By DAN
KOVALIK
AUGUST 12, 2016
On Saturday, August 13, the world will celebrate the 90th
birthday of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro Ruz, the only individual
ever to be acknowledged by the UN as a “World Hero
of Solidarity.” It is very hard to think of a more important world leader
than Fidel. The contribution he has made to the world socialist movement, to
the Third World liberation struggle and to social justice has been monumental –
especially when one considers that he has been the leader of a tiny country
with roughly the same population as New York City.
At the current
time, the Colombian government and leftist FARC guerillas are engaged in
a peace process in Havana, and are very near to reaching a final peace
accord, in large part due to Fidel’s efforts.
As Nelson
Mandela himself has acknowledged, South Africa is free from apartheid in
no small measure due to Fidel’s leadership in militarily aiding the liberation
struggles in Southern Africa, especially in Angola and Namibia, against the
South African military which was then being supported by the United States.
In addition, The Latin American Medical School (ELAM) in Cuba,
which trains doctors from all around the world, but particularly from poor
countries, was Fidel’s brainchild. Today, 70 countries from around the world
benefit from Cuba’s medical internationalism, including Haiti where Cuban
doctors have been, according to The New York Times, at the
forefront of the fight against cholera.
As we speak,
Cuba has hundreds of doctors working in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela where
Venezuelan doctors fear to tread. There are Cuban-trained doctors in remote
parts of Honduras which are otherwise not served by the Honduran government.
Patients from 26 Latin American & Caribbean countries have traveled to Cuba
to have their eyesight restored by Cuban doctors. Among this list is Mario
Teran, the Bolivian soldier who shot and killed Che Guevara. The Cubans not
only forgave Mario, but also returned his eyesight to him. Cuba even
offered to send 1,500 doctors to minister to the victims of the Hurricane Katrina,
though this kind offer was rejected by the United States
As Piero Gleijeses, a professor at John Hopkins University,
wrote in his book Conflicting Missions about
Cuba’s outreach to Algeria shortly after the Cuban Revolution:
It was an unusual gesture: an underdeveloped country tendering
free aid to another in even more dire straits. It was offered at a time when
the exodus of doctors from Cuba following the revolution had forced the
government to stretch its resources while launching its domestic programs to
increase mass access to health care. ‘It was like a beggar offering his help, but we knew the Algerian
people needed it even more than we did and that they deserved it,’ [Cuban
Minister of Public Health] Machado Ventura remarked. It was an act of
solidarity that brought no tangible benefit and came at real material cost.
These words are
just as true today as they were then, as this act of solidarity is repeated by
Cuba over and over again throughout the world. And, it has been done even as
Cuba has struggled to survive in the face of a 55-year embargo by the United
States which has cost it billions of dollars in potential revenue, and even as
it has endured numerous acts of terrorism by the United States and
U.S.-supported mercenaries over the years.
Just recently,
I was reminded of the fact that, for the past 25 years, Cuba has been treating
26,000 Ukrainian citizens affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident at its
Tarara international medical center in Havana. Cuba has continued to do so, it
must be emphasized, though even the potential for any help for this effort from
the Soviet Union passed long ago.
According to
Hugo Chavez, when he came to power in Venezuela in 1999, “the only light on the
house at that time was Cuba,” meaning that Cuba was the only country in the
region free of U.S. imperial domination. Thanks to the perseverance of Fidel
and the Cuban people, now much of Latin America has been freed from the bonds
of the U.S. Empire.
That Cuba not
only stands 25 years after the collapse of the USSR, but indeed prospers and
remains as a beacon to other countries, is a testament to Fidel’s revolutionary
fervor and fortitude. Indeed, Fidel’s very life at this point – one that the
U.S. has tried to extinguish on literally hundreds of occasions – itself
constitutes an act of brave deviance against wealth, power and imperialist
aggression. Incredibly, Fidel has survived 12 U.S. Presidents, a full quarter
of all the U.S. Presidents since the founding of our nation.
I join the
world in honoring Fidel Castro Ruz on his birthday, and hope that he continues
to live and to lead for some time to come.
Daniel Kovalik lives in
Pittsburgh and teaches International Human Rights Law at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Law.
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