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Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 01:07:30 -0400 (EDT)
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Subject: [CubaNews] RHC News Update-01 May 2001
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 01 May 2001
.
*CUBANS CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY
*FIDEL WARNS LATIN AMERICA, CARIBBEAN OF DANGERS LURKING IN "FREE TRADE"
*WORLD BANK PRESIDENT "NOT ASHAMED" TO SAY CUBA HAS DONE GREAT WORK
*FIDEL CASTRO CLOSES WORKERS' CONGRESS WITH A NOD TO THE WORLD BANK
*CUBAN HEALTH TOURISM ATTRACTS INCREASING NUMBERS OF CLIENTS
*ZAPATISTAS SUSPEND PEACE TALKS TO PROTEST CHANGES IN RIGHTS LEGISLATION
*ROUND-UP: MAY DAY IN LATIN AMERICA
.
*CUBANS CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY
*Havana, May 1 (RHC)--This year's celebration of International Workers Day
in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion was attended by more than a million
people.
The cultural and political program included ballet, operatic song and short
speeches by Pedro Ross Leal, the General Secretary of the Confederation of
Cuban Workers, and international figures including Arnold August, author of
Democracy in Cuba; the ceremony ended with a speech by President Fidel
Castro, who then led the cheering crowd on a march to the US interests
Section.
The Cuban leader's 40-minute address covered a range of topics, from the
mistaken predictions of Cuba's demise after the Soviet Union's collapse to
to the expansionist nature of US policy, the current global economic crisis
and the recent Summit of the Americas in Quebec.
*FIDEL WARNS LATIN AMERICA, CARIBBEAN OF DANGERS LURKING IN "FREE TRADE"
Havana, May 1 (RHC)--Cuban President Fidel Castro has asserted that the Free
Trade Association of the Americas will inexorably lead to the annexation of
Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States. Speaking before more
than one million Cubans at Havana's Revolution Square on the occasion of
International Workers Day, the Cuban leader said it's not strange that, in
desperation over enormous and unpayable foreign debts and economic
dependence, many of the region's countries are allowing themselves to be
blindly dragged into a U.S.-led free trade zone.
He said an association between the world's only superpower and countries
suffering poverty, underdevelopment and financial dependence on institutions
like the World Bank that are controlled by Washington imposes unequal
conditions that will lead to the devouring of those countries. What's most
sad, cynical and hypocritical, said the Cuban leader, is that the free trade
association is being designed without consulting the region's peoples, an
elementary aspect of democracy.
President Castro said such an association will offer less protection to
national industries and interests, more unemployment and social problems,
and the disappearance of national currencies. He warned that we are up
against an adversary that is powerful in everything except ethics and ideas,
a superpower that has no messages or answers to the planet's overwhelming
problems. The international community, he said, has never before been
immersed in the discontent and insecurity that exists today, and and that
imperialism -- unable to escape its own shadow -- is preordained to continue
to increasingly pillage and exploit the world.
The superpower to the north can devour us, Fidel predicted, but will not be
able to digest us -- that the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean
will arise in rebirth from their ashes. He said that it would nevertheless
be much better if those peoples did not have to endure this.
In reference to the anti-Cuba vote at the United Nations Human Rights
Commission, the Cuban leader said several governments in the region lacking
principles and ethics handed to a right wing government in Washington a
pretext to continue its genocidal blockade against Cuba, on a silver
platter.
Following the speech, Fidel Castro led a protest march of hundreds of
thousands to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
*WORLD BANK PRESIDENT "NOT ASHAMED" TO SAY CUBA HAS DONE GREAT WORK
Washington, May 1 (RHC)--World Bank President James Wolfensohn has issued
unusual statements of praise concerning social development in Cuba.
Following Sunday's publication of the financial institution's 2001 Report on
World Development, Wolfensohn said Cuba has done great work in the fields of
health and education, adding that he isn't ashamed to say so.
The 2001 Report noted that Cuba's social indicators improved during the
1990s, despite Washington's blockade and the lack of access to aid received
historically from the Soviet Union which had disintegrated. Jo Ritzen, vice
president of the World Bank's Development Policy, said the infant mortality
rate in Cuba went down from 11 deaths per one thousand live births in 1990
to 7 in 1999, placing Cuba in the ranks of industrialized nations and in the
6th place worldwide.
The report compared Cuba's statistics to Argentina's, with 18 deaths per
1,000 live births; Costa Rica, with 12, and Chile, with 10, while the
average in Latin America and the Caribbean is 30.
It also noted that mortality rates for children under 5 years of age
decreased in Cuba during the last decade from 13 to 8, 50% better than
Chile, placing Cuba in second place on the list of Latin American nations.
The average mortality rate for children under 5 in the region as a whole was
38 in 1999.
*FIDEL CASTRO CLOSES WORKERS' CONGRESS WITH A NOD TO THE WORLD BANK
Havana, May 1 (RHC)--In the closing speech at the 18th Congress of the
Confederation of Cuban Workers Monday night, Cuban President Fidel Castro
compared the treatment of workers abroad with those in Cuba and thanked the
president of the World Bank.
The Cuban leader recalled the images of the previous week in which workers
and students in Quebec, Canada were attacked with tear gas and rubber
bullets as they protested the US-supported Free Trade Association of the
Americas during the Summit of the Americas. Such images are never seen in
Cuba, he commented, because the island has social unity.
In thanking World Bank officials for commending Cuban health care and
education, Fidel Castro noted that the island would not be needing any World
Bank money because, he said, Cuba does not support the policies of free
market restructuring of Third World economies to benefit the rich of the
First World.
The Cuban president went on to condemn free market neoliberalism as creating
what he called "savage societies," where people are not taken into account.
He noted that on May 1, when workers throughout Latin America marching to
demand improved working conditions and better pay, they would be surrounded
by police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. Cuba is not run on the
basis of guns, tear gas and rubber bullets, he said. The very comments about
Cuba by the World Bank's president James Wolfensohn prove that the island
has a just society. Our society is a socialist one, said the president, not
a mercantile one.
*CUBAN HEALTH TOURISM ATTRACTS INCREASING NUMBERS OF CLIENTS
Havana, May 1 (RHC)--In what Cuba calls its "health tourism" sector, the
island is experiencing increasing success and expansion of a service that
caters to the needs of foreigners seeking medical help as well as an
additional source of income to keep the nation's public health care system
afloat.
Most people seeking medical intervention come to Cuba because they are
unable to find effective treatment for their ailments elsewhere. Special
facilities offer treatment of anything from slipped disks to laser eye
surgery to liposuction. Many patients come from Latin America for plastic
surgery, reports Dr Ramon Prado, who heads the Havana Cira Garcia clinic.
One of the most sought-after treatments is for retinitis pigmentosa, which
causes eventual blindness, he added. Other treatments are for stroke and
trauma victims, drug and alcohol addiction, and neurological disorders such
as Parkinson's Disease.
The dollars earned go toward the Cuban public health care system, which is
completely free to Cubans. Although those facilities used by Cubans may lack
the new coat of paint and attractive additions the wards for foreigners
have, the quality of medical care is the same, stress Cuban health
authorities.
Chicago Tribune journalist Laurie Goering reports that the cost of an
operation for someone from the U.S. is a third less in Cuba. But for many,
says Dr Carlos Leyvsa of Cubanacan Tourism's health program, it's not just a
question of cost but quality.
*ZAPATISTAS SUSPEND PEACE TALKS TO PROTEST CHANGES IN RIGHTS LEGISLATION
Mexico City, May 1 (RHC)--The Zapatista National Liberation Army in
Chiapas has suspended contacts with the government to protest congressional
modifications in legislation on indigenous rights, autonomy and culture. In
a statement that has caused commotion in Mexican society, rebel commander
Marcos called the measure a legislative mockery that reveals a total divorce
between the country's political leadership and popular demands.
The legislation was recently approved in the Senate with important
modifications to the original agreement, signed by the Zapatistas and the
Congressional Chiapas Peace Commission in February, 1996, and later passed
by the lower house.
Unacceptable alterations include changes in the definitions of autonomy,
self-determination and principles governing use of natural resources.
Mexican President Vicente Fox admits that the modifications are
unacceptable, but has called on the Zapatistas to respect the rules of the
democratic game. Leftist legislators, however, said that Fox should have
prevented approval of the alterations and that he should now veto the
legislation.
Chiapas Governor Pablo Salazar added his voice to those calling for
rejection of the measure, charging that the federal Congress failed to
respond to the needs and demands of the indigenous population and Mexican
society in general. While the Zapatistas have declared themselves in a state
of rebellion, Mexico's National Indigenous Congress has called for protest
mobilizations.
*ROUND-UP: MAY DAY IN LATIN AMERICA
Caracas, Quito, Santiago de Chile, Sao Paulo, Bogota, May 1 (RHC)--In
Venezuela today, workers who support President Hugo Chavez held a counter
demonstration in what they called a mobilization against the traditiona;
labor union mafias. The Bolivarian Workers Force called for a greater
workers participation in the management of firms and for a redistribution of
land to put an end to what is known as the latifundio -- the agrarian model
based on large land holdings.
In Ecuador, workers took to the streets of all the major cities to deplore
an unprecedented emigration of Ecuadorans because of unemployment and
underemployment. Between 1999 and 2000, one million Ecuadorans left the
country according to the National Statistics and Census Institute, and that
figure has increased in the first months of this year.
In Chile, President Ricardo Lagos chose International Workers Day to
announce a job creation program amid predictions that unemployment could
surpass 10% this year. In Brazil, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sao
Paulo, Claudio Cardinal Hummes, lashed out at free market globalization,
calling on workers worldwide to mobilize in a fight against the effects of
the current economic world order.
And in Colombia, workers launched May Day mobilizations with a call to set
up a special commission to investigate the wave of assassinations of labor
leaders, which this year alone has claimed 38 lives. That figure represents
a four-fold increase in the number of labor leaders killed during the same
period last year.
(c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
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