Socialist Action /July 2001
World Bank Leaders Admit: 'Cuba Has
Done a Good Job'
By CARL ROSENTHAL
The May 30 release of the World Bank's 2001 edition
of "World Development Indicators" (WDI) was the occasion for some
raised eyebrows in ruling-class circles when it demonstrated that revolutionary
Cuba had topped virtually all other poor countries as well as some of the
advanced capitalist nations in health and education indices.
World Bank President James Wolfensohn was compelled
to concede that Cuba had done "a good job" in meeting the social
welfare needs of its people.
At a time when poverty, disease, and illiteracy
are on the rise and as World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
structural adjustment programs demand social cutbacks and profiteering privatizations
as a condition for aid, Cuba, with no aid and a nationalized economy designed
to meet human needs not profit, has actually improved its performance in
both areas.
Aside from North Korea, Cuba is the one developing
country that has not received World Bank aid or counsel. Cuba continues
to set an example for the world despite a 41-year U.S. economic blockade
and continuous U.S. support to Miami-based anti-Cuban terrorists, as well
as the cessation a decade ago of favorable trade agreements with Russia
and Eastern Europe.
Eric Swanson, the program manager for the Bank's
Development Data Group, which compiled the 400-page 2001 report covering
scores of economic, social, and environmental indicators, stated, "Cuba
is in some sense almost an anti-model" for the World Bank's nostrum
of progress through private enterprise.
Health care and education are free to all in Cuba;
foreign capitalist investors are allowed the minimum of operating room and
are under tight government scrutiny; virtually all staples and commodities
are subsidized and readily available; rent does not exist for some 90 percent
of the population, and no one pays more than 5 percent of their monthly
income for rent; and Cuba's currency is not really convertible.
Cuba's record of social achievement has not only
been sustained; it's been enhanced, according to the WDI. Infant mortality
rate has been reduced from 11 per 1000 births in 1990 to seven in 1999,
which places it firmly in the ranks of the Western industrialized nations.
Jo Ritz, the World Bank's Vice President for Development
Policy, who visited Cuba in an unofficial capacity several months ago, noted
that Cuba stands sixth in the world in this category.
The infant mortality rate for Argentina stood at
18 in 1999; Chile's was down to 10; and Costa Rica, 12. For the entire Latin
American and Caribbean region as a whole, the average was 30 in 1999.
Similarly, the mortality rate for children under
five in Cuba has fallen from 13 to eight per thousand over the decade. That
figure is 50 percent lower than the rate in Chile, the Latin American country
closest to Cuba's achievement. For the region as a whole, the average was
38 in 1999.
"Six for every 1000 in infant mortality-the
same level as Spain-is just unbelievable," according to Ritz, a former
education minister in the Netherlands. "You observe it, and so you
see that Cuba has done exceedingly well in the human development area."
Indeed, in Ritz's own field the figures tell much
the same story. Net primary enrollment for both girls and boys reached 100
percent in 1997, up from 92 percent in 1990. That was as high as in most
developed nations, higher even than the U.S. rate and well above 80-90 percent
rates achieved by the most advanced Latin American countries.
"Even in education performance, Cuba's is
very much in tune with the developed world, and much higher than schools
in, say, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile," says Ritz.
Public spending on education in Cuba amounts to
about 6.7 percent of gross national income, twice the proportion in other
Latin America and Caribbean nations. There were 12 primary pupils for every
Cuban teacher in 1997, a ratio that ranked with Sweden, rather than with
any other developing country. The Latin American and East Asian average
was twice as high, at 25 to one.
The average youth (ages 15-24) illiteracy rate
in Latin America and the Caribbean stands at seven percent. In Cuba, the
rate is zero. Only Uruguay approaches that rate, with one percent youth
illiteracy.
Cuba devoted 9.1 percent of its gross domestic
product (GDP) during the 1990s to health care, roughly equivalent to Canada's
rate. Its ratio of 5.3 doctors per 1000 people was the highest in the world.
Wayne Smith, who headed the U.S. Interests Section
in Havana in the late 1970s and early 1980s and who has traveled to Cuba
many times since, noted at the April 30 World Bank/IMF meeting, "Doctors
in Cuba can make more driving cabs and working in hotels, but they don't.
They're just very dedicated."
On July 26, Cuba will celebrate the 41st anniversary
of a social revolution that ended imperialist rule for the first time in
Latin America and opened a new chapter in social progress.
Cuba dedicated the first year of its revolution
to a program to eliminate illiteracy. Within two years it had nationalized
imperialist property and embarked on a socialist course that for the first
time in its history placed the satisfaction of human needs on the order
of the day.
Under conditions of a U.S.-imposed worldwide blockade
and shunned by the Stalinist regimes that preferred to enrich a corrupt
bureaucracy seeking the restoration of capitalism, Cuba has set an example
for the world.
Statistics and World Bank official quotes were
taken from an article by Cuban solidarity activist Jim Lobe.
Socialist Action /July 2001 |