Demand of the Cuban People to the Socialist Military Junta for Imprisoning, Repressing, Plundering, and Re-impoverishing Cuba for a Half-Century.

 

 

 

 

Today, Cuba has many unknown features for many peoples in the world, including for its own Cuban people.

 

 

 

 

WE, THE PEOPLE, DEMAND:

 

 

 

 

1. All U.N. Human Rights and Civil Freedoms’ Observance.

 

 

 

Cuba in 1951-52 was a nation of immigrants advancing in national sovereignty, individual liberties, longevity, education, wealth, equality, and every modern standard and level of living of the western world, with multiple parties, free lections and free-market economy.

 

Since 1959 to 2009 the Socialist Military Junta and Communist one-party of Cuba violates unpunishedly most of the U.N. defined 30 articles of individual political rights and civil freedoms in 1948, crucial issue of the concepts about the human life wellbeing or overall quality of life and health support systems.

 

Cuba’s 90 miles from the US, converted its Island in 1959-2009 on the major Russian-Chinese bases overseas, to expand the Cold War against the US, and socialism in America and Africa. In spite of such deviation from peaceful development, the Military Junta justifies its socioeconomic debacle, only with the US ‘unjustified’ hostility and embargo, never with the 50-year self-blockade of Cubans normal way of living, work and education with an unsuccessful system.

 

Cuba’s military Junta as the Soviet one, indoctrinated, suppressing persons own thoughts, converting them in fundamentalist ideologists and military against the US-West. Autarky, central planning, old technology, lack of liberties, parties, private property, and working energy, worsened civil labor productivity, growth in income, consumption and living levels more than prioritized physical-health ones, as hunger and infant-maternal mortalities. Mental and social wellbeing and health depressed by terror, forcing captivity and penury, counterbalanced the healthy effects of massive instruction, equal subsistence security, and mortality reduction achieved.

 

The “thought control” through the communist party dependent massive daily propaganda media and masses, labor and social collective organisms closely bound together with a monstrous police machinery, makes each person ill and disabled mentally to discriminate well what is real or not, moral or not, and persons are converted in ideological slaves manipulated as part of a cattle herd.

 

 

 

 

Some human rights:

 

 

article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. […];

 

article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. […];

 

United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: UN Pub.  Available in: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml (Accessed 22 July 2009).

 

 

 

Human rights and liberties defined the key differences between a human community and a cattle herd.

 

 

The Soviet-Cuban social concept and system abuses the rights as follows:  

 

Everyone has the right to: liberty, security, asylum, own property;

 

Everyone has the right to: freedom of movement and residence in his country and abroad;

 

Everyone has the right to: freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression; seek, receive and impart information, ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers;

 

Everyone has the right to: peaceful assembly and association in parties; periodic, genuine elections by universal equal suffrage;

 

Everyone has the right to: free choice of employment, form and join trade unions; and choose the parents the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

 

No one shall be:  held in slavery or servitude; subjected to torture or cruel, degrading treatment or punishment, to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile, to interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence; and deprived of her/his properties.

 

In Cuba since 1959 to 2009, the Cubans have been totally discriminated in relation to any kind of foreign people living in the country; the university professionals have been totally degraded below the non-qualified workers in living levels; the key posts in the Military Junta and one-party are not for the blacks and women; the middle or high-class social origins of a citizen has been always a political sin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. All U.N. Overall and Integral Standards and Levels of Living’ Observance.

 

 

Since 1959 to 2009 the Socialist Military Junta of Cuba depresses unpunishedly most of the U.N. defined 12 factors of the standards and levels of living, including human liberties again in 1954, crucial issue of the concepts about the human life wellbeing or overall quality of life and health support systems.

 

 

Level of life factors in the community:

 

 

health, including demographic conditions;

feeding and nutrition;

education, including teaching people to read/write;

working conditions;

employment conditions;

consumption and saving of the community;

transportation;

housing;

social security;

and human liberties.

 

 

United Nations. (1954). Report on international definition and measurement of standards and levels of living. New York: UN Pub.

 

 

 

Cuba’s Main Development Insights:

 

Self-Sustainable Colony of Spain 1492-1898;

Self-Sustainable Democratic Republic 1902-1958;

Soviet-Chinese-Venezuelan Dependent Totalitarian Country 1959-2009.

 

 

 

Cuba is an interesting case of involution in the middle of the 20^th century. Because of its proximity to the US, it could strengthen its market economy during the 19^th century, before conquer its sovereignty as colony from Spain. The Independence War let it in ruins, but from 1898-1958 it could forge under the US and all West advice, a friendly, harmonious and comprehensive self-sustained development, which was valued until 1928 as “economic miracle”, with a Latin American style democratic-capitalism. Cuba until 1958 received immigrants from Western Europe and Latin America.

 

In 1959 a revolution becoming a springboard for the spread of a military, ideological and economical Sovietization by the USSR, China and East European Bloc in America and Africa, arrested Cuba’s balanced self-growth, urban civilization and living standards.

 

Since the 1950s to the 1980s, Soviet Russia appealing to national sovereignty, self-determination and social justice, induced in the developing nations’ Non-Alignment Movement --and in its Cuban satellite--, rejection of modern values and traits, as personal liberties, hard working-style, economic growth, etc. Assimilating from developed nations only modern technologies and medicine, their main half-century production have been more people, with a reduced material minimum required for subsistence to living levels far below that of the Stone Age.

 

Other modern values and traits still unwanted by some totalitarian developing nation governments as Cuba and North Korea, due to the Soviet socialist concept are as follows: personal private property, work, and enterprise in all decent productive-service activities, including education and medical care; open sale to persons of food, industrial stuff, houses, cars, boats, etc, in national currency, without rationing or ban; opened access to complete national and international news and information by printed and electronic media, without daily boycott and manipulation, including full internet at home; and reverence for own national and world history and statistics, without distortion. 

 

All the Third World has been changing since the 1990s, excepting Cuba and North Korea. In a half-century, our island has been transformed in one of the poorest countries of America, of emigrants, living in the most captive and oppressed conditions in the world, excepting North Korea, with equity at the bottom –99% of the Cubans are poorest than ever before.

 

 

 

Some Data of Cuba Before and After the Sovietization:

 

 

 

In 1957, Cuba’s GDP per-head (1990-int-$) was $2406, double that South Korea's $1206, Taiwan’s $1314, larger than Singapore’s $2318, fourfold that of China’s $636, and two-thirds of USSR’s $3576.   Yet on 2006, Cuba’s $3214 is worse than ever in America and worldwide. It is one-fifth of South Korea's $18356, one-sixth of Taiwan’s $19860, one-eighth of Singapore’s $26162, a half of China’s $6048 and of Russia’s $7831; even being rented in 1959-2000 by the USSR/Russia and in 1991-99-2009 by China and Venezuela.

 

Cuba failed predicting in 1961 that its GDP per-capita by 1980 would be higher that of the US’s $11025 --in 1961.

 

Cuba since 1991-2009 has deepened its 1959-90 chronic malnutrition, weakening a subsistence-rationing card with animal feeding quality sugar/rice and other few products for 49 years.

 

Cuba from 1900, 1957 to 2007 has worsened its GDP per-capita growth % and place from 5^th, 11^th to 18^th in America and 28^th, 48^th to 113^th worldwide.

 

Cuba’s U.N. Human Development Index in 1951-52 could rank anyway around the 25^th place in the world. The UNDP in 1990 defined it as a composite index measuring average achievements of countries on basic issues: life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate/gross school enrollment ratio, GDP-percapita, but letting out countries’ observance of: personal liberties, military troops’ density, refugees-emigrants outflows, and subsidies-remittances inflows.

 

However, today, if the Human Development Index was complemented only with individual liberties observance by real Non Government Organizations’ independent observers, Cuba would worsen its current 51^st place at least over the 100^th.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. All U.N. Overall Standards and Levels of Health’s Observance.

 

 

Since 1959 to 2009 the Military Junta of Cuba depresses unpunishedly most of the U.N. defined overall standards and levels of health, crucial issue of the human life wellbeing or overall quality of life and health support systems.

 

 

Level of health factors in the community:

 

 

article 25. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family; including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, […]; Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.

 

United Nations. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights. New York: UN Pub.  Available in: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml (Accessed 22 July 2009).

 

 

 

That pregnant care, birth care, and baby care are entitled to special care and assistance; do not mean that overall children, adults, and very specially, elder life and health levels could be depressed. For most non-pregnant/baby cares, Cuba guarantees access to physicians, but no to all tests, procedures, operations, and medicines.

 

By U.N. statistics and international comparison works, in 1957, Cuba had the world 14^th lowest IMR [32 x 1000 live births (l.b.)], 36% of the South Korea’s (90); yet on 2007, it has the world 21^st lowest rate (5), over South Korea’s (4). Cuba having 65-year life span, 12-years more than South Korea (53), now has 78, one less than South Korea’s (79). Cuba having 80% of adult literacy, nearly twofold the South Korea’s (46%), now both are alike.

 

Cuba from 1900;1957 to 2007 has improved its IMR reduction % and place in America from 5^th;3^rd to 1^st, but not enough finally, worsening its worldwide place from 19^th;14^th to 24^th. 

 

Cuba having in 1957 America and world’s 5^th and 26^th highest physicians’ densities, now in 2007 has the world 1^st, but 30^th caring its own people, because half of them are state-contracted abroad. Cuba had also in 1957 America and world’s 3^rd and 16^th places in dentists; 3^rd and 14^th in midwives; and 5^th  and 26^th in pharmacists; and America’s 6^th in nurses. After 1958, community midwives work disappeared changed to obstetric nurses.

 

Cuba’s percent of GDP for health was 11.3% (1909), 7.2% (1957) and 6.3% (2007). Healthcare expenditures count weakest Cuban pesos, as if they were US dollars in physicians’ wages (now less than $1 USD daily) --2^nd world underpaid services after North Korea.

 

Cuba is a small island of lengthened form, full of fertile land, rivers and sea, with a successful agriculture, cattle raising, and fishing –364 days a year until 1958. Cuba in 1728, graduated physicians in Havana University Medical School, built schools and infirmaries in 500 sugar mills’ outbuildings, as in towns and cities, along with cultural centers. In the 1800s, Cuba developed modern railroads (2^nd in America), roads, ports, aqueducts-sewer systems, state hospitals, Spanish regional clinics, private offices and pharmacies.

 

Since 1861, Cuba had an Academy of Medical Sciences, scientific institutes and journals. Carlos J. Finlay, discoverer of yellow fever’s transmission and eradication in 1981 and 1901, founded the first world National Secretary of Health and Charity in 1909, and a public health institute, with all their logical implications.

 

Cuba developed in 1900-58 high-density of top physicians, nurses, pharmacists, midwives, reorganizing its primary, secondary and tertiary health care with top hospitals, mutualist clinics, pharmaceutical labs, children’s and old peoples’ homes, pharmacies, in a harmonious and comprehensive primary living, working, education and health care rising levels, adding last democratic institutions and systems.

 

Liberalization, industrialization, and urbanization were awkwardly for the workers, but labor unions and political parties’ competition humanized their work, with advanced legislation for employees, women and children. In 1958, Cuba was a country with top urbanity, modern cities and towns, housing, highways, airports, supermarkets, educational, fine arts and sport institutions, and increasing its national sovereignty.  

 

Being Cuban, was more than any foreigner was. Being physician was the most rewarding profession. Anybody wanted to change its citizenship or emigrate, as today, even to a poorest Sub-Saharan African country. Anybody wanted to change being physician to work as a hotel porter.

 

McGuire and Frankel’s most complete and rigorous study from Harvard, summarize this well as follows:

 

“Revolutionary Cuba since 1959 has outpaced most other Latin American countries at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. Pre-revolutionary Cuba from 1900 to 1959 did even better, however, outperforming all other Latin American countries for which data are available. Pre-revolutionary Cuba became Latin America's unlikely champion of mortality decline despite experiencing slow economic growth and high income inequality, a record that is inconsistent with the "wealthier is healthier" interpretation of mortality reduction. It also achieved this distinction despite being ruled by governments that are sometimes portrayed as corrupt, personalistic, patronage-ridden, subordinate to U.S. business interests, and neglectful, at best, of the exploited and downtrodden. We attribute pre-revolutionary Cuba's rapid mortality decline to its health care system's accessibility to a large fraction of the poor and to features of the island's history, geography, labor union movement, and political system that contributed to this accessibility.”

 

Since 1959, previous clinics and hospitals’ emergency rooms have given most primary health care. Community/labor one-party organisms have controlled epidemics with vaccination and HIV/AIDS with coercive healthism. Soviet-Czechoslovakian style integral polyclinics were opened in confiscated private and mutualist (insurance) clinics, SOS-houses and family housing since 1962; converted to community medicine in 1974, and to medical education and family physician offices in 1984. These have not worked well in the cities, but better in the countryside. It is a four-tied health care system with 100% access to military-bureaucracy, foreigners, less poor people paying under-the-table, and a majority of poorest people with less than essential care.   

 

Jorge Aldereguia, a Cuban fundamentalist ideologist, obviating history, statistics, socialism’s physical-health bias, rise of Cuban all adult-elder, maternal-infant mortalities, abortions, low birth-weights/lengths, fall of youth body size, and starvation in 1959-69/1991-2000 due to socialist debacle, found “Cuba’s health miracles” in the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Canadians Spiegel, Yassi, and Evans, theorized in the 2000s on supposed “socialism health miracles”, based on Cuba’s top density of physicians, recognizing a “50-year socialist health paradox” with the “wealthier is healthier” correlation. They neglect U.N. statistics, scientific medicine and public health history 1804-1958, admiring the nonsense phrase: “now Cubans live like the poor and die like the rich *with socialism”.

 

They ignore that in 1958, heart and cancer diseases were already Cuba’s 1^st and 2^nd leading causes of death. Really, in 1958, most Cubans had standards of living in average over the extreme oppression, captivity and poverty that 99% of workers and pensioners live today (less than $1 US dollar daily), maintaining also heart and cancer diseases, as 1^st and 2^nd leading causes. Cuba had in 1958 institutes for cancer, tropical medicine, heart, and eyes, among others even before, into a two-tier system of a more solvent infant-adult-elder medical/dental care.

 

Only one example of the discriminatory adult-elder health care system: coronary bypass and angioplastia although arose in the 1960s and the 1970s, yet today, less than 3% of patients with coronary heart disease and heart attack can access any of them. Less than 5% access in time to effective thrombolysis with streptokinase instead of the heparin of the 1950s for heart attack; and less than 3% of the patients with coronary heart disease have access to any of the statins of the late 1980s. 

 

Cuba supposed “socialist” paradox with wealth-health strong-direct countries’ correlation is much more than low 1990s GDP per-head and premature mortality. It can be well explained by late accumulative synergistic effects of integral-balanced improved living, working, education, health standards and infrastructure from 1500 to 1958; USSR huge billionaire subsidy 1959-89; and US-West medical advances 1959-2009 acquired via U.N.-WHO, applied exclusively in pregnant, birth, and baby cares. Military tasks abroad, repression and self-depressed economy from 1959-2009, have forced overall children, adults and elder life and health levels’ regression. For non-pregnant/baby cares, Cuba guarantees access to physicians, but no to all tests, procedures, operations, and medicines, blaming the US embargo from 1992-2009.

 

It is easy to predict, what disastrous consequences for 150 transition-developing nations searching for health care systems, could have so incomplete evaluations of Cuba’s physical health bias in the Soviet socialist period.

 

The boosting of integral physical, mental, and social wellbeing and health, in developing nations, needs a set of conditions as follows: modern values, good use of geography; peace with neighbors; small army and government; free-market economy, trade, investment; free multi-party press, periodic elections, all-IT; all individual liberties; alliances for private-state agriculture-industry diversification, top technology; autonomous powers; self-sustainable growth in labor productivity, income, nutrition, clean-water, sanitation, infrastructure; two-tier comprehensive health care system; and best care of medical workforce.

 

What living and health standards would have achieved Cuba in 2009, with its natural and social assets, if it had followed the path, not of the distant Southeast Asian Tigers, but of the near Chile from 1975-2009?

 

 

 

 

 

Personal proposal first posted on Dec. 7, 2009.