World Health Care, Human Rights and Research Memoranda

Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World's Conception of Health Care

Steve Brouwer, author of a just-released study, will speak about his new work in the conference room at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs on Friday, October 7 at 11:00 am, in Washington D.C., at 1250 Connecticut Ave. NW, approximately one block from Dupont Circle, on the Red Line. In his talk, he will discuss progressive solutions to health care in Venezuela and Cuba, as well as the importance of the ALBA alliance (which includes, among other nations, Cuba and Venezuela), and other related issues.

Brouwer’s study focuses on Cuba’s and Venezuela’s often astonishing medical workers , many of whom have left their comfortable backgrounds to travel to poor communities in their respective countries in order to practice health care from a grassroots-level approach. The author of other works such as Sharing the Pie, Conquest and Capitalism: 1492 to 1992, and Exporting the Gospel, Brouwer paints a vivid picture of the challenges and accomplishments faced by these doughty medics, who have accepted the difficult credo facing the hardships in delivering health care to all. This story has at times transformed the way Latin Americans think about health care, and helps to shed light on unique approaches that can be applied to improve other all too often unjust and defective health care systems that today are functioning around the world.

In Bolstering Economic Ties, U.S. Turns a Blind Eye to Colombia’s Questionable Human Rights Record

Obstruction to the long-stalled free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with Colombia is finally coming to an end, as President Barack Obama submitted the Colombian, South Korean, and Panamanian FTA proposals to Congress on October 3, 2011. Along with the two other pending FTAs, the Colombian agreement has been on the congressional backburner since the United States and Colombia initiated an agreement on November 22, 2006. The trade accord, first drafted by former President George W. Bush, and later revised by his incumbent Barack Obama, has been widely criticized for expanding trade relations with a country that still has an enormous record of human rights violations toward political activists and union leaders.

There has been little progress in investigating violence toward labor organizers and human rights activists committed by right-wing paramilitary death squads. Ignoring criticism, Washington maintains the claim that Bogotá is taking the appropriate steps to investigate human rights cases. Several U.S. unions, including the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union, greatly oppose the FTA agreements because of the possibility that a very large amount of jobs will be lost in the U.S. manufacturing sector if they are enacted.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Denise Fonseca.
To read the rest of this analysis, click here.

Press Memoranda to be Released by COHA in the Next Several Days:

Argentina Advances Reproductive Rights through Education
by COHA Research Associate Katie Steefel

Chinese Flow of Investment Continues to Aid Brazil's Ascendency
by COHA Research Associate Faizaan Sami

Blaring Impunity: Unrelenting Honduran Journalist Assassinations as Government Sits on its Hands
by COHA Research Fellow Olga Imbaquingo and COHA Research Associate Gabriela Acosta

Brazil Strikes Out Again and Again with its Quirky Foreign Policy Abroad: Noble Past Efforts Fade as Itamaraty's Moral Order Breaks Apart
by COHA Research Associate Linnea LaMon

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 | Research Memorandum 11.3

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