From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 20:20:09 -0700 To: "CubaNews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [CubaNews] Cuban doctors in Latin America August 8, 2001 Living accounts . Eight novels to date on the work of Cuban doctors in Latin America and Africa from the Pablo de la Torriente Brau publishing house IT was none other than the great writer Alejo Carpentier who in 1975 affirmed that journalists are those who "animate the great novel of the future with their eye-witness accounts and features." Now readers have an opportunity to appreciate and understand the writer's reflections in El Siglo de las Luces (Explosion in a Cathedral). The Pablo de la Torriente publishing house has taken on the editing of eight books by an equal number of Cuban journalists, features, eye-witness accounts, reports, written on the spot and which have trailed-to use another of Carpentier's words-the day-to-day content of Cuban medical cooperation. These eight "chroniclers of their time," as the great author describes journalists, have had the rare chance to reflect a human experience, the arrival of those doctors in remote areas of the American and African continents, places where those living there had never "seen" a doctor before the much-heralded new millennium. Their profession took those colleagues to "investigate the wherefore of things" and their work also includes, in modest appendices, geographical and historical information, the results of health work undertaken, different ethnic groups, features and evaluations. In the prologue to Omayda Alonso's book Guatemala, del tocorro al quetzal (Guatemala, from the Tocororo to the Quetzal), her colleague Juan Emilio Friguis notes: "The antecedent of the journalistic accounts in these pages is the integral health system organized by Cuba at Fidel's initiative to offset the disastrous effect on South America of Hurricanes Georges and Mitch in late 1998." The author herself states in her first account, "La realidad de un sue�o" (A Dream Come True) that "Fidel proposed the idea of reporting on the labor of our medical brigades in Central American countries and in Haiti (later extended to Venezuela) in March 1999, at the Cuban Journalists Congress." This is where these novels came from, from the vast humanitarian work of the Cuban doctors and from the pens and hearts of those who have followed that veritable adventure. Another work, Puerto de Esperanza (Gateway of Hope), was born out of the presence of Cuban medical workers in Guatemala, where journalist Ronal S�arez affirms in his introduction: "I simply decided to narrate what I saw in a country where daily life surpasses the imagination." There is no doubt that The Kingdom of this World influenced Alberto Nu�ez and his Haiti, un Sue�o por Vida (Haiti, a Dream for Life). In situ he reread Carpentier's great novel. Some of the novelist's ideas support his reportage, and one halts "at the reflection that Carpentier makes through Ti Noel on how man's grandeur lies in wanting to improve what he is, in taking on tasks, not in the kingdom of heaven where there is no grandeur to conquer but in the kingdom of this world, the appropriate place for achieving his highest stature." Another two books record medical experiences in Honduras: Vencedores de la Muerte (Conquerors of Death) by F�lix Hern�ndez Rodr�guez, and Un Solo Corazon (Just One Heart) by Deisy Francis Mexidor. Of the first book Doctor Elis Gonz�lez, coordinator of the Cuban medical mission, confirms in a singular coincidence that the book contains eyewitness accounts that "keep history from being erased." The second, whose title Kupia Kumi was translated into the Misquit language by the author, his colleague Luis Hern�ndez Serrano describes its chapters as impassioned and revealing. Venezuela, Despu�s del Dilivio (Venezuela, After the Deluge) by Roger Ricardo Luis has been summarized in the introduction by novelist and journalist Marta Rojas (those two terms that Carpentier does not counterpose): "Velocity and rhythm. Depth of analysis when necessary. A subtle human content when there appears to be just facts, and penetrating when the pain described is strong. In short, a moving and reflective account from beginning to end. This is the style of the author's reports and features." Medical co-operation in Africa has inspired other books: Gambia, el Perfume de los Ra�ces (Gambia, the Perfume of Roots) by Jos� Antonio Fulgueiras and Cartas Desde Africa (Letters From Africa) by Jos� Antonio Res�llez. The Pablo de Torriente publishing house included in Fulgueiras ' book excerpts of the speech by Cuban president Fidel Castro at the Medical Science Faculty graduation ceremony in Cuba on August 13, 2000. The speech refers specifically to doctors returning to The Gambia after taking vacation. "They eagerly returned to the dozens of settlements they attend on both banks of the wide river stretching for hundreds of kilometers across a small elongated country where the most human of services are being offered: relieving pain, preserving or reestablishing of immense well-being of health and, above all, saving lives." Cartas Desde Africa relates experiences and reflections after the journey made by a Cuban television crew to Gambia, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, enriched by a conversation between the author and the Cuban president. These are the first eight books, but the publishing house is to edit further material, given that Cuban medical cooperation continues, accompanied by Cuban journalists. Going back to Carpentier, by way of an epilogue: "When our profession is made light of, it is usually said newspaper articles are carried off by the wind. They are born in the morning and die in the afternoon...That is not true, because journalists are a kind of historian in themselves. They are the chroniclers of their time, the ones responsible for the immediate communication of events. They convey the living state, the primary state, events that will later be sited in a their proper perspective and dimension in a specific historical analysis. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
