Havana, Cuba – Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales left Cuba on Saturday after a nearly 24-hour visit during which he and Cuban leader Fidel Castro signed a wide-ranging mutual cooperation agreement.
Castro accompanied Morales to Jose Marti Airport, and the two embraced goodbye outside the plane.
Cuba was the first country the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) chose to visit following his election victory on Dec. 18 with 53.7 percent of the vote.
The 11-point agreement, the Cuban official press noted Saturday, sets up a non-profit bilateral entity to provide “free, high- quality” ophthalmology services to poor Bolivians.
Cuba will provide the equipment and specialists in the initial phase of the project, which will enjoy the support of doctors trained at Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) and fund the salaries of the technical staff.
Bolivia, for its part, will provide the medical facilities, including the National Ophthalmology Institute, which has two centers, one in Cochabamba and one in Santa Cruz.
Those two centers will be equipped to operate on 100 patients a day, more if at some point the poor of other countries are accepted for treatment.
A total of 2,847 young Bolivians are currently going to school in Cuba, of which 2,655 are studying medicine, and 25 Cuban doctors are currently providing service in Bolivia as part of Operation Miracle, which treats eye problems among the poor.
That initiative, led and coordinated by Cuba and Venezuela, has been extended to other nations in the region, including Panama and Ecuador.
More than 1,500 Bolivians have been operated in Cuba through Operation Miracle, and 1,300 others in Bolivia itself in a center donated by the Cuban government, the Cuban press said.
Cuba will provide 5,000 scholarships to Bolivians to study at ELAM, and 2,000 recipients have already begun their training on the island.
Under the Cuba-Bolivia agreement, Cuba will also contribute its experience, teaching materials and other equipment to a project designed to teach Bolivia’s “entire eligible population” to read via a 30-month program set to begin in July 2006, according to the state-run press.
Cuba will also share with the Andean nation its experience regarding energy conservation and sports, and the two nations will engage in academic, scientific and cultural exchanges, the press added.
On Friday, at an event laden with symbolism and featuring a miner’s hardhat, Castro and Morales appeared to seal their political alliance.
Little did representatives of the Federation of Mining Cooperatives of Bolivia imagine that the hardhat they gave Castro Friday night, in the two leader’s first public event after Morales’ election victory on Dec. 18, would be so well received by the Cuban president.
At the event, throughout which Castro kept his hardhat on, Morales heaped praise on his counterpart and said he was having trouble choosing among the terms “teacher, wise man and grandfather” to refer to him.
The coca-growers’ leader described the occasion as “the encounter of two generations of struggle for dignity, two revolutions on behalf of life and humanity.”
“The struggle of the Cuban people has not been in vain … This victory is not Evo Morales’. This victory is not the Bolivian people’s alone, but also the Cuban people’s and that of the people of Latin America who struggle constantly for social justice,” he added.
Morales called to mind Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and insisted he is not afraid to keep repeating that “Fidel and Hugo are the commanders of Latin America’s liberation forces.”
Castro praised the “wide-ranging” agreement the countries signed, based on “reciprocity and solidarity” and predicted “Evo Morales is going to be successful at his colossal task.”
“After all, I have lived through an experience that has already gone on for 47 years. Wow, it seems like yesterday!” said Castro, hardhat on his head, referring to the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution on Sunday.
Morales, who traveled to Cuba with a 60-person delegation, is also scheduled to visit Spain, France, Belgium, South Africa, China and Brazil.
Diplomatic relations between Cuba and Bolivia, first established in 1902, when the island achieved independence, were discontinued between 1964 and 1983.
