Before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, Pat Robertson was having some of his allotted lifetime minutes of fame via his ill-considered comment about sending in a special operative to "take out" Hugo Chavez. One of the reasons he offers for his anti-Chavez frenzy is that Chavez is buds with Fidel Castro and the two of them together might be source of "instability" in Latin America, and thus cause a problem for the USA. This post offers a glimpse into both countries, Cuba and Venezuela, and some of their dreaded, unstable ways of caring for their people.
This piece by Marjorie Cohn in Truthout might be considered "finger-pointing," thus my begging Neil's tolerance - I intend it as pointing a finger at a better way to deal with catastrophe than that which we are currently witnessing on the Gulf Coast. From "The Two Americas:"
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. ...snip... They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed. ...snip... After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does." ...snip... On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.
So, that's the island of Cuba. Now we travel over to Venezuela, for a glimpse of what a writer name Mattie Wiess saw there last month. The point of the article is to make it clear that Rev. Robertson was not speaking for just himself, or some small wacko group, when he made his "take-out-Chavez" statement. In fact, Weiss says:
...he is by no means the first to beat the drum against Venezuela. In fact, his comments were merely a more vitriolic version of what the Bush administration has been saying for some time, with declarations to "contain" Chavez and the funneling of millions of dollars to opposition groups within the country.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of what Weiss witnessed on his visit to this country where the ideas of Socialism in action are infuriating the rich and powerful with friends in high places:
What I saw, in the enormous city of Caracas and the rural towns of Monagas state, were huge numbers of people who, for the first time in their lives, have free and adequate health care, the opportunity to attend university, access to land grants and work contracts, constitutionally assured rights for women and indigenous people, and free breakfast programs for children. And with all this, a sense of dignity and ownership over their lives. (Robertson's Not Alone in His Dislike of Chavez, Mattie Weiss, Minneapolis Star Tribune)
It's all starting to sound better and better to me, health care and education for all, good emergency planning and carrying out of plans, the evils of Socialism. If more people in this country knew about this, it might even cause instability right here, forget about Latin America!
