646. 2012: Another Year of Work and Challenges for Cuba

By Prensa Latina, January 1. 2012

Havana, Jan 1 (Prensa Latina) A year of work and challenges in line with the agreements of Cuba's Communist Party's Congress, forecasts Minister of Culture Abel Prieto for a young 2012.

  The government brass stressed on the need to bear in mind the rich popular debates that preceded the congress and led to core commitments serving today as guidelines for daily effort whose good results will only stem from hard work and let's think of creative work as a priority and true source of wealth.

Miguel Barnet, president of the National Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC) added that the creativeness that characterizes the Cuban people, its spirit and sense of commitment will always be the driving engine behind every achievement.

"Today everyone talks about the crisis in Europe and the World, but we, Cubans, have surmounted worst crises thanks to our wit, self-confidence and trust in our Revolution," says the poet and ethnologist.

The 53th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution caught everyone immersed in a revamp to guarantee the continuity of Cuban Socialism so the dawn of January 1, 1959 toppled the old philosophy of a quality life for a few, making the status inclusive for the large masses of the have not, wiping out 400 years of colonialism.

Those changes have taken place despite the hostile scenario, considering that eight in every ten Cuban is born under the effects of The US economic, commercial and financial blockade, a unilateral measure that slows but fails to stall our progression.

We rid large private estates -in every avenue of life and economics- with the Agrarian Reform and nationalizations that fed The US ravenous hatred against Cuba, the Literacy Campaign turned Cuba into the first country in Latin America to wipe out illiteracy.

For the first time ever, a government in Cuba truly honored democracy enforcing and fostering the right to work, the right to health care, the right to culture, the right to practicing healthy sports and declares illegal vices nurtured by the pseudo-republic like drug addiction and trafficking, organized crime, prostitution and child abuse.

The policies introduced from 1959 are helping Cuba boast 54 years of Millennium Goals fulfillment, 58 years ahead of the UN 2015 deadline.

That is why the blockade has never achieved one single goal and purpose to ruin the Revolution, and the number of our admirers and friends increase at every corner of the world and that shows in the messages congratulating the Island for its 54th year of national independence and self-determination.

Hence the messages urging to free the Five Cuban antiterrorists -Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez- unfairly jailed in the US for defending their country from Florida-based violent groups.

But there are also salutations from Presidents Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), as well as from Bolivia, Vietnam, China, Belarus, Laos, Guatemala, El Salvador, Egypt, The Dominican Republic.

The associations of friendship with Cuba, the Communist parties of Spain and France, and the Latin American and Caribbean Student Regional Organization (OCLAE), among many more, help remind that Cuba will never be alone.