ADDRESS BY CARLOS LAGE DÁVILA,
VICEPRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE OF THE
Excellencies,
Emigration is a right that must be respected. It is
unfair and cruel to be forced to emigrate and leave homeland and family behind
in order to provide food, healthcare and education to your children.
Sending remittances to family back home is a noble
act which should be facilitated but it is humiliating for a country to have to
depend on this money.
The fact that rich countries are adopting ever more
restrictive, abusive and xenophobic measures on emigration is morally
unacceptable.
The wall on the Mexican border and the immigrant
hunts that take place there are proof, if any were needed, of the contempt that
the powerful feel towards all those who are not as powerful, even if these
governments are their allies.
Alongside this form of emigration is another which is
just as shocking. Doctors, computer programmers, teachers, nurses and other
professionals and technicians are encouraged to migrate to rich countries, and
are offered wages and conditions unavailable to them in our countries. For them
there are no walls or forced returns, on the contrary, there are plans and programs
in place to lure them. Around 240,000 Latin American university graduates
migrated last year. Training these professionals cost no less than 5 billion
dollars. We should be paid compensation and I propose that we make this demand.
These émigrés, whose rights we justly defend, are a
consequence of the plundering, exploitation and unequal distribution of wealth.
Nothing will stop this migration as long as there is
underdevelopment and poverty, as long as the current neoliberal economic policies
are imposed on the countries of the South, and as long as the current
international economic order remains unchanged.
I want to make something perfectly clear. In most
underdeveloped countries there is no political will or economic or human
interest to change this situation. The opulent and spendthrift North uses immigrants
while discriminating against them. The South is providing raw material to the
North, while serving as a kind of warehouse from where they get all their
resources, from mineral supplies to human talent.
Just one example that confirms this: the Millennium
aims and goals, which represent nothing more than a modest palliative for the
problems currently endured by underdeveloped countries, will not be fulfilled.
The developed world did not have any intention of providing the minimum
financial aid asked of them and billions of people continue to live without
access to food, healthcare or education.
Spending on arms and wars now exceeds one trillion
dollars; another trillion is spent on commercial publicity, which in the case
of medication, for example, means that the price is multiplied by up to ten
times; the debt still hasn’t been cancelled and the official development
assistance is subject to an increasing number of conditions: advisers coming
from the North must live in luxury, purchases must be made in donor countries,
and less and less cooperation is given to healthcare and education while more
and more is given to the struggle against drug trafficking and for good governance
and human rights advice.
Instead of trying to change the current situation,
the
The
The free exchange of commodities that the developed
world wants to impose and the free flow of capital that it demands are nothing
but a snare if they are not accompanied by the free passage of people.
In this regard, and in others, the hypocrisy and
double standards of the world in which we live are laid bare.
The issue of migration in
A Latin American who goes to live in the
A Latin American must wait in his or her country for
a permit to migrate to the
The Bush administration cancelled migration talks,
once again limited remittances to a total of $300 every three months and
imposed travel restrictions that allow Cuban immigrants to travel to Cuba only once
every three years and that to visit only parents, grandparents, children,
grandchildren or siblings; that is, to Mr. Bush, a cousin or aunt is not a
family member.
The
This policy, enforced for decades, seeks to eventually
promote a massive exodus which can be used to intensify the anti-Cuban campaign
and, ultimately, serve as a pretext for military aggression.
A program financed by the
In hardly two years, Operation Miracle has helped
over 450 thousand people from Latin America and the Caribbean to recuperate
their vision, and all these services have been provided free of charge. By now,
conditions have been created to operate on one million people every year.
Even though our country’s own resources would not
suffice to provide these services, if imperialism succeeded in its offensive
against
The new concepts applied to the massive and urgent training
of physicians, from Latin America and elsewhere in the world, will make it
possible to have, in a rather short time, over 10 thousand new doctors
annually, who will not practice private medicine but will take healthcare to
and preserve the lives of millions of people.
Today, cooperation in the field of health enables
Cuba, and increasingly Bolivia and Venezuela, to ensure all of its citizens,
without exemption, medical care of excellence provided free of charge.
At this moment, 2,400,000 Latin Americans from 11
countries are no longer illiterates and thousands of Cuban specialists work as
sport instructors.
Although blockaded and harassed,
Thank you very much.