- For a long time there was only one country in Latin America
offering free health care to all its citizens. Now there are two. The governments
of both countries regard health care as a basic human right. So Cuba, rich
in health care, and Venezuela, rich in oil, have arranged a barter deal
for the benefit of each population. This would seem to be a major historical
example of beneficial free trade. Who could possibly object?
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- Well, Condoleezza Rice for one, who seems quite disturbed
by this alliance. During an interview last October with the editorial board
of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, then National Security Advisor Rice called
President Hugo Chavez "a real problem." She said, "He will
continue his contacts with Fidel Castro, maybe giving Castro one last fling
to try to affect he politics of Latin America." Why is she so alarmed?
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- In that same interview, she praised Russia in contrast
to the Soviet Union. "Amazing things are happening in the economy,"
she enthused, citing a "remarkable" example of progress: "Putin
is telling people they're going to have to pay for their health care."
Condoleezza Rice with roots in Alabama, where many people cannot afford
adequate health care, has grown up to become a member of the corporate
elite, on the board of directors for such giants of industry as Transamerica,
Charles Schwab, and Hewlett Packard. Like her boss, President George W.
Bush, and other members of his cabinet, she is invested in the oil industry,
with a direct interest in Venezuelan oil through Chevron Corporation. In
1995, the same year that Chevron signed an agreement in Caracas to operate
Venezuela's Boscan heavy-oil field over a 20 to 30-year period, Chevron
named its largest oil tanker for a member of its Board of Directors: Condoleezza
Rice. After Rice became National Security Advisor in 2001, Chevron renamed
the tanker to avoid such a blatant connection.
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- Now Miss Oil Tanker of 1995 is Secretary of State, in
charge of implementing U.S. policy toward all countries. It is no wonder
she is eager to support such anti-Chavez activities as the oil strike of
2002 that temporarily devastated the Venezuelan economy. And it is no surprise
that the alliance between Havana and Caracas causes great consternation
for the Bush administration. Take the issue of free trade. For decades
Havana has refused to be controlled by Washington's trade mechanisms, such
as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with its consequential subtractions
for domestic welfare and additions for foreign debt. In 1985 Cuba hosted
a conference on the Latin American debt crisis where delegates called,
to no avail, for a basic restructuring of the relationship between debtor
and creditor nations. Now Venezuela has become a partner in resistance
to this financial bondage, although Venezuela, unlike Cuba, belongs to
international financial institutions such as the IMF.
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- Instead of conceding to the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA) that Washington is trying to impose, Venezuela and Cuba have launched
the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an effort to unify
Latin American countries in the 21st century's continuation of the work
of Simon BolÌvar, who was born in Venezuela, and Jose Marti, who
was born in Cuba. On December 14, President Fidel Castro and President
Hugo Chavez signed a far-reaching agreement "towards the process of
integration," including "the exchange of goods and services which
best correspond to the social and economic necessities of both countries."
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- One example is literacy: "Both parties will work
together and in coordination with other Latin American countries to eradicate
illiteracy in third countries" (Article 5). The Cuban teaching method
known as "Si se puede" (Yes I can) is rapidly increasing literacy
among Venezuelans and is already used in many other countries, including
Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Mozambique, New Zealand,
Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Peru. What could be more conducive to creating
the democracy that George Bush claims to want to bring to the world? Why
should Washington not support the expansion of literacy that is a necessity
for true democracy?
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- The aim "to eradicate illiteracy in third countries"
strikes fear in the Bush administration. In that same interview last October,
Rice said "the key" to stopping Hugo Chavez "is to mobilize
the region to both watch him and be vigilant about him and to pressure
him." She explained, "We can't do it alone....But the OAS (Organization
of American States) can do a lot." On November 20, with Rice on her
way to the State Department, The Washington Post followed up with an editorial
called "Watch Venezuela," advising that Rice's plan to isolate
Chavez "sounds like a wise policy."
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- But the horse was already out of the barn. Venezuela
galvanized the creation of the South American Union (or the South American
Community of Nations) in December, with the goal of creating a free trade
zone among its members: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,
Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. One major expression of this unity
is Telesur, a television network to broadcast, starting this year, about
Latin America from Latin America.
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- True to her plan, once she got her new job in January,
Secretary of State Rice lost no time in trying to destroy that unity. The
State Department sent letters to Latin American leaders in order to mobilize
them against Chavez in a dispute between Venezuela and Colombia. Nobody
answered the State Department's call. U.S. pressure proved decidedly unhelpful,
exacerbating the conflict. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe turned for
help to none other than Fidel Castro. Castro sent Foreign Minister Felipe
Perez Roque to Caracas. Brazil and Peru also mediated. But as Uribe publicly
acknowledged, it was Castro's help that was crucial to the peaceful outcome
when Uribe met with Chavez in Caracas. Ironically, Cuba, which was able
to mediate successfully, is not even a member of the OAS, having been expelled
in 1962 as part of Washington's mobilization of Latin American countries
against Cuba during Operation Mongoose, another attempt, following the
Bay of Pigs, to overthrow the Cuban government.
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- Bush administration officials and media have escalated
their attacks against Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. In the opening statement
of her Senate confirmation hearing on January 18-19, Rice called Cuba an
"outpost of tyranny." Perhaps the label of "terrorist nation"
has lost its fear-inducing effect even though Cuba remains on the State
Department's list of terrorist nations. Nobody can rationally figure out
how Cuba is a terrorist threat, especially after the total discrediting
of John Bolton's claim in 2002 that Cuba's medical system is a cover for
bioterrorism. So now the State Department is using "tyranny"
as the buzz word because Fidel Castro has not been elected in a U.S.-approved
kind of election like the one that took place in 1901 under U.S. occupation--comparable
to the January election in Iraq.
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- Nevermind that in 1952 when Castro was running for Congress,
Washington supported a coup that installed the dictatorship of General
Fulgencio Batista, canceling the election and suspending the Constitution.
Nevermind that the Helms-Burton law of 1996 makes it illegal in the United
States for Fidel Castro (or his brother Raul) to run in a Cuban election.
If Cuba were to hold such an election, the results would not be recognized
by the United States.
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- Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998 and re-elected with 59.5
percent of the vote in 2000 (the same year that Bush was elected by the
Supreme Court). In 2002, he was restored to power in two days by his people
after a coup supported by Washington and cheered on by the U.S. media,
notably The New York Times. In 2004, Chavez won a referendum monitored
by international observers, including former President Jimmy Carter. Yet
in her confirmation hearing, Rice openly threatened the elected government
of Venezuela when she said she wants the OAS to hold accountable "leaders
who do not govern democratically, even if they are democratically elected."
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- Of course U.S. overthrows of elected governments are
nothing new, as demonstrated in Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic,
and Haiti, to name a few. Venezuela is now instituting land reform, the
very issue that led in 1954 to the CIA's overthrow of the elected government
in Guatemala. Right on cue, CIA Director Porter Goss, in his February 16
testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, named Venezuela among
"potential flashpoints in 2005" because "Chavez is consolidating
his power by using technically legal tactics to target his opponents and
meddling in the region, supported by Castro."
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- Another U.S. method of "regime change" has
been assassination as documented by the 1975 Senate Select Intelligence
Committee hearings in the wake of the war against Vietnam when, for a brief
period, some members of Congress dared to attempt to rectify a few of the
most murderous practices of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Fidel Castro
was of course a frequent target. In an incisive speech to the OAS on February
23, Venezuelan Foreign Minister AlÌ RodrÌguez said:
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- "The absurdity of the accusations levied against
our government would not bother us in the least if a multitude of facts
did not exist that prove that when such statements are made, it's because,
sooner or later, the attack will follow....It is what happened with Allende,
it is what happened in the Dominican Republic, it is what happened in Guatemala
and countless other cases. For the same reason, we cannot dismiss information
from our intelligence services concerning the physical liquidation of our
president, the same man who has been legitimated every time he has been
subjected to the scrutiny of the Venezuelan people."
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- RodrÌguez noted that Article 1 of the OAS Charter
states that the OAS "has no powers other than those expressly conferred
upon it by this Charter, none of whose provisions authorizes it to intervene
in matters that are within the internal jurisdiction of the Member States."
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- He told the OAS members that, with all due respect, Venezuela
would like to "stress the need of social justice as a fundamental
component of democracy." The Foreign Minister added that "democracy
in a country like Venezuela, whose concrete reality is one of poverty,
depends on giving the large majority of the country the opportunity to
participate, that is, the overcoming of poverty becomes the government's
first reason for being."
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- Imagine having a government that considers overcoming
poverty to be its first reason for being. Again and again, people ask,
Why does Washington oppose Cuba since it is obvious that Cuba is not a
threat to our national security? Rice calls it an "outpost of tyranny,"
but the real reason is the example that Cuba provides for people all over
the planet who desperately need health and education. Fidel Castro refuses
to tell people "they're going to have to pay for their health care."
And now Hugo Chavez, with Cuba's cooperation, is putting that example into
action in Venezuela.
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- With Cuban doctors making a difference in the world,
fear of the Cuban example increases among those who have no intention of
dealing with the great challenges of our time: the millions of people around
the world without health care and without literacy. Writing from Honduras
in her February 18 column, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, The Wall Street Journal's
senior editorial page writer and one of the most vociferous opponents of
both Castro and Chavez, reports that Cuba sent 350 doctors to Honduras
in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch wreaked havoc in a country already poverty-stricken.
O'Grady is concerned that the Cuban doctors have stayed to look after Honduran
people and that 600 Hondurans are studying medicine in Cuba so that they
can return to provide medical care for their people. O'Grady calls the
Cuban doctors "Fidel's foot soldiers" with "the potential
for soft indoctrination, a kind of tilling the soil in the poor countryside
so that it is ready when political opportunity presents itself as it has
in Venezuela of late." To a rational human being, Cuba's ability to
provide health care and Venezuela's eagerness to work with Cuba to provide
health care present quite a different potential: that is, human potential
for unselfish cooperation.
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- http://www.zmag.org/content/=
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