Caribbean Political Economy

Forty Years of Cuba-CARICOM Friendship and Cooperation

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December 8 2012 marks the fortieth anniversary of the day when four independent states of the Commonwealth Caribbean, in defiance of the hemispheric hegemon, opened full diplomatic relations with Cuba. Today all of CARICOM maintains close ties of friendship and cooperation with the sister republic, which continues to maintain its revolutionary project in spite of a US-imposed blockade which has been repeatedly condemned by the overwhelming majority of the world community. A selection of items from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba commemorating the 40th anniversary.
 

Jamaica, Cuba celebrate forty years of friendship YesCuba

Citation to the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples Jamaican Network in Solidarity with Cuba

Forty years of cooperation Humberto Rosario Trinidad Express

Sandy solidarity to Cuba from UWI students Milagros Martinez

Cuba And Southern African Liberation: The Unknown Story, Isaac Saney

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Cuba’s direct, extensive, critical and decisive role in the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa is little known in the West. As 2012 marches into 2013, we are in the midst of the 25th anniversary of a series of military engagements that profoundly altered the history of southern Africa…

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Medical Training in Cuba: A Personal Experience, Wendy Campbell

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Wendy Campbell is past Head Girl at Garvey Maceo High School in Jamaica and a final-year medical student in Cuba.  In this article she speaks of her experience  in Cuba over the past six years.
 

“As someone who benefited from the exposure to Cuba’s medical system, I would like to give back to Jamaica; I would like to use the knowledge that I have gained in Cuba to implement some of the programmes than can be implemented, especially the system of primary health care.”

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Donations for Santiago de Cuba, Norman Girvan

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Santiago de Cuba, well-known to readers of this blog as the host to the annual Festival del Caribe, was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. As many as 130,000 homes may have been damaged and 15,400 destroyed in this city of 500,000 people. The city is still without electricity and running water and repair crews are being rushed from other provinces. Click here for a report on the situation in the city and here for a YouTube video on the devastation, Show your solidarity with the Santiaguerans who have shown so much hospitality to Caribbean visitors by donating through Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba; click here to make a donation.

Cuba’s new migration policy seeks to regulate the brain drain, Norman Girvan

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 Top officials, social service professionals with high-level responsibilities, science and technology professionals and top athletes and trainers; will have to wait for up to 3-5 years after applying for permission to live abroad; during which time they will be required to train a replacement.
 

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Cuba’s migration policy reform Salim Lamrani Historical context and analysis

The immigration law and Cuba’s relationship with the émigrés, Jesús Arboleya Cervera Additional Information and analysis

Cuba’s new migration policy and the brain drain, Jesús Arboleya Cervera

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Cuba’s new policy on travel and emigration, which is still a work in progress, raises questions about how to manage the ‘brain drain’ that are of interest to other Caribbean countries.

Read commentary on Cuba’s new policy

Test of official announcement on new policy

Implications for the United States Wayne Smith

Cuba, A Healthy Island, Salim Lamrani

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Cuba, with the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, and the lowest infant mortality in all the Americas, is currently training over 24,000 doctors from 116 counties free of charge in its medical schools; and has medical training programmes in,   eight other countries . Salim Lamrani teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris.

SINCE the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, the development of Cuban medicine has been a government priority. The country is now a point of reference internationally, with Cuba, in fact, currently having the highest number of doctors per inhabitant in the world…

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Read Scholarships to the Daughters of Nanny and to the Sons of Cudjoe and of Tacky, Dellie-Ann Antoinette Green

Olympic Coverage: Another Cuban Gift to the World, Keith Ellis

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‘ Sport Internationalism’ is little known dimension of Cuba’s international mission of solidarity.

From the beginning of the London Olympic Games of 2012 to one day after the closing ceremonies, Cuba provided coverage 24 hours every day in the country, ´s language, Spanish. What is more, the coverage was entirely free of commercials…

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Scholarships to the Daughters of Nanny and to the Sons of Cudjoe and of Tacky, Dellie-Ann Antoinette Green

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Vote of Thanks delivered on behalf of Jamaican Medical Scholarship Awardees (2012) at The Embassy of The Republic of Cuba in Jamaica, June 8, 2012. Reprinted from YESCuba Newsletter of the Jamaican Youth and Elders in Solidarity with Cuba, June 9, 2012

It is, indeed, a signal honour for me to have been invited to move this vote of thanks. “Thank you” could be said as simply and as easily as this: “THANK YOU.” But might this not be rude? Would this not be an instance of brevity being most inappropriate? On the other hand, I could choose to be boring and insensitive to this wonderful audience and deliver an hour-long diatribe..

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José Martí and the Origins of Cuban Humanism, Keith Ellis

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Keith Ellis, a Jamaican, is Professor Emeritus of Spanish American Literature at the University of Toronto. This article first appeared in YESCuba, the newsletter of Jamaican Youth and Elders in Solidarity with Cuba.

Between August of 1883 and May of the following year, José Martí­, then thirty years old, published a series of essays on scientific education. In them he formulated and anticipated a policy of education for Cuba. Among the precepts that he announced in them were the following: “To be good is the only way to be happy;” “To be cultured and educated is the only way to be free;” …

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Huge Respect for Jamaican Professor in Cuba YESCuba

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