Mission Accomplished: 15 Years of Cuba-Venezuela Pact

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday that the path had not been easy, but the Cuba-Venezuela social agreement has achieved its goal of educating and bringing healthcare to the region’s poorest.

In a speech to mark the 15th anniversary of the landmark pact, Maduro outlined how the social objectives had been unheard of in Latin America, before late former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and former president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, signed the document on Oct. 30 2000.

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“Those things they signed seemed impossible … No one had done it before: educate the public, bring free health care, advance the union of South America and Caribbean, rectify all those things betrayed by imperialism,” he said.

“Commandantes, mission accomplished. We have built a new path.”

The Venezuelan president noted that the agreement had been fraught with difficulties.

“No one ever said it would be easy, but what it is is very satisfying. Anyone who said that free, quality education would be easy was lying,” he said.

Cuba-Venezuela Scientific Collaboration

About 200 projects of scientific collaboration have been reached between Venezuela and Cuba in the past 15 years, as part of the Integral Cooperation Agreement signed by the then presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

Food security, biotechnology production and management of toxic waste are some of the sectors that stand out in this exchange. Described by the Venezuelan ambassador in Havana, Ali Rodriguez, as a “solidarity that would not exist in a capitalist context."

“In these times when nature is threatened, all the aid is welcome, especially for a state like Venezuela, which has so much exploitation of oil and gas, so we must have systems to preserve the quality of water and soil,” Rodriguez said to the Cuban-state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

With the research centers and facilities created as a result of this cooperation, both countries have generated high value-add products and have begun to break the technological dependence that Cuba has faced over the past five decades due to the U.S. blockade on the island.

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During one of his multiple visits to Havana, Chavez said Venezuela and Cuba were undergoing “one and the same revolution.” The bilateral relation between the two nations has strengthened over the past decade, it includes development aid, joint business ventures, and cooperation in the fields of intelligence service and military.