Cuban weed marabu 'could be turned to fuel'

Sugar Mill at Ciro Redondo, Cuba

This article was written by Sarah Rainsford for BBC News

Drive anywhere in the Cuban countryside and you will spot the marabu lining the road: a dense, woody weed that grows as tall as trees and has invaded vast swathes of agricultural land.

The land-grab began in the 1990s when Cuba was in economic crisis following the collapse of its great benefactor, the Soviet Union. The mighty sugar industry slumped too, and cane fields were overrun by marabu. But to one British firm, the aggressive weed is less a problem than a valuable resource.

Havana Energy has just signed a $50m (£31m) investment deal to build a renewable-energy power plant in central Cuba, supplying one of the country's biggest sugar mills as well as the national grid. During the harvest it will be fuelled by sugar-cane residue, known as bagasse. The rest of the year it will be fed with marabu.

"Marabu has a very high calorific level and low moisture, so as biomass it's very attractive," explains the firm's CEO, Andrew Macdonald.

Benefits for all

Harvesting marabu will also address a pressing issue on the island.

"Seventy per cent of the food Cubans consume is imported, which is a national tragedy with their climate and soil," says technical director Keith Dawson. "Every Cuban hates marabu so we're doing a service: not just removing it but also returning the land to farming."

The deal is a joint-venture with Cuba's state sugar monopoly and is part of a move by the Communist government to diversify its energy supply away from dependence on subsidised, imported oil from its socialist ally, Venezuela.

"Cuba relies on diesel-powered power stations, which are even less green than coal, very expensive and give-off horrible emissions," Mr Macdonald explains, saying his firm's green energy will also be cheaper.

Now the papers have finally been signed, the British team face their first major test. Early next year they will import a combination of forestry and construction equipment that they hope can harvest the marabu economically. No-one has managed that yet.

"You can't underestimate marabu. We've brought foresters to look at it and they've been confused, and agricultural kit is not strong enough," says agricultural adviser Julian Bell.

'Terrible state'

The plant's woody roots vary in size and are as dense as teak with fierce thorns. "Usually you just wouldn't bother. But I don't know anywhere else with 1.5 million hectares covered in such a good energy source," he says.

There is another incentive. Research at Strathclyde University has revealed that marabu produces high-grade activated carbon for use in filters - like in Cuban rum production. Potentially, the carbon could also be used in new-generation fast-charging batteries.

So Havana Energy will bring a reactor to the Ciro Redondo mill next year to trial carbon manufacturing.

In the small town that grew up around the sugar mill, there is a good deal of expectation about the investment. The joint venture should create around 60 new jobs and includes funds to upgrade the dilapidated mill itself, now a century old. Only one of its three crushing machines are operational, it still has Soviet-era signs and ageing east German equipment, and large sections of the roof are missing.

"It's in a terrible state," says retired sugar-worker Oberto Vazquez as he passes on his bicycle. "When it rains, it rains more inside than out."

So for Cuba this venture is not only about sourcing alternative energy.

The government is in the midst of a drive to boost sugar production, cashing in on higher global prices and increased demand from countries like China. It has reopened almost a dozen old mills, targeting 20% production growth per year.

Tackling weeds

It has allowed foreign funds into the sector for the first time since the 1959 revolution. As well as the British venture, a Brazilian firm has been contracted to manage another large mill in a nearby province.

"The main [British] investment is to build the power plant, but we have negotiated access to credit to improve the cane fields and the sugar mill itself," says Rafael Rivacoba, director of international relations at Azcuba, Cuba's sugar firm. "I think that's positive."

He describes further foreign investment in the sector as a possibility, but is cautious. The deal with Havana Energy took three years to negotiate.

"We're thinking about other things," he says, admitting that international sugar brokers are knocking at his door. "But nothing's been decided."

On the ground in Ciro Redondo though, funding from anywhere is welcome. The mill can only afford to irrigate 12% of its crops today; average yields in the cane fields are under half the international norm.

"We have the will and the knowledge," says manager Victor Dieguez. "But we need investment."

That is now on its way and if this pilot project succeeds, the British team has an option to build four more power plants at other sugar mills.

First though, it has to tackle the marabu: to prove that it does have the solution, to turn a weed into a valuable asset.

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How Cuba survived economic meltdown and became a world model of sustainability - organic farming, community gardens for growing food locally, use of renewable energy. Buy it on DVD from the Cuba Solidarity Campaign Shop.

One to Read: Sustainable Agriculture & Food Security in an Era of Oil Scarcity
Examination of Cuban agricultural experience since the Special Period. As Cuba seeks to avoid dependency on imported food goods and promote urban agriculture, can it provide a model for a post-petroleum food system? Buy it from the Cuba Solidarity Campaign Shop.

Why is Cuba’s health-care system the best model for poor countries?

Cuba-trained medical student examines Peruvian child, Lima, Peru, December 2010. Photo by Don Fitz.

Furious though it may be, the current debate over health care in the US is largely irrelevant to charting a path for the poor countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific Islands. That is because the US squanders perhaps 10 to 20 times what is needed for a good, affordable medical system. The waste is far more than the 30% overhead by private insurance companies. It includes an enormous amount of over-treatment, making the poor sicker by refusing them treatment, exorbitant over-pricing of medications and medical procedures, creation of illnesses, exposure to contagion through over-hospitalisation, and disease-focused instead of prevention-focused research.

Poor countries simply cannot afford such a health system. Well over 100 countries are looking to the example of Cuba, which has the same 78-year life expectancy of the US while spending 4% per person annually of what the US does.

The most revolutionary idea of the Cuban system is doctors living in the neighbourhoods they serve. A doctor-nurse team is part of the community and know their patients well because they live at (or near) the consultorio (doctors’ office) where they work. Consultorios are backed up by policlínicos which provide services during off-hours and offer a wide variety of specialists. Policlínicos coordinate community health delivery and link nationally designed health initiatives with their local implementation.

Cubans call their system medicina general integral (MGI, comprehensive general medicine). Its programs focus on preventing people from getting diseases and treating them as rapidly as possible.

The MGI integration of neighbourhood doctors’ offices with area clinics and a national hospital system also means the country responds well to emergencies. It has the ability to evacuate entire cities during a hurricane largely because consultorio staff know everyone in their neighbourhood and know who to call for help getting disabled residents out of harm’s way.

New York City (roughly the same population as Cuba) had 43,000 cases of AIDS, Cuba had 200 AIDS patients. More recent emergencies such as outbreaks of dengue fever are quickly followed by national mobilisations.

Cuba is a leader in eradicating diseases: Pedro Kouri Institute of Topical Medicine, Havana, Cuba, May 2012. Photo by Don Fitz.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of Cuban medicine it that, despite its being a poor country itself, Cuba has sent more than 124,000 health-care professionals to provide care to 154 countries. In addition to providing preventive medicine Cuba sends response teams following emergencies (such as earthquakes and hurricanes) and has more than 20,000 students from other countries studying to be doctors at its Latin American School of Medicine in Havana (ELAM, Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina).

In a recent Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal article, I gave in-depth descriptions of ELAM students participating in Cuban medical efforts in Haiti, Ghana and Peru. What follows are 10 generalisations from Cuba’s extensive experience in developing medical science and sharing its approach with poor countries throughout the world. The concepts form the basis of the new global medicine and summarise what many authors have observed in dozens of articles and books.

First, it is not necessary to focus on expensive technology as the initial approach to medical care. Cuban doctors use machines that are available, but they have an amazing ability to treat disaster victims with field surgery. They are very aware that most lives are saved through preventive medicine such as nutrition and hygiene and that traditional cultures have their own healing wisdom. This is in direct contrast to Western medicine, especially as is dominant in the US, which uses costly diagnostic and treatment techniques as the first approach and is contemptuous of natural and alternative approaches.

Second, doctors must be part of the communities where they are working. This could mean living in the same neighbourhood as a Peruvian consultorio. It could mean living in a Venezuelan community that is much more violent than a Cuban one. Or it could mean living in emergency tents adjacent to where victims are housed as Cuban medical brigades did after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Or it could mean staying in a village guesthouse in Ghana. Cuba-trained doctors know their patients by knowing their patients’ communities. This differs sharply from US doctors, who receive zero training on how to assess homes of their patients.

Third, the MGI model outlines relationships between people that go beyond a set of facts. Instead of memorising mountains of information unlikely to be used in community health, which US students must do to pass medical board exams, Cuban students learn what is necessary to relate to people in consultorios, polyclínicos, field hospitals and remote villages. Far from being nuisance courses, studies in how people are bio-psycho-social beings are critical for the everyday practice of Cuban medicine.

Fourth, the MGI model is not static but is evolving and unique for each community. Western medicine searches for the correct pill for a given disease. In its rigid approach, a major reason for research is to discover a new pill after “side effects” of the first pill surface. Since traditional medicine is based on the culture where it has existed for centuries, the MGI model avoids the futility of seeking to impose a Western mindset on other societies.

Fifth, it is necessary to adapt medical aid to the political climate of the host country. This means using whatever resources the host government is able and willing to offer and living with restrictions. Those hosting a Cuban medical brigade may be friendly as in Venezuela and Ghana, hostile as is the Brazilian Medical Association, become increasingly hostile as occurred after the 2009 coup in Honduras, or change from hostile to friendly as occurred in Peru with the 2011 election of Ollanta Humala. This is quite different from US medical aid which, like its food aid, is part of an overall effort to dominate the receiving country and push it into adopting a Western model.

Sixth, the MGI model creates the basis for dramatic health effects. Preventive community health training, a desire to understand traditional healers, the ability to respond quickly to emergencies, and an appreciation of political limitations give Cuban medical teams astounding success. During the first 18 months of Cuba’s work in Honduras following Hurricane Mitch, infant mortality dropped from 80.3 to 30.9 per 1000 live births. When Cuban health professionals intervened in Gambia, malaria decreased from 600,000 cases in 2002 to 200,000 two years later. And Cuban/Venezuelan collaboration resulted in 1.5 million vision corrections by 2009. Kirk and Erisman conclude that “almost 2 million people throughout the world … owe their very lives to the availability of Cuban medical services.”

Seventh, the new global medicine can become reality only if medical staff put healing above personal wealth. In Cuba, being a doctor, nurse or support staff and going on a mission to another country is one of the most fulfilling activities a person can do. The program continues to find an increasing number of volunteers despite the low salaries that Cuban health professionals earn. There is definitely a minority of US doctors who focus their practice in low-income communities that have the greatest need. But there is no US political leadership which makes a concerted effort to get physicians to do anything other than follow the money.

Eighth, dedication to the new global medicine is now being transferred to the next generation. When students at Cuban schools learn to be doctors, dentists or nurses their instructors tell them of their own participation in health brigades in Angola, Peru, Haiti, Honduras and dozens of other countries. Venezuela has already developed its own approach of MIC (medicina integral communitaria, comprehensive community medicine), which builds upon, but is distinct from, Cuban MGI. Many ELAM students who work in Ghana as the Yaa Asantewaa Brigade are from the US. They learn approaches of traditional healers so they can compliment Ghanaian techniques with Cuban medical knowledge.

Ninth, the Cuban model is remaking medicine across the globe. Though best known for its successes in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, Cuba has also provided assistance in Asia and the Pacific islands. Cuba provided relief to the Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami and Pakistan after its 2005 earthquake. Many of the countries hosting Cuban medical brigades are eager for them to help redesign their own health-care systems. Rather than attempting to make expensive Western techniques available to everyone, the Cuban MGI model helps re-conceptualise how healing systems can meet the needs of a country’s poor.

Tenth, the new global medicine is a microcosm of how a few thousand revolutionaries can change the world. They do not need vast riches, expensive technology or a massive increase in personal possessions to improve the quality of people’s lives. If dedicated to helping people while learning from those they help, they can prefigure a new world by carefully utilising the resources in front of them. Such revolutionary activity helps show a world facing acute climate change that it can resolve many basic human needs without pouring more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Discussions of global health in the West typically bemoan the indisputable fact that poor countries still suffer from chronic and infectious diseases that rich countries have controlled for decades. International health organisations wring their hands over the high infant mortality rates and lack of resources to cope with natural disasters in much of the world.

But they ignore the one health system that actually functions in a poor country, providing health care to all of its citizens as well as millions of others around the world. The conspiracy of silence surrounding the resounding success of Cuba’s health system proves the unconcern by those who piously claim to be the most concerned.

How should progressives respond to this feigned ignorance of a meaningful solution to global health problems? A rational response must begin with spreading the word of Cuba’s new global medicine through every source of alternative media available. The message needs to be: Good health care is not more expensive — revolutionary medicine is far more cost effective than corporate controlled medicine.

This article was written by Don Fitz for the Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. View the original article with references here.

The incredible story of Cuban medical internationalism

Source: The New Internationalist

Latin America 2012 Conference Report

Over 400 delegates attended a packed Conway Hall for the eighth annual Latin America Conference. Whilst progressive governments across the continent lead the challenge to neo-liberal hegemony, the threat of US imperialism remains a real and present danger. In that context, solidarity and support for Latin America is needed now more than ever, writes Bob Oram.

It is impossible to put in words the feeling I had listening to Aidee Moreno from Colombia’s agricultural workers union. It is shocking when she describes how her husband was murdered in 1994, her mother ten years later and then numerous other members of her family. On top of this you are numb listening to tales of the 1,000’s of members assassinated, disappeared or in prison.

Living with two bodyguards because she is a trade union leader, Aidee is a brave and stoic individual who makes a powerful case for international solidarity. Echoing Frances O’Grady’s earlier comment that it is “wrong for the EU to give its stamp of approval to a free trade agreement with Colombia,” Aidee urged us to lobby MEPs to reject a deal that will not benefit workers. Welcoming the current peace talks brokered by Cuba with the FARC and Colombian government in Havana, she re-iterated that this is a critical moment for her members with violence and threats on the increase. Our support and solidarity is needed more than ever.

Frances O’Grady, TUC General Secretary designate, welcomed delegates from Latin America to cold austerity Britain. She praised the huge social and economic advances made across the continent and the “spectacular re-election of Hugo Chavez”. She spoke of her pride speaking at the Vigil for the Miami Five outside the US embassy with Che’s daughter Aleida, and noted that Cuba still defies US might and economic power to put its people first.

Jacobo Torres, Executive Committee of the Venezuelan Socialist Party, lamented the western press that call his country a dictatorship. He joked that, having had 14 elections in 13 years, they should have a place in the Guinness Book of Records. With an 81% turnout and 55% of the vote in the presidential elections, Chavez has a legitimacy that our politicians can only fantasise about.

“We are building a participatory democracy. While the rest of the world talks about it, we are creating it. It is not the democratisation of poverty as they claim but the real transfer of power to people, so that they can govern and be in control of their own destiny,” Jacobo said to huge applause.

Journalist Victoria Brittain spoke about Cuba’s role 40 years ago at the heart of African liberation and drew lessons for Latin America now. Describing the hope encapsulated on Cuba’s Island of Youth, meeting African children who had arrived skinny and traumatised but who grew to be confident and positive, she praised Cuba’s enormous support for African liberation, especially the MPLA in Angola. Reflecting on the strategies employed by the US to topple progressive post-colonial regimes – assassinations, funding ‘oppositions’, smear media stories, economic attacks and corrupting elites – she saw hope today for Latin America in the fact that the ruthless undercurrent of the cold war is no longer prevalent and the internet makes us more aware of what is happening globally.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, praised Cuba and all the countries defending their sovereignty and independence in a world dominated by capital. The Bolivarian alternative demonstrates “a world can be built based on need and not greed” he said to cheers from delegates.

Seminars

As always, the only criticism of the day is that you have to make choices. With over 16 seminars and film screenings, something is always missed. This year over 50 speakers covered everything from threats to the Amazon, media misrepresentation, the future of the Malvinas, ALBA, Latin America and austerity, and country-specific reports from Ecuador, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia.

A packed workshop heard about Cuba and its efforts to update its socialist model. Tony Kapcia, University of Nottingham, contrasted the styles of Fidel and Raul but emphasised their shared ideology. He explained that Cuba should not be viewed through the lens of Eastern European socialism but more as a ‘nation-building’ de-colonisation process that has, for fifty years, involved mass mobilisations of the people.

Echoing this theme, Steve Ludlam, Sheffield University, asserted that this is not a change in the system but a change in political culture that is defined by high levels of participation. Public meetings attended by 9 million people ensured less than a third of the original economic proposals survived. Policies such as the changes to exit visas and the sale of houses were proposed by ordinary Cubans as part of a citizen-led consultation.

On workplace changes, all attempts to increase productivity by redeploying state jobs to the private sector have to be approved by workplace assemblies with a 75% turnout. All jobs identified have to have clear justification agreed by democratically-elected committees. This ensures no personal reasons or prejudices could be used in selection.

Even with these safeguards, the trade unions found problems and the whole process was halted and the issues addressed. Trade unions have ensured new safeguards for all the new workers and are recruiting heavily on the back of this. For example, before the reforms, 2% of private transport operators were unionised. That figure now stands at 80%.

Both Kapcia and Ludlam made clear that politics in Cuba is a collectivised process where everyone is represented. Government is accountable – not to outside forces or capital – but society.

Carlos Alfaro from the Cuban Embassy thanked the UK government and individual donors that have contributed to the Emergency Appeal for Cuba following Hurricane Sandy. Cuba is facing huge challenges to repair and rebuild the areas devastated by the worst storm to hit that part of the island for 50 years.

Sean Crowe, Sinn Fein TD, praised Cuba’s friendship with Ireland and wryly reflected on two small islands oppressed for many years by their nearest neighbour. Highlighting the vote this year at the UN condemning the US blockade, he spoke of the damage it causes to people’s lives. Describing it as “plain wrong,” he decried the immorality of not saving children’s lives when the means to do so are readily available.

“The blockade has cost lives simply because of the fear of what Cuba is, its inspiration, symbolism and potential for the rest of the world” he said in a workshop on the blockade alongside the Cuban Ambassador, Esther Armenteros.

Esther re-iterated the desire for centuries of the US to see Cuba “fall like a ripe apple into their hands” and the fact they have never forgiven them for building a different society “in their own backyard”. Describing how Obama has weakened his anti-Cuban rhetoric whilst tightening the blockade, she highlighted how it hurts American citizens as well as Cubans. Stressing that Cuba wants to live in peace with its nearest neighbour (“we and they cannot go anywhere”). However, it has to be as full equals and Cubans are prepared to “go on as long as it takes defending our sovereignty and independence”.

Rob Miller, Director of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, urged delegates to ask their MP’s to sign Early Day Motion 497 calling for visitation rights for the wives of the Miami Five. Over 100 MP’s have now signed – but more are needed.

Closing Rally

Guillaume Long, President of Ecuador’s Higher Education Council, spoke of the many achievements of the government elected in 2006. He explained how Ecuador, by tackling tax evasion, has increased tax revenues from 2.7 billion to 9.3 billion dollars. This has enabled money to be spent on public services. The new constitution enshrines rights for Ecuadorians that are helping repair the sense of nationhood in a state devastated by past instability and economic neo-liberal experiments. The failed 2010 coup signalled the intent of the right but he is hopeful that the forthcoming elections will be peaceful and that the citizen’s revolution of President Correa will continue.

Guardian writer Seamus Milne highlighted the democratic nature developments across Latin America. Openings in media, advances for indigenous populations, economic integration and independent foreign policies are all signs of a 21st century socialism in the making. Fearing the capacity for reversals, he warned about his recent experiences observing the Venezuelan elections and the insidious role of the CIA. However his belief in the strength of the people and the “bankruptcy of neo-liberal economics” provides hope for the future.

Jeremy Corbyn MP rounded off a great day by calling on George Osborne to learn lessons from Ecuador, Jeremy Hunt to visit Cuba’s health service and for the government to take advice from Bolivia on climate change and Venezuela on elections. Praising the ALBA alternative, he described it as “not just an economic model” but a way of taking the different strengths from countries and sharing. The 69 million people of ALBA and the non-aligned movement are a vital and important counter-force to the unaccountable power of the multi-nationals and we all need to stand firm in solidarity with them. Next year he said, “is the 40th anniversary of Allende’s murder” a stark reminder of the lengths to which the US will be go to extinguish every beacon of hope. In Conway Hall, with a motto on the roof urging, “To thine own self be true” it was a fitting end to a great day, as he urged vigilance and increased solidarity with all the countries in Latin America.

Delegates left to a bucket collection for the emergency appeal for Hurricane Sandy which struck Cuba in November. The collection raised a magnificent £774.90 which will be sent to Cuba immediately.

If you would like to donate, please send your donation to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, c/o Unite Woodberry, 218 Green Lanes, London, N4 2HB. Cheques or postal orders should be made payable to ‘CSC’, and clearly marked on the back ‘Hurricane relief’. Further information on the hurricane relief effort here.

A selection of photos from Latin America 2012 can be seen here.

It's time to end the 50-year blockade of Cuba

Many people believe that the 1962 "October crisis," as the Cubans call it, represents the closest that the world has ever come to a nuclear war. It was a defining moment of John F Kennedy's presidency, a touchstone of cold war history.

For 13 days the United States and the Soviet Union came close to the unthinkable. US defence secretary Robert McNamara wondered whether he "would live to see another Saturday night" and Dino Brugioni, a member of the CIA team monitoring the weapons build-up, saw no way out except "war and complete destruction."

Although Cuba was sidelined in the ultimate resolution between Kennedy and Khrushchov, a commitment was given that the US would not invade the island. Technically Washington has kept to this - with no overt military action since the Bay of Pigs - but the last 50 years have been marked by aggressive interference in every other manner.

The "October crisis" was simply the continuance of an unrelenting obsession with Cuba and an unremitting class hatred and fear of the Cuban revolution. US interference in Cuba dates right back to the start of the 20th century. After the Spanish-American war the US Congress passed the Platt amendment of 1902, which stipulated that Cuba "shall never entry into treaty ... with any foreign power," that Cuba's finances would be under the control of the US and that it would "exercise the right to intervene." It also said the US would have a right to a military base on the island.

Although the Platt amendment was repealed in 1934 every president since the passing of that legislation has sought to achieve its objectives. Eisenhower began to plot the overthrow of Fidel Castro soon after the triumph of the Cuban revolution.

At the national security council meeting on January 14 1960 undersecretary of state Livingston Merchant noted that "our present objective was to adjust all our actions in such a way as to accelerate the development of an opposition in Cuba which would bring about … a new government favourable to US interests."

The programme drawn up by Merchant led directly to the Bay of Pigs. At the same time a national intelligence estimate made clear what the new fear was, noting that "Latin America is ripe for revolution in one form or another."

It was the example of Cuba, the potential of Cuba, that had to be destroyed at all costs. That is why Kennedy chose his brother in 1961 to lead a top-level agency group to oversee Operation Mongoose, a programme of paramilitary operations, economic warfare and sabotage designed to visit the "terrors of the earth" on Castro and topple him from power.

That is why, as the Excomm tapes clearly show, Kennedy's advisers were ready to go to war over Cuba and the missiles. As McNamara said 30 years later, "If I had been a Cuban or Soviet leader, I think I might have expected a US invasion."

Analysis written by the State Department policy planning council in 1964 offers further insight.

"Perhaps of even greater moment is that the primary danger we face in Castro is ... the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movements in many Latin American countries."

How prescient this was and how responsible it has been for the fear that has driven over 50 years of economic blockade as well as terrorism, pollution, chemical warfare, assassination attempts and the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to overthrow a sovereign state.

It has driven laws through Congress further tightening all aspects of the brutal policy so eloquently denounced by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla on November 13 2012 at the United Nations, when for the 21st time the world voted for the end of the US blockade. Rodriguez provided a huge list of medicines and equipment that Cuba is prevented from buying from US companies and the terrible suffering this causes patients.

He gave the names and ages of babies and young children waiting for heart operations because they are prevented from accessing the food supplement needed for intravenous feeding.

The patients forced to be sent to third countries because US companies could not sell Cuba life-saving medicines for their specialist conditions. The children who lost their eyesight because the US government prevented their doctors from buying the cancer drugs that could save their eyes - 15 in the last year alone.

What is abundantly clear to everyone around the world is that US hostility to Cuba does not stem from its alleged human rights failings but from its social and political successes and the challenge its unyielding independence offers them. It is the fact that they have chosen socialism that the US cannot accept.

Saddled with a siege economy by the illegal US blockade and a war-time political culture ever since the October crisis the people have achieved health and education standards that match or outstrip not only the US but countries in Europe as well.

It is Cuba's selfless internationalism and solidarity, sending teachers, doctors and nurses to over 70 countries around the world, that shows what can be achieved by focusing on humanity and not wars.

As Fidel said in 2005 to an audience of students, "We have never considered producing nuclear weapons.

"We possess a weapon as powerful as nuclear power and it is the immense justice for which we are struggling. Our nuclear weapon is the invincible power of moral weapons."

President Barack Obama ran under the electoral banner "Forward." If he genuinely wants change we can believe in he can start with his anachronistic cold war policy towards Cuba, which not only alienates the US from its neighbours in Latin America but from the rest of the world as well.

When will he accept that 188 countries opposing the US is a mandate for real change?

•    This article was written by Bob Oram for the Morning Star. Bob will be one of over 50 speakers at the Latin America Conference this Saturday at Conway Hall, London WC1. You can book tickets online here.

America's morbid fascination with Castro's mortality

Sarah Stephens, Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, writes for the Huffington Post:

Since the Cold War, the United States has had an unhealthy preoccupation with Fidel Castro's mortality. It's like a vestigial tail that our body politic refuses to shake.

Killing Fidel Castro started as a high U.S. government priority before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, as the National Security Archives - and many others - have thoroughly documented. Our government spent years, directly and indirectly, trying to hasten his demise. As years past, and plot piled upon plot, a rough accounting tells us that Cuba's former leader endured 600 assassinations attempts. He joked a few years back, "If surviving assassination were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal."

Not so funny for the United States. Covert action plans like trying to kill Castro, and eliminating other leaders, was undertaken by the executive branch of our government without accountability and oversight. They were a scandal and they were dangerous to U.S. interests. Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart, a Member of "The Church Committee," which investigated the abuses beginning in 1975, wrote us about the executive order issued by President Ford that banned the policy:

It was a Republican president, Gerald Ford, and a wise one who decreed that the United States was out of the assassination business, a business that set us back in the court of world opinion to at least the same degree as our policy of unilateral invasions.

Nonetheless efforts via CIA "assets" to kill President Castro persisted but never succeeded into the new millennium, and the grim fascination with the Cuban leader's lifespan waxed with every news item about his health only to wane after he recovered.

In the summer of 2006, he temporarily stepped aside as president due to illness, setting off rounds of speculation about a possible cancer. Months later, the Director of National Intelligence, John D. Negroponte, told the Washington Post, "Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer . . . months, not years."

In 2007, the Miami city commission made plans to throw a party at the Orange Bowl when Castro died, but he outlived that facility which was demolished in 2008.

The rumors never stopped, long after the reins of power were formally transferred in February 2008, and Raúl Castro became Cuba's president. They intensified when he disappeared from public view after being photographed with Pope Benedict XVI. Alarms, false ones, apparently, were rung when he failed to respond publicly to President Hugo Chavez's re-election earlier this month. A Venezuelan journalist, according to the Miami Herald tweeted predictions that Cuba would announce Castro's death within 72 hours. Finally, a Venezuelan doctor who lives in Naples, Florida, who previously issued erroneous claims about Chavez's illness, proclaimed that sources in Cuba had told him that Fidel Castro had suffered a catastrophic stroke.

It turns out, the ghouls, once again, got it wrong. Castro's family issued a statement saying that Fidel was still alive. He published a letter, congratulating graduates on the anniversary of a Cuban medical institute. He met at the Hotel Nacional with Venezuela's former vice president, who waved a picture of the former leader looking very much alive. Finally, as the Associated Press reported, state media published a photograph of Castro holding a "proof of life," dated copy of the newspaper Granma, with an accompanying comment by the former president, "I don't even remember what a headache feels like."

But don't think this will put an end to the U.S. addiction to morbid speculation. The Cuban government protects the health condition of its leaders with the stamp of secrecy.

The city of Miami is updating its "Fidel death plan," and is busy finding a replacement site for its fiesta, as the Mayor Tomás Regalado confessed, the current document still lists the Orange Bowl as the place for celebrants to go.

Early this year, Governor Romney recommitted U.S. policy to the assassination route, "If I'm fortunate to become the next president of the United States it is my expectation that Fidel Castro will finally be taken off this planet."

Then, there's the Helms-Burton Act, which prevents the U.S. from recognizing the government of Cuba until its government no longer includes Fidel Castro and Raul Castro.

So far as we can see, the vestigial tail will continue to wag the dog of U.S. policy for a while longer.

US-Cuba ties: Obama win stirs little hope among Cubans

The day after the US elections, the central square in Florida was crowded at lunchtime: workers tucking into cheap pizzas on park benches, sheltering from the sun or chatting, leaning on their bicycles.

But unlike in its namesake across the water, President Barack Obama's victory was creating little stir in Cuba's own Florida.

"I didn't follow it at all," said Rafael, a computer technician on his lunch break.

"But I think Obama is better than the other one," he says, referring to defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney - a common view here.

President Obama is generally seen as the least worst option for Cuba. In his first term, he relaxed travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans to the island and lifted the limit on how much money they could send back to their families. That has made day-to-day life slightly easier for some - including here in Florida, Cuba - and for them, Mr Obama's re-election is a relief. Mr Romney slammed the policy change as "appeasement" and vowed to reverse it.

The changes have provided important funds, and supplies, for many of the Communist-run island's estimated 400,000 new, private businesses; and by extension they have helped those taking advantage of their new freedom to buy cars and houses, if they can afford it.

"That family help is very important in an under-developed country, you can really feel it here," said Rafael.

But, like many here, he had hoped for more.

Endless embargo?

The US president talked of a new era in relations with Latin America at the start of his first term but many Cubans are disappointed with the result.

"The only thing I would ask of him is to lift the blockade, so we Cubans can breathe a little," said Dana Yeves, buying a paper cone of donuts from a street cart.

The "blockade" is how Cubans refer to the five-decade old trade embargo imposed on the island by the United States. The embargo, dating from the Cold War, was aimed squarely at Cuba's leadership. Instead, ordinary Cubans have borne the brunt of a policy that prevents the sale to Cuba of all but medicine and food, while Fidel and now Raul Castro have run Cuba since 1959. Dana believes there is little chance that Mr Obama will end the embargo.

"I think he'd have done it already, if he was going to. The people controlling politics over there are the gusanos," she said, using the pejorative term "worms" for Cuban exiles in the US, who campaign relentlessly against any easing of the sanctions on Communist Cuba.

"Let's hope it happens, but I don't think the gusanos will let him change things even if he wanted to."

This month, the UN General Assembly will hold its annual discussion on the US policy, proposed by Cuba, and, as usual, is likely to vote overwhelmingly to condemn it.

Freeze or thaw?

Ahead of the debate, the Cuban government has been running its usual awareness-raising campaign in the national press, and screened a new documentary in Havana on the embargo's impact.

The film includes a young musician and a circus student explaining their difficulties, with captions blaming everything on the embargo.

"There's no reason to think anything would change, whoever is president," said Andor Piloto, who was in the audience. Like many there, he is an activist with Cuba's Communist Youth.

"I'm really not interested in who wins, we just want them to change more than 50 years of bad policy towards Cuba. We want to live without the blockade one day," Andor says.

"We want to be treated like any other country," he said as he and the other young Communists boarded old, yellow US school buses to head home.

"The Republicans do all they can to squeeze Cuba, but Obama has done nothing for us either," said Havana pensioner Alberto.

Improved remittances and flights for Cuban-Americans were all very well, Alberto said, but meant little to the vast majority of Cubans who like him had to get by with a state salary or pension of under $20 a month.

"I'd say the best thing he can do now would be to lift the blockade. That way it would show that all Cuba's problems can't be blamed on the blockade; they're Cuba's fault too," said Alberto.

With so much to occupy President Obama, it is hard to imagine that ending the embargo will be a priority. But it is the one thing Cubans want from the US - and the one unchanged element of their relationship for more than 50 years.

This article was written by Sarah Rainsford for the BBC