Tuesday night, listening to President Barak Obama’s Non-State-of-the-Union, State-of-the-Union enunciation of his priorities – self-sufficiency, health and education – fired other synapses, in the context of this Sunday’s my-pov.ca screening of Che. Before the joint sessions of the American congress, Obama waxed eloquent: ‘Now is the time to jumpstart … areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down.’ Hmmm, I thought. I remember those words from before.
Fifty years ago – 1959 to be precise – Fidel Castro was identifying in speeches for Cubans the self-same self-sufficiency, health and education links. When Castro came to power in 1959, only 8% of the farmers had access to health care. Same with schools, so Castro mobilized teachers, workers, and high school kids to teach more than 700,000 peasants how to read, reducing the illiteracy from 23% to 4% in one year. Fifty years before Obama, he connected Cuba’s economic transformation to equally transforming publicly supported health and education. And for his troubles, was denounced, boycotted, invaded. The most recent Cuban figures I came across were now comparable to Canada’s: life expectancy at birth (75.7 years), adult literacy rate (95.9%), combined enrollment in school (72%).
Today no demonologist’s denouncing President Obama as a dirty Commie bastard for focusing on improving his country's health, education and self-sufficiency (although inevitably I’m sure some nutbar will). Watching Che Sunday, may stir other similar connectors in you as well.
Fifty years ago – 1959 to be precise – Fidel Castro was identifying in speeches for Cubans the self-same self-sufficiency, health and education links. When Castro came to power in 1959, only 8% of the farmers had access to health care. Same with schools, so Castro mobilized teachers, workers, and high school kids to teach more than 700,000 peasants how to read, reducing the illiteracy from 23% to 4% in one year. Fifty years before Obama, he connected Cuba’s economic transformation to equally transforming publicly supported health and education. And for his troubles, was denounced, boycotted, invaded. The most recent Cuban figures I came across were now comparable to Canada’s: life expectancy at birth (75.7 years), adult literacy rate (95.9%), combined enrollment in school (72%).
Today no demonologist’s denouncing President Obama as a dirty Commie bastard for focusing on improving his country's health, education and self-sufficiency (although inevitably I’m sure some nutbar will). Watching Che Sunday, may stir other similar connectors in you as well.
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