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The Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Havana, Cuba
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The Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Havana, Cuba, currently has over 9,000 students from 24 countries, including Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. Eighty of these students are from the United States. Just a month ago, poor black, Latino and Native-American med-school hopefuls faced the possibility of being stripped of the right to a free education in Havana, Cuba because of regulations that restricted travel to the island.
Last month I spoke to one of these scholars, named Linda Rodriguez. Linda has an Associates in Science from Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, NJ, and was looking forward to joining other LASM students this September after having received a scholarship from the Cuban government to study there. She told me that she was overwhelmed with hope and joy when the scholarship was first offered to her, but after hearing about "the new regulations being implemented, [she] was immediately perturbed." Who could blame her?
The threat to Linda’s free education existed in the elimination of the "fully hosted" provision against travel to Cuba. In the past, students were allowed to be fully hosted in Cuba. All costs and fees could be paid for by any non-U.S. national. The elimination of the fully hosted provision prohibits students from accepting scholarships by a third-country national, non-US resident, or Cuban authority.
This was part of President Bush’s most recent regulations against Cuba through the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury Department. Had these regulations remained, students would have had to forfeit their right to a free education and be subject to the US Treasury Licensing Department.
In a letter to President Bush dated June 21, 2004, Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, stated, "When you forbid Americans to travel to Cuba under the threat of brutal repression, you are violating a constitutional principle and a right of which your country’s citizens have always been proud."
In the summer of 2000 Castro had offered free housing and tuition to up to 500 U.S. students, a scholarship package totaling $200,000 per scholar.
The first 10 U.S. students accepted into LASM set off on April 3, 2001 for a six-year medical school program, taking with them the hope of a better health care system for medically underserved communities in the U.S. The scholarship program is part of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organizing/Pastors for Peace, founded by Rev. Lucius Walker and led by Velvet Ross.
Cuba is known for its record doctor to patient ratio and for having sent 20,000 doctors to 64 Third World countries.
One would think that Castro’s scholarship offer would be readily welcomed by President Bush at a time where American youths are facing immense high school drop out and unemployment rates. Twenty-seven million between the ages of 18 and 24 did not graduate from high school in 2000, and, according to Bureau of Labor statistics, in the of summer 2003 the youth labor force constituted of a total of 24.2 million youth. Many smart students of color fall between the cracks of our inept, or perhaps just poorly funded, public school system. Our society preaches to them that only some who are special and lucky enough get to make it.
Luckily, the battle for the American LASM students was fought and has been won. The US government has finally allowed the continuation of the scholarship program for US students from low-income communities to attend the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba. This decision was reached after many people, including parents and friends of the medical students, protested (by making phone calls and sending letters and faxes to the State and Treasury Departments) against preventing these students from traveling to Cuba to attend medical school. This effort was also aided when members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses and even Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell intervened on behalf of the students.
Due to the public outcry from the students' families and concerned citizens, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has reinstated the "fully hosted" provision so that underprivileged students of color may be able to pursue their dreams of being doctors -and they may be able to do so for free in Cuba.
Jeannette Caceres is a junior at New York University majoring in Latin American Studies and print journalism. She does spoken word and hip-hop theater and lives in Harlem.
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