Posted on 05/07/2006 4:01:56 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
LA PAZ, Bolivia - Gladys Melani was nearly blind from cataracts. Juana Mamani was illiterate. Sharon Mayra didn't officially exist. What these three Bolivians had in common was poverty, and help from Cuba and Venezuela in solving their problems.
Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have made a fast and extensive start in providing President Evo Morales' three-month-old left-wing government with humanitarian aid, winning the thanks of its beneficiaries as well as political points.
It's part of what Morales, in a veiled taunt to the Bush administration, calls an "axis of good."
Melani's cataracts were removed for free by one of some 700 Cuban doctors who have fanned out to the farthest corners of Bolivia. Cuban teaching materials are helping Mamani learn to read and write.
Technology from Venezuela got 17-year-old Mayra the ID card without which she couldn't travel abroad, vote, enter government buildings or collect a pension. An estimated 1 million poor Bolivians, nearly 10 percent of the population, are expected to get the same help.
Venezuela is also helping to set up 109 rural radio stations so Morales can spread his socialist gospel much as Chavez has done.
Morales, an Aymara Indian, won office in December in a landslide of discontent with the traditional ruling class. On April 29, he signed a "trade agreement of the people" with Castro and Chavez, a mostly symbolic alternative to free trade agreements Washington has reached with other Latin American countries.
Two days later, he decreed the nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas, an even more forceful assertion of state control of mineral resources than Chavez has taken with his nation's oil.
The United States remains Bolivia's single biggest foreign donor, contributing a bit less than half of the $360 million annually with which rich nations collectively pay 60 percent of the Bolivian government's bills.
But the Cuban and Venezuelan largesse has mounted as Morales continues to veer to the left. Last weekend, Venezuela offered an additional $130 million in two separate funds - one for social projects, another for infrastructure and development projects.
"What these doctors and workers have generated goes beyond cooperation and is more about inter-human relations," said Alberto Nogales, Bolivia's vice minister of health.
Critics see dangers.
Fernando Messmer, an opposition congressman and former foreign minister, says Venezuela could use the database set up for the ID cards to keep tabs on Bolivians.
He has no proof, but contends Venezuela and Cuba are concerned more with promoting Morales than helping the poor.
"It's dangerous because it's moving toward consolidating a totalitarian state," he said.
Venezuela's state energy company, meanwhile, has signed a contract to build an ethane, methane and propane plant in Bolivia, and Venezuelan experts are involved in the details of Morales' gas nationalization. Chavez has offered Bolivia diesel fuel that can be paid for with farm products such as soy.
Flush with petrodollars, Chavez has offered fuel at preferential rates to 13 Caribbean countries as well as some poor U.S. districts, and scholarships for Haitians.
Meanwhile the Cubans, who in Cold War times sent soldiers to fight in Angola and Nicaragua, have focused on bringing medicine and literacy to friendly neighbors, Venezuela included.
A literacy campaign modeled on the one Cuba ran in Venezuela aims to teach Bolivia's 720,000 illiterates to read and write in two years. Cuba has delivered 30,000 TV sets plus workbooks and videotapes for Bolivian volunteer teachers.
It is equipping 20 rural Bolivian hospitals, providing free eye surgery in three new ophthalmology centers, and offering to pay for 6,000 Bolivians to study in Cuba.
The Bolivian Medical Association objects, saying the country has 10,000 unemployed doctors of its own. But 75-year-old Gladys Melani feels only gratitude to the eye doctors at a newly-equipped center in La Paz.
"Thank God the Cuban doctors arrived with all their understanding and care. They operated on me, and thanks to them I can see, I can keep working," she said.
Morales' opponents accuse him of using the Venezuelan and Cuban aid programs to mobilize support in July 2 elections for an assembly to rewrite Bolivian's constitution - a pattern similar to that which helped Chavez consolidate power in Venezuela.
But independent political analyst Cayetano Llobet believes the fears are overblown.
"There's a prejudiced mentality in the middle class that believes we're practically being invaded by Cuba and Venezuela," he said. "I don't think it's that serious or alarming."
***....Morales' opponents accuse him of using the Venezuelan and Cuban aid programs to mobilize support in July 2 elections for an assembly to rewrite Bolivian's constitution - a pattern similar to that which helped Chavez consolidate power in Venezuela..... ***
Why are we sending 360 million to this s###hole?
Not mentioned in this is that one of Morales' techniques in his takeover was essentially to destroy any foreign humanitarian or domestic self-help programs that existed in Bolivia. This is a standard leftist technique. It is called miserification, meaning that the left makes sure that in the bottom strata of society, people are as miserable as possible, so that they will be angry and desperate and the left can appear as the savior.
This often means killing or driving out anyone who attempts to improve the lot of the poor. And then, of course, bringing in other more radical leftists to do what humanitarian groups, domestic social service organizations or even the federal government of the pre-communist state had been trying to do. The communist playbook never changes.
i am guessing he believes in the tooth fairy, as well...
The commies send a little money and a lot of propaganda, we send a lot of money and little else.
Beyond that the Miami Herald is only printing this piece since they have such a huge Cuban audience that is dumping them as fast as you can say MSM/left wing publication. Were it not for that you would never read such things in the Pravda version of the Herald.
>>>This often means killing or driving out anyone who attempts to improve the lot of the poor. <<<
Missionaries see no reason for expulsion from Venezuela
BY STEVEN DUDLEY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
CARACAS, Venezuela - If there was ever anything sinister about Florida-based Christian missionaries working with indigenous tribes in southern Venezuela, it remains unknown to them.
Venezuela's government ordered the expulsion of close to 50 missionaries from the region earlier this year after accusing members of the New Tribes Mission, headquartered in Sanford, Fla., of spying and seeking to exploit its natural resources........
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/world/14431793.htm
He's a fool or a bold-faced liar.
i'm thinking fool. imagine how many leftists in our own country, when hearing of this would think, hey, that's fantastic, they are promoting literacy and providing medical assistance. they would be totally unconcerned with the socialistic/communistic/totalitarian strings that come attached.
This is so, so AP. Spin the facts to make the communists look good, instead of asking the question why does the government deny an ID card to someone on the basis of literacy? A life long manual laborer can't get a pension if s/he can't write??? They can't vote or enter a government building if illiterate? Put it that way and suddenly the communist government doesn't look all that caring or nurturing, does it? No, it shows the typical bureaucratic idiocy that the Soviets had to live with for 75 years and Cubans still do. AP and Reuters would rather choke than say anything positive about any conservative government - it's always criticize, criticize, criticize but things sure change when its a communist one like Cuba or Venezuela.
The left always play hardball while we play by the rules.
It's been Chavez's dream for decades to pull all of Latin America under his influence. He's on the march and we're footing the bill by buying HIS oil.
In Miami all of the Cubans go to Jewish doctors with good reason.
W ought to grow a pair and nip this in the bud before we are facing a neo communist resurgency in Central and South America.
These marxists mean to destroy the USA, best not to let them get too far.
The "hands-off" US policy towards these little Stalins just lets them consolidate their powerbase.
We need to stay involved and push for elections to continue so that someday, a democratic opposition party takes over again.
blind leading the blind
Spreading the red.
That's interesting. I have always wondered how Cuban-Americans could bring themselves to read that left-wing MSM stuff. And how they feel, knowing the truth.
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