Why Hate Cuba? Especially Its Medical Practices

Going back to Cuba’s 1959 revolution we can see that it occurred during the cold war anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era which permeated that time. Though the Cuban revolution was (and continues to be) portrayed as a “Communist” revolution, it was not. When Fidel Castro visited New York in April 1959, he described it as a “humanist revolution” which focused on land reform, literacy, and of course, the hostility of the Batista regime to granting those. However, then vice-president Richard Nixon played no small part in converting Fidel to communism. When Fidel met with him in New York, Nixon showed no interest in the social reforms that Fidel tried to explain. Being “gratuitously snubbed” by Nixon, Fidel left convinced that Cuba would not receive any support from the US. Today’s hostility toward Cuba is part of a broader onslaught by the US against any country that fails to submit to its imperial power. The US has been outraged that it and its proxy forces have been defeated by popular movements. Three stand out. The backbone of Cuba’s revolutionary alliance was the July 26 movement headed by Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. It was only when the fanatically anti-Communist John and Bobby Kennedy gave the green light to the April, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion that Cuba first announced that the revolution was “socialist.” That attack from Florida by Cuban counterrevolutionaries was soundly defeated by Cuban forces under Fidel’s leadership. The second victory of a popular movement was in Viet Nam from the 1960s and early 1970s. That US onslaught was defeated so badly that Nixon had to order the last troops to run out as fast as they could go in 1973. Che Guevara helped set the stage for the third defeat. Beginning in 1964 he made multiple trips to get a first-hand look at African movements in Algeria, Ghana, the Congo, Guinea, Mali, Benin, Tanzania and Egypt. In April, 1974 Portugal dictator Marcello Caetano fell, unleashing a wave of popular movements in its former colonies. The greatest struggle occurred in Angola. Revolutionary forces were backed by Cuba; South African forces did the dirty work of the US. Though not often recognized, Viet Nam became a spectacular win for Africa. The Viet Nam war and military draft were despised so much by American youth that not even southern racists could envision US ground troops in another war at the time of Angola. Terrified that its youth would refuse to participate in a war to suppress Angola and defend apartheid, the US let South Africa do the fighting. Suffering a tremendous defeat at the hands of Angolan/Cuban troops, South Africa withdrew in August, 1988. South African society changed and elected Nelson Mandela to head the country in 1994. Cuba had been the critical actor in the victorious struggle. When South Africans opened Freedom Park in Pretoria in 2007, its Wall of Names recognized the more than 2000 Cubans who lost their lives in the Angolan war. Cuba is the only foreign country represented on the Wall. The US military brass seethed at the thought of a people’s army defeating one with vastly more weapons and resources. It is hardly an accident that victimization by American imperialism is against people of color in whatever corner of the world where they live. Yet there has always been a particular loathing of Black people, whether they were in Africa or were their slave descendants in the Americas. The most extreme early hatred of the Cuban revolution was from white southern aristocrats and politicians who went berserk at the spectacle of Black Cubans taking up arms against their oppressors. It was much like the vitriol of their wealthy ancestors who had glared at images of Toussaint Louverture leading slaves to victory over masters and muttered that they would destroy Haiti for that outrage. Shortly after 1959, Black Cubans, especially those living in the most impoverished rural areas, glared back as they were the first generation taking their children to see doctors and saw clinics and hospitals being erected for them. For Black Cubans during the early 1960s, these were simultaneously part of their realities – press portrayals of Black Americans in the South who demanded the right to sit at lunch counters being beaten and bitten by dogs as police put cattle prods to the breasts of Black women. US rulers had long felt an affinity for South African apartheid. Trump revealed this openly when he announced that whites in that country deserved special immigration status due to the supposed mistreatment at the hand of Blacks. It was not unlike France demanding money from Haiti for the financial “loss” of their slave property as the price for recognizing the revolution. Another reason that the rich and powerful hate Cuba is the way it does so much better than the US in caring for its own people. Intentional efforts to destroy the Cuban medical system have occurred without documentation of any harm to any American from the island nation. The revolution continued to be very real for Cubans as thousands received land and learned to read and write. Cuba greatly expanded non-toxic agriculture during the post-1991 embargo. But nowhere has Cuba exceeded more spectacularly than its medical revolution. Soon after 1959 pharmaceutical production was nationalized so people could afford medicines; clinics opened where there had been none; and a series of redesigns transformed the entire medical system. Cuba greatly expanded medical education, admitting students who had been previously been shut out. When students graduate from medical school they have no debts to repay, unlike in the US where debt forces graduates to search for high-paying jobs in the sickness industry. For the first few years after the revolution infant mortality increased. But as the new medical approach took hold it dropped, and, by 1998 the infant mortality rate in Cuba was down to 7.1 per 1000 live births, overtaking that in the US, which stood at 7.6 per 1000 live births. Life expectancy (LE) also surpassed that in the US. By 2016 Cuba’s LE was 79.0 years when it was 78.5 years in the US. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving Cuba without its best trading partner. During the extreme hardship of the “Special Period” of the 1990s, Cuba’s economy shrank by 40-45%. Tightened sanctions from the US left Cuba with serious damage to its economy, including higher costs for drugs, including those for treating HIV/AIDS. The US Toricelli law of 1992 and Helms-Burton law of 1996 were designed to isolate and strangle Cuba by limiting its trade. Cuba’s extensive medical research allowed it to have a rapid response to the HIV/AIDS crisis that arrived in the 1980s. The nation focused its resources on developing treatment which was provided at no charge to everyone infected. At the same time that New York City (with a population similar to Cuba) had 43,000 deaths from AIDS, Cuba suffered 200 deaths. Its research also prepared the island nation for Covid 19 even before its first fatality. Without a nationalized medical system, the US was woefully incompetent in responding to the epidemic. US LE dropped by 1.36 years for whites, 3.25 years for Hispanics, 3.88 years for Blacks, and an incredible 6.6 years for Native Americans. Meanwhile, Cuba had a slight increase in LE by 0.2 years. This difference was a testimony to the extreme racism which persists in the growth-oriented US. Another reason that the rich and powerful hate Cuba is the way it cares for people throughout the world. Both the US and Cuba have sought to influence other countries. But their techniques have been quite different. The US seeks to prove that it is better at killing than any other nation. Cuba seeks to show the poor world that it can help them develop health care for all of their people at an affordable level. Shortly after its revolution Cuba began sending doctors and nurses around the world. In 1963, Cuba’s first official medical brigade went to Algeria with 55 staff, including 29 doctors. Brigades soon expanded across the globe, especially in Africa and Latin America. By 2014, 135,000 Cuban medical staff had worked in 158 countries. For countless people in many countries, the first time they have seen a doctor has either been one from Cuba or one trained in Cuba. In fact, as of 2009, “almost 2 million people throughout the world owe their very lives to the availability of Cuban medical services.” By now the number of patients far exceeds 2 million. A second form of Cuban medical internationalism has been responses to crises. Even before going to Algeria, during the year following its revolution, Cuba sent medical aide to Chile for earthquake assistance. Just a few of the large number of Cuban crisis interventions include an aggressive anti-malaria campaign in Africa in 2002-2004; medical teams going to Sri Lanka and Indonesia after a massive tsunami of December 2004; and 2000 personnel assisting Pakistan following a huge 2005 earthquake. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown resulted in 125,000 deaths and 150,000 being evacuated. In perhaps its largest undertaking, Cuba supported victims throughout its harsh “Special Period” – in March 1990 it took in a group of 25,000 patients, mostly children. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti brought medical staff from both the US and Cuba. However, US physicians practiced “medical tourism” as they stayed in luxury hotels at night and did disaster relief during the day. In contrast, Cuban doctors had been in Haiti before the crisis, stayed after disaster recovery was completed, and, during the crisis, lived and slept in the same camps as earthquake victims, smelling the smells of non-sanitation and attending to the dying even at night. As decades went by Cuba developed an internationalism that outshone US by far. Cuba’s sending doctors even to aid richer countries like Italy during Covid inspired suggestions, such as that from Code Pink, that they should receive the 2021 Nobel Prize for their medical aide. Of all countries needing help, only one totally refused assistance from Cuba. Following the 2005 Katrina Hurricane, George W. Bush ignored Cuba’s offer to send 1500 medical staff to New Orleans. By the late 1990s the small island nation had often brought students from overseas to study to become doctors. In October 1998 Hurricane Mitch wrought incredible destruction to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Beliz and El Salvador. Mitch was a unique event because it sparked the creation of ELAM, Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (Latin American School of Medicine). After the hurricane Fidel decided to bring students from other countries to Cuba to study medicine. ELAM began in 1999. ELAM aimed to reverse the “brain drain” of medical student graduates leaving their homes in poor countries to earn far higher salaries in the rich world. After its 1964 independence only 50 of 600 doctors trained in Zambia remained there. A student in Sierra Leone could earn 20 times more by practicing in South Africa as would be made by staying home. At ELAM, students prepare to return as doctors in their own under-served communities. Cuban medical training focuses on public health and primary care to provide what the poor world needs most. In January 2014 there were 11,000 students from 123 countries at ELAM. 75% of students accepted for ELAM come from worker or campesino families. ELAM students are integrated into 21 faculties and 444 polyclinics throughout Cuba’s 15 provinces. All have courses in traditional and natural medicine which proves invaluable if they practice medicine “in indigenous communities where shamans are often the trusted health providers.” When visiting my daughter at ELAM in 2009-2010, I spoke with students from Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Peru, St. Lucia (in Caribbean), Sierra Leone, Kenya, São Tomé and Príncipe (off African coast) Lesotho, and Tuvalu. I found that many students have arrangements with their governments to pay for their medical training. In exchange for having it paid for, they will work for several years (often 5) at a public medical institution. Students from Latin America and Africa typically attend ELAM immediately after high school. No student I spoke with ever raised the possibility of becoming wealthy by studying medicine in Cuba. Most of them would not have been able to go to medical school had it not been for ELAM. This indicates that the shortage of doctors in impoverished areas has nothing to do with a lack of young people willing to become doctors and working in those communities. Cuban medicine has been critical to the poor world due to the way it makes drugs available. Though Americans are highly unlikely to learn it from the corporate press, Cuba spreads medical assistance by providing drugs to the poor world at low cost. Before the revolution, 70% of Cuba’s pharmaceutical industry was foreign-controlled and only 1000 of 4000 medications in use had therapeutic value. In 1961, the new government nationalized 35 warehouses and 370 pharmacies. By 1968, urban pharmacies had decreased by more than half, but rural pharmacies, where the poorest Cubans lived, had increased five-fold. Cuba has produced new medicines and shared its knowledge about them in ways that empower rather than subdue poor countries. Use of Heberprot B to treat diabetes has reduced amputations by 80%. Cuban researchers have created an effective vaccine against type-B bacterial meningitis. It has developed the first synthetic vaccine for Haemophilius influenza type B (Hib). Providing vaccines such as these has resulted in the immunization of millions of Latin American children. Collaboration with Brazil has resulted in meningitis vaccines at a cost of 95¢ rather than $15 to $20 per dose. Cuba and Brazil are also working together on Interferon alpha 2b for hepatitis C and recombinant human erythropoletin (rHuEPO) for anemia. In contrast to this international medical solidarity, the US sickness industry has the compassion of a school of leering sharks about to begin