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Latin America is finally free

October 3 2006

FIVE centuries after the European conquests, Latin America is reasserting its independence. In the southern cone especially, from Venezuela to Argentina, the region is rising to overthrow the legacy of external domination of the past centuries and the cruel and destructive social forms that they have helped to establish.

The mechanisms of imperial control — violence and economic warfare, hardly a distant memory in Latin America — are losing their effectiveness, a sign of the shift towards independence. Washington is now compelled to tolerate governments that in the past would have drawn down intervention or reprisal.

Throughout the region a vibrant array of popular movements provide the basis for a meaningful democracy. The indigenous populations, as if in a rediscovery of their pre-Columbian legacy, are much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador.

These developments are in part the result of a phenomenon that has been observed for some years by specialists and polling organisations in Latin America: As the elected governments became more formally democratic, citizens expressed an increasing disillusionment with the way democracy functions and "lack of faith" in the democratic institutions. They have sought to construct democratic systems based on popular participation rather than elite and foreign domination.

A persuasive explanation for the decline of faith in existing democratic institutions has been offered by Argentine political scientist Atilio Boron, who observed that the new wave of democratisation in Latin America coincided with externally mandated economic "reforms" that undermine effective democracy.

The concepts of democracy and development are closely related in many respects. One is that they have a common enemy: loss of sovereignty. In a world of nation-states, it is true by definition that decline of sovereignty entails decline of democracy, and decline in ability to conduct social and economic policy. That in turn harms development, a conclusion confirmed by centuries of economic history.

The same historical record reveals that loss of sovereignty consistently leads to imposed liberalisation, of course in the interests of those with the power to impose this social and economic regime. In recent years, the imposed regime is commonly called "neoliberalism." It is not a very good term: The socio-economic regime is not new, and it is not liberal, at least as the concept was understood by classical liberals.

In the United States, faith in institutions has also been declining steadily, and for good reasons. A huge gulf has opened between public opinion and public policy, rarely reported, though people cannot fail to be aware that their policy choices are disregarded.

It is instructive to compare the recent presidential elections in the richest country of the world and the poorest country in South America — Bolivia.

In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, voters had a choice between two men born to wealth and privilege, who attended the same elite university, joined the same secret society where privileged young men are trained to join the ruling class, and were able to run in the election because they were supported by pretty much the same conglomerations of private power.

Their programmes were similar, consistent with the needs of their primary constituency: wealth and privilege. Studies of public opinion revealed that on a host of major issues, both parties are well to the right of the general population, the Bush administration dramatically so.

In part for these reasons, issues are removed from the electoral agenda. Few voters even knew the stand of the candidates on issues. Candidates are packaged and sold like toothpaste and cars and lifestyle drugs, and by the same industries, dedicated to delusion and deceit.

For contrast, consider Bolivia and Evo Morales’ election last December. Voters were familiar with the issues, very real and important ones like national control over natural gas and other resources, which has overwhelming popular support. Indigenous rights, women’s rights, land rights and water rights are on the political agenda, among many others. The population chose someone from their own ranks, not a representative of narrow sectors of privilege. There was real participation, not just pushing a lever once every few years.

The comparison, and it is not the only one, raises some questions about where programmes of "democracy promotion" are needed.

Given its new ascendancy, Latin America may come to terms with some of its severe internal problems. The region is notorious for the rapacity of its wealthy classes, and their freedom from social responsibility.

Comparative studies of Latin American and East Asian economic development are revealing in this respect. Latin America has close to the world’s worst record for inequality, East Asia the best. The same holds for education, health and social welfare generally. Imports to Latin America have been heavily skewed towards consumption by the rich; in East Asia, toward productive investment. Capital flight from Latin America has approached the scale of the debt — suggesting a way to overcome this crushing burden. In East Asia, capital flight has been tightly controlled.

Latin American economies have also been more open to foreign investment than Asia. Since the 1950s, foreign multinationals have controlled far larger shares of industrial production in Latin America than in the East Asian success stories, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The World Bank reported that foreign investment and privatisation have tended to substitute for other capital flows in Latin America, transferring control and sending profits abroad, unlike East Asia.

Meanwhile new socio-economic programmes under way in Latin America are reversing patterns that trace back to the Spanish conquests — with Latin American elites and economies linked to the imperial powers but not to one another.

Of course this shift is highly unwelcome in Washington, for the traditional reasons: The United States has expected to rely on Latin America as a secure base for resources, markets and investment opportunities. And as planners have long emphasised, if this hemisphere is out of control, how can the United States hope to resist defiance elsewhere?

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.

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GRANMA
March 15, 2007

Report from the Venezuelan Great Savannah

Ronald Suarez and Alberto Borrego Avila (photo)
Granma Special Correspondents

"Where is everyone going," the Cuban doctor asked. "Don't you worry doc,
we'll take care of you and continue preparing the food you like. You won't
lack anything while you are with us," replied some of the residents.

THE CUBAN DOCTORS WERE THE FIRST EVER TO WORK IN THE VILLAGES

OF THE PEMON INDIGENOUS, IN VENEZUELA'S GREAT SAVANNAH.

Dr. Lester Montoya had to run to catch up to the members of the village and
prevent them from blocking the roads of the Southern Great Savannah. They
were committed to stop anybody from entering or leaving their territory, not
even the National Guard or the Army, because the Venezuelan Constitution
provides autonomy to indigenous communities.

The same thing was happening in other communities. The reason of the
protests: Trying to stop the transfers of Cuban doctors.

"It took a lot of work to finally convince them," Montoya recalls. The
Council of elders met first, followed by a town assembly. After long
debates, they finally acquiesced to trust once again the Cuban doctor, the
first to cut across the jungle to take care of them.

Place of Honor

The story had begun some six months earlier, when the beating on pots and
pans woke up the Cuban doctors. What a way to start a day, they thought.

The sound came from locals worried about the presence of the Cubans. "They
are military people sent by Fidel Castro, and they have already unloaded
their weapons to launch an attack on the village," one local radio station
had reported.

The previous day, a truck from the National Guard had arrived with several
boxes of medical supplies. One by one, they opened all the boxes in front of
the inhabitants of Santa Elena de Uarien, one of the towns mentioned in
Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos (The lost steps).

The 27 Cuban doctors had arrived after a tiring road trip of more than 2,000
kilometers, following the same route taken by Carpentier a half century
before in search of the origins of American humankind and its music.

They came with the mission of offering free healthcare for the people of
Santa Elena and the rest of the communities in the Great Savannah, comprised
of some 48,800 people, scattered in a territory half the size of Cuba.

In Ikabaru, Betania, Maurak, located in the depths of the jungle, they set
up their camps, after the Council of the Elderly, the supreme authority of
the tribe, approved the arrival to each of the villages.

Afterwards, in an assembly meeting, there was a discussion on what to feed
the guests, since they were not used to eating the moriche worm, or the
roasted bachaco (a kind of ant) or tripe soup.

The remoteness, harsh conditions and lack of communication, led the
organizers to consider the Great Savannah as a place of honor. And the
performance of the Cuban doctors, every day, validates that description.

In Ikabaru, Dr. Ibis used her own anti-poison serum to neutralize the venom
of a patient that had been bit by a snake. In Santa Elena, Dr. Tejada
donated his blood to save the life of a miner who was haemorrhaging. But the
most important achievement has been changing the people's hygienic
practices, and convincing entire populations who had never seen a doctor in
their lives, to get check ups.

The land of The Lost Steps

The Great Savannah is a beautiful jungle landscape separated for centuries
from modern life. The jungle rises to an altitude of 1,500 meters above sea
level, with steep drop-offs and rivers descending in torrents that generate
the majority of electricity in Venezuela.

Scientists believe that these were the first lands to emerge, but they are
also the last to be explored. It was pure greed that first pushed colonizers
into this area in search of El Dorado, the mystical golden city.

Now the Cuban doctors have come, not following a legend but to come and live
and work among the Pemon indigenous, people who use to live and die, without
ever seeing a doctor.

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Belize

Due to the presence of the Cuban medical brigade, 45 Health Centers, 37 of them located in rural areas, were able to start functioning. Family health care services, covering 100,000 people, were included in the program for rural areas.

Guatemala

During its 18 months of work, the Cuban medical cooperation in Guatemala has implemented, along with the Health Ministry of that country, a net of primary health care in each of the departments where it is present. Through this net, the application of a Mother-Child health care program by virtue of which the infant mortality rate was reduced from 40x1000 born alive to 18.5x1000 born alive have been possible.

Along with the Guatemalan Health Ministry, Cubans are working in the implementation of an educational program addressed to foster family medicine in 6 departments of the country.

Haiti

With financial support of Japan and the PHO, a vaccination campaign for protection against six childhood illnesses, which will cover an infant population of 800 thousand children, is carried out in Haiti. Cuban health personnel resulted a decisive force in that campaign.

A project of triangular cooperation among Cuba, France and Haiti is developed in two departments of the South. A French contribution amounting 400 000 USD will be devoted to purchase medicines and medical inputs as well as to train human resources. That project is led by Cuban health professionals.

Honduras

Cuban cooperation has achieved 12% of medical care covering, but in departments like Intibuca and the Mosquitia , the most remote in the Honduran geography, and with a more difficult economic situation, a covering of 85% of the population has been reached.

In the Honduran Mosquitia, department located in the northwest of the country, infant mortality reduction has been up to 40%. According to the Honduran Health Ministry official information, the rate of infant mortality in that department was 92 for each 1000 born alive in 1998. Through Cuban medical cooperation, the first semester of the 2000 close with a mortality rate of 46 per 1000 born alive. That is to say, in a year and a half of cooperation, 54 children’s lives were saved in that department.

In Santa Bárbara department with a population of 300 000 inhabitants, the mortality rate was 60 per 1000 born alive at the arrival of the Cuban medical cooperation. This rate was reduced to 45 per 1000 born alive in just six months.

At the request of the First Lady of Honduras and of the leaders of the tawahka ethnic group, which is considered by UNESCO an anthropological reserve of that region, in serious danger of extinction as a result of their population's abrupt reduction, the Government of Cuba has begun a comprehensive health care program in these communities with the purpose of protecting their population and developing the region.

The Cuban medical cooperation has proven its integrality with the presence of electro-medical engineers who have repaired a significant number of medical equipments, allowing the Honduran Health Ministry to save a total of 371 266 USD.

On request of the Honduran Government, faced to a difficult situation provoked by the dengue epidemic, Cuban medical brigade has been reinforced with 20 new specialists plus 12 water heater nebulizators and ½ ton of pesticides. The joint work they are developing with the country health authorities is aimed at neutralizing the epidemic which has already taken the lives of 4 Hondurans, 3 of them children.

Cuba has also sent a SUMA equipment with 5 000 diagnosis tests that have facilitated both the active searching of cases and the precocious detection of the illness.

Venezuela

107 members of a medical team remain working in Venezuela, 99 of them located in the State of Vargas and 8 in Miranda .Seventy one are doctors, 14 graduated in nursery and 22 are paramedic professionals and technicians.

Cuban Comprehensive Health Care Delivery Program covers a population of 225 549 out of the 304 000 inhabitants of the State of Vargas who represent the 74.19% of the total population of the state. Our medical team is distributed in 4 regions: Carayaca, Catia the Sea, Caraballeda and Caruao.

The Cuban doctors are located in 45 of the 57 health posts of the State of Vargas. From the primary care, they have been able to attend 456 539 people both in outpatient consultations and at home, to deliver 241 childbirths as well as to practice 2396 surgical interventions, as well as 52 615 sessions of health education and 12 806 sanitary actions.

In the regions and medical posts where our collaborators are located, the infant mortality remains in zero.

Gambia

Sentry Centers in charge of evaluating the Cuban Comprehensive Health Care Delivery Program, have recognized a 34% reduction of the infant mortality rate, that is to say, from an infant mortality rate of 121 x 1000 born alive in 1998, they have gotten to reduce the rate to 90 x 1000 born alive. With a Cuban medical team of 154 members, a population health covering of 90% has been accomplished.

The creation of a small medicine faculty in Gambia has allowed to begin the training of 22 youths in such specialty, an effort made possible with the support both of the country’s authorities and the World Health Organization, which made a contribution of USD 35 thousand for the purchasing of text books and computers.

Equatorial Guinea

In that African country with an infant mortality rate of 111 for each 1000 born alive, a health care covering of 80% of the population has been achieved with 139 Cuban medical specialists distributed in the whole country.

A work is being done by a Cuban professors staff to establish the Medicine School in which 30 young Guineans will be registered the next academic year.

In the regions and health post where our collaborators are located the infant mortality remains in zero.

http://america.cubaminrex.cu/English/cooperation/cooperation.htm