Their man in Havana
Bolivia has benefited from a close relationship with Fidel Castro, especially in relation to healthcare. What will happen to that now?
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
All Hugh O'Shaughnessy articles
February 20, 2008 4:00 PM
As a downcast Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, talked yesterday of the retirement of Fidel Castro from the Cuban presidency, it was clear he was lamenting one who had been a friend and firm support since the Bolivian came into office in January 2006 after a smashing electoral victory. No international expert, Morales is committed to the most profound reforms in a country where the large indigenous majority has been reduced over the past five centuries to helots by the white and near-white elites with their cultural roots in Europe. He needs all the help he can get and cannot afford to lose an ally like the Cuban.
Morales, an Aymara who rose from a village where he ate the orange peel dropped from passing buses, organised the lads into a football team and went on to fame as the trumpeter in his band, the Imperial Royals, is attempting more thoroughgoing transformation than even Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. He has needed Fidel.
Havana was one of Morales' first main stops in December 2005 on his international tour after his electoral victory in December 2005. Castro has been a pillar to him politically - as Chávez has been his banker - while Bolivia builds up its financial strength from cash flowing into the hitherto empty Bolivian coffers from high oil, gas and metals prices and the better much fairer deals that the Bolivians have prised out of foreign companies. The Cubans came up with the goods.
Bolivia has mounted an extraordinary education programme with Cuban texts and TV sets and 118 Cuban and 18 Venezuelan literacy experts who are training local teachers. "The province of Oruro will be declared literate at the beginning of March". Rafael Dauza, the Cuban ambassador told me on Tuesday: "... and the whole country will follow by the end of the year when it'll be the third totally literate country in Latin America. So far we've helped 464,000 Bolivians to read and write and there are a few tens of thousands to go."
The Cuban record in helping to set up minimum health standards is even more extraordinary. There are 2,000 Cuban medical staff, including 1,300 fully qualified doctors, up and down the country today, including in the backlands where many locals fear to tread. The Cubans have set up 20 simple hospitals in each of the last two years. Preventative health, a Cuban speciality, has been a priority with emphasis on reducing infantile mortality and increasing life expectancy. Dauza says:
"We given 9,300,000 medical consultations. That's more than the population of Bolivia - obviously some have had 10 consultations and some have never come. There have been 200,000 eye operations at the joint Cuban-Venezuelan eye hospitals. None of this has cost the patients or the Bolivian government a penny and we've used our own kit and supplies. It's all been free to Bolivia."
More:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/hugh_oshaughnessy/2008/02/their_man_in_havana.htmlHugh O'Shaughnessy is a prize-winning journalist who has written on Latin America for over 40 years for newspapers including The Observer and the Financial Times. He has published a number of books on the region, including Pinochet and the Politics of Torture.
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