Author: Víctor Fowler
lajiribilla@cubarte.cult.cuJanuary 01 to January 25, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
On December 1, 1955, during a public bus ride in Montgomery City, Alabama, a 42-year-old black seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give a white man the seat in which she was sitting. The codes of segregated behavior at the time included that Black people (in the southern states) paid their fare by boarding at the front door, where the driver was located, alighted to re-enter the bus now at the rear door, and only then sought accommodation in the back seats. Black people were not even allowed to walk through the aisle of the bus between white passengers to the back of the bus.
If they acted otherwise, for example, by remaining seated (which is what Parks did), the driver – who, in all likelihood, would offend the offender – was to call the police to take them to the station and, later, to try and punish the Black man or woman foolish enough to violate the rules. A little more than ten years earlier, Parks herself had had an altercation when, after paying, she refused to enter through the back door; on that occasion, rather than be arrested, Parks chose to leave the bus.
The above episode is known as one of the main moments, the detonator, of a protest of leaders and, in general, Black demonstrators who – opposed to this segregationist practice – maintained a boycott against the company that extended, heroically, throughout a year and that would draw the attention of the mass media of the entire country to the violence and cruelty of racial discrimination in the South of the American nation. As stated from the very beginning of the volume Civil Rights in America. Racial desegregation of public accommodations. A National Historic Landmarks theme study:
Physical separation of the races in public accommodations was an uncomfortable and degrading practice for those who were denied equal access. Segregation in theaters, restaurants, hotels and buses was a constant irritation in daily life and an insulting nuisance. This resulted in direct confrontations between racial minorities who demanded their right to pay for goods and services in the marketplace, and white business owners who demanded the right to only serve whom they chose.[i] The segregation of theaters, restaurants, hotels, and buses was a constant irritant in daily life and an insulting nuisance.
The roots of the problem extend to the beginning of the 19th century when the northern states of what would become the United States of America virtually abolished slavery thanks to a variety of “constitutional, judicial or legislative” actions (p. 6). At the same time, in the South, the practices of separation between races intensified.
Along with this, the anxiety of contact meant that in the most racist nuclei of the northern elites, efforts to extend spaces differentiated according to skin color also multiplied. An example of this is the introduction of cars for Black people on trains and the numerous cases of protest and refusal to travel in them (even the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass was removed from his seat on one occasion for refusing to change cars).
An 1857 court case, Scott v. Sandford (where a slave, Dred Scott, tried to prove that – because he had resided in non-slave states – he should be considered a free man), was to have enormous consequences for the struggles that were to take place a hundred years later and that we know today as the Civil Rights Movement. In the Dred Scott case, which Scott lost, the Supreme Court ruled not only that the plaintiff was not a citizen, but that “Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories”.
In other words, decisions about slavery (and others in this area involving customs) were left to the states and local governments. Another important decision was Hall v. DeCuir (1877) where it was decided that “the laws of a state are not applicable to interstate ship voyages and that only Congress can regulate interstate commerce”. Finally, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) opened the door for the extension of “segregation of the races, provided the separate facilities were of equal quality.” [ii]
Although protests throughout the century led seven southern states to eliminate laws that favored segregation in the public space, legal decisions such as those mentioned above made possible a reality where supply found its most evident application in Black individuals of high economic capacity .For the same price as their white counterparts, Blacks could travel in a sophisticated train carriage, while in the lower economic strata the difference was perfectly visible in the quality of supply and in the treatment received.
II
Parks’ arrest was followed by a mobilization on her behalf whose movers and shakers included Edgar Daniel (E. D.) Nixon, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (with whom Parks had worked in the NAACP); Clifford Durr, a white Montgomery lawyer and strong advocate of interracial democracy with his wife Virginia; Jo Ann Gibson, an English professor at Alabama State College; and – among the clergy who offered support – a young pastor, just 26 years old, named Martin Luther King Jr. The success of the boycott, planned to last one day, was such that the organizers decided to extend it, and so it ended up spanning an entire year; along the way, on January 30, 1956, a bomb exploded in King’s house and on February 21 -along with almost 90 protest leaders- he was arrested and charged with having organized a boycott considered illegal. On November 13, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racial segregation in interstate as well as intrastate travel, and so, on December 21, 1956, Reverend King “along with several black and white companions boarded a bus for a historic unsegregated ride” (p. 46).
From this point on, the life of Martin Luther King Jr. began to become more risky, complex and to grow into a legend. The son and grandson of Baptist pastors, a pastor himself, MLK developed his political, social, religious and cultural action in the brief period from 1955 to April 4, 1968, the date on which he died in Memphis, assassinated by James Earl Ray, a racist shooter. In this brief period, he became a leading figure in the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956); he helped found and was the first president (1957) of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS); led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, where he delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech, recognized as one of the most important pieces of oratory delivered in the country; was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was a leading figure in securing passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition, he was the central figure in two of the greatest battles for civil rights: those that took place in the cities of Birmingham and Selma, both in the state of Alabama, in 1963.
III
In the first of these, on April 13, 1963, King was arrested and during the three days he was behind bars he wrote his well-known Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable tissue of mutuality, bound together in a simple fabric of destiny. Anything that affects one directly affects all indirectly.” In that same document, MLK would explain the essence of nonviolence (the Gandhian-inspired mode of protest that he breathed into the Civil Rights Movement) as follows:
Why direct action, sit-ins, marches and the like? Isn’t negotiation a better way? You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, that is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the problem. (…) I have worked and preached vigorously against violent tension, but there is a kind of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.[iii] I have worked and preached vigorously against violent tension, but there is a kind of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.[iii]
The condition of nonviolence could only find its foundation in the love that cares for the suffering other and that, as part of God’s created works, even embraces the other who oppresses. Because of this, King’s nonviolence opposes both the part of the Black community that accommodates segregation (be it the lower strata or the academic sectors) and those who preach hatred and separation between the races (which, in context, pointed to the Black nationalists of Elijah Muhammad).
IV
Martin Luther King’s social thought reached its greatest radicalism when, in an endeavor that would bring him multiple misunderstandings (even among leaders of the anti-racist struggles) as well as numerous new enemies (both among whites and Blacks), he became one of the most prominent intellectuals and political figures who publicly opposed the Vietnam War. The statement that gained the greatest resonance in this regard was the speech Beyond Vietnam: The Time to Break the Silence, delivered on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church before an audience of about 300 people, exactly one year before his death, whose first sentence was: “Tonight I have come to this magnificent house of worship because my conscience leaves me no other choice”, and where he singled out the United States as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. The finesse of the socio-political analysis that MLK was able to develop shines through in excerpts such as the following:
Repeatedly we have been confronted with the cruel irony of watching black and white youths on television screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. We have seen them in brutal solidarity, burning shacks in a poor village, but we understand that they would never live together on the same block in Detroit. I cannot remain silent in the face of this cruel manipulation of the poor.[iv] Increasingly, by choice or by choice alone, the poor are being manipulated.
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has played – the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense benefits of investments across the sea.
I am convinced that, if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we need, as a nation, to undergo a radical revolution of values. We need to quickly begin the transformation from a “things-oriented” society to a “people-oriented” society. When property rights and the profit motive are more important than the person, it is impossible to conquer the gigantic trio of racism, materialism and militarism.[v] (Idem)
V
The other enormous cause to which MLK devoted a great deal of energy was the struggle of American workers for better wages, health care, education for their children, and decent housing. The satisfaction of such demands had to derive, in Luther King’s thinking, from the action of workers integrated into a powerful, organized, highly conscious and nonviolent labor movement; the speech delivered to the Illinois state labor union meeting on October 7, 1965, in Springfield is an illustration of that idea as the following quote shows:
The labor movement was the main force transforming misery and despair into hope and progress. As a result of hard-fought battles, economic and social reforms gave birth to unemployment insurance, age pensions, government assistance for the indigent, and, above all, new standards of living that meant mere survival, if not tolerable living. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they held out until they were overrun.[vi]
For Cornel West, editor of the volume The Radical King, MLK’s growing engagement with progressive guild leaders “is integral to his calling”; according to the well-known scholar, poverty was for King not only “a barbaric form of tyranny to be banished from the Earth,” but that “the greatness of nations or civilizations is measured not by military might, architectural prowess, or the number of multimillionaire citizens; the greatness of who or what we rather consist in how we treat the least of these: the weak, the vulnerable, the orphan, the widow, the widow, the stranger, the poor, the marginal, and the prisoner (West, 2014).
VI
MLK’s last (and unfinished) great battle was the so-called “Poor People’s March” -which sought to repeat the massive demonstration of people in front of the Capitol in Washington, which in 1963 had attracted a quarter of a million people-, but now to demand a fairer redistribution of wealth in the country. In political terms, the most outstanding feature of this new mobilization was that it was intended to convene and represent a multiracial sector which, in addition to Black Americans, was intended to include Native Americans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and poor white Americans. Thus, in a speech delivered in New York on March 10, 1968, he was able to say:
Now, I said poor people, too, and by that I mean all poor people. When we go to Washington we are going to have black people with us because black people are poor, but we are also going to have Puerto Ricans because Puerto Ricans are poor in the United States of America. We are going to have Mexican-Americans because they are mistreated. We are going to have Native Americans because they are mistreated. And for those who don’t let their prejudices lead them to blindly support their oppressors, along with us in Washington we’re going to have Appalachian whites (West, 2014).
VII
MLK’s last public speech was the sermon he delivered in Memphis the night before his assassination. Known as I Have Been to the Mountaintop, this beautiful oratorical piece is inspired by the biblical story of Moses (who, after the Exodus, leads the people of Israel to the very Holy Land, although he dies without entering it) to establish a chilling parallel -in light of what was to happen the next day- between the biblical prophet and Martin Luther King himself. Following several investigations and testimonies about those last weeks, the amount of pitfalls, persecution, threats and misunderstanding around MLK damaged his spirit and health, to the point of causing depression and lack of sleep, among other ailments. Some testimonies even speak of the fact that, after years of threat, MLK began to feel, foresee or expect to meet an early death. The speech begins with a strange proposition that the speaker receives from the Almighty himself: to choose the era in which he prefers to live and this, after a long journey through time, turns out to be the one in which we find ourselves. At the end, after mentioning the possible threats to his life, MLK pronounced the following closing paragraph:
We’re going to have some tough days ahead, but I’m not interested in that right now. Because I’ve been to the top of the mountain. And I don’t worry about it. Like anyone else, I’d like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not worried about it now. I just want to fulfill God’s wishes and He has allowed me to climb the mountain. And I’ve looked around. And I have seen the Promised Land. I may not go in there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I am happy, tonight. I am not worried about anything. I fear no man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord (West, 2014).
VIII
During the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., following the wishes of his widow, Coretta, excerpts from the sermon entitled The major drum, King delivered on February 4, 1968, at his Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, Georgia, were heard. May these words serve as a farewell:
If any of you are around when it’s my turn to find my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you have someone to say the eulogy, tell them not to talk too much. (…)
Tell him not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, for that is not important.
Tell him not to mention that I have been awarded three or four hundred other recognitions, because this is not important.
Tell them not to mention where I went to school.
But I would like someone to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life in service to others.
I would like someone to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love someone.
I want you to say that I tried to take the right stand on the issue of war. I want you to be able to say that day that I tried to feed the hungry.
And I want you to be able to say that in my life I tried to clothe the naked.
I want you to be able to say that day that I tried to visit those who were in prison.
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, say – if you wish – that I was a drum major; say that I was a drum major for justice.
Say I was a drum major for peace.
I was a drum major for honesty and all the other superficial things won’t matter.
I had no money to leave behind me.
I didn’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind me.
But I do want to leave a life of commitment and this is all I want to say.
If I can help someone as I pass.
If I can celebrate someone with a word or song.
If I can show someone that their journey is wrong,
then my life will not have been in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian,
If I can bring salvation to this world once built,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
then my life will not have been in vain.
Yes, Jesus, I want to be at your right hand and at your left, But not for any selfish reason.
I want to be on your right and on your left, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition, but I want to be right there in love and justice, in truth and commitment to others, so that it will make this old world a new world. (Idem)
CITATIONS:
[i] Cianci Salvatore, Susan. Civil Rights in America. Racial desegregation of public accommodations. A National Historic Landmarks theme study. Washington, D. C.: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2009.
[ii] Schultz, David (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court. New York: Facts of File, 2005.
[iii] West, Cornel (ed.) The radical King. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.
[iv] Idem.
[v] Idem.
[vi] King, Jr., Martin Luther. All labor has dignity. Boston: Beacon Press, 2011.
By Luis A. Montero Cabrera
January 28, 2021
This is the fourth in a series of articles
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
It has been news in Cuba for months that we are generating our vaccines from platforms already created. The centers generating such projects work in partnership, exchanging experiences and knowledge, and also competing, as it should be done in a society that works for the good of all. Any group that participates will be happy for the triumph of the other, because what matters is the welfare of the whole society. Obviously they will also be very happy if their own vaccine candidate is successful.
It has been mentioned that our vaccines are all based on a key antigen of the COVID 19 virus: the constituent molecules of the outer spikes of the aggregate that makes up the virus. This molecular complex is referred to as RBD, from the acronym for receptor binding domain. We have also learned that adjuvants are substances that increase the effectiveness of vaccines. Their use is a common practice of this “engineering”, even to achieve vaccines against several diseases simultaneously.
The Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV) is an institution that has grown from the success in the 80’s of the last century with the world’s first vaccine against meningococcus B. The current management has another very important success under its belt, in this case from the University of Havana (UH), with the world’s first commercial synthetic vaccine. This was put into practice at the beginning of this century against haempphilus influenzae. IFV is now working on at least two vaccine candidates known as SOBERANA 01 and SOBERANA 02. The RBD antigens of both are chemically treated variants of the coronavirus spikes.
The SOBERANA 01 antigen is based on the RBD produced from live mammalian cells into which DNA has been introduced with the codes to make them produce the desired molecules. This is why it is called “recombinant” RBD. The great advantage is that these molecules are identical to those of the virus but have been obtained without the intervention of this harmful entity and in a very efficient and harmless way in our industrial plants for this purpose in the neighboring Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM). The latter has a long experience in these matters and a proverbial willingness to empower itself through collaboration.
The RBD has been transformed with highly advanced laboratory chemical methods to duplicate it in a single structure. This is a so-called “dimeric” form that in preliminary tests proved to be more stimulating to the immune system. In short, it is more immunogenic than the simple “monomeric” form.
SOBERANA 01 also contains proteins that are harmless antigens of the outer membrane of the dreaded meningococcus bacteria in conjunction with aluminum hydroxide as adjuvants. The meningococcal antigen helps to “trigger” the generation of antibodies. Aluminum hydroxide is harmless, but it prolongs the presence of the antigen and gives our defenses more time to react. The interest in the effectiveness of a vaccine lies in the fact that it causes us to generate antibodies (immunogenicity) and that these are the ones that trigger the defense actions against COVID 19 (specific immunogenicity).
The SOBERANA 02 antigen is the same RBD of the COVID 19 virus but in monomeric form. The aim is to provoke the immune response of the organism by conjugating it (molecularly binding it) with another well-known and harmless antigen as adjuvant: the “tetanus toxoid”. This substance is associated with the bacteria that produce tetanus, but is chemically inactivated to render it harmless. It has long been used as their highly effective vaccine. A construction of the RBD with the toxoid creates a complex containing more specific antigens. It can be said that it would be “multimeric”. Thus an interesting engineering of the antigen with an adjuvant ensues.
The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), one of the most important institutions in Cuban science, has generated the other vaccines. Its track record is transcendental in these matters. It has two candidates also based on the RBD antigen whose coded name is CIGB 669 for nasal application and CIGB 66 for intramuscular application. Their applications have “combat” names such as MAMBISA and ABDALA. The mambisas were the women who joined the forces of the liberating army against the peninsular crown at the end of the 19th century. This denomination was reviled and even pejorative in the Spanish royalist press of the time. They made it equivalent to something like “terrorist” today. However, when the forces of freedom triumphed, it became a symbol of sublime militancy. ABDALA is the name of a play in poetry by José Martí, his first and adolescent literary work. The hero Abdala appears as a young man who is a convinced defender of his homeland, who puts it before all other personal and family interests. Our vaccines are samples of sovereignty, the fight for freedom and love for the homeland.
The nasal formulation of the preparation CIGB 669 takes advantage of the excellent permeability capacity of the intranasal membranes. Most of our skin is shielded against the penetration of molecules of any kind. But nasal membranes are not like that. They encompass a large surface area that is very dense in blood vessels and very permeable, which makes them a very attractive route for medicating. This pathway is also naturally selected to generate some very neutralizing antibodies and in the same location that is the route of virus entry.
Its RBD is accompanied as an adjuvant with another antigen that is used in the proven “HeberNasvac”, the chronic hepatitis B vaccine that is also administered nasally. This is its nucleocapsid, which is what the central molecular complex in a virus particle is called. Viruses are not cells, but they usually have this kind of “nucleus”. HeberNasvac” is the world’s first therapeutic vaccine against a chronic infectious disease. This platform is patented by CIGB for its vaccines. In the world there is only one other nasal vaccine on the market, the FluMist and Fluenz Tetra (according to their applications in the USA and Europe) and it is used against influenza. It has the advantages of being non-invasive and can be applied even in precarious hygienic conditions, as can be the case in many places in this disparate world.
Unlike the Finlay Vaccine Institute vaccines, the adjuvant nucleocapsid in CIGB 669 is recombinant and is produced in a typical culture medium. Its RBD, also recombinant, from CIGB is produced in yeast. MAMBISA is actually a procedure consisting of dose combinations of the two CIGB vaccine candidates. ABDALA is intramuscular only with the CIGB 66 candidate.
The success of a vaccine as a drug needs to be demonstrated before mass application. How is the most indicated and effective one known? How is work being done to test Cuban vaccines in times when a single day’s delay in application can cost a life?
Luis Alberto Cabrera Montero holds a Doctorate Chemical Sciences. He is a Senior Researcher and Full Professor at the University of Havana. He is President of the Scientific Advisory Council of the University of Havana and is a Merit Member and Coordinator of Natural and Exact Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba. For a full biography, see http://www.academiaciencias.cu/en/node/674
By: Randy Alonso Falcón
January 27, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
“It will not be an exhausted and outdated world order that can save humanity and create the indispensable natural conditions for a dignified and decent life on the planet. (…) This is not an ideological question; it is already a question of life or death for the human species.”
Fidel Castro Ruz
Speech at the Open Tribune of the Revolution, held in San José de las Lajas
January 27, 2001
Solidarity and Justice are still words in disuse even when the catastrophe concerns us all, like a great universal Titanic. A tiny and sticky virus has moved fears, shaken societies and health systems, provoked countless reflections on today and the future, but it has not succeeded in making equity and love for others prosper.
This week will mark the 100 millionth person infected with COVID-19 in the world and already more than 2 million people have died.
“Every day the gap between the haves and have-nots grows. The pandemic has reminded us that health and economics are linked and that we are all in the same boat. The pandemic will not end until it ends everywhere,” said World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday.
The numbers bear incontrovertible witness to the expert’s assessment.
Despite numerous calls from the UN and various world leaders to seek a global response to the pandemic and to facilitate and share access to a cure for the disease, narrow views and deaf ears predominate.
“Science is succeeding, but solidarity is failing,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted on January 15. Several vaccines are already available worldwide to tackle the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but access to them is as deeply unequal as the world we inhabit.
Some 66.33 million doses have been administered to date, 93% of which were delivered in just 15 countries: the US, China, UK, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Germany, India, Italy, Turkey, Spain, France and Russia, according to the data analysis platform Our World in Data, based on figures from Oxford University.
In all of sub-Saharan Africa, only 25 doses of vaccine could be administered in Guinea. Populous countries like Nigeria, with 200 million inhabitants, are waiting for the first dose.
The same scramble that took place at the beginning of the pandemic with lung ventilators, masks and protective suits is now being staged with vaccines: hoarding, overpricing and speculation. “An immoral race to the bottom,” as the WHO’s top executive described it.
The COVAX fund, created as a sort of global effort to make vaccines accessible to the poorest nations or those with limited resources, announced that in February it will begin to deliver the first doses (they first said that in January), but it recognizes that it has been limited by the lucrative agreements of various individual nations with the pharmaceutical companies that produce the anti-COVID vaccines.
Another handicap has been the high cost of the vaccines that have the most international approval so far. As Norwegian expert John-Arne Rottingen told The Guardian, “The difficulty is that we really only have widespread international approval for marketing two vaccines: the two mRNA vaccines. The challenge is that one, the Moderna vaccine is very expensive, and the other, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which was first available and is now being applied in Europe, is moderately expensive compared to others, and requires a super cold chain. The price and cold chain makes it not the ideal vaccines for a global vaccine.”
While nations like India and South Africa are calling on the WHO to campaign for pharmaceutical companies to relinquish intellectual property rights to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. That would allow other qualified manufacturers in the South to expand production of those antidotes; countries like the US, UK and Canada have opposed the initiative. Those three wealthy nations have purchased or reserved enough doses to inoculate their populations at least four times.
High-income countries account for 16% of the world’s population, but hold more than 60% of the vaccines purchased so far.
Rich countries account for the lion’s share of vaccine production. Graphic: The Guardian
Some forecasts put the total population of middle-income and poor countries that could be vaccinated this year at 27%. Duke University’s Center for Global Health Innovation estimates that there will not be enough vaccines to immunize the world’s population until at least 2023.
“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure, and the price of this failure will be paid in lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,” Dr. Tedros regretfully sentenced.
“Vaccine nationalism” is the exact reflection of an unequal and unjust world in which a few remain the great beneficiaries of wealth, for which billions must make do with the leftovers.
It is the “inequality virus” that OXFAM denounces in its most recent report, in which it evidences that the current failed economic system “allows a super-rich elite to continue to accumulate wealth in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, while billions of people face great hardship to get by.”
While billionaires saw their fortunes increase between March and December 2020 by a total volume of $3.9 trillion-to amass an unimaginable $11.95 trillion-the poorest people on the planet will need “more than a decade to recover from the economic impacts of the crisis” accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Racial differences have also deepened. In the United States, the most powerful nation on the planet, if mortality rates were equal to those of the white population, nearly 22,000 Latinos and blacks would not have died from the coronavirus outbreak. In Brazil, people of African descent are 40% more likely to die from COVID than whites.
One of the conclusions of the Oxfam report is that “the pandemic is likely to increase inequality in a way never seen before”. The World Bank has warned that, in the current context, more than 100 million people could reach extreme poverty.
The 10 richest men in the world saw their net worth increase by $540 billion in the pandemic 2020 period. That list is topped by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. It also includes luxury group LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to Oxfam, the money hoarded by these potentates would be enough to prevent people from falling into poverty due to the effects of the virus and would also guarantee a vaccine for everyone on the planet.
Among so much inequity and indifference, a small archipelago in the Caribbean, called Cuba, has been able to send thousands of doctors and nurses, in some 50 brigades of the “Henry Reeve” Internationalist Contingent, to more than thirty countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, to collaborate in the fight against the deadly disease.
Thousands of lives saved or recovered in a scenario of total complexity are the fruit of their solidarity work. The human and professional quality of these sons and daughters of the Cuban people overcomes the most diverse obstacles. It leaves a mark of affection, gratitude and example that is recognized by all those with whom they have shared and whom they have cared for.
That same country, with scarce economic resources but abundant in trained and educated talent, has been able to build an advanced biopharmaceutical industry, which is now preparing to produce 100 million doses of Soberana 02, one of the 4 vaccines on which its scientists are working. This would make it possible to immunize the entire Cuban population (it would be one of the first countries to achieve this) and to have more than 70 million doses available for other peoples of the South. There are already countries interested in acquiring it, such as Vietnam, Iran and Venezuela, Pakistan and India, the Director General of the Finlay Vaccine Institute recently announced.
Researchers from that institution are working with countries such as Italy and Canada to test the impact of the Soberana 01 vaccine on people who have already had COVID-19 and are convalescing, but are at risk of reinfection.
“We are not a multinational where (financial) return is the number one reason. We work the other way around, creating more health and return is a consequence, it is never going to be the priority,” Dr. Vicente Vérez, leader of the main vaccine research center in Cuba, explained to the press last week.
“Our world can only beat this virus one way: united,” the UN Secretary-General recently emphasized. Unfortunately, the vaccines of solidarity and justice have not been able to be applied in the rich world that dominates.
By Domingo Amuchastegui.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Received by email January 27, 2020.
Written during the Trump administration.
Cuba today faces its most critical and complex situation. This is the result of the interaction of three factors. The most recent is the multifaceted impact of the arrival of the coronavirus or COVID-19, which ranges from damage to the health-care system and the population in general to the impact on its economy. Added to this is the economic war of the Trump administration against Cuba, and with a no less harmful gravitation, the persistence of a proven inoperative model that refuses to deepen and broaden the path of reforms.
In such a context, it is essential to examine the challenges and priorities that in the short and immediate term -and with a level of urgency as never before- the Cuban leadership will have to deal with and find the best and most lasting solutions to ensure its recovery and stabilization.
At the level of the INTERNAL SECTOR:
The need to minimize and reduce to a minimum the complexities and costs of the effects of the pandemic in the shortest possible time.
Undertake the redesign of the economic model with the necessary comprehensiveness and depth. This has been lacking in the reform measures adopted so far, which appear as isolated and incomplete patches that fail to energize the entire economy at the levels it requires. Let no one be scandalized by what I am saying. Let us recall Fidel Castro’s words to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg for the important US publication The Atlantic (9/8/2010): “The Cuban Model Doesn’t Even Work for Us Anymore”.
Such a redesign in which the state concentrates on what Cuban economists repeat over and over again: the fundamental means of production (key sectors) of the island (sugar industry, not its agricultural part; nickel/cobalt, biopharmaceuticals, tourism industry, exportable medical services, energy, citrus, fishing, rum and tobacco), which must be consistently opened to its association with foreign capital (an aspect that President Diaz-Canel and the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, have been insisting on repeatedly, but still without translating them into actions and projects consistent with such an imperative).
At the same time, to get rid of the heavy and unproductive burden that has been represented for decades by the costly and unproductive ownership and administration of tens of thousands of small businesses that should be transferred to the cooperative and private sectors, in a broad and sustained project for the promotion of SMEs [Small and Medium Enterprises].
Recovery and effective dynamization of the key sectors mentioned above in terms of productivity and export capacity. SMEs -private, cooperatives and tenants or farmers- must be exempted from the tax burdens and bureaucratic interference that today slow down and asphyxiate their normal operation and development. This includes their more functional and flexible articulation to the export/import and financing processes and space in the national banking system. Open these sectors to investments by Cuban emigrants.
Specific issues of utmost importance are the need to: a) Significantly increase productivity levels and reduce production costs, especially in the tourism and biopharmaceutical industries; b) Eliminate the mechanisms of compulsory contracting by foreign companies through state agencies and the tax overload that this mechanism entails; c) Guarantee the sale of all goods and services to the Cuban economy, especially in the tourism and biopharmaceutical industries; d) Ensure the sale of all goods and services to foreign companies through state agencies and the tax overload that this mechanism entails; e) Ensure that all goods and services are sold in the Cuban market. To guarantee the sale of all supplies and equipment rental to SMEs (otherwise theft, corruption, and the so-called underground economy will continue to reign); d. To reduce by no less than 50% the tax on purchases in convertible currency stores (MLC).
Last but not least: To advance definitively, and in a comprehensive manner, in the process of monetary and exchange unification in order to stabilize in a real way the income of the population and the exchange and transfer of foreign companies operating in Cuba.
At the EXTERNAL SECTOR level:
To promptly and effectively face and settle foreign debt obligations as well as commercial credits owed.
In line with the official emphasis on the need to promote foreign investment (FI) as a strategic component, review and update the 2014 Investment Law in order to make it more attractive and encourage the arrival of foreign capital, including foreign direct investment (FDI) and other modalities that more effectively meet the requirements of foreign investment. Avoid at all costs, negotiating disasters such as those conducted with GLAXO and the Siemens/Total energy project, among others. Rationalize the Portfolio of Opportunities offered every year to foreign entrepreneurs attending the Havana International Fair (FIHAV), making it more selective and with greater incentives.
With the utmost urgency, design a strategy -and as an effective practice- to boost the growth of investments in the Special Development Zone of Mariel (ZEDM) and its Container Terminal, since so far its revenues barely cover its operating and maintenance costs. This project -the most important in the Cuban economy so far in the new century- may perish due to starvation or lack of relevant projects. Attracting important projects with the capacity to re-export to the entire region is no less indispensable.
It is time for the Cuban leadership to reflect on its pariah status with respect to the international financial system, its institutions and mechanisms, and to consider exploring and advancing in this direction, which could well begin through levels of association and cooperation with the World Bank. If successful in this approach to the World Bank, and considering that the OAS sanctions were lifted several years ago, Havana could manage -without a formal return to that organization- an approach that could be sponsored by CELAC members and that would result in some level of association and cooperation with the IDB. Such steps would undoubtedly serve to give confidence and encourage the flow of EI and credits to the Cuban economy.
Por Domingo Amuchastegui
Jan 27, 2021 8:57 AM
Cuba enfrenta hoy su más crítica y compleja situación. Ello es resultado de la interacción de tres factores. El más reciente lo constituye el impacto multifacético de la llegada del coronavirus o COVID-19, que va desde los perjuicios al sistema de salud y a la población en general hasta el impacto a su economía (Ver Coronovirus y Cuba). A esto se suma la guerra económica de la administración Trump contra Cuba, y con una gravitación no menos perjuidical, la persistencia de un modelo probadamente inoperante que se resiste a profundizar y ampliar el camino de las reformas.
En semejante contexto, resulta imprescindible un examen de los desafíos y prioridades que a corto e inmediato plazo -y con un nivel de urgencia como nunca antes- la dirigencia cubana tendrá que lidiar con ello y encontrar las mejores, y más duraderas, soluciones que aseguren su recuperación y estabilización.
A nivel de SECTOR INTERNO:
Aminorar y reducir al mínimo las complejidades y costos de los efectos de la pandemia en el más breve posible plazo.
Acometer el rediseño del modelo económico con la integralidad y profundidad necesaria, y de lo cual han carecido las medidas de reformas hasta ahora adoptadas, que aparecen como parches aislados e incompletes que no logran dinamizar la totalidad de la economíaa los niveles que la misma require. Nadie se escandalice por lo que planteo. Recordemos las palabras de Fidel Castro al periodista Jefrrey Goldberg para la importante publicación estadounidense The Atlantic (9/8/2010): “The Cuban Model Doesn’t Even Work for Us Anymore.”
Un rediseño tal en los cuales el Estado se concentre en lo que los economistas cubanos repiten una y otra vez: los medios fundamentales de producción (sectores claves) de la isla (industria azucarera, no su parte agrícola; níquel/cobalto, biofarmacéuitica, industria turística, servicios médicos exportables, energía, cítricos, pesca, ron y tabaco), que deben abrirse consistemente a su asociación con el capital extranjero (aspecto éste en el que viene insistiendo repeidamente el presidente Díaz-Canel y el Ministro de Economía, Alejandro Gil, pero todavía sin traducirse en acciones y proyectos consistentes con semejante imperativo).
Paralelamente, desembarazarse de la pesada e improductiva carga que ha venido representando durante décadas la propiedad y administración costosísima e improductiva de decenas de miles de pequeños negocios que deben ser transferidos a los sectores cooperativo y privado, en un Amplio y sostenido proyecto de fomento de las PYMES.
Recuperación y efectiva dinamización de los sectores claves antes apuntados en términos de productividad y capacidad exportadora. Las PYMES -privadas, cooperativas y arrendatarios o finqueros- deben ser eximidas de las cargas fiscales e injerencias burocráticas que frenan y asifixian hoy su normal funcionamiento y desarrollo, incluyendo su articulación más funcional y flexible a los procesos de exportación/importación y de financiamiento y un espacio en el sistema bancario nacional. Abrir estos sectores a las inversiones de la emigración cubana.
Cuestiones puntuales de suma importancia son: a) Aumentar sensiblemente los niveles de productividad y reducir costos de producción, en especial en la industria turística y en la biofarmacéutica; b) Suprimir los mecanismos de contratación obligatoria por compañías extranjeras por intermedio de agencias estatales y la sobrecarga impositiva que este mecanismo acompaña; c. Garantizar la venta de todos los suministros y alquier de equipos varios, a las PYMES (de lo contrario seguirán reinando el robo, la corrupción y la llamada economía sumergida); d. Reducir en no menos de un 50% el gravamen sobre las compras en los comercios en moneda convertible (MLC).
Por ultimo y no por ello de menor importancia: Avanzar definitivamente, y de manera integral, en el proceso de unificación monetaria y cambiaria a fin de estabilizar de manera real los ingresos de la población y de cambios y transferencias de las empresas extranjeras que operan en Cuba.
A nivel de SECTOR EXTERNO:
Afrontar y solventar con prontitud y eficacia las obligaciones de la deuda externa asi como de los créditos comerciales adeudados.
En consonancia con el énfasis oficial en la necesidad de promocionar como componente estratégico la inversion extranjera (IE), revisar y actualizar la Ley de Inversiones del 2014 en función de hacer más atractivo e incentivar la llegada del capital del capital extranjero, incluída de manera destacada la inversion extranjera directa (FDI) y otras modalidades que se ajusten más aficazmente a los requerimientos de la IE. Evitar a toda costa, desastres negociadores como las conducidos con GLAXO y el proyecto energético Siemens/Total, entre otros. Racionalizar la Cartera de Oportunidades que cada año se oferta a emporesarios extranjeros asistentes a la Feria Internacional de La Habana (FIHAV), haciéndola más selectiva y con mayores incentivos.
Con máxima urgencia, diseñar una estrategia -y una práctica efectiva- para dinamizar el crecimiento de las inversiones en la Zona especial de Desarrollo de Mariel (ZEDM) y su Terminal de Contenedores pues hasta ahora sus ingresos apenas cubren sus costos de operaciones y mantenimiento. Este proyecto -el más importante en la economía cubana en lo que va del nuevo siglo- puede perecer por inanición o ausencia de proyectos relevantes. Atraer proyectos de peso y con capacidad reexportadora hacia toda la region, es algo no menos indispensable.
Es hora ya de que la dirigencia cubana reflexione acerca de su status de paria con respecto al sistema financiero internacional, sus institucones y mecanismos, y considere explorar y avanzar en esta dirección que bien pudiera comenzar por medio de niveles de asociación y cooperación con el Banco Mundial. Caso de tener éxito en esta aporoximación al Banco Mundial, y onsiderando que las sanciones de la OEA ya fueron levantadas hace ya varios años, La Habana pudiera gestionar -sin un regreso formal a dicha organziación- gestion que pudiera ser auspiciada por miembros de la CELAC y que se tradujera en algún nivel de asociación y cooperación con el BID. Semejantes pasos, indudablemente, servirían para dar confianza e incentivar los flujos de IE y créditos parfa la economía cubana.
By Domingo Amuchastegui Having faced hostility, siege, aggression and sanctions from the U.S. for 60 years is no small thing in international relations, especially being a small island, with very scarce resources, located just 90 miles from the U.S. coast. It is now facing the toughest sanctions from the Trump administration, but it is surviving and still standing. A most unusual episode. Being the defunct Soviet Union its main ally, Havana did not hesitate to question, criticize and condemn, privately and publicly, different policies and actions of Moscow. Even more forceful were its clashes with China until the end of the 80s of the last century. Another very unusual episode in the field of alliances. “Toujour l’audace,” [“Always audacity”] was a guiding maxim of Havana, whether in its support of insurgent movements, of Vietnam in its critical years, of the surprising missile initiative that originated the most serious crisis of the so-called “cold war,” followed by the deployment of Cuban forces in Algeria, Angola and southern Africa or the Horn of Africa, all of them without consultation and contradicting Soviet and Chinese policies. Undoubtedly, a unique trajectory in these times. From another dimension, and for almost 30 years, the UN has witnessed almost unanimous votes condemning the US embargo against Cuba -which Washington continues to scorn- an unprecedented event in the multilateral system of relations of the post-World War II period. From a political-diplomatic siege for years agreed by the OAS -with the exception of Mexico- we have moved on to a situation today with reestablished relations with all its members, including the early recognition and cooperative relations between Cuba and CARICOM countries. No less relevant in this Latin American context have been Cuba’s notable contributions to the most important peace processes that have taken place in the region: Esquipulas, Guatemala and Colombia, while today from Norway to the Lima Group, from Prime Minister Trudeau to the head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez, and six visits by the High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Security of the European Union (EU), Federica Mogherini, recognize and call for Cuba’s participation in the management and possible settlement of the Venezuelan crisis. It is worth recalling that, in the heat of the collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, more than 200 foreign correspondents gathered in Havana in expectation of a similar outcome in Cuba. They were left waiting because it did not happen. Meanwhile, in subsequent decades, dozens of heads of state and governments visited Cuba in search of a closer and more constructive relationship. To enumerate such visits would be endless, from the French President Francois Hollande to Pedro Sanchez, President of the Spanish Government, to three Presidents of China, the President and Prime Minister of Russia, plus the Prime Ministers of Canada and Japan, Presidents of Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and others, as well as the visits of bitter Cuban-American enemies to Havana such as Carlos Carlos Gutierrez, Alfie Fanjul and Carlos Saladrigas, among others. The reasons for its non-collapse allow for easy answers, neither yesterday nor today. On the other hand, Havana, in spite of everything, has not ceased in its efforts to seek a normalization agreement with the US. At one time, John F. Kennedy himself even considered such a possibility and initiated contacts. With James Carter and Barack Obama, the first and only progress was made, culminating with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. No less relevant has been Cuba’s sustained cooperation with U.S. institutions such as the DEA, the Coast Guard, and in the perimeter of the Guantanamo Naval Base, in addition to the close collaboration with Interpol. How can it be explained that the last three Popes (John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis) have visited Cuba and conversed with its main leaders? How can it be explained that the churches of Rome and Moscow agreed to meet, after more than a millennium of antagonism, not in Paris or Geneva, but in Havana? On the other hand, how can it be explained that the current Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, visits Havana and that sometime later he sends his special envoy, Kenji Furuya, on a special mission so far surrounded by speculation? Or that Prince Charles of the United Kingdom or the King and Queen of Spain decide to visit Havana at a time when Cuba’s relations with the United States are at their most critical level due to the economic and political-diplomatic war unleashed by the Trump administration against Cuba? And today, in the face of Trump’s current policy towards Cuba, the EU, its main authorities and several of its most important members such as Spain and France, reject the application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, its extraterritoriality and illegal attempt to sanction those European and other countries’ companies involved in Cuba’s economic relations. Canada has done the same. All these factors have neutralized and weakened the implications of such an application, representing another setback for U.S. diplomacy against Cuba. Finally, let us remember: This is a small island, with no economy of scale, with very scarce resources, a pariah of the international financial system (IMF-WB-IDB), facing all kinds of limitations and diverse internal shortcomings, which may be the subject of objections and criticisms of very different kinds. But the undeniable fact has been and continues to be its singular stature in the international arena and which seems to bear no correspondence with its internal situation. Have the political genius of Fidel Castro and the heroic magnitude of Che Guevara been responsible for their disjunct international performance? Or perhaps their social projects at home and in the Third World arevof particular transcendence? Or perhaps the examples they may suggest, together with their proposals and initiatives for the resolution of not a few conflicts, their gravitation in the system of international relations (UN, Group of 77, Non-Aligned, CELAC, CARICOM and others), together with their extended and very active political-diplomatic network with its state and non-state components? And, perhaps, why not? Theere is always valid image of David versus Goliath? Let us avoid simplifications in order to give an answer to this singular case. The future may increase or reduce its specific gravity, but its singular protagonism is worthy of in-depth study. It is a challenge to rigorous inquiry for a better understanding of the Cuban case.
Por Domingo Amuchastegui Haber enfrentado la hostilidad, asedio, agresiones y sanciones de EEUU durante 60 años no es poca cosa en materia de relaciones internacionales, sobre todo siendo una pequeña isla, de muy escasos recursos, situada apenas a 90 millas de las costas norteamericanas. Ahora enfrenta las mayores sanciones de parte de la administración Trump, pero sobrevive y sigue en pie. Episodio bien insólito. Siendo la fenecida Unión Soviética su principal aliado, La Habana no vaciló en cuestionar, criticar y condenar a ésta, de manera privada y pública, diferentes políticas y acciones de Moscú. Con más fuerza todavía fueron sus choques con China hasta fines de los 80 del siglo pasado. Otro episodio bien insólito en el campo de las alianzas. “Toujour l’audace,” fue una máxima rectora de La Habana, ya fuera en su apoyo de movimientos insurgents, de Vietnam en sus años críticos, de la sorpresiva iniciativa de cohetes que originaron la más grave crisis de la llamada “guerra fría,” seguido por los despliegues de fuerzas cubanas en Argelia, Angola y el sur de Africa o el Cuerno de Africa, todas ellas sin consultar y contradiciendo políticas soviéticas y chinas. Sin dudas, una trayectoria única en estos tiempos. Desde otra dimensión, y por casi 30 años, la ONU ha sido testigo de votaciones casi unánimes, condenando el embargo de EEUU contra Cuba -y que Washington sigue menospreciando- es un hecho sin precedentes en el sistema multilateral de relaciones de la segunda postguerra. De un cerco politico-diplomatico por años acordado por la OEA -con la excepción de México- se ha pasado a una situación hoy con relaciones restablecidas con todos sus miembros, incluyendo el temprano reconocimiento y relaciones de cooperación entre Cuba y países del CARICOM. No menos relevante en este contexto latinoamericano, han sido las notables contribuciones de Cuba a los procesos de paz más importantes que han tenido lugar en la región: Esquipulas, Guatemala y Colombia, mientras que hoy desde Noruega hasta el Grupo de Lima, desde el premier Trudeau hasta el jefe del gobierno español, Pedro Sánchez, y seis visitas de la Alta Comisionada de Relaciones Exteriores y Seguridad de la Unión Europea (UE), Federica Mogherini, reconocen y convocan la participación de Cuba en el manejo y posible arreglo de la crisis venezolana. Vale recordar que, al calor del derrumbe de Europa Oriental y la Unión Soviética, más de 200 corresponsales extranjeros se congregaron en La Habana a la espera de un desenlace similar en Cuba. Se quedaron esperando pues ello no tuvo lugar. Mientras, en décadas posteriores, decenas de jefes de Estado y Gobierno visitaban Cuba en búsqueda de una relación más estrecha y constructiva. Enumerar dichas visitas sería interminable, desde el presidente francés Francois Hollande hasta Pedro Sánchez, presidente del gobierno español hasta tres presidentes de China, el presidente y el primer ministro de Rusia, más los primeros ministros de Canadá y Japón, presidentes de Chile, Brasil, Colombia, México, Venezuela y otros.No menos relevante han sido las visitas de enconados enemigos cubano-americanos a la La Habana como Carlos Guti♪0rrez, Alfie Fanjul y Carlos Saladrigas, entre otros. Las razones de su no colapso no admite respuestas fáciles, ni ayer ni hoy. Por otra parte, La Habana, a pesar de todo, no ha cejado en su empeño de procurar un acuerdo de normalización con EEUU. En su momento el propio Johan F. Kennedy llegó a razonar tal posibilidad e iniciar contactos. Con James Carter y Barack Obama, se lograron los primeros y únicos avances, culminando con el restablecmiento de relaciones diplomáticas entre ambos países. No menos relevante, ha sido la sostenida cooperación de Cuba con insituciones norteaericanas como la DEA, los Guardacostas y en el perímetro de la Base Naval de Guantánamo, además de la estrecha colaboración con la Interpol. Desde otra dimension más que singular ¿Cómo se explica que los tres últimos Papas (Juan Pablo II, Benedicto XVI y Francisco hayan visitado Cuba y conversado con sus principales dirigentes? ¿Cómo explicar que las Iglesias de Roma y Moscú acordaran reunirse, tras más de un milenio de antagonismos, no en París o Ginebra, sino en La Habana? Por otro lado, ¿cómo se explica que el actual premier de Japón, Shinzo Abe, visite La Habana y que tiempo después haga llegar su envíado especial, Kenji Furuya, en una misión especial hasta ahora rodeada de especulaciones? ¿O que el príncipe Carlos del Reino Unido o los reyes de España decidan visitar La Habana en el momento en que las relaciones de Cuba con EEUU llegan a su nivel más crítico debido a la guerra económica y política-diplomática desatada por la administración Trump contra Cuba? Y hoy, frente a la política actual de Trump hacia Cuba, la UE, sus principales autoridades y varios de sus más importantes miembros como España y Francia, rechazan la aplicación del Título III de la Ley Helms-Burton, su extraterritorialidad e ilegal intento por sancioner aquellas empresas europeas y de otros países que participan en las relaciones económicas de Cuba. Canadá ha hecho otro tanto. Todos estos factores ellos neutralizado y debilitado las implicaciones de semejante aplicación, representando otro revés de la diplomacia norteamericana contra Cuba. Por ultimo, recordemos: Se trata de una pequeña isla, sin una esconomía de escala, de muy escasos recursos, paria del sistema financiero internacional (FMI-BM-BID), enfrentada a todo género de limitaciones y carencias diversas a lo interno, que podrá ser tema para objeciones y críticas de factura muy diferentes, pero lo inobjetable ha sido y continúa siendo su singular estatura en el quehacer internacional y que parecería no guardar correspondencia alguna con su situación interna. ¿Han sido el genio politico de Fidel Castro y la magnitud heroica de un Ché Guevara responsables por desemjante desempeño internacional? ¿ O acaso sus proyectos sociales a lo interno y a escala del Tercer Mundo de particular trascendencia? ¿Acaso los ejemplos que estos pueden sugerir junto a sus propuestas e iniciativas para la resolución de no pocos conflictos, su gravitación en el sistema de relaciones internacionales (ONU, Grupo de los 77, No Alineados, CELAC, CARICOM y otros), junto a su extendida y muy activa red política-diplomática con sus componentes estatales y no estatales? Y, tal vez ¿por qué no? La imagen siempre válida de David versus Goliat… Evitemos las simplifcaciones para dar respuesta a este singular caso. El futuro podrá acrecentar o reducir su gravitación, pero su singular protagonismo es digno de estudiarse con profundidad. Es un un reto a la indagación rigurosa para una mayor comprensión del caso cubano.
Cuba: Sixty Years as a Unique International Actor
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
[Received via email on January 27, 2021. Evidently written during the Trump presidency.]60 Años de un singular actor internacional: Cuba
By Domingo Amuchastegui
Received January 27, 2021 in English
In late December 2016, during the economic debates at Cuba’s National Assembly, Agustín Lage Dávila –renown Cuban scientist- publicly questioned the absence of explicit financial support to scientific institutions, making an urgent appeal to meet such needs (See my January 2017 column). The demand was most unusual; in fact, it was a serious warning. At that time, there were no official comments or reply from the new Minister of Economy and Planning, Ricardo Cabrisas or any other official…at least publicly.
A month later, it was obvious that Lage’s warning was not an isolated statement. Most Cuban scientists and experts, shared the following approach: “It is evident that among ourselves there isn’t full understanding about this vital issue (the proper and necessary funding for scientific development) and that it is required to go deeper in its analysis to be able to start effective actions, that today become very urgent.” The usual funds assigned at the beginning of every fiscal year for R&D and Science and Technology Activities (ACT in Spanish), had explicitly “disappeared” from the 2017 budget Supporting this view there were scientists and experts key institutions from the Ministry of Technology and Environment, Higher Education Ministry, BioCubaFarma, and others.
Furthermore, it was pointed out that over the last 10 years GDP growth did not include any increment in resources assigned to I+D, bringing down its contribution to the GDP to 0.42 percent. As a consequence, and despite some successes, scientific potentials were weakened. Resources to support the development of science in Cuba –together with taking pride in its biotech/pharmaceutical achievements- must be clearly stated in the nation’s budget seeking to promote I+D and ACT, putting an end to such negative trends.
Some may argue that currently –resulting from policies of economic decentralization- scientific institutions are allowed to invest a portion of its proceeds in ACT, but the truth is that such funds are extremely modest and are kept at a very low level due to current government policies. At the same time, exports coming from the field of science have been dragging for several years now the default in payments from some of Cuba’s largest markets like Venezuela, Angola, and others, thus aggravating its financial needs.
In recent years, again and again, it has become a familiar pattern to read in Cuba’s official economic reports about “the decline of exports of goods and services.” One important segment of such declining feature is connected, precisely, to that of the declining trend in the field of biotech/pharmaceutical research, production, and exports, including serious shortages in the local markets (hospitals and pharmacies), a most unusual problem.
Among Cuban scientists and experts some of the most relevant, and persistent, proposals and recommendation are the following:
— Funds for ACT should be a priority.
— Access to risk capitals is another option to explore.
— The new law to be discussed in the near future must include basic principals connected to ACT in the field of business operations.
— Resorting to foreign investment, putting an end to the official refusal to open up to such possibility. The example of how this can benefit scientific potentials and technologies can be found in the many benefits that foreign investment has added to Cuba’s nickel and oil industries.
–Keeping higher education institutions isolated from business-like projects and investments should come to an end, as well as their right to retain proceeds and benefits from such ties. Outdated legislation in this particular field should come to an end.
–A sound policy of stimulating those who excel in their work and achievements.
Government policies and actions need to pay very special attention, and care, to this situation, considering how important this field has been to Cuba’s development, economy, and also its international prestige. They cannot continue to turn their backs to such demands. A sense of urgency and the sound recommendations put in place, must not be overlooked nor postponed anymore.
Filmmaker Nina Gladitz did not rest in tracking down what she called the sinister side of what was once called “the eye of Hitler”
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
“The search for beauty in the image, above all and of all”, was the pretext used by the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl every time she was reproached for having put her talent at the service of Nazism, and especially of Hitler, of whom she said in her memoirs (1987) that, after meeting him in a rally held in Berlin, 1932, “it was as if the earth opened up before me”.
Riefenstahl lived 101 years (1902-2003) and her actions have fueled a debate that involves art and ideology with the social and ethical responsibility of the artist.
Many did not forgive her fabricated naiveté to shake off a stigma that linked her to the crimes of Nazism, but there were those who extended a mantle of benevolence over her by arguing for the transcendence of her documentary, perfectionist and avant-garde work in German cinema.
Today, films such as The Triumph of the Will and Olympia are considered masterpieces of propaganda, based on a renovating formal aesthetic, taking into account the years in which they were conceived, and their capacity to transform reality into “ideological art”, if that is the concept for an ideology of extermination.
The first of these films turns the National Socialist [Nazi Party] Congress, held in Nuremberg in 1934, into an epic event of multitudes and leaders feverish with the word of a Hitler deified in images.
Olympia (1938) takes up again the fervor of the Führer for ancient Greece to link the 1936 Berlin Olympics with a symbolism of the Nazi racial myth, claiming that the proclaimed German civilization, superior in all respects, was the heir to an Aryan culture from classical antiquity.
“She is the only one of the stars who truly understands us”, Goebbels had said of the filmmaker in 1933, shortly after Hitler, a hardened film buff, signed her as the quintessential film diffuser of his party’s ideology.
The same Leni Riefenstahl, beautiful, willing, with a past that linked her to sports and snowy mountain climbing; also a dancer and actress who came to rival Greta Garbo in roles, was considered by Hitler an ideal of classic perfection. He put a lot of resources at her disposal and made her a pampered member of the group formed by the flower and cream of Berlin’s Nazism, who applauded her “neat and moving” style. And while there were those who spoke of a romance, she always denied it: “It wasn’t sexy, if it had been sexy, we would have naturally been lovers”. This did not prevent her from affirming, years later, that the triumph of Nazism had not been a political reaction, but the unusual adoration “of a unique leader”.
Riefenstahl managed to get Hitler to extend a high budget in 1940 to bring Tiefland (Lowland) to the screen, inspired by an opera (1903) by Eugen d’Albert that took place in Spain. The film would not be released until 1954 because, in addition to the author’s pedigree, there was something murky about it that had not been fully unraveled: Where had the gypsies from a concentration camp gone, since extras with a Mediterranean look were needed?
A murmur spread then: after the filming of Tiefland, those extras had been deported to Auschwitz.
Leni Riefenstahl, who after the war was investigated several times, subjected to four denazification processes, and finally exonerated under the ruling that she was only a “sympathizer” of the Nazis, protested against what she called slander and swore that she still had news, and even correspondence, with those gypsies.
In later years she would condemn the barbarism of which, she assured, she had witnessed nothing and used to reply to those who accused her: “my thing was art, to capture an era, a perception of ideology and not unrestricted support. Tell me, where is my fault, I did not throw atomic bombs, I have not denied anyone, where is my fault?”
In 1982, the gypsy nebula was brought to light in a television documentary by German filmmaker Nina Gladitz. The young filmmaker had located the descendants and they claimed that the director of Tiefland treated the extras like servants and then returned them to their origin, the Maxglan concentration camp in Austria, from where they were transferred, and killed, in the gas chamber of Auschwitz.
Leni complained to Gladitz, and although most of her allegations did not come to fruition, she came out saying that she had won the lawsuit. Her work had received by then a kind of rehabilitation, after the documentary Olympia had been shown, in 1972. When the filmmaker turned one hundred years old, she was, for many, more a legend admired for her technical and artistic contributions to cinema than a “circumstantial suspect” of having taken the symbols of Nazism to starry planes.
But the filmmaker Nina Gladitz did not rest in tracing what she called the sinister side of the woman who, at the time, had been called “the eye of Hitler”. A few days ago she published a book in which she exposes the complicity of Riefenstahl, and not only in “the artistic”. Documents show that 40 of the 53 gypsies were killed without the director doing anything to stop it, after having recruited them herself. Also, supported by archival materials, she reveals that the names of important collaborating filmmakers, such as Willy Zielke, who filmed the initial takes of Olympia (and ended up sterilized and mentally ill), were erased from her films, in addition to Leni interceding with Hitler’s top brass to prevent other filmmakers from filming; a behavior of which not a word had ever been said and in which she highlights -among other examples- the elimination of the credits, as co-director in Blue Light, of the Hungarian Béla Balázs.
According to Nina Gladitz’s book, the talented Willy Zielke was taken out of the asylum by Leni Riefenstahl with the aim of turning him into a prisoner-assistant. Shortly before the end of the war, she burned almost all the files she owned in the gardens of her villa. Judging by classified French intelligence materials reviewed by Gladitz, that fire included scenes of the destruction of a Jewish ghetto shot on Hitler’s orders, although no one knows if the film ever materialized.
A definitive adjustment then for the filmmaker who ran to film the Nazi invasion of Poland, where she was photographed in uniform, together with German soldiers and carrying a gun around her waist, and for whom, after the occupation of Paris, she wrote the following telegram to Hitler: “With indescribable joy, deeply moved and full of ardent gratitude, we share with you, my Führer, your greatest victory and that of Germany, the entry of German troops into Paris. You surpass all that the human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving facts without parallel in the history of humanity. How can we ever thank you? Congratulating you is too little to express the feelings that move me.”
How was that cable possible, Leni Riefenstahl was once asked, and she, with the unheard of “naivety” that some people still use at times to alternate with their inexplicable ravings, replied: “Everyone thought the war was over, and in that spirit, I sent the cable.”
A MATTER OF LAW
The new Family Code is one of the norms that should be born in line with the constitutional precepts regarding the approach to violence in this area
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Myths about family violence are as old as each of its manifestations. And they are absolutely false.
That only physical assaults are expressions of violence, and that nothing else occurs in low-income households in marginal places, are some of the most common beliefs.
The reality, however, confirms daily, with sufficient eloquence, that violence can also be psychological, economic, patrimonial and can occur in all types of families, regardless of their economic or cultural level.
“She (or he) asked for it”, “jealousy is a manifestation of love”, “what happens in the family, good or bad, stays in the family”, “the letter with blood enters”, are also phrases that swell the bulky list of myths that, in the opinion of specialists, make the victim responsible, harm her perception of the abuse and neutralize her reaction and denunciation.
For Dr. Yamila González Ferrer, Vice President of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba (UNJC) and of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, “the Cuban Constitution gives the highest rank to the prevention and attention to violence in the family space”.
Both in this area (Art. 85), adds the also titular professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana, and in what refers to gender violence (Art. 43) and against children and adolescents (Art. 84 and 86), the 2019 Magna Carta is located in a remarkable place on a planetary scale in the constitutional approach to this issue.
The Law on Laws, specifically in Article 85, states that: “family violence, in any of its manifestations, is considered destructive of the persons involved, of families and of society, and is sanctioned by law”.
Such projection, González Ferrer considers, is comprehensive of the three scopes in which the violence in the familiar space affects negatively, and that cannot be lost sight of: the individual, the familiar one and the social one. In that same sense, the precept opens its protective fan to all the manifestations in which it can appear.
Nevertheless, the expert clarifies, “except in cases where its scope requires treatment in criminal proceedings, family violence does not usually generate any palpable legal consequence in Cuba today.
“Hence the need to promote the improvement of legal mechanisms and public policies, so that there is no impunity and the highest protection is provided to the victims”.
According to González Ferrer, it is necessary to elaborate new legal provisions and to modify or perfect other existing ones, not only in substantive family matters, but also in contractual, succession, procedural and criminal matters, so that it is possible to develop the constitutional postulates.
The new Family Code, therefore, is one of the norms that should be born tempered to the precepts of the Magna Carta as to the treatment of family violence, as well as to the protection against any of its manifestations.
Yamila González, who also coordinates the UNJC’s Gender Justice Project, insists on defining what family violence is, and what its causes and types are, because one must always know the phenomenon in order to face it and avoid it.
According to the professor, violence in family contexts is part of the network of violence that exists in society. It is, in turn, a universal phenomenon, with its concrete historical characteristics and the peculiarities of each family group; it is a social problem that has different causes and dimensions and encompasses all types of existing families.
The very patriarchal structure of the family, recognizes González Ferrer, “makes it one of the most violent social institutions, since it develops asymmetrical power relations through gender and generation, which are the guarantors of the legitimization and reproduction of the patriarchy as a system of domination”.
Based on its interdependence with the environment, “family violence must be understood as a process. It is not casual or established overnight, but has a painful path of formation, which is established in the family climate through an endless cycle of very harmful behaviors for human beings.”
In the opinion of the Vice President of the UNJC, violence is a cultural problem, not entirely legal, so it must act on the social, educational, cultural resources that make it possible, without disregarding the use of law as and when appropriate.
In conceptual terms, she emphasizes, “family or intra-family violence is that which occurs within the family. It refers to any form of abuse that occurs among its members, and implies an imbalance of power that is exercised from the strongest to the weakest”.
The expressions of family violence are the physical, psychic, moral, sexual, economic or patrimonial abuse, either by action or omission, direct or indirect, in which aggressors and victims maintain or have maintained couple relationships, as well as the one that takes place between relatives. The same treatment must be given to acts of this nature committed between people in cohabiting relationships.
In the words of the expert, there are three significant ways in which family violence is expressed, since in the patriarchal, hierarchical family, power is exercised along two fundamental lines: gender and generation.
It is a very particular type of violence, based on a patriarchal culture, rooted in the inequality of power between men and women. It is based on sexist stereotypes, which generate prejudice and lead to expressions of discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.
It can be physical, psychological, sexual, moral, symbolic, economic, or patrimonial, and has a negative impact on the enjoyment of rights, freedoms, and the integral well-being of people.
It occurs in family, work, school, political, cultural, and any other environment in society. Its most generalized, frequent and significant expression is that which occurs against women.
Nevertheless, gender violence against men exists, such as homophobia, for example, when they are attacked for having transgressed gender norms from the canons of hegemonic masculinity; or the mocking and questioning that those who assume co-responsibility for domestic tasks and the care of their children may receive and are then criticized by their relatives, co-workers, or friends.
It is one that manifests itself against people because of aging, given the decrease in their physical and intellectual capacities, economic and social participation.
Its most common expressions are physical and emotional abandonment, hygienic, medical and food neglect, underestimation, financial and patrimonial manipulation, physical and verbal abuse.
This is what happens with respect to children and adolescents because of their condition as developing persons. Even if it is not directly about them, it is considered direct violence because it affects the adequate development of their personality and the feeling of security and trust in those around them, with transcendence to their social life.
On this sensitive subject, some think that, in situations of violence within the family, if it is not about the person of the son or daughter, there is no significant level of affectation, when the damage derived from living in violent environments is severe for the integral development of their personality and with very negative consequences towards the future.
Whatever the nature of the conflicts, Gonzalez Ferrer says, “their solution should not be managed in a violent way but through communication and negotiation. There is an urgent need for education and a culture of peace, of respect for human rights, based on the need to learn to live and relate in harmony.
By Luis A Montero Cabrera
January 21, 2021
Translated by Merriam Ansara for CubaNews and other outlets.
This is the third in a series of articles.
We Cubans have a very remarkable platform for biomedical production, one might even say extraordinary for a country like ours. An infamous 2004 document from the “Commission for the Support of a Free Cuba” of a previous administration in the US described it as unnecessary and very expensive for such a poor country as ours: “Large sums were also directed to activities such as the development of biotechnology and bioscience centers not appropriate in magnitude and expense for such a fundamentally poor nation, and which have failed to be justified financially”. The only thing to be added to this is that those of us in the South with darker skin ought not to have the luxury of science. But our biopharmaceutical sector is the child of necessity, of the creative initiative of a lover of knowledge and a true revolutionary, as was our Fidel, and of an educational policy that gives everybody without distinction the right to reach the highest level of human knowledge and to with that knowledge, create. It was not begun with a specific strategy or goal but became, as it is today a bastion of the knowledge, science and culture of our country. It was and is the fruit of revolutionary thinking.
The development of a vaccine today requires the existence of today’s conditions for this kind of research. It must begin by looking at the scientific literature for antecedents and ways of doing things that can lead to the implementation of more and more exquisite laboratory procedures and rigorous tests. In our case and for the above reasons, a firm base for the research was already established when the COVID 19 emergency arose. Events such as these cannot be foreseen, but the preparation of the conditions to face them is the duty of any decent political system.
Chinese science immediately made available to the international community everything it knew about this dangerous and ultra-contagious virus and in other countries as well the information that was being generated was made available to all. Under these conditions, several of our scientific groups set to work to obtain a specific Cuban vaccine for this disease. One of the efforts, at the Finlay Vaccine Institute, is led by the same Prof. Vicente Vérez who obtained the previous milestone of the vaccine against “Haemophilus influenzae”, the first with synthetic antigens that was used and commercialized in the world. The other groups involved work at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology with a long tradition also in the design and production of novel vaccines.
Remember that the essential component of a vaccine is the antigen that activates the immune system and leaves it ready to fight and destroy the foreign invader. Additional determining factors are both the adjuvants and the pharmaceutical forms for delivering the vaccine to humans. If you have an established and strong foundation in these last two aspects, determining the most suitable antigen becomes the heart of the creative work.
The antigen chosen in Cuba, for many reasons, was the “receptor-binding domain” of the virus (RBD). In simple terms, these are the molecules that constitute the external “spikes” so striking that they appear in the pictorial representation and the high-resolution microscopy of the viral molecular aggregate. This CoV “spike” protein (S) plays the most important role in viral binding, fusion and entry into cells of the organism attacked by the virus.
Therefore, it serves as a target for the immune system to develop antibodies, and for scientists to use them as antigens in the design of effective vaccines. An article that appeared in one of the branches of the well-known journal Nature had characterized this component as very promising as a vaccine antigen against COVID 19 as early as March 2020. The authors of the article are a very good reflection of the current internationalization of the basic sciences. Most are Chinese in origin and did extensive work in collaboration between the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute in New York, the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, and the Key Laboratory for Medical Molecular Virology at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Our compañeros evaluated alternatives. One of them was to generate the so-called messenger RNA that was capable of producing the antigen in human cells. It is an ultra-modern technology that is being used in some of the COVID 19 vaccines that are already being applied. It has some advantages, but also has an important disadvantage so far not overcome for a vaccine that is intended to be administered massively throughout the world, especially the less developed one: it requires very strict cooling conditions for its transport and preservation.
Our biotechnology system, on the other hand, has at the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) the possibility to “ferment” mammalian cells that directly produce the RBD antigen, since the technology has been developed for other similar productions. It also has the possibility of producing a significant quantity if the antigen is viable for our vaccine. Therefore, all Cuban vaccine candidates, at least up to now, are based on this antigen, with some modification that makes it more active.
The results are exhilarating. And thus our scientists began the race to produce a variety of vaccines, in different institutions and by different scientific groups, collaborating and competing, in order to arrive at the best solutions. “SOBERANAS” 1 and 2, the MAMBISA and the ABDALA are very promising.
Vaccines are drugs. Therefore, they require measurements of their effectiveness, knowing their contraindications and risks, and finding the appropriate formulations and the most viable forms of administration before applying them en masse. Everything must proceed in a strict regulatory framework to ensure that consequences more serious than the disease itself were avoided. If they have the same antigen, how are our vaccine variants different? What state are they in their research and development?
Havana, January 20, 2021
Luis Alberto Cabrera Montero holds a Doctorate Chemical Sciences. He is Senior Researcher and Full Professor at the University of Havana. He is President of the Scientific Advisory Council of the University of Havana and is a Merit Member and Coordinator of Natural and Exact Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba. For a full biography, see http://www.academiaciencias.cu/en/node/674
By Luis A Montero Cabrera
January 11, 2021
Translated by Merriam Ansara for CubaNews and other outlets.
This is the second in a series of articles.
The molecules of an invading biological entity that are identified and are accessible to the human immune system are often referred to as “antigens”. They are usually expressed in the outermost parts of the nanoscopic carrier and are a necessary part of its composition. They are the same when found in a virus, in a fungus, in a bacterium, or in the cells of an organ from another being transplanted into our body.
An important characteristic of the infection and self-healing process is that when an individual overcomes a disease by the action of the immune system, it usually remains prepared to defeat it in future reinfections of the same type. The system “remembers” the intruder antigen and thus we are prepared to reject its carriers again. It is a biological fabric very refined by natural selection through many generations and species.
By realizing this, and using scientific reasoning, human beings try to use this defense “memory” to ensure that people do not get sick with an infection, even if they have never suffered from the disease. It is about “teaching” the immune system of each individual to activate and destroy any morbid invasion once its antigens are detected. The challenge is great, because to invade the body with antigens from a certain infection without making the person sick requires wise processing.
The result is known as a “vaccine.” Its name is due to the fact that the first formulations were cultivated in cows. It is always a chemical-biological preparation of antigens to achieve active acquired immunity against a particular infectious disease. The first vaccines contained the organisms that caused the disease from weakened or dead forms of themselves. It was not known then that what the immune system recognized was only its antigens. These preparations thus “taught” the human body to “shoot” the actions that would destroy the invader. Vaccines can be prophylactic when they prevent and prevent the effects of future infection, as it is desired that COVID-19 be, or therapeutic when they are used to fight a disease that has already invaded the body, such as cancer.
Most likely, the first disease to be prevented by inoculation was smallpox. It seems that the first recorded use of it occurred in the 16th century in China. The scientific and reproducible vaccine against smallpox was invented and duly reported in the specialized literature in 1796 by the English physician Edward Jenner. Smallpox was a contagious and deadly disease, and it is said to kill up to 60% of infected adults and 80% of children.
Tomas Romay y Chacón was a physician and scientist born in Havana in 1764. Having begun by studying law he switched to medicine and in 1791 at the age of 27 was 33rd medical graduate in Cuba. He became a professor at our University of Havana and co-founder of the Royal Patriotic Society of Havana, today the Economic Society of Friends of the Country. As early as 1804, just 8 years after the appearance of the vaccine in Europe, Romay implemented smallpox vaccination on our island with preparations made “in situ” with the support of the Patriotic Society. In this way, he used the local science instead of waiting for delayed arrival of the vaccine from the Metropolis. He and his collaborators followed the procedures published and described by Jenner and manufactured the first Cuban vaccine, the smallpox vaccine. A marvelous success of a nascent, Creole, nation’s innovation and wisdom.
Time passed and scientific research led to the knowledge that the key to vaccines were the antigens and not the entire infectious entities.
Vaccines have been produced in Cuba for many decades. Two of them at least have been both original and exclusive. In 1987 Drs. Concepción Campa and Gustavo Sierra led a scientific group at the Finlay Vaccine Institute to obtain a vaccine that at that time was the first of its kind in the world. This vaccine was and still is very effective against a bacterium that attacks the meninges in the brain and nervous system, called group B and C meningococcus. This type of meningitis is particularly deadly in children. Cuban science at the University of Havana produced in 2004 the world’s first efficient commercial vaccine based on an antigen manufactured in the laboratory, that is, “synthetic”. Prof. Vicente Vérez, a scientist who has dedicated his life to the chemistry of sugars, his wife Dr. Violeta Fernández (who died very young) and their collaborators were the authors of this second great feat. Thanks to the work of these scientific groups, many Cuban children and children in many parts of the world are alive and active today as adults.
Vaccines don’t just contain antigens. The immune system is not equally effective in all people and at all ages. Certain antigens are more activating than others because they are more easily recognized and “trigger” the work of the entire system that feels invaded. Vaccines are made more effective with so-called “adjuvants” (helpers) which, when given together with the appropriate antigens, cause many people’s immune systems to wake up more quickly and efficiently.
New types of vaccines have recently appeared that do not contain antigens directly but rather RNA that allows our cells to synthesize them “in situ”, recognize them and learn to fight them. While the vaccines that contain only antigens without the need to supply the infectious agent are efficient and safe, these others are as well and furthermore allow for mutations of the virus to be taken into account with much greater facility and so ensure the utility of the vaccines over time.
It can be said that vaccines are pieces of biological technology that represent a lifeline for many human beings. Without them we would be at the mercy of Darwinian natural selection and an epidemic would be survived only by the few who could overcome it thanks to some singularity of their organism. This was the case before science intervened by inventing vaccines. The cost was immense in precious lives ending early. It could also be said that without vaccines some type of infection could come along that might lead to the extinction of homo sapiens as a living species, which has happened many times before with other species in the beautiful and harsh history of life on this planet.
And what will the current vaccines against COVID and very particularly the SOBERANAS, MAMBISA and ABDALA be like? How do you prove that they serve what they have been designed for?
Havana, January 6, 2021
Luis Alberto Cabrera Montero holds a Doctorate Chemical Sciences. He is a Senior Researcher and Full Professor at the University of Havana. He is President of the Scientific Advisory Council of the University of Havana and is a Merit Member and Coordinator of Natural and Exact Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba. For a full biography, see http://www.academiaciencias.cu/en/node/674
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