Bulatlat - The Philippines's alternative weekly newsmagazine

This story was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 38, October 30-November 5,, 2005

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

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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