Granma Ignores Castro Crisis

Well.

It’s been a week since the Cuban government asked for a Spanish doctor to fly to Cuba to diagnose the ex-leader , Fidel Castro.

The news hit the wires on Sunday. Since then, there have been press conferences, protests and all hell has broken loose in Madrid over the controversial 6,000 mile house call.

The Doctor’s diagnosis that Castro, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t have cancer was in all the international newspapers except for Cuba’s

So much for Mr. “the revolution cannot lie, Raúl Castro”

What are they afraid of? That Cubans are going to find out that their health system is a house of propaganda leaflets? They pretty much already found out the first time they had to go to an emergency room.

And yet the propaganda about the marvels of the Cuban healthcare system continues:

From The Miami Herald. I had read this article before, but after this weekend’s events its good comedy. Here’s an excerpt:

Castro, who is widely believed to be terminally ill and who was too sick to attend his belated 80th birthday celebrations in Havana this month, made medical diplomacy a centerpiece of his regime. He dispatched Cuban doctors throughout the third world, and he soon expanded the free medical school offer to other Central American, South American, Caribbean and African countries. And in 2000, during a visit to Cuba by members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, Castro offered free medical scholarships to U.S. students, too, if they agree to return to poor, underserved U.S. areas.

The first U.S. students arrived in the fall of 2001. They moved into the quarters of a former naval academy on the Cuban coast west of Havana, where there are 3,300 students from 29 countries. They were expected to spend the next six years (compared to four in a U.S. medical school) enduring blackouts, water shortages, an endless diet of rice and beans, long lines for everything, little phone or Internet contact with the rest of the world, and long months between visits home. They had to know (or take a 12-week course to quickly learn) Spanish. For the first two years, they live in dormitories. They receive a monthly stipend of about $4.

Why would anyone do that?

Most of the more than 90 U.S. students here are African American or Hispanic. Many graduated from top-tier U.S. colleges but couldn't go to medical schools in the U.S. because of the high cost or because of low scores on admission exams or a lack of prerequisite courses. Others didn't apply to U.S. medical schools, put off by the cost or focus on lucrative specialties

Article/Propaganda/Comedy Routine Here