havana – COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE

_{^{Photo credit: Prensa Latina}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM for its Spanish language initials) is a masterpiece of Cuba’s remarkable healthcare system. A conference of ELAM graduates took place in Havana from November 11 to November 15; two sets of them attended. The gathering marked the 25^th anniversary of ELAM’s founding in 1999.

What happened and what was said reflect Cuba’s healthcare achievements and ELAM’s special contribution. A focus on ELAM demonstrates for us the paradox, cruelty, and injustice of U.S. aggression against a people capable of producing such an unprecedented achievement as ELAM.

To be aware that ELAM exists and that its creation falls within the range of human capacity is to be reassured that, in fact, possibilities do exist other than U.S. warmaking, militarization, and complicity in anti-Palestine genocide.

ELAM evolved out of Cuba’s response in 1999 to the ravages of Hurricanes George and Mitch in the Caribbean area and in parts of Central America. Cuban physicians carrying out rescue missions discovered that local healthcare workers were overwhelmed by the catastrophe. Within weeks, Cuba’s political leaders opted to prepare young people to be physicians in their own countries and be ready for future disasters and much more

Soon prospective medical students were heading to ELAM from hurricane-affected regions. Later they came from throughout Latin America, and eventually from Africa and farther afield, including from the United States. They were motivated by idealism – enrollees dedicate themselves to serving the underserved – and the fact that no personal outlay is required.

ELAM has now prepared 31,180 physicians for service in 120 countries. Some 1800 medical students from many countries are presently studying there. ELAM provides the first two years of pre-clinical courses at a converted naval base immediately to the west of Havana. Clinical training over the next four years takes place at teaching hospitals throughout Cuba.

On hand in Havana 25 years after ELAM’s initiation were more than 300 ELAM graduates and students plus 250 guests, physicians and students, from 30 countries. The occasion combined the 1^st International Congress of ELAM graduates and the 2^nd International Assembly of the International Medical Society of Graduates of ELAM (SMI-ELAM).

Organizers assigned the theme “Guardians of life, creators of a better world.” They projected the assembly as “a space for scientific interchange … and a concrete step toward creation of an international medical and scientific organization whose members [are] ELAM graduates.”

The gathering featured plenary sessions, round tables, panels, and presentations by clinical and research specialists. These took place in Havana’s teaching hospitals and Conventions Center. Topics were: primary health care, medical care during emergencies and natural disasters, postgraduate medical training, and higher education in the medical sciences. Presenters linked medical education, social impact, and international solidarity. Experts from abroad and from international organizations were participating.

Welcoming the delegates, ELAM’s rector Yoandra Muro insisted that, “Commander Fidel is here, standing up, fighting with the example he instilled in his children, the graduates of this project of love.” Here, “we have a space for [ELAM] graduates to continue strengthening our kind of work and projecting training programs for the guardians of the present and future.” She identified graduates as “invincible standard-bearers in the field of health, who from their quality preparation are steeped in the work of solidarity.”

Luther Castillo Harry, currently minister of science, technology, and innovation in the Honduran government, graduated from ELAM in 2007. He declared at the conference that, “We are looking at the possibility of building the greatest scientific organization in the world … Each one of us has to be an ambassador of the Cuban Revolution.” And, “We will only gain the possible, through struggle against the impossible.”

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel sent a message welcoming graduates back to their “second homeland.” He indicated he would not attend the sessions because of duties with post-hurricane recovery efforts. Díaz-Canel cited Fidel Castro’s “deep conviction that a better world is possible if we fight tirelessly for that ideal.” He speculated on “Fidel’s happiness had he been able to see you become guardians of the life and health of your people.”

Presiding over a plenary session, public health minister José Ángel Portal Miranda discussed healthcare in Cuba. The report has him outlining a system based on primary care that involves 69 medical specialties and three levels of care. Cuba’s medical network, he explained, consists of 451 polyclinics, 11,315 community health centers, 149 hospitals, and a work force of 400,000 people. There are eight physicians serving each cohort of 1000 Cubans, 80,000 in all. Maternity homes and homes for elders are part of the system.

The minister indicated that 40 different faculties or their affiliates are responsible for training physicians; medical sciences are taught in 13 universities. He identified “the development of science and technology as the fundamental pillar of the health system.” Presently 2,767 research projects and 82 clinical trials are underway.

Portal highlighted Cuba’s international medical solidarity, mentioning the Comprehensive Health Program mediated through international missions, the Barrio Adentro program for Venezuela, Operation Miracle (for eye care), and the Henry Reeve Brigades. He cited some 600,000 Cuban health workers having cared for people in more than 160 countries over many years.

Concluding his remarks, he stated that, “Out of ELAM have emerged and will emerge galenos who will save humanity from the barbarism. Or, as leader of the Revolution Fidel Castro said – ‘Doctors, not bombs!’” (Claudius Galen was a Greek physician and researcher in the classical era. Spanish speakers often refer to physicians as “galenos.”)

Here is Castro speaking in Buenos Aires in 2003:

“Our country does not drop bombs on other peoples, nor does it send thousands of planes to bomb cities; Our country has no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The tens of thousands of scientists and doctors in our country have been educated in the idea of saving lives. It would be absolutely contradictory to their conception to put a scientist or a doctor to produce substances, bacteria or viruses capable of killing other human beings.”

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

_{^{Some of the weapons seized from a Florida-based terrorist captured on Cuban soil after he snuck onto the island via jet ski. | Photo courtesy of Granma}}

_{Reposted from the People’s World}

When the U.S. government launched its so-called “Global War on Terror” after the al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S.-led terror attacks against Cuba had already been ongoing for over 40 years.

They included: military invasion (1961), CIA-sponsored counter-revolutionary paramilitaries in the countryside (1960s), a fully loaded Cuban airliner brought down by U.S. agents (1976), attacks on coastal towns and fishing boats, biowarfare, hundreds of killings in Cuba and abroad, sabotage, and bombings of hotels and tourist facilities (1997).

With the new century, however, violence and terror seemed to be on vacation. The Cuban media and sympathetic international media were reporting little or nothing about U.S.-based terror attacks that had been their stock in trade.

On Dec. 17, 2023, Cuban Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez released a statement harking back to the violent past. He insisted that the “U.S. government is very aware of the official, public, and repeated denunciations by the Cuban government of the assistance, protection, and tolerance that promotors and perpetrators of terrorist acts against Cuba enjoy in the United States.”

He added that, “Recently Cuba’s Interior Ministry has reported on the dismantling of destabilization plans developed in the United States by terrorists of Cuban origin in a security operation that led to the detention of several persons tied to this conspiracy.”

Rodríguez’s statement followed a report appearing on the Communist Party’s Granma newspaper on Dec. 9, 2023. A Florida resident, traveling on a jet ski, came ashore near Matanzas on Cuba’s northern coast in late 2023; no date was specified. Carrying pistols, ammunition, and loading clips, the individual headed for Cienfuegos, his province of origin, and was arrested.

The unnamed man “contacted several people in order to recruit them.” He allegedly had ties in South Florida with “terrorists who publicly promote violent actions against Cuba … [and who] have received military training with weapons, have the physical equipment … and other resources to carry out their plans.”

Granma stated that, “the terrorists, with their plans for actions aimed at undermining internal order, go beyond a virtual setting; they concentrated on promoting violence so as to cause pain, suffering, and death at the year’s end.”

These “instigators of hate and death … appear on [Cuba’s] National List … [Cuban security officials] have investigated actions they’ve taken in the national territory or in other countries.”

A report on Jan. 4 from Mexican journalist Beto Rodríguez discusses the Interior Ministry’s “National List of persons and entities … associated with terrorism against Cuba.” Since 1999, they “have planned, carried out, and plotted acts of extreme violence in Cuban territory.’’

The List first appeared on Dec. 7 in Cuba’s Official Gazette as Resolution 19/2023. It names 61 individuals and 19 terrorist organizations, all based in the United States, presumably most of them in South Florida. One of the names on the List belongs to the jet skier, but which one is unspecified.

According to Beto Rodríguez, criminal investigations in Cuba revealed that some of the listed persons targeted “governmental and tourist installations and carrying out sabotage, illegal incursions, human trafficking, and preparations for war.” They “made plans for assassinating leaders of the revolution.”

He also reported that the arrested jet skier “intended to recruit Cubans for burning sugarcane plantations, provoke disturbances, disturb tourist centers, and hand out propaganda.” “[C]itizen denunciation” led to his arrest.

Appearing on the List is Alexander Alazo Baró, who shot at Cuba’s embassy in Washington with a semiautomatic weapon on April 30, 2020. He is still “under investigation.” Two Molotov cocktails exploded at the embassy on Sept. 24, 2023. The perpetrator is unknown.

Beto Rodríguez notes that on Nov. 24, 2023, the U.S. State Department, warning prospective travelers to Cuba of “potential terrorist actions … against the United States,” advised them to avoid “sites commonly used for demonstrations.”

A day earlier, a large pro-Palestinian march headed by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel passed by the U.S. embassy in Havana. Journalist Rodríguez surmises that, “Washington already knew beforehand that anti-Cuban groups were planning to enter onto the island to commit acts of terrorism.”

Hernando Calvo Ospina, veteran analyst of U.S. terror against Cuba, reported on Jan. 10 that Cuba’s government referred the National List to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), which deals with crime extending across borders.

Describing activities of the listed persons, Calvo Ospina highlights their new use of social media to communicate propaganda and to “incite internal violence, the assassination of State personalities, the destruction of common goods and all kinds of sabotage.”

Ospina states that, “the objectives now being pursued are similar to those of the so-called ‘historical exile group.’ Only the method has changed. Both have one thing in common: they use terrorist methods.” Some of those whose names appear were carrying out terrorist activities in the 1990s.

He indicates that, “Many received direct funding from the U.S. State Department, and also from the CIA, which uses various entities and NGOs to deliver it.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, the government’s so-called “democracy and human rights funding” for Cuba, a reference to support provided for interventionist programming, amounted to $20 million annually from 2014 to 2022. In July 2023, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee, sought “to boost funding by 50% for democracy promotion efforts in Cuba.”

What looks like a revival of the U.S. government’s former anti-Cuba terror campaign may point to one or more of several possibilities:

Terror attacks had actually continued during the past two decades, but Cuba’s government, for unknown reasons, opted not to publicize them.
Terror attacks did continue, but at a low ebb, and now the Cuban government, at a difficult time, seeks to inform world opinion of illegal and dangerous U.S. actions, the object being to promote multi-national mobilization against prolonged U.S. all-but-war against Cuba.
The U.S. government, taking advantage of Cubans’ discouragement aggravated by a terrible economic crisis, has successfully recruited dissidents and once more is capable of mounting terror attacks.
The U.S. government, true to its ideologic core, to its imperialist self, stops at nothing while dominating or beating up on lesser peoples of the world.

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_{W.T. Whitney Jr.}_{is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}