Diario Guardian. 23-Nov. 2017
Cuban activist calls on Caribbean people to unite
Paying tribute to Cuba’s legendary leader the late Fidel Castro, International Relations Officer of the Cuban Communist Party Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera has called on Caribbean people to unite.
Giving an insight on Castro’s life during a seminar hosted by the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union in San Fernando on Tuesday, Balaguer said people could not study the 20th century and the present millennium, without the thought and work of Castro.
Describing Castro as “an absolutely central figure for the analysis of contemporaneity and the profound future challenges,” Balaguer said Castro was “a soldier of ideas.”
“Today, when in this seminar we reflect on his work, he will continue to call us to unity, never to renounce the glory we have lived, which translates into never renouncing the legacy of Fidel, that legacy that has brought us here. Facing turbulent attacks, but always safe and full of infinite faith in victory,” Balaguer said.
He added, “Solidarity was one of the principles of the Cuban Revolution that Fidel most cultivated, so he instilled those feelings in the Cuban people.”
Balaguer also said, “It was Fidel example of friend, brother, full revolutionary, conductor of peoples, the same one that calls us to continue challenging powerful dominant forces with our own efforts and with our own example, for each tribune to denounce the unjust and inhuman blockade of the greatest power of the world against Cuba, with the sole purpose of seizing our dreams, our freedom and our self-determination.”
Meanwhile, Edalmis Brookes, Caribbean coordinator in the department of International Relations of the Cuban Communist Party said it was because of Castro’s legacy that Cuba has the best healthcare in the Americas.
“In 2016, for the eighth consecutive year, Cuba achieved an infant mortality rate below five per thousand live births, confirming that it was the vanguard of America and among the first 20 nations in the world. Likewise, it had also achieved validation by the World Health Organization as the first country in the world to eliminate the mother-child transmission of HIV-Aids and congenital syphilis, in one of the most relevant results of Cuban science in the sphere of health during 2015,” Brookes added.
Even though Cuba has been blocked by the United States since the triumph of the Revolution, Brookes said Cuba could boast of the lowest rates of illiteracy, malnutrition and infant mortality as well as the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, one doctor for every 120 people.