Steve Brouwer on Health Care in Venezuela & Cuba, NYC, 9/2

“How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing

Joined by the Honorable Jorge Valero Briceño, Permanent Representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United Nations

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Drawing on long-term participant observations as well as in-depth research, author and journalist Steve Brouwer tells the story of the innovative and inspirational health care programs pioneered in Cuba and being adapted to the needs of Venezuela today. Unlike the for-profit system of health care in the United States, the Cuban and Venezuelan models aim to provide free care for the entire population, particularly in poor rural and urban areas. For nearly a decade, thousands of Cuban medical personnel have focused on delivering primary, secondary, and preventive care while at the same time training the Venezuelan doctors who will one day replace them. These new physicians are receiving a thorough medical education while continuing to live in and serve their own communities; many of them hope to one day join the ranks of Cuba’s international medical brigades that are spreading revolutionary approaches to health care in many parts of the world. These models are not without their challenges, however, and Brouwer gives a nuanced account of how Venezuela and Cuba are fending off capitalist and imperialist influences that are openly hostile to any alternatives to profit-driven, market-based health care.

Presented by Monthly Review Press; Bolivarian Circle Alberto Lovera; Cuba Solidarity New York; The Indypendent; July 26 Coalition; Casa de las Americas; The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY; IFCO-Pastors for Peace; The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, CUNY; and others TBA

Steve Brouwer is the author of Robbing Us Blind: The Return of the Bush Gang; Sharing the Pie: A Citizen’s Guide to Wealth and Power in the United States; Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism (co-authored with Susan D. Rose); and Conquest and Capitalism, 1492-1992. He is also a carpenter and designer, and has organized worker-owned construction businesses and housing cooperatives. In 2007-2008, he lived in a rural village in the mountains of Venezuela and wrote about his campesino neighbors and the Bolivarian Revolution.