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CUBA GRADUATES FIRST CLASS OF DOCTORS FOR WORLD'S POOR, HEALS POLITICAL WOUNDS, AND FURTHERS THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION.

Article Excerpt
Cuba's Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) graduated its first class of new physicians Aug. 20 in a ceremony headed by Presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Martin Torrijos of Panama. About 1,600 graduates from 28 countries got their diplomas, culminating six years of innovative medical education. The school makes doctors of some of the poorest of the world's people, sending them off in their final year of school to serve in the most remote and underserved regions of their countries.

Castro told the graduates, "You, evidently, are some superdestabilizers of the hemisphere; you're destabilizing pain and suffering." Castro was playing off US accusations that he and Chavez were destabilizing the region with this and other initiatives aimed at improving the lot of the poor.

Chavez continued that theme with his remarks to the class, telling them that training doctors is a way of "advancing by the ALBA (Alternativa Boliviariana para las Americas) road," a reference to Venezuela's alternative to the US-promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

The school, utilizing the facilities of all of Cuba's medical schools, currently has 12,000 foreign students in all stages of medical education. Among them...

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