[INDEX |
NATIONAL
|
WORLD
|
PERSPECTIVE
|
COLUMNS
|
MONEY
|
ENTERTAINMENT
|
HEALTH
|
TECH
|
LETTERS
|
SUBSCRIBE]
FinalCall.com News
Perspectives
Time To Make Peace With Cuba
By Nicole C. Lee
-Guest Columnist-
Updated Jan 7, 2009 - 12:31:00 AM
January 1, 2009, marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Over the past 50 years Cuba has been a focal point of U.S. disdain.
Early in the morning of January 1, 1959, members of the July 26th Movement entered into Havana and took control of the government General Fulgencio Batista. Since coming to power in coup d’ètat in 1952, the brutal, U.S.-backed regime of General Batista had been facing rising opposition by the Cuban citizens and an armed rebellion known as the July 26th Movement. The leadership of the July 26th Movement included a young lawyer named Fidel Castro, his brother Raul Castro, and a doctor named Ernesto Che Guevara from Argentina.
Since the triumph of the Revolution, the U.S. has imposed an economic embargo as a “pressure point” to secure democracy and human rights in Cuba.
At the same time, these sanctions have been unduly cruel on Cuban citizens and have cut off American’s fundamental right to travel. Fifty years later it is time for the U.S. to admit that the embargo has failed and to engage in diplomacy and dialogue with Cuba.
Even under the grips of the embargo, Cuba is recognized as a leader in enforcing the right to health and boasts one of the best public healthcare systems on the globe.
The government has ensured that doctors are relatively close to the public they serve. According to a 2007/2008 UNDP Human Development Report, the doctor to population ratio in 2000-2004 was 591 physicians per 100,000 people compared to the United States’ 256.
Cuba has taken this achievement beyond its borders. For many years, the country has hosted medical students from countries such as Honduras, South Africa, Venezuela and Tanzania at minimum cost or full scholarship.
For over five years Cuba has been training young people from poor disenfranchised areas of the United States, under a program negotiated by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). The students receive full scholarships under a condition that when they graduate they return to their under-served communities.
Cuba also offered the U.S. assistance during the Hurricane Katrina crisis but the Bush administration refused.
From its inception, the Cuban Revolution has constantly worked with other people struggling to free themselves from oppression.
In the 1970s and the 1980s when South Africans and Namibians were fighting against the racist apartheid regime, it was the Cuban troops who supported the liberation movement. South Africa is free today partly because of the military support of Cuba to South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) and the Angolan government in repelling apartheid forces from Angola in the battle of Cuito-Cuanavale in March 1988.
A primary goal of the Revolution was to implement integrationist and redistributive policies that would eliminate the racial disparities that existed for hundreds of years since slavery and during the Spanish colonial period. Castro has also attributed the success of the revolution to the unity of all Cubans, across class lines.
The U.S. is also at a moment where its citizens have coalesced across class lines to bring about change at a critical time. Although the Cuban Revolution led to significant gains for Afro-descendants, we must remember that the legacy of global slavery and colonization did not leave any country unscathed. Just as discriminatory practices remain in parts of Cuba, so too do they persist in the United States–and progress along class lines does not mean that social distinctions such as race and ethnicity will not be used to maintain the status quo. Our job is to ensure that the status quo does not prevail.
After 50 years the time has come for the United States to normalize relations with Cuba. The hope is that in 2009 President Obama will open the lines of communications with Cuba and put to rest decades of unfounded fear and distress between the two nations.
(Nicole C. Lee is the executive director of TransAfrica Forum.)
