Here are the ten most important news in Cuba in 2022, a selection from the perspective of .
With a scientific community working non-stop, straining the country’s scarce logistical and financial resources, Cuba developed and produced the first Anti-Covid Vaccine in Latin America. It was the pioneer country in immunizing its pediatric population between the ages of two and 18 and this was a milestone not only for the Caribbean nation but for the world. The universalization of vaccines – three out of a total of five validated – on the island has allowed infections to be reduced to a minimum, death statistics to zero since September and a return to normal in all areas. Domestic vaccines have also saved many lives in developing countries, who bought them as alternatives to the expensive or inadequate options of the big capitalist pharmaceutical industry.
The first of the three tragedies that have befallen Cuba this year occurred at 10:30 am on May 6th. A devastating explosion caused by a gas leak in the Icon’s supply Hotel Saratoga, of Old Havana, used the stroke of a pen to erase the entire facade of the building, a legacy of the city’s eclectic architecture, and also damaged several adjacent buildings. The human record was terrible: 47 dead and 52 wounded. There were no tourists in the hotel at the time of the blast as it was being renovated to reopen soon. Work is currently underway to rehabilitate the building, but the wounds will take time for many to heal.
In the 1960s, Mexico was the only Latin American country, following the sovereignist model, that did not join the continental isolation of Fidel Castro’s government, imposed by Washington with its colonial ministry, then as now OAS. Returning to Mexico this tradition of independence and attachment to Cuba, since the time of the romantic poet José María Heredia, in the nineteenth century, the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador He paid a working visit to Havana as the two countries celebrated 120 years of diplomatic relations. The bilateral agenda has been broad and extensive, from the Cuban Doctors’ Treaty and the trade commitments to the Summit of the Americas and the migration crisis that has gripped the entire region and has the destination coveted by millions at the southern border of the United States. . .
On a stormy Friday evening, August 5th, lightning struck the 52 crude oil storage tank of the Matanzas Supertanker Base, a city one hundred kilometers from Havana that caused the largest and most devastating industrial disaster in Cuban history. The incident spread to the left of the huge warehouses, with one of them exploding and the other three collapsing. The black plume of smoke stretched west for hundreds of kilometers and was captured by satellites. After five days and nights, and with the help of Mexican and Venezuelan firefighters and technicians, the blaze was finally brought under control, leaving a charred, distorted landscape soaked with water. The brave Cuban firefighters, who came from different provinces, suffered the deaths of fifteen of their colleagues. A total of 17 people died and around 150 suffered burns of varying degrees of severity. “It always hurts to come back to this place. All honor to the deceased,” wrote the President of the Republic on Twitter.
A more humane, inclusive and modern Cuba emerged victorious on September 25 in a referendum ratified by 66.87 percent of valid votes and a turnout in the polls approaching 75 percent family codewhich replaced the previous one and was surpassed by the reality of the seventies.
The new text, submitted in more than twenty versions before the final number 25, went through academic and public discussions and, with a balanced vision, codifies and defends the new forms, needs and problems of the island’s families in the best interests of the child, equal marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, even solidarity pregnancy, gender-based violence, the progressive underage decision-making and inheritance and pension entitlements, among many other figures.
It was a natural monster that descended on the westernmost part of Cuba early in the morning of September 27. Hurricane Ian devastated the province with sustained wind speeds of over 200 kilometers per hour and downpours of up to 108 liters per square meter pine forest of the river, affecting more than sixty percent of its housing stock, most of its power grid and numerous roads and plantations, including the famous tobacco, in addition to causing a nationwide power outage on the island as a result of load imbalance. A counter-storm of work and solidarity has managed to pull the people of Pinar del Río out of the slump, but there is still much to be rehabilitated, especially in homes, but not with a fully restored power grid in a few months.
Thirty years, thirty times. The math doesn’t lie, let alone the international community, when it comes to lifting the blockade that the United States has officially maintained against Cuba since 1962, which has failed when its victory decides to change the island’s regime. US sanctions, retouched in their perversity with more than two hundred measures during the Trump era, currently cost fifteen million dollars a day, their penalties cut through the lives of Cubans and are the main obstacle to Cuba’s development.
It was as big as it could get. He sang about love, heartbreak, homeland, the singer’s ethics, the mistakes of one and the other, the revolution and the diaspora, the days of glory and loneliness, tradition and renewal, finally Pablo Milaneswho died of cancer in Madrid at the age of 79, with or without a guitar, with a thunderous and delicate voice, accompanied the sentimentality of generations of Cubans, regardless of their geography or beliefs, to unite them in their deepest and deepest form generous identity, in the deepest essence.
Two international trips by a team of ministers led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel in November and December confirmed that Cuba is not floundering in the midst of its worst economic crisis in more than thirty years and that its resistance is being recognized and nurtured by major players on the world stage.
The President met with his counterparts from Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China and signed cooperation agreements in which Cuba offers its scientific capabilities in the medical and pharmaceutical fields with highly effective products with added value. The same happened during his Caribbean tour of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, where the eighth was held CARICOM-Cuba Summit, and finally Granada. In these latter areas, the common strategies stemming from the insularity condition relate to programs of solidarity and mutual support in the face of common challenges.
And it is precisely solidarity and integration that are the touchstone of ALBA TCP, The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Treaty, which had two summits in Havana in 2022. Number 21 in May and 22 in December.
In the first, this consensus platform sent a strong anti-hegemonic message, opposing the expulsion of three of its members — Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba — from the Ninth America Summit, held in Los Angeles amid protest and disappointment by the majority of participants, with an absentee Mexico in disgust.
In the second, the ALBA-TCP leaders chose to further integrate the organization of ten countries in the daily life of their peoples, already benefiting from crucial events such as the fight against illiteracy, the free return of sight health to six million people, the census and the protection of disabled citizens and the training of thousands of doctors. (ALH)
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