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Reflections by the Commander in Chief
I mentioned something and included a quotation
on this topic for an example I used in my last
reflection, titled "Bush, Health and Education",
which I dedicated to children. In this
reflection, aimed at the first class to graduate
from the University of Information Sciences (UCI),
I shall delve more deeply into this thorny
issue.
These graduates were the pioneers, from whom I
learned much about the intelligence and the
values our young people can cultivate when they
study assiduously. I also learned much from the
excellent staff of professors, a great many of
whom had studied at the José Antonio Echevarría
University Complex (CUJAE).
Neither can I avoid to mention the example of
the social workers, whose organizational skills
and spirit of sacrifice enriched my knowledge
and afforded me new experiences, nor the
thousands of educators who graduated recently,
who made the goal of having one teacher for
every 15 students, in the seventh, eighth and
ninth grades of our junior high schools a
reality. All of them began their university
studies almost simultaneously, infused with the
ideas which were born and were applied in the
battle to have a 6 year old child who had been
kidnapped returned to his family and homeland, a
child for whom we were willing to give our all.
In two days, 1,334 computer sciences
engineers from around the country, whose
exemplary conduct and knowledge earned them
university scholarships, shall graduate from UCI.
Of these, 1,134 have been assigned to different
ministries, which provide important services to
our people, and to state agencies which manage
crucial economic resources. A centralized
reserve of 200 young and carefully selected
graduates, which shall grow larger every year,
awaits different assignments. This reserve is
made up of graduates from all of the country's
provinces who shall stay lodged at UCI
residences. A total of 56 percent are males and
44 percent females.
UCI opens its doors to young people
from Cuba's 169 municipalities. It is not
grounded in the model of exclusion and
competition among human beings which developed
capitalist countries advocate.
Our world order appears to have been
designed to foster the egoism, individualism and
dehumanization of humanity.
A Reuters press dispatch published
on May 3, 2006, titled “African brain drain
deprives Africa of vital talent”, reports that,
in Africa, "it is estimated that some 20,000
skilled professionals are leaving the continent
every year, depriving Africa of the doctors,
nurses, teachers and engineers it needs to break
a cycle of poverty and under-development".
Reuters adds that "the World Health Organization
(WHO) says that Sub-Saharan Africa bears 24
percent of the world's global burden of disease
including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. To
face that challenge, it has just 3 percent of
the world’s health workers”. “In Malawi, only 5
percent of physicians' posts and 65 percent of
nursing vacancies are filled. In the country of
10 million, one doctor serves 50,000 people”.
Quoting a report from the World
Bank, the dispatch reports that, "stymied by
conflict, poverty, lethal diseases and
corruption, much of Africa is in no position to
compete with richer countries that promise
higher salaries, better working conditions and
political stability”.
“Brain drain deals a double blow to
weak economies, which not only lose their best
human resources and the money spent training
them, but then have to pay an estimated $5.6
billion a year to employ expatriates”.
The phrase “brain drain” was coined
in the 1960s, when the United States began to
hoard UK doctors. In that case, one developed
country dispossessed another; one emerged from
the Second World War in 1944 with 80 percent of
the world’s gold reserve in bullions, the other
had been severely hit and deprived of its empire
in the course of the war.
A World Bank report titled "International
migration, remittances and the brain drain",
made public in October 2005, yielded the
following results:
In the last 40 years, more than 1.2
million professionals from Latin America and the
Caribbean have emigrated to the United States,
Canada and the United Kingdom. An average of 70
scientists a day has emigrated from Latin
America in the course of 40 years.
Of the 150 million people around the
world involved in science and technology
activities, 90 percent is concentrated in the
seven most industrialized nations.
A number of countries, particularly
small nations in Africa, the Caribbean and
Central America, have lost over 30 percent of
their population with higher education as a
result of migration.
The Caribbean islands, where nearly
all nations are English-speaking, report the
world's highest brain drain. In some of these
islands, 8 of every 10 university graduates have
left their native countries.
More than 70 percent of software
programmers employed by the US Company Microsoft
Corporation are from India and Latin America.
The intense migratory movements,
from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
towards Western Europe and North America, which
began following the collapse of the socialist
block, are worthy of special mention.
The International Labor Organization
(ILO) points out that the number of scientists
and engineers who abandon their native countries
and emigrate to industrialized nations is about
one third of the number of those who stay in
their native countries, something which
significantly depletes indispensable human
resource reserves.
The ILO report maintains that the
migration of students is a precursor of the
brain drain. The Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported
that, at the beginning of the new millennium, a
bit more than 1.5 million foreign students
pursued higher studies in member states and
that, of these, more than half were from
non-OECD countries. Of this total, nearly half a
million studied in the United States, one
quarter of a million in the United Kingdom and
nearly 200 thousand in Germany.
Between 1960 and 1990, the United
States and Canada received more than one million
professional immigrants and experts from Third
World countries.
These figures are but a pale
reflection of the tragedy.
In recent years, encouraging this
type of emigration has become an official state
policy in a number of North countries, which use
incentives and procedures especially tailored to
suit this end.
The American Competitiveness in the
21st Century Act —approved by the US
Congress in 2000— increased the temporary work
visa (H-1B) allotment, from 65 thousand to 115
thousand in the 2000 fiscal year and then to 195
thousand for fiscal years 2001 through 2003. The
aim of this increase in the visa cap was to
encourage the entry into the United States of
highly qualified immigrants who could occupy
positions in the high-technology sector. Though
this figure was reduced to 65 thousand in the
2005 fiscal year, the flow of professionals
towards this country has remained steady.
Similar measures were promulgated by
the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and
Australia. Since 1990, this last country
prioritized the intake of highly qualified
workers, primarily for sectors such as banking,
insurance and the so-called knowledge economy.
In nearly all cases, the selection
criteria are based on the worker's high
qualifications, language proficiency, age, work
experience and professional achievements. The UK
program grants extra points to medical doctors.
This relentless plundering of brains
in South countries dismantles and weakens
programs aimed at training human capital, a
resource which is needed to rise from the depths
of underdevelopment. It is not limited to the
transfer of capital; it also entails the import
of grey matter, which nips a country's nascent
intelligence and future at the bud.
Between 1959 and 2004, Cuba has
graduated 805,902 professionals, including
medical doctors. The United States' unjust
policy towards our country has deprived us of
5.16 percent of the professionals who graduated
under the Revolution.
However, not even the elite of
immigrant workers enjoy work conditions and
salaries like those of US nationals. In order to
avoid the complicated paperwork which US labor
legislation requires and reduce the costs of
immigration procedures, the United States has
gone as far as creating a software ship-factory
which keeps highly-qualified slaves anchored in
international waters, in a kind of assembly
plant which produces all manner of digital
devices. Project SeaCode consists of a ship,
anchored more than three miles off the coast of
California (international waters), with 600
Indian computer scientists on board, who work an
uninterrupted 12 hour daily shift for four
months out at sea.
The trend towards the privatization
of knowledge and the internalization of
scientific research companies subordinated to
big capital has been creating a kind of
"scientific apartheid" which affects the vast
majority of the world's population.
The United States, Japan and Germany
combined have a percentage of the world's
population similar to that of Latin America, but
their investment in research and development is
of 52.9 percent, as opposed to 1.3 percent in
the latter. Today's economic gap foreshadows
what tomorrow's may be if these trends are not
reversed.
That future is already upon us. The
so-called new economy mobilizes immense capital
flows each year. According to a 2006 report
published by Digital Planet, a World
Information Technology and Services Alliance
(WITSA) publication, the global Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) market accounted
for three trillion US dollars in 2006.
More and more people have access to
the Internet each day —in July 9, 2007, the
figure was almost 1.4 billion users. However, in
many countries, including numerous developed
ones, the people with no access to this service
continue to be the majority. The digital gap
spells dramatic differences, whereby part of
humanity, fortunate and connected, has more
information at its disposal than any generation
before it ever had.
To have an idea of what this means,
suffice it two compare two realities: while more
than 70 percent of the population of the United
States has access to the Internet, only 3
percent of Africa's entire population has such
access. Internet service providers are based in
high-income countries, where a mere 16 percent
of the world's population lives.
The underprivileged situation our
group of countries faces within these global
information networks, the Internet and all
modern means used to transfer information and
images must urgently be addressed.
A society in which millions of human
beings are considered superfluous, the brain
drain of South countries constitutes a common
practice and economic power and new technologies
are wielded by only a handful of nations cannot
be called human, not by a long shot. Overcoming
this dilemma is as important for the destiny of
humanity as mitigating the climate change crisis
which scourges the planet, two problems which
are completely interrelated.
To conclude, I need only add:
Whoever has a computer has all
published knowledge at their disposal and the
privileged memory of the machine belongs to them
too.
Ideas are born of knowledge and
ethical values. An important part of the problem
would be technologically solved, another must be
cultivated restlessly. Otherwise, the most basic
instincts shall prevail.
The task ahead of UCI graduates is
grandiose. I hope you are able to fulfill it. I
am confident that you will.
Fidel Castro Ruz
July 17, 2007
11:05 am
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