details Farmer's and Kidder's time in Cuba. Farmer's first commentary about the island of Cuba comes from his view from the plane as it lands: Look! Only ninety miles from Haiti and look! Trees! Crops! It's all so verdant! At the height of the dry season! The same ecology as Haiti's and look! His adopted country and its limitations are never far from his mind.

The Cuban doctor who is running the AIDS conference is a friend of Farmer's named Jorge Pérez. He has sent a car for them, and as they travel to Havana, Kidder sees the large billboard with Ché Geuvera. It reminds him that Farmer is fond of Cuba, not for ideological reasons, but for its health statistics, vetted by WHO and generally regarded as among the most accurate in the world. Since its revolution, Cuba had achieved real control over infectious diseases. Farmer says it is a given for him to admire Cuban medicine. It's a poor country, largely in part because of the American embargo, but the regime had listened to its epidemiologists and had increased health expenditures. In fact, their doctors are so well trained that the country has largely abandoned any idea of exporting its armies, but sends out its doctors instead. Farmer even becomes incensed at comparing Cuba to Scandinavian countries which have learned how to manage their wealth. Cuba has learned how to manage its poverty. He also wasn't a Marxist in any way. It seems to him an undeniably inaccurate philosophy. However, he is more interested in denouncing the faults of capitalism than in cataloguing the.........

 

Notes

Their time in Cuba is interesting for Kidder, but he has a hard time disassociating himself from what he has learned all his life about Cuba by living in America. To Farmer, it's not about the politics, but about the health system. He doesn't care where the compassion for........

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