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MEETING in Caracas, we, the Cuban and Venezuelan delegations, have held the 9th meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission, eight years and 44 days after the signing of the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement that created it, and which was signed by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz and Commander President Hugo Chávez Frías on October 30, 2000. That historic event was the start of an accelerated process of genuine unity and integration between the peoples of Cuba and Venezuela, joined by six Latin American and Caribbean nations in what today constitutes the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America. At this 9th meeting, via the work of 24 technical commissions, we have reviewed the state of cooperation, and at the same time, have drawn up and approved the Working Program for the year 2009. That comprises 173 projects that will be implemented by 59 institutions in both countries. We have also had the opportunity to review the progress of the economic associations established and other programs that we are jointly undertaking in the industrial and agricultural areas, with the participation of the ministers in charge of these activities in both countries. That has enabled us to adopt a group of measures aimed at perfecting them. Our agenda also included a profound exchange of opinions about the future of our ties and our participation in the context of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America. In that context, we agree on the need for our actions to take into account the imminent intensification of the present crisis that is now affecting all of humanity and particularly the countries of the Third World, victims of neoliberal policies promoted and cruelly applied by imperialism. With the aim of following up on these accords, we have decided to hold an extraordinary meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission in the second quarter of 2009, whose principal objective will be to identify channels for attaining a greater level of articulation and comprehensiveness in our efforts to expedite and give increasingly more solid foundations to the intense process of unity and integration between our sister nations. In addition, the social missions, a fundamental element in the country’s economic and social development, will continue to advance and be consolidated as priorities, despite the world economic crisis. The results achieved are unprecedented in the history of cooperation; we shall mention a few: In the health sector, more than 327 million medical consultations have been recorded and 112,000 lives saved, just under the Barrio Adentro I program. Under Barrio Adentro II, there are now 475 Comprehensive Diagnostic Centers (CDI), 541 Comprehensive Rehabilitation (SRI) facilities and 23 High-Technology Centers (CAT). At these centers, 92,000 operations have been performed; more than 195,000 medical examinations done, and more than 575,000 lives saved, attending to a population in excess of 17 million. The sports mission that has accompanied Barrio Adentro I since the beginning, to contribute to improving the population’s physical well-being, now has 6,000 cooperation workers, 1,500 of whom are doing so by scouting for, preparing and training athletes, while the rest – 4,500 – are working directly at community level in every municipality of the country, contributing to the development of a generalized physical culture as part of people’s integral development and their increased physical well-being. Thousands of events, competitions, seminars, workshops and other physical culture, sporting and recreational activities have been organized, and it is believed that 13 million people have benefited from them. In education, illiteracy has been eradicated, resulting in 1.7 million people learning how to read and write. Under Mission Ribas, more than half a million students have graduated, and under Mission Sucre, some 31,000. Currently, a total of more than 1.3 million students are enrolled in all the missions combined. The Corazón Adentro Culture Mission, which began last May with 535 cooperation workers, has now accumulated almost 6,000 activities with close to one million participants, and has held more than 2,000 workshops to impart knowledge of different artistic expressions, with some 28,000 participants. With respect to Mission Campo Adentro, in 2008, collaboration with this sector has made it possible to undertake l52 projects with the participation of 1,547 cooperation workers, who, via direct advisement and training activities, accompanied 203,141 producers and fishers. This collaboration has resulted in a significant increase in the level of attention to producers, in food production, the improvement of agricultural practices and yields, and a decrease in the use of agro-toxins. The 2009 program projects the consolidation of techniques and work methodologies implemented over the previous years; the continuation of studies and the improvement of labor, with an agro-environmental concept aimed at achieving sustainable agriculture and the consolidation of the rural movement directed at the strengthening of agrarian socialism. We congratulate ourselves for the success of this meeting, which we have the honor of closing today in the presence of the president of Cuba, General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, and the Commander-President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, in the same year that we are commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution and the 50th of the Cuban Revolution, which we will be celebrating on January 1. We can affirm with satisfaction that we have advanced, but the road to be traveled is still long and difficult, which is why we must double our efforts, the supreme goal of which is to forge a future of happiness and prosperity for our peoples. This is the declaration of the Cuban and Venezuelan delegations meeting in Caracas on the 13th day of the month of December of 2008. (Cubaminrex- Granma Internacional) |