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Castro Closes Ranks With Friendly Leaders
By Lisa J. Adams, Associated Press
Writer .
HAVANA - Alienated from European nations after
a crackdown on the opposition and the execution
of three ferry boat hijackers, President Fidel
Castro closed ranks Monday with friendly African,
Caribbean and South American heads of state at
a U.N. conference.
Notably absent from the sixth U.N. Convention
to Combat Desertification were high-ranking representatives
of the European Union. The EU's 15 members unanimously
agreed to reduce high-level governmental visits
and participation in cultural events in Cuba after
the roundup of 75 dissidents, who were later given
heavy jail sentences, and the firing squad executions
of the ferry boat hijackers last spring.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - who faces
his own headaches at home, where last week he
announced new plans by opponents to topple him
- joined Castro and in a fiery speech criticized
leaders of powerful industrialized nations for
promising grand solutions yet doing nothing to
solve developing nations' grave environmental
and financial problems.
"What they have done is absolutely insignificant
given the gravity of the problem," Chavez
said, blaming globalization and failed neoliberal
economic policies. "Neoliberalism has been
defeated," Chavez proclaimed to audience
applause. "Now we're going to bury it, starting
this century."
Chavez and Castro are strong political allies
and close friends. Chavez thanked the Cuban leader
for technological assistance that he said helped
sharply reduce Venezuela's illiteracy rates.
Last year, Chavez survived a short-lived coup
attempt by opponents who accuse him of trying
to amass power. They have called for a recall
referendum later this year.
Chavez contends that an "oligarchy"
bent on ousting a democratically elected leader
has sabotaged his efforts to fight for the poor.
The 13 heads of state and government from Africa
and the Caribbean attending the U.N. conference
also included the presidents of Zimbabwe, Gambia,
Burkina Faso, Mali and Namibia and the prime ministers
of Lesotho, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada,
and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Many of the Africa presidents in attendance hail
from countries whose independence struggles were
aided by Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Coming to Cuba is to come to a country
where there are true friends of Africa,"
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said.
Mugabe is the target of widespread international
criticism. Zimbabwe was suspended for a year from
the decision-making councils of the Commonwealth
of Britain and its former terrorities because
of concerns about human rights and disputed presidential
elections Mugabe narrowly won last year.
Castro, who replaced his military uniform with
a dark blue suit and tie for Monday's session,
noted that despite a more than 40-year U.S. economic
blockade, Cuba has made progress in health, employment
and education, while preserving the environment.
"In spite of huge obstacles, it is still
possible to do a great deal to ensure that the
environment is preserved and that humanity survives,"
said Castro. He said such achievements are "incompatible
with the atrocious economic system imposed upon
the world, the ruthless neoliberal globalization."
Delegates from more than 170 nations have been
in Cuba for a week for the United Nations conference
aimed at combating the planet's "desertification"
- an alarming rate of soil degradation they said
threatens the world's food and water.
Participants have pledged to work toward financing
solutions to the problem. The conference ends
Friday.
Scholar traces Milton Hershey's Cuban ties
HERSHEY, Pa. 2 (AP) -- The late Milton S. Hershey
is best known as the founder of the giant candy
company that bears his name and the builder of
much of the Pennsylvania community where it is
located, but he also owned sugar plantations in
Cuba for about 30 years, according to a researcher.
Thomas Winpenny, a history professor at Elizabethtown
College who recently wrote about Hershey's Cuban
connections in an article in the Journal of the
Lancaster County Historical Society, said income
from the plantations helped finance construction
projects that continued in Hershey, Pa., through
the Depression.
"Even in lean times, apparently, Cuban activities
were really very profitable," said Winpenny,
who spent months scouring Hershey's personal papers
and material from what is now Hershey Foods Corp.,
the nation's largest candymaker.
The plantations provided cheap sugar for Hershey's
U.S. chocolate plant, which was a decade old when
he made the first of about $40 million in investments
in Cuba starting in 1916.
Hershey eventually owned about 60,000 acres and
leased another 30,000 acres on five plantations
located on Cuba's northwest coast, not far from
Havana, Winpenny said.
He also built a 72-mile railroad system and founded
a town called Central Hershey. In the town, which
contained sugar refineries and had its own power
plant, he built an orphan's school, a recreational
park and other facilities similar to those he
established in Hershey, Pa.
Fearing that political unrest in Cuba would lead
to a peasant uprising, Hershey sold his interests
there in the late 1940s and early '50s, Winpenny
said.
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