Radio Havana Cuba-01 May 2001 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 01 May 2001 . *CUBANS CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY *FIDEL WARNS LATIN AMERICA, CARIBBEAN OF DANGERS LURKING IN "FREE TRADE" *WORLD BANK PRESIDENT "NOT ASHAMED" TO SAY CUBA HAS DONE GREAT WORK *FIDEL CASTRO CLOSES WORKERS' CONGRESS WITH A NOD TO THE WORLD BANK *CUBAN HEALTH TOURISM ATTRACTS INCREASING NUMBERS OF CLIENTS *ZAPATISTAS SUSPEND PEACE TALKS TO PROTEST CHANGES IN RIGHTS LEGISLATION *ROUND-UP: MAY DAY IN LATIN AMERICA . *CUBANS CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY *Havana, May 1 (RHC)--This year's celebration of International Workers Day in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion was attended by more than a million people. The cultural and political program included ballet, operatic song and short speeches by Pedro Ross Leal, the General Secretary of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, and international figures including Arnold August, author of Democracy in Cuba; the ceremony ended with a speech by President Fidel Castro, who then led the cheering crowd on a march to the US interests Section. The Cuban leader's 40-minute address covered a range of topics, from the mistaken predictions of Cuba's demise after the Soviet Union's collapse to to the expansionist nature of US policy, the current global economic crisis and the recent Summit of the Americas in Quebec. *FIDEL WARNS LATIN AMERICA, CARIBBEAN OF DANGERS LURKING IN "FREE TRADE" Havana, May 1 (RHC)--Cuban President Fidel Castro has asserted that the Free Trade Association of the Americas will inexorably lead to the annexation of Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States. Speaking before more than one million Cubans at Havana's Revolution Square on the occasion of International Workers Day, the Cuban leader said it's not strange that, in desperation over enormous and unpayable foreign debts and economic dependence, many of the region's countries are allowing themselves to be blindly dragged into a U.S.-led free trade zone. He said an association between the world's only superpower and countries suffering poverty, underdevelopment and financial dependence on institutions like the World Bank that are controlled by Washington imposes unequal conditions that will lead to the devouring of those countries. What's most sad, cynical and hypocritical, said the Cuban leader, is that the free trade association is being designed without consulting the region's peoples, an elementary aspect of democracy. President Castro said such an association will offer less protection to national industries and interests, more unemployment and social problems, and the disappearance of national currencies. He warned that we are up against an adversary that is powerful in everything except ethics and ideas, a superpower that has no messages or answers to the planet's overwhelming problems. The international community, he said, has never before been immersed in the discontent and insecurity that exists today, and and that imperialism -- unable to escape its own shadow -- is preordained to continue to increasingly pillage and exploit the world. The superpower to the north can devour us, Fidel predicted, but will not be able to digest us -- that the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean will arise in rebirth from their ashes. He said that it would nevertheless be much better if those peoples did not have to endure this. In reference to the anti-Cuba vote at the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the Cuban leader said several governments in the region lacking principles and ethics handed to a right wing government in Washington a pretext to continue its genocidal blockade against Cuba, on a silver platter. Following the speech, Fidel Castro led a protest march of hundreds of thousands to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. *WORLD BANK PRESIDENT "NOT ASHAMED" TO SAY CUBA HAS DONE GREAT WORK Washington, May 1 (RHC)--World Bank President James Wolfensohn has issued unusual statements of praise concerning social development in Cuba. Following Sunday's publication of the financial institution's 2001 Report on World Development, Wolfensohn said Cuba has done great work in the fields of health and education, adding that he isn't ashamed to say so. The 2001 Report noted that Cuba's social indicators improved during the 1990s, despite Washington's blockade and the lack of access to aid received historically from the Soviet Union which had disintegrated. Jo Ritzen, vice president of the World Bank's Development Policy, said the infant mortality rate in Cuba went down from 11 deaths per one thousand live births in 1990 to 7 in 1999, placing Cuba in the ranks of industrialized nations and in the 6th place worldwide. The report compared Cuba's statistics to Argentina's, with 18 deaths per 1,000 live births; Costa Rica, with 12, and Chile, with 10, while the average in Latin America and the Caribbean is 30. It also noted that mortality rates for children under 5 years of age decreased in Cuba during the last decade from 13 to 8, 50% better than Chile, placing Cuba in second place on the list of Latin American nations. The average mortality rate for children under 5 in the region as a whole was 38 in 1999. *FIDEL CASTRO CLOSES WORKERS' CONGRESS WITH A NOD TO THE WORLD BANK Havana, May 1 (RHC)--In the closing speech at the 18th Congress of the Confederation of Cuban Workers Monday night, Cuban President Fidel Castro compared the treatment of workers abroad with those in Cuba and thanked the president of the World Bank. The Cuban leader recalled the images of the previous week in which workers and students in Quebec, Canada were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets as they protested the US-supported Free Trade Association of the Americas during the Summit of the Americas. Such images are never seen in Cuba, he commented, because the island has social unity. In thanking World Bank officials for commending Cuban health care and education, Fidel Castro noted that the island would not be needing any World Bank money because, he said, Cuba does not support the policies of free market restructuring of Third World economies to benefit the rich of the First World. The Cuban president went on to condemn free market neoliberalism as creating what he called "savage societies," where people are not taken into account. He noted that on May 1, when workers throughout Latin America marching to demand improved working conditions and better pay, they would be surrounded by police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. Cuba is not run on the basis of guns, tear gas and rubber bullets, he said. The very comments about Cuba by the World Bank's president James Wolfensohn prove that the island has a just society. Our society is a socialist one, said the president, not a mercantile one. *CUBAN HEALTH TOURISM ATTRACTS INCREASING NUMBERS OF CLIENTS Havana, May 1 (RHC)--In what Cuba calls its "health tourism" sector, the island is experiencing increasing success and expansion of a service that caters to the needs of foreigners seeking medical help as well as an additional source of income to keep the nation's public health care system afloat. Most people seeking medical intervention come to Cuba because they are unable to find effective treatment for their ailments elsewhere. Special facilities offer treatment of anything from slipped disks to laser eye surgery to liposuction. Many patients come from Latin America for plastic surgery, reports Dr Ramon Prado, who heads the Havana Cira Garcia clinic. One of the most sought-after treatments is for retinitis pigmentosa, which causes eventual blindness, he added. Other treatments are for stroke and trauma victims, drug and alcohol addiction, and neurological disorders such as Parkinson's Disease. The dollars earned go toward the Cuban public health care system, which is completely free to Cubans. Although those facilities used by Cubans may lack the new coat of paint and attractive additions the wards for foreigners have, the quality of medical care is the same, stress Cuban health authorities. Chicago Tribune journalist Laurie Goering reports that the cost of an operation for someone from the U.S. is a third less in Cuba. But for many, says Dr Carlos Leyvsa of Cubanacan Tourism's health program, it's not just a question of cost but quality. *ZAPATISTAS SUSPEND PEACE TALKS TO PROTEST CHANGES IN RIGHTS LEGISLATION Mexico City, May 1 (RHC)--The Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas has suspended contacts with the government to protest congressional modifications in legislation on indigenous rights, autonomy and culture. In a statement that has caused commotion in Mexican society, rebel commander Marcos called the measure a legislative mockery that reveals a total divorce between the country's political leadership and popular demands. The legislation was recently approved in the Senate with important modifications to the original agreement, signed by the Zapatistas and the Congressional Chiapas Peace Commission in February, 1996, and later passed by the lower house. Unacceptable alterations include changes in the definitions of autonomy, self-determination and principles governing use of natural resources. Mexican President Vicente Fox admits that the modifications are unacceptable, but has called on the Zapatistas to respect the rules of the democratic game. Leftist legislators, however, said that Fox should have prevented approval of the alterations and that he should now veto the legislation. Chiapas Governor Pablo Salazar added his voice to those calling for rejection of the measure, charging that the federal Congress failed to respond to the needs and demands of the indigenous population and Mexican society in general. While the Zapatistas have declared themselves in a state of rebellion, Mexico's National Indigenous Congress has called for protest mobilizations. *ROUND-UP: MAY DAY IN LATIN AMERICA Caracas, Quito, Santiago de Chile, Sao Paulo, Bogota, May 1 (RHC)--In Venezuela today, workers who support President Hugo Chavez held a counter demonstration in what they called a mobilization against the traditiona; labor union mafias. The Bolivarian Workers Force called for a greater workers participation in the management of firms and for a redistribution of land to put an end to what is known as the latifundio -- the agrarian model based on large land holdings. In Ecuador, workers took to the streets of all the major cities to deplore an unprecedented emigration of Ecuadorans because of unemployment and underemployment. Between 1999 and 2000, one million Ecuadorans left the country according to the National Statistics and Census Institute, and that figure has increased in the first months of this year. In Chile, President Ricardo Lagos chose International Workers Day to announce a job creation program amid predictions that unemployment could surpass 10% this year. In Brazil, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sao Paulo, Claudio Cardinal Hummes, lashed out at free market globalization, calling on workers worldwide to mobilize in a fight against the effects of the current economic world order. And in Colombia, workers launched May Day mobilizations with a call to set up a special commission to investigate the wave of assassinations of labor leaders, which this year alone has claimed 38 lives. That figure represents a four-fold increase in the number of labor leaders killed during the same period last year. (c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= rhc-eng-4793 2001-May-02 01:06:36