A New Era for Latin America
Affirmed President Hugo Chavez after receiving the Jose Marti International Award in Havana. Fidel Castro noted the profound human and social achievements of the Venezuelan Revolution
Taken from Granma
By MARIA JULIA MAYORAL
February 4, 2006
"The 21st century will be the age of our redemption, the age of our unity and complete independence as a region, as a grand nation; it will be the century that marks the end of US imperialism; I believe this more and more every day," said President Hugo Chavez upon receiving, from the hands of Fidel Castro, the UNESCO International Jose Marti Award on Friday evening.
Before masses of people gathered at Revolution Square in Havana, the leader of the Venezuelan Revolution assured that in receiving an honor of that nature -one which supports and advances the ideas of Marti and the integration process in "Our America"- he was not receiving it for his individual merit. Rather, he pointed out, he was accepting it "as ones highest obligation, if one wishes to be consistent with people of the stature of Marti and Bolivar - people from who we learned the importance of the battle of knowledge, of conscience, of ideas, and we must intensify that battle."
"This great award that you have given me," Chavez noted, "commits me even more to the unity and liberation of our peoples as never before. I will carry it with humility, full of honor, with happiness, on behalf of an entire people. In this way," he asserted, "I state, here in Revolution Square, under the eternal figures of Marti and Che, embraced by Bolivar's dreams, that it is a commitment that I could well borrow from a legendary phrase of this land: 'Homeland or death, we shall overcome.' "
Chavez, who recalled the more than 200 years of attempts on the part of US imperialism to seize Our America, again thanked the Cuban Revolution and its people for their being an example of resistance; "without them," he assured, "there would not be a revolution such as the one in Venezuela today."
The Venezuelan head of state also announced that he would decline accepting the monetary incentive associated with the recognition awarded by UNESCO, and instead he would donate the funds to the "sister nation of Bolivia."
According to the Cuban Commander-in-chief, yesterday was a historic day of special significance; "in no other way could be described the deserved recognition being received by Chavez, a promoter of deep social transformations for the benefit of the Venezuelan people," he said.
Fidel Castro pointed out that seven years ago, when the Bolivarian Revolution came to power, the South American nation's export revenues had dropped considerably, based primarily on the lower prices of oil and minerals. A negative balance of payments continued along with a shortage of state reserves to service the nation's international debt obligations.
In that context, he added, as the foreign debt rose, the immense majority of the population was living in poverty, the unemployment rate was conservatively estimated at 11 percent, the infant mortality rate was recorded at 28 deaths for each thousand live births, approximately 2.3 million children were effectively locked out of the educational system. He further noted that more than a million Venezuelans were displaced from the middle class due to declining incomes; unemployment and inflation that had reduced them to poor or indigent.
"In only seven years the Chavez government has radically turned around that disastrous panorama," Fidel Castro stressed. "Illiteracy was eliminated; thousands of those who learned to read and write in that campaign have now gone on to complete studies at the sixth grade level."
At the same time, progress continues at the high school level, as with the increased access to higher education in new and accessible community-based university facilities. New study programs have been added that include social administration, community development, environmental administration, social communication; and various technical, administrative and legal disciplines. There are 15,392 youths studying General Practitioner Community Medicine as a part of Venezuela's "Barrio Adentro" community healthcare program, which has become a massive university all across Venezuela; "something absolutely new in the history of humanity," said Fidel Castro.
Fidel Castro noted that today 17 million Venezuelans receive free medical care through the Barrio Adentro program. He added that there are now in operation 600 comprehensive diagnostic health centers, a host of first class polyclinics, and 600 therapy and rehabilitation centers.
"The Bolivarian process," he noted, "will be recognized for having developed human capital, to have multiplied it; to have defended the country's natural resources and to have proclaimed the integration and cooperation of an America united in such way that it can fuel its own development."
This whole great transformation of a humanist vocation has been developed amidst imperialistic conspiracies and perverse attacks against the economy in an attempt to squash the Bolivarian process, said the Cuban president.
The White House's representatives ignore and distort these facts, as was just done by Donald Rumsfeld, the current Pentagon chief; and US intelligence chief John Negroponte, an intimate friend of the well-known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
Chavez noted "such lies are part of the historic behavior of our enemies; they also defamed Bolivar because they feared a popular struggle, but -paraphrasing Quijote- it doesn't matter that the empire's dogs bark at the moon, this means that the peoples of Latin America are riding forward to consolidate our true liberation in this century."
Referring to imperialism and its henchmen, Chavez noted, "They will try to preserve that empire, and we will do everything possible to crush it."
Fidel Castro announced that the joint plan of Cuba and Venezuela to graduate 100,000 doctors in 10 years has been ratcheted up to 150,000. Castro affirmed that these physicians will be able to go neighborhoods or places struck by natural disasters to exercise their professions in the interests of humankind - not commercialized medicine. He confirmed that the two countries are only waiting for indications from President Evo Morales to begin a massive literacy campaign in Bolivia.
"Venezuela and Cuba are united," the Cuban president emphasized, "but not for the purpose of hurling bombs or using terrorist techniques. To the contrary, we are not looking at using either force nor violence; just the opposite, we seek to carry out actions that are absolutely humanitarian."
"Such efforts," he recognized, "will continue to face enormous obstacles, difficulties and risks -we do not underestimate this; but we have the conviction, the peace and the pleasure of really fighting for a better world, and nothing or anyone will be able to impede the bright future of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean."
At the ceremony, also speaking was Miguel Bonasso, an Argentine deputy and writer who highlighted the fact that Cuba and Venezuela are united around a concept that has nothing to do with the false regional integration scheme being peddled by the empire and the transnationals. He said true regional integration is taking place through the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)- "which sees people as the main characters; not the longing for markets, but infinite solidarity."