Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Haiti's plight can bind US and Cuba

Haiti's plight can bind US and Cuba
Following the earthquake in Haiti, the US and Cuba should cast aside their
differences to help their troubled neighbour
 Steve Clemons
 
guardian.co.uk
,
 Thursday 14 January 2010 17.03 GMT
In Latin America, Cuba stands out as one of the most effective deployers of
soft power. Rather than exporting revolution, Cuba today exports doctors -
with more than 30,000 Cuban doctors working in more than 100 underdeveloped
countries around the world.
Cuba has become a marquis provider of catastrophe-related medical assistance
around the world, particularly after tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes -
and no doubt will send large contingents of medical personnel to
earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Moving beyond the cold war stasis in US-Cuba
relations is a priority of Barack Obama's administration, and the
devastation in Haiti provides a platform to provide relief for a desperate
nearby nation and build collaboration between Cuba and the US.
Many great American voices from Brent Scowcroft and George Shultz to Jackson
Browne and Bill Richardson have argued that the US-Cuba embargo makes no
sense as foreign policy, that the right of Americans to travel anywhere in
the world should not be suspended in the case of Cuba, that Cuba's exports
of doctors rather than arms should be more than enough reason to strike Cuba
off America's watch list of state sponsors of terror.
But to effect change in a relationship as historically toxic as that of
Fidel Castro's Cuba and 11 US presidents will require certain narratives.
One such narrative could evolve from tying American resource co-ordination
and financial support in a regional multilateral effort with other Latin
American nations - particularly Cuba's deep bench of natural
disaster-experienced medical corps.
After Hurricane Katrina pounded New Orleans and southern Mississippi, Fidel
Castro offered relief support from a 1,600 person medical team called the
Henry Reeves Brigade, named after an American doctor who fought in Cuba's
war of independence. The US predictably turned down the offer in September
2005.
Shortly afterwards, in October 2005, the Reeves Brigade was dispatched to
help provide much-needed medical relief after the devastating Kashmir
earthquake that tore through the Himalayan mountain region along Pakistan
and Kashmir. The US and Europe each sent teams of doctors to Pakistan, each
with one base camp deployed for a month. The Cubans deployed seven major
base camps and 30 field hospitals in the fundamentalist Islamic region of
Pakistan, a nation with which Cuba did not have diplomatic relations at the
time. Today, the Cubans and Pakistanis have embassies in each other's
capitals.
Bruno Rodriguez, now foreign minister of Cuba, headed the mission and lived
in Pakistan's rugged mountains for that full year. The Cuban medical teams
reportedly worked constructively and positively with personnel from the US
and Europe - and this kind of collaboration, even if informal, could be the
kind of confidence-building narrative to move US-Cuba relations out of the
gridlock they have been in for decades.
Haiti is in trouble today - with the earthquake devastating the capital city
of Port-au-Prince and highlighting what was already a human development
disaster even before the 7.0 quake hit. The UN development programme's
offices have been destroyed with hundreds of people unaccounted for.
Notwithstanding any casualties among its own citizens living in Haiti, Cuba
currently has 408 doctors providing services there.
This is time for the US, for Cuba, and other major Latin American nations to
throw their weight into stopping a worse human tragedy in Haiti than already
exists - and to potentially tie the US and Cuba together in a way that
creates greater positives for Haiti and for longer-term, 21st century
US-Cuba relations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/14/haiti-earthquake-us-cuba

 countries around the world.
#_L'oloturia sotto spirito ancora fa finta di non crederci, neanche se lo 
scrive il Guardian e se son quasi 50 anni che lo fa.