REVIEW
Lessons in Standing Up
How does one of the smallest countries in the world stand up to bullying
by the sole superpower? There are answers to be found in No Mas Bloqueo
(No More Blockade), an inter-active multi-media CD produced and
distributed by Cuba’s Ministry of External Relations.
BY
ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
How does one of the smallest countries
in the world stand up to bullying by the sole superpower? There are
answers to be found in No Mas Bloqueo (No More Blockade), an
inter-active multi-media CD produced and distributed by Cuba’s Ministry of
External Relations.
Cuba’s health care system has been
lauded as a model of excellence by many international institutions, among
them the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s
Fund (Unicef). The Cuban people enjoy free universal health care.
Based on data from the Unicef, Cuba
has the world’s third lowest rate of infant mortality – lower than that of
the U.S. – and one of the highest global rates of child immunization (96
percent). There is one doctor for every 200 persons in Cuba, which is the
highest per-capita number of doctors in the world and is twice that of the
U.S.
The average life expectancy rate in
Cuba is 77.1 years, closely rivaling that of the U.S. which stands at 77.3
years. Its infant mortality rate of 7.5 for every 1,000 births is lower
than that of the U.S., which is eight for every 1,000.
In education, Cuba’s feats are no less
remarkable. In its State of the World’s Children report for 2003,
the Unicef placed Cuba’s adult literacy rate at 96 percent, or eight
percentage points higher than that for all of Latin America and the
Caribbean and just three percentage points behind that of the U.S. There
is a ration of one teacher for every 20 students in the island nation.
Not bad for a small country that has
had to put up with a U.S.-led economic embargo for the last 43 years. The
total trade embargo between the U.S. and Cuba took effect on Feb. 3, 1962.
However, as early as three years
before, the U.S. government had been pushing for such a measure. On April
6, 1960, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
Lester D. Mallory stated that “the only foreseeable means to alienate
internal support is by creating disillusionment and discouragement based
on lack of satisfaction and economical difficulties.”
The blockade, then, was meant to
destabilize Cuba’s socialist regime, which was catapulted to power on the
heels of a revolutionary struggle that ousted the U.S-backed dictatorship
of Fulgencio Batista.
How the Cuban people have survived the
43-year blockade is told in No Mas Bloqueo.
The CD runs like a website, and
contains documents, speeches, articles, photos, a number of video clips,
and even a song clip related to the Cuban people’s fight against the
blockade. Its main sections include a chronology and a historical
backgrounder on the blockade, documents condemning the “genocide” wrought
by the blockade on the Cuban people, articles and speeches on world and
Cuban anti-blockade campaigns, materials on U.S. legislation on the
blockade for the last 43 years, and a portion on what Cuba has achieved
despite the blockade.
No Mas Bloqueo
tells the viewer about the deleterious effects of the blockade on Cuba’s
social and economic life: limitations on medical equipments and supplies
for its hospitals, particularly a curtailment on purchases of cytostatic
drugs for its cancer patients; a decreasing number of school supplies and
difficulties in obtaining software for its public libraries, deprivation
of cultural exchange between the U.S. and Cuba, and loss of royalties for
Cuban artists and writers.
But there is never a hint of self-pity
in any of the varied materials offered by No Mas Bloqueo. There is,
instead, an air of defiance all throughout the CD.
The defiance is particularly marked in
the “Proclamation by the National Assembly of People’s Power of the
Republic of Cuba on the Blockade and the Economic War,” released July 12,
2000 – part of which states thus:
“There are more than enough machetes, rifles and fists in
this country to ensure that our people are never again enslaved, and that
Cuba is never again made into a colony of the United States.
“This is the main lesson of our fighting history, the main
lesson from all the experience gained by our people, who have rightly
confronted from day one the ambitions of the mightiest power on Earth to
take control of our country, to rob it of its independence and deprive all
the men and women of Cuba of all the rights conquered through our efforts,
our struggle and our sacrifices.”
No Mas Bloqueo shows that a
united people fully aware and appreciative of their rights as human
beings, and determined to fight for these behind a dedicated and competent
leadership, can stand up to the world’s biggest bully.
Bulatlat
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