicines and equipment. It never crossed our mind that the President of that nation would reject the offer and let a number of Americans that could have been saved to die. The mistake made by that government was perhaps the inability to understand that the people of Cuba do not see in the American people an enemy; it does not blame it for the aggressions our homeland has suffered.

Nor was that government capable of understanding that our country does not need to beg for favors or forgiveness of those who, for half a century now, have been trying, to no avail, to bring us to our knees. Our country, also in the case of Haiti, immediately responded to the US authorities requests to fly over the eastern part of Cuba as well as other facilities they needed to deliver assistance, as quickly as possible, to the American and Haitian citizens who had been affected by the earthquake.

Such have been the principles characterizing the ethical behavior of our people. Together with its equanimity and firmness, these have been the ever-present features of our foreign policy. And this is known only too well by whoever have been our adversaries in the international arena.

Cuba will firmly stand by the opinion that the tragedy that has taken place in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, is a challenge to the richest and more powerful countries of the world.

Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti’s slavery and subsequent poverty were imposed from abroad. That terrible earthquake occurred after the Copenhagen Summit, where the most elemental rights of 192 UN member States were trampled upon. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a competition has unleashed in Haiti to hastily and illegally adopt boys and girls. UNICEF has been forced to adopt preventive measures against the uprooting of many children, which will deprive their close relatives from their rights. There are more than one hundred thousand deadly victims. A high number of citizens have lost their arms or legs, or have suffered fractures requiring rehabilitation that would enable them to work or manage their own.

Eighty per cent of the country needs to be rebuilt. Haiti requires an economy that is developed enough to meet its needs according to its productive capacity. The reconstruction of Europe or Japan, which was based on the productive capacity and the technical level of the population, was a relatively simple task as compared to the effort that needs to be made in Haiti. There, as well as in most of Africa and elsewhere in the Third World, it is indispensable to create the conditions for a sustainable development. In only forty years time, humanity will be made of more than nine billion inhabitants, and right now is faced with the challenge of a climate change that scientists accept as an inescapable reality.

In the midst of the Haitian tragedy, without anybody knowing how and why, thousands of US marines, 82nd Airborne Division troops and other military forces have occupied Haiti. Worse still is the fact that neither the United Nations Organization nor the US government have offered an explanation to the world’s public opinion about this relocation of troops.

Several governments have complained that their aircraft have not been allowed to land in order to deliver the human and technical resources that have been sent to Haiti.

Some countries, for their part, have announced they would be sending an additional number of troops and military equipment. In my view, such events will complicate and create chaos in international cooperation, which is already in itself complex. It is necessary to seriously discuss this issue. The UN should be entrusted with the leading role it deserves in these so delicate matters.

Our country is accomplishing a strictly humanitarian mission. To the extent of its possibilities, it will contribute the human and material resources at its disposal. The will of our people, who takes pride in its medical doctors and cooperation workers who provide vital services, is huge, and will rise to the occasion.

Any significant cooperation that is offered to our country will not be rejected, but its acceptance will fully depend on the importance and transcendence of the assistance that is requested from the human resources of our homeland.

It is only fair to state that, up until this moment, our modest airc
rafts and the important human resources that Cuba has made available to the Haitian people have arrived at their destination without any difficulty whatsoever.

We send doctors, not soldiers!

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 23, 2010
5:30 p.m.

Originally posted at Prensa Latina

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