Cuban, Venezuelan services aid poor

Cuban, Venezuelan services aid poor
By Fiona Smith
The Associated Press

June 18, 2006

LA PAZ, Bolivia · Gladys Melani was nearly blind from cataracts. Juana
Mamani was illiterate. Sharon Mayra didn't officially exist. What these
three Bolivians had in common was poverty, and help from Cuba and
Venezuela in solving their problems.

Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have made a fast and extensive start in
providing President Evo Morales' three-month-old, left-wing government
with humanitarian aid, winning the thanks of its beneficiaries as well
as political points.

It's part of what Morales, in a veiled taunt to the Bush administration,
calls an "axis of good."

Melani's cataracts were removed for free by one of about 700 Cuban
doctors who have fanned out to the farthest corners of Bolivia. Cuban
teaching materials are helping Mamani learn to read and write.

Technology from Venezuela got 17-year-old Mayra the ID card without
which she couldn't travel abroad, vote, enter government buildings or
accumulate a pension. An estimated 1 million poor Bolivians, nearly 10
percent of the population, are expected to get the same help.

Venezuela also is helping to set up 109 rural radio stations so Morales
can spread his socialist gospel much as Chavez has done.

Morales, an Aymara Indian, won office in December in a landslide of
discontent with the traditional ruling class. On April 29, he signed a
"trade agreement of the people" with Castro and Chavez, a mostly
symbolic alternative to free trade agreements Washington has reached
with other Latin American countries.

Two days later, he decreed the nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas,
an even more forceful assertion of state control of mineral resources
than Chavez has taken with his nation's oil.

The United States remains Bolivia's single biggest foreign donor,
contributing a bit less than half of the $360 million annually with
which rich nations collectively pay 60 percent of the Bolivian
government's bills.

But the Cuban and Venezuelan largesse has mounted as Morales continues
to veer to the left. And critics see dangers. Fernando Messmer, an
opposition congressman and former foreign minister, says Venezuela could
use the database set up for the ID cards to keep tabs on Bolivians.

He has no proof, but contends Venezuela and Cuba are concerned more with
promoting Morales than helping the poor.

"It's dangerous because it's moving toward consolidating a totalitarian
state," he said.

Venezuela's state energy company, meanwhile, has signed a contract to
build an ethane, methane and propane plant in Bolivia, and Venezuelan
experts are involved in the details of Morales' gas nationalization.
Chavez has offered Bolivia diesel fuel that can be paid for with farm
products such as soy.

Flush with petrodollars, Chavez has offered fuel at preferential rates
to 13 Caribbean countries as well as some poor U.S. districts, and
scholarships for Haitians.

The Cubans, who in Cold War times sent soldiers to fight in Angola and
Nicaragua, have focused on bringing medicine and literacy to friendly
neighbors, Venezuela included.

A literacy campaign modeled on the one Cuba ran in Venezuela aims to
teach Bolivia's 720,000 illiterates to read and write in two years. Cuba
has delivered 30,000 TV sets plus workbooks and videotapes for Bolivian
volunteer teachers.

It is equipping 20 rural Bolivian hospitals, providing free eye surgery
in three new ophthalmology centers, and offering to pay for 6,000
Bolivians to study in Cuba.

The Bolivian Medical Association objects, saying the country has 10,000
unemployed doctors of its own. But Melani, 75, feels only gratitude to
the eye doctors at a newly equipped center in La Paz.

"Thank God the Cuban doctors arrived with all their understanding and
care. They operated on me, and thanks to them I can see, I can keep
working," she said.

Morales' opponents accuse him of using the Venezuelan and Cuban aid
programs to mobilize support in July 2 elections for an assembly to
rewrite Bolivian's constitution -- a pattern similar to that which
helped Chavez consolidate power in Venezuela.

But independent political analyst Cayetano Llobet thinks the fears are
overblown.

"There's a prejudiced mentality in the middle class that believes we're
practically being invaded by Cuba and Venezuela," he said. "I don't
think it's that serious or alarming."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/caribbean/sfl-hbolivia18jun18,0,6518345.story?coll=sfla-news-caribbean