Childhood
in Cuba: Privilege by Right
By:
Luz Marina Fornieles
Cubasi
June 1st, 2004
The
evils that damage humankind, especially children go from war conflicts,
poverty, violence, terrorism, tortures, to pornography, prostitution,
drugs and even death that every year takes more than 13 million children
under five.
Of
such circumstances it doesn’t even escape the so called first
world: In the US a minor is gunned dead every 92 minutes as a consequence
of the prevailing danger in that country, where other statistics—equally
frightening—show that an average of 13 children are murdered
daily, while six commit suicide and other three are victims of abuses.
In the richest nation of the world and also human rights “defender”
a minor out of six lacks the necessary food affirms a study of Tufts
University from Boston, Massachusetts. According to an investigation
of the hunger and poverty Center of this same organization in the
US many families are compelled to choose between heat in their houses
or food for their children.
It’s also a cause for alarm the news that in this sense provides
the beaten Latin America economies. Some experts address that in the
continent more than 100 million children and adolescents suffer the
hardness of misery and other more than 16 million works to survive.
These represent the 17% of children population.
These same sources reveal that this amount 5 000 000 are between the
ages of 10 to 14 years old. But there are still more shocking data:
20 million adolescents in Latin America don’t have access to
mid-basic education and a million suffer direct or indirect sexual
exploitation.
In the sub-region the child death rate is 43 for every thousand minors
under five years and 35 for those under 12 months, judging by UNICEF,
which equally condemns the fact that 40 out of 100 people live in
the most extreme poverty in Latin America, more than the half are
children.
Similar problem presented Cuba before 1959 as it was announced in1953
by young lawyer Fidel Castro, in his historic defence History Will
Absolve Me: “of so much misery only death can set free; and
the State is really helping: to die. Ninety percent of children from
the country side were devoured by parasites that infiltrated from
the soil through nails on naked feet.
Society it touched by the piece of news of the kidnapping or the assassination
of a creature but remains criminally indifferent before the mass murdering
committed on so many thousand children who die every year by the lack
of resources, agonizing among painful death-rattle and whose innocent
eyes, already show the shine of death seem to look to the infinite
asking for forgiveness to human selfishness, and that this burden
doesn’t fall on men’s shoulder God’s curse”.
Cuba after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959: the reverse of the
coin
This accurate testimony makes reference to a time when in the island
the 20% of the most wealthy population received 58% of incomes, while
the 20% of the most poor received the 2%.
The 24 percent of active population was unemployed and education was
not guaranteed: there was a million illiterate and children schooling
ranged between 6 to 14 years amounted only the 56 percent.
Such parameters were still negative in rural zones, where the 61 percent
of minors didn’t attend primary school. No medical attention
was given there either.
Only the depth of social changes promoted by the Revolution 44 years
ago could eliminate this wretched status and give way to another situation
where new generation, the future have utmost priority.
For them in Cuba hope is defended every day, starting the same dawn
of January 1st, 1959. Frequently it’s been said that we are
like a big school for the remarkable triumphs of the education system,
always free and with a quality compared with developed nations.
Schooling rates is 99 percent. In the last academic year more than
2 000 000 pupils attended to classrooms. Advances in this field carried
the island to head the list of pre-school education in Latin America:
nearly 90 percent of Cuban children between ages 0-5 received educational
attention a record statistic for Latin America. 150 000 of them were
registered in day-care centres.
The other 146 000 in kindergarten age and the rest are subjected to
UNESCO´s plan through which parents receive orientation for
their children delivered by instructors and physicians living nearby.
With the 1 118 day-care centres created throughout the archipelago
in 40 years, more than 136 thousand mothers are benefit.
The budget destined to these facilities surpasses the 110 million
pesos. This same statistics reveals that Cuban scholars know a lot
more mathematics than their Latin American peers.
Likewise the Cuban government keeps thirtieth home for children and
young (up to 17-years-old) homeless for being orphans. In the same
way centres have been opened for diseases like autism. This strengthens
the national will to prevent a child without school or teacher, no
one citizen without the proper medical attention before born.
This last claim is not, in any way, an exaggeration because in Cuba
medical attention to people begins when they are still in their mother’s
womb during the first weeks of pregnancy. Overcoming serious economic
difficulties faced by the nation since the past decade, known as ´Economic
Debacle` and considered the most difficult moment of the revolutionary
process yet the island met the goals pursued for year 2000 in the
World Summit for Children (1990).
In spite of these circumstances that in other geographic areas destroyed
social advances, in Cuba the domestic budget in 2002 for education
activities was 2 500 000 pesos, for the health system surpassed 1
900 000 pesos.
As it’s noticeable, these fields are still priorities in its
condition of Revolution’s remarkable achievement. Precisely
in the medicine field international reliability has been reached.
That is the case of child death rate a universal indicator measuring
in a concise way the welfare and development of a country including
social, economic, biological, political, demographic and sanitary
conditions of the population. In 2002 was 6.5 for every thousand born
children figure that keeps the archipelago with the lowest rate in
Latin America and it is also registered among the lowest reached in
local history: 7,9 (1996); 7,2 (1997); 7,1 (1998), 6,4 (1999), 7,2
(2000) and 6,2 (2001).
Within the health program arises the eradication of poliomyelitis,
diphtheria, neonatal tetanus, tubercular meningitis and severe complications
of congenital German measles syndrome and meningoencephalitis post-parotiditis.
German measles, malaria, tetanus or parotiditis… and most recently
added to this list measles after eight years without a reported case
of this disease, which produce in other underdeveloped nations more
than a million deaths every year. These successes are displayed to
the world even in the middle of the most various shortages at present
(food, clothes, shoes, medicines, means of transportation, fuel…)
when in spite of everything Cuban children in their first day of life
are immunized against 13 avoidable diseases by means of a shot, including
hepatitis B and homophiles influenza.
For these reasons UNICEF has publicly acknowledged that “Children
born in Cuba have the best chance to survive the first years of their
life than the rest of the children of Latin America and the Caribbean
region”.
On its behalf, World Health Organization (WHO) places Cuba on the
top of the list of vaccine immunization among 214 countries of all
over the world. The Cuban State’s politics seeks to protect
people especially minors in spite of its limitations imposed by the
North American blockade.
The North American enclosure, first strengthen by Torricelli Amendment
(1993) and then the extraterritorial law Helms-Burton (1996) appears
as one of the most flagrant violations of individual, political, social,
economic, and cultural rights of Cuban population and in a barefaced
way against the more than 2 million children.
International pundits acknowledge that the repercussion of this genocide
US law against the greatest of Antilles is expressed in less possibilities
of obtaining drugs, school accessories, food, toys and other resources
and it has only be possible to relieve this situation thanks to national
will and universal solidarity.
Nonetheless the incredible sacrifices, Cuba doesn’t give up
in its attempt to grant each child his most privileged condition by
right, to not allow never again that human selfishness means pain
and death for Cuban children.
Cuba
children outside the reach of world hardships
200 million children in the world will sleep in the streets. None
of them is Cuban. 2.50 million children below the age of 13 are forced
to work to survive. None of them is Cuban. More than a million children
are forced to child prostitution and tenth of thousands have been
victims of organ smuggling. None of them is Cuban. 25 thousand die
everyday in the world as a consequence of measles, malaria, diphtheria,
pneumonia, and malnutrition. None of them is Cuban.
Figures
about childhood at a global scale
600 million children grow up in absolute poverty.
250
million children between the ages of 5 and 14 work (30 millions are
in Latin America)
130 million (60 percent of them girls) don’t attend to school
in the planet.
One out of four children inhabiting the world lives in dangerous conditions
and more than 11 millions die every year for avoidable causes.
Children
from the street are estimated in more than 200 millions, half of which
go into prostitution every year.
Minors
who work or wander aimlessly are exposed to be battered by their bosses,
the public, authorities, child molesters, and dealers of all sorts.
Just in Latin America 60 thousand lose their lives every day before
the age of five and two million do not enter school while 800 thousand
who had the chance had to drop school seeking support.
In 25 poor countries a creature born today will not reach the age
50 while a baby born in a rich state will reach 78.
Around 100 million of Latin Americans from 10 to 14-years-old are
victims of delinquency, gunned conflicts, white slave trade, drug
dealing and sexual exploitation among other acts of violence.
