Cuba – 55 years of ideas and truth

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.peoplesworld.org/cuba-55-years-of-ideas-and-truth/

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Cuba's infant mortality rate is at a new low: 4.2 babies died during 2013 out of every 1000 births. Average rates for the region remain at around 30. Maternal mortality has dropped, and life expectancy at 77.9 years matches that of industrialized nations. Physician density in Cuba is one physician for 197 persons, one of the world's top rates. That doesn't include 40,000 Cuban physicians serving abroad in 70 countries.

Universal education and health care are intact; 1,993,300 students from preschool through university level will be enrolled in 2014, and eighty million physician consultations are anticipated, plus 22 million visits to dentists and 1.140.000 hospital admissions.

The United Nations Program in Human Development ranked Cuba 59th overall out of 187 countries. UNESCO's 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report had Cuba as 14th in the world. Health care expenses consumed 22 percent of Cuba's 2013 state budget, education 27 percent. Cuba's 54 percent current budgetary allowance for social services is among the world's highest. Only 30 countries share Cuba's below-five percent unemployment rate.

Cuba maintains its outsized role in international solidarity. Two thousand teachers work abroad. Cuba's "Yo sí puedo" literacy program has benefited eight million learners in 29 countries. "Operation Miracle" has restored sight for two million people worldwide. By 2011, the Latin American School of Medicine had graduated 9,960 new doctors from 58 countries. Tens of thousands of other medical students and graduate physicians study in Cuba.

Economic readjustment is proceeding. A new Labor Code became law following discussions among almost three million workers. State businesses, newly autonomous, are on track to increase exports and reduce imports. Mariel is the site of a new "Special Development Zone" directed at promoting foreign investment, exports, jobs, and fostering modern business technologies. New patterns of land use and agricultural marketing prevail.

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[MyNameGoesHere]

1. It really worries me that things are moving towards a "normal" relationship

with Tio Sam. Let's hope this isn't a move backwards to pre-1959 "normal" relations. That would be tragic. I do think the communist need to have some form of election reform. The Venezuelan model may work, and hopefully it will not extinguish the spark of the revolution. Although I prefer a system that doesn't exist yet, I am hopeful this isn't the last of the revolution.

[AProgressiveThinker]

2. More proof

that a centralized, state socialist economy is not such a bad idea, eh?