July 16, 2001
Eight young people are among the first students from the United States to receive scholarships to attend the Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Havana. The more than 3,400 international students at the school come from 23 Latin American, Caribbean and African countries.
The Cuban government has offered full scholarships to up to 500 students from communities in the United States that lack access to good medical care. On returning to the U.S., they will be required to take three years of post-graduate, hands-on training and pass a national licensing examination in English.
In addition to training thousands of doctors from other countries, Cuba sends some 20,000 volunteer doctors as well as other medical personnel to work in rural areas in countries throughout Africa and Latin America, often in areas where other doctors will not work.
July 16, 1976
PHILADELPHIA — Thousands upon thousands of people marched through the streets of North Philadelphia July 4, chanting “For a bicentennial without colonies!” and “Independence for Puerto Rico — right now!” It was the biggest demonstration in support of Puerto Rican independence ever held in the U.S. Several banners called for the release of five Puerto Rican nationalists who have been in U.S. prisons since the early 1950s.
The rally after the march lasted three hours. The speech that seemed to capture the main theme of the rally best was that of Juan Mari Bras, general secretary of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party.
He concluded by urging North Americans to continue supporting the independence struggle. “You know very well that independence for Puerto Rico is a blow against imperialism and will be a victory for your people as well as us.”
July 16, 1951
Ruins, starvation, disease and death — that is the condition of Korea, one year after Truman’s “police action” began. Joseph Fromm of the U.S. News, who has followed the Korean war from the beginning, says that on North Korea alone “almost as many tons of bombs were dropped … as on Japan during the whole of World War II.” A similar treatment was accorded to South Korea.
Fromm estimates the number of civilian casualties at anywhere from one person in six to one in four out of a total population of 29 million. The list of casualties and refugees “could easily run as high as seven or eight million.”
No people will ever accept as “liberators” those who have turned their country into a wasteland. The American imperialists have built up a record of “bitterness and ruin” it will indeed take years to wipe out from the memory of all the Asian peoples.