Socialist Action /October 2000
US Cool to Fidel's Teaching Offer
The Clinton administration evidently does not wish
to have publicized Castro's offer to have Cuba teach medicine to college
graduates from underserved U.S. minority communities.
Juan Gonzalez, the New York Daily News reporter
and co-host with Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now"
program, reports how the State Department refused a visa to Ricardo Alarcon,
the president of Cuba's National Assembly, to attend a Congressional Black
Caucus conference and dinner. (N.Y. Daily News, Sept. 15, 2000).
The 38-person caucus had invited Alarcon to attend
so that they might announce plans for the program, which they had welcomed.
When Alarcon got no answer to his request for a
visa to go to Washington from the United Nations meeting, Harlem Rep. Charles
Rangel wrote to Clinton at the end of August, "It would be a great
embarrassment to the caucus, as well as to our government, to have a formal
invitation at this level be rescinded for any reason short of a diplomatic
catastrophe."
Nevertheless, the visa was not granted, and neither
the White House nor the State Department would say why.
Yet the Congressional Black Caucus greeted Clinton
heartily when he and Gore came to the conference soliciting votes for Gore.
Will the Congressional Black Caucus now demand
that the pre-med students be allowed to go to Cuba for their free training,
or will it drop the matter? -P.S.
Socialist Action /October 2000 |