PULL QUOTE: ‘Haciendo Possible Otro Mundo (Making a Better World Possible)’
LAST Wednesday (January 1, 2014) marked the 55th Anniversary of the end of the Cuban Revolution (July 26, 1953 – January 1, 1959), an event that has transformed this Caribbean territory from an outpost of North American imperialism into a Socialist State system.

The distinction between the State apparatus and a still undeveloped civil society has yet to be re-examined in depth in the Cuban history, as theoretical post-Cold War issues have tended to converge on the overall dynamic of a viable Anti-Imperialist strategy (Giovanni Arrighi and James Petras, 2001-2002).
Sufficient to note, however, that Cuba’s transformation has been severely constrained as a direct consequence of the American Empire’s blocade.
Certainly, were it not for the criminal embargo, the socio-economic transformative process would have been much more impressive than has been recorded.
Compared to other developing countries, Cuba’s education and health sectors, as well as its biotechnology, and, to a lesser extent, construction sectors, and services (especially tourism/hospitality) would have been amongst the top rated on a worldwide scale, were it not for Helms-Burton/Torricelli.

War as a means of Defeating Social Rebellions

Writing in one of his regular columns published in the October 28, 2010 edition of Granma, captioned ‘Reflections of the Commandte’, Fidel Castro cited the War Crimes of US Lt. General Stanley McCrystal, the Commander appointed by President Barack Obama responsible for the war in Afghanistan.
At that time, the Cuban leader had already indicated where he stood on the issues of the US Guantanamo Base and detention camp for mainly Islamic militants accused of terrorist crimes, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Killer Drones described as Predators I and II.
Cuba’s position on the War on Terror had long before the launching of the Arab Spring at the end of 2010 in Tunis, sought to have the Bush Administration declare as Crimes Against Humanity those operations conducted by the US CIA, and other covert agencies working under the control of the National Security Agency (NSA) condemned.
The terrorist bombing of a Cubana airline, Flight 455, off the coast of Barbados in October 1976, in which all passengers and crew were killed, has long been presented as a major terrorist atrocity, for which the CIA was responsible through its agents and anti-Cuba, anti-Castro extremists (See as reference Cuba, USA and the hypocrisy of the WoT Latin America Symposium, London 2006).
It was at least, in part, a response to the challenges created by the Bush Administration’s protection of the convicted terrorists Luiz Posada and Orlando Bosch, that Havana took the entirely justifiable measure of recruiting the Cuban anti-terrorists who have become known as the Cuban Five after these were framed by the FBI.
In assessing the progress made by Cuba there is a need to review not only the education process (including higher and special education) and the health or social medicine progress, but also the political and organizational advances made through People’s Committees for the Defence of the Revolution. All of this requires an above-party focus despite the fact that the PCC (Parti Communist of Cuba) has embarked on a stage or phase where internal democratization has broadened enormously the scope or, if we like space, for participation in the decision making institutions.
This is the ultimate principle opted for by the political directorate to safeguard socialism. To improve the quality of work, to change the relationship between clericalist or Cuban office staffers and labour units engaged in weekly or monthly remunerated work. To boost support for high capitalisation infrastructure partially by shifting the tax burden to those subsectors that can access micro credit and anticipate seasonal demands.
The short to medium objectives of the ‘socialist conversion’ of centrally directed state capitalism it would appear, is to create an intensification of social property collaboration with self-employed sectors and provide material incentives that reward instead of penalise the ability and capacity for income generation over and above all in the agricultural or rural based sectors.

The medical brigades as a renewable asset

Globalisation and the engagement of socialist Cuba in several Latin and Caribbean countries has evolved over the past five (5) years amidst a crisis of international finance monopoly capitalism. A crisis that Noam Chomsky and others believe cannot be solved even with the waging of expensive wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Central Africa, Colombia as well as that in Mexico against the narco cartels.
In an earlier frame and as a direct result and response to the United States Commission for a Transition to a Free Cuba Report, and which was elaborated by the administration of George W Bush, the Cuban authorities announced as early as 2005 that the Medical Brigades would spearhead the component of solidarity that characterises Havana’s Foreign Policy. In other words Cuba would counter the dispatch of conventional weapons and other armaments with more trained doctors and health workers.
But historically the Medical brigades were inaugurated as early as 1963 in various parts of the still colonialized world, or prior to these same countries becoming independent. Cuban medical teams were engaged in South Yemen, in the territories of the Sahel, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Eritrea as well as the East African littoral of Tanzania (inclusive of Zanzibar) for at least a decade before the mid 1970s and the dreadful Ethiopian/Sahel famine.
Cuban internationalists provided basic medical training for clinical services in parts of Congo-Brazzaville as from the period during the regime of Messemba-Debat in the mid-1960s. after the emergence of Marian N’Gauabi these teams were upgraded to full Medical Brigade status as from 1969. Similar patterns of service provision and health care training developed in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean in the latter 1970s with countries such as Nicaragua, Grenada, Jamaica and Guyana establishing relations with Cuba and opting for Cuban Medical Assistance.
Perhaps with the exception of Soviet era technicians, engineers, agronomists and doctors (of human medicine as well as veterans) there has been no other comparative initiative, no other example of an international humanitarian outreach than those of the Cuban Medical Brigades. Today countries including Yemen, Pakistan, Mongolia and Central Asian Republics Uzbekistan and Tajikistan share partnerships that are not dissimilar to those worked out between Cuba and the 5th Bolivarian Socialist Republic of Venezuela.
It is in this set of historical circumstances that Cuban Medical Missions are to be provided to cater for health care demands in Brazil. The socialist revolution has proceeded to the stage where the reproduction of health care providers and doctors has become a renewable asset rivalling tourism as a source of foreign exchange. This process has been criticised as being exploitative, for denying the doctors themselves the full value of the services these contribute.
What these negative slants ignore of are ignorant of are factors such as cost of training, capitalisation for risk insurance, procurement of suitable living accommodation as well as the fact that in countries such as Venezuela for instance payment for Cuban doctors is met by the supply side of oil exports to Cuba and not in monetary paper. Yet these doctors are paid and have a standard of living that supports the status they have gained over several decades.

Yes, a better world is possible!
Written By Eddi Rodney