Our Cuasi-Consular Works Havana-Spokane

My wife Lolita, architect, and I have been exchanging and sharing, reestablishing trust with love, with more than 700 physicians, nurses, public administrators, natural, social & political scientists, engineers & architects of 36 People to People Professional Ambassadors Delegations and other organizations since November 6, 2000. In the one hand, we have updated as never before our knowledge in those matters, but in the other hand and the most important thing, we have understood each other more than never before --after 1958--, and this is helping to bring nearer our both neighboring countries again.

In this period we have been actively involved in many ways voluntarily working with Havanatur Tourism Agency and helping to the comprehension and empathy between the American and the Cuban professionals, with the only retribution than the duty with our fatherland fulfilled. We shall confess that our interaction with People to People Ambassadors Program has had a profound effect on us till the point that has changed our lives. We are in almost all our free hours dedicated to the study or meditation on how can we help to the successful march of the program in any way.

We feel very privileged Cuban professionals, because we know that this pioneer work is crucial to be able to develop in the future very strong professional collaboration links. These links began in the past since before 1762 when the Capture of Havana by the British, and became one of the first and strongest of the U.S. in Latin America and the Caribbean, in the first half of the 20-century. In addition, we know that this will help to come much closer our American and Cuban peoples, more early than late, when the political conditions in our homeland finally change.

It is interesting to note that in 1762, the Spanish Havana port was a more opulent city than the English Boston, New York and New Orleans, but less fortified than the Spanish Saint Augustine in US Florida, and for that reason it was the captured.

We are sure that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, would be very proud of these American professional ambassadors, as well as we are sure that Felix Varela the "Havana University Professor and Priest that taught Cubans to think in Cuban and to be Cubans" (who lived and died in USA), Carlos Manuel de Céspedes the "Father of our Homeland", and José Martí the "Most Eminent Person of our Independence" (who lived in the USA the half of his life), among other Cuban patriots, would be very proud of our efforts too.

We are of the very few (surely less than 1%) Havanan survivors from before the arrival of the Revolution in 1959. We are a rare specie in extinction who know very well Havana City, Varadero Beach, and all Cuba since before and after, and hope to know it also in the future when Cuba changes and recovers again.

Beginnings with PtP Supporting Havanatur

I arrived to Havana on October 15, 2000, from an International Conference of Health Research for Development at Bangkok (supported exclusively by the World Health Organization/Global Forum for Health Research Foundation as in 1999 to Forum 3 at Geneva), and attended at a Cuban individual researcher title. In its marketplace created by the GFHR, WHO, COHRED, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, Canadian, Swiss, Norwegian and Swedish Agencies, I promoted some projects, of my own and personal Integration Science Program, not of my Clinical Research Center, and as an extra but that facilitated me to travel before Havana authorities, other vaccines projects of the Center for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology, in front of 30 great world donors for global health research.

One night in the middle of that conference two officials of our Public Health Ministry and I, as researcher of the Scientific Productive Pole of West Havana gave to a scientific delegation of the Thai government, a talk requested to me two weeks before, about "The Health Research System in Cuba", as first step to begin the scientific collaboration between countries without diplomatic and even commercial relations yet. I also talked to different WHO/GFHR personalities of the conference, and at the end-plenary, I made a 3-minute personal reflections in that world meeting to more than 800 professionals of 100 countries on Global Health Research Governance.

The morning after, I participated in a Workshop of the Alliance for Health Policy and System Research in Bangkok too. In the year 2000, I had made my former Plaza Community Polyclinic and Clinical Research Center, partners of that alliance, and afterwards, in 2003 I made my former Vedado University Polyclinic also partner of it.

I informed many successful exchanges with the Director-General of the WHO, GFHR, COHRED, Rockefeller Foundation, etc., and my words in the last plennary on the World Governance of Global Health Research, to my Director of the Clinical Research Center. He elevated a copy to the Director of the Scientific Pole of West Havana, at the same time, Secretary of the Cuban State Council.

Some days after, through the Vice-Deputy of my Clinical Research Center, I knew that the Havanatur Tourism Agency was looking for a lecturer to talk to a "Group of Americans". Then, I knew that Professor Carlos Pazos, ex-Director and now Adviser in our Ministry of Public Health was also doing this extra non-remunerated job, so I accepted. I began to talk 2.5-3 hours in my free time and giving my personal view on "The Health Research System in Cuba", on November 6, 2000, in the Havana Melia Hotel once or twice a week, passing over certain apprehension and prejudices of my health and science ministry authorities.

Soon, I understood that I was as a single researcher a more suitable professional for Havanatur and for PTPAP than Prof. Pazos, Cuban state official before the International Organism against the Nuclear War, and in a certain way I continued doing his job with a more informal and open approach. I am founder of the crucial medical scientific training and research centers of Havana; professor of physiology first and of internal medicine and biostatistics later of Havana University since 1968, working gratis, without category and privileges; and researcher who since 1988, is waiting for the Cuban government permission to defend a Ph.D. thesis made in the Cuban Cancer Institute to receive the Ph.D. degree.

Years later, I knew that the Cuban PtP Program had begun around April 2000, with difficulties of understanding and intolerance of the first speakers with the first delegations, who thought that had to report only the positive Cuban-Soviet/Chinese experience after 1958, before "U.S. imperialist and CIA agents" coming delegations, forgeting the great period of the Western Cuban medicine and public health between 1728 and 1958.

My wife Lolita, also speaks English and is a full connoisseur of many cities and places of the United States of America, including Miami (our overseas Cuban "Hong Kong" and/or "Taiwan" since the 1990s), in ten annual tourist trips with her mother Dolores Acosta Magriñat, born in Key West in 1903 and one of the first Cuban dentists, father Aurelio Espinosa Cruz, lawyer and President of the Lions Club of Havana, Cuba, and minor sister Raquel, before the distancing of the US and Cuba since 1959 when Soviet Union and red China entered openly in the island. She began to converse after the talks in the hotel lobby and buffet, with the wives of the delegates and with the women delegates too.

Lolita as architect has gone directing two visits of architects, civil engineers and cement specialists to the Varadero Beach tourist pole (our Cuban "Shanghai" since the 1990ies), the one she helped to build when she was manager of the architecture designs of most of those hotels until 1993-1994. Then she began by her own personal interest to study marketing research, and in 1996 (already retired from a National Enterprise of Architectural Designs) began to work in marketing research till the year 2000, when the Cuban Association of Economist Consultancy, braked her advanced works, and finally let her unemployed, due to "lack of works giving big money" in marketing research in Cuba...

Other Friendly Personal Initiatives Taken

We have been also distributing many modern medicines, supplies, scientific journals, CDs, information and contacts, etc, by different biomedical centers of Havana, very kindly brought or sent and donated by many of the American professionals, together with their high spirit of solidarity and friendship to our Cuban professionals and peoples in need, in our familiar, working, hospital, and social circles, including the neighborhoods where our family lives.

We made all that was possible since April 3, 2001 to improve the quality and to increase the spread of the scientific exchanges of the US people to people delegations in the medical and in other non-medical programs with many more Cuban professionals. We need very much of the American professionals latest knowledge, great experience, friendly partnerships, and important support and collaboration, in all the medical, health, and scientific fields in Cuba.

We have had to make searches in libraries and full Internet out of our centers on information of the updated Cuban situation in public health, education, social welfare, science and technology, economy, society, politics, etc.; searches about PTPAP delegations best possibilities of visits and exchanges at Havana; personal coordination with Spokane PTPAP HQs and of Cuban personalities to exchange with the groups and organization of a meeting, as happened with the U.S. Initiative of Prof. Haile Debas' Gastrointestinal Clinical and Surgical Scientific Cuban-American Meeting in the Havana Melia Hotel; and coordination of many other personal visits and exchanges here of professionals that have come through PTPAP and other U.S. organizations before.

For us has been a very singular and wonderful experience to have the opportunity through Havanatur Tourism Agency and People to People Ambassadors Program (PtPAP) to do all these works.

Outline of the PtP Ambassadors Program

PtPAP was the first program of PtP International created in 1956 by the U.S. President General Dwight David Eisenhower, "Hero of the North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Normandy's Campaigns in the Second World War", Supreme Commander of NATO, Chancellor of Columbia University, and US President for two periods from 1953 to 1961. He helped to save the world of the German National Socialism (Nazism), Italian Fascism, and Russian/Soviet Socialism.

Ike organized the Cold War since 1946 that USA and Western Europe won on 1989-1991 against the Soviet Union and East European satellites' ideology and military. He sincerely tried to save the Cubans from the Eastern Eurasian socialism. However, socialist Cuba with Soviet and Chinese support resisted the first economical sanctions, the broke up of the diplomatic relationships with USA in January 1961, the US Embargo, and the Pigs Bay Invasion; the latter organized but not conducted by him.

(As an interesting parenthesis, in 1992, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, secret KGB information arrived to the world public opinion by a book written by Christopher Andrews and Vasili Mitrokhin: The World was Going our Way, 2005. Through the revelations of this former KGB Officer of the Luvianca Moscow Headquarters who exiled in England, it was known the insights of the still silented Soviet Revolution in Cuba from 1953 to 1958 organized by Fidel and Raul Castro --and many other soviet revolutions in the Third World. Unfortunately for the Cuban people, this information was unknown then for the Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and American President Dwight Eisenhower, who prepared the Pigs Bay Invasion with Cubans in the exile, supported by the U.S. army, and John F. Kennedy, who did not give the U.S. army support to the 2105 Brigade at the last hour, when the Cuban communist army was wholly supported and trained by Soviet and Chinese Imperialisms intelligence, arms and military troops).

Afterwards, in 1961 General Eisenhower converted PtPI and PtPAP in a non-governmental private system to get closer the governments relations with about 40 countries, first working hard to establish trust, tolerance of differences, understanding and cooperation between the peoples. The things were much more complex, deep and difficult that he had thought in the first years. It is possible that if General Eisenhower had lived up to 1974, he with more experience would have advised the US President Richard Nixon (once his Vice President) to introduce the PtPAP also in Cuba as happened with China, after 1973 when Mao Zedong was substituted, and also with Russia, still with Leonid Brezhnev in power.

There is a very impressive thought of the PtPAP political philosophy. General Eisenhower said: "The people want peace; indeed, I believe they want peace so badly that governments will just have to step aside and let them have it".

As has told Mary Jean Eisenhower, Chief Executive Officer and after president of PtPI in the PtPAP web site, before the savage terrorist attack of 9/11: "finished the cold war, the world needs to increase the international cooperation for other global problems, as to find the cure for cancer and AIDS --among other spheres as preservation of environment and reduction of poverty".

We hope in the future these exchanges between the real peoples of the States and Cuba will be very increased as very good neighbors that we were before and can become to be again.

Scientific U.S.-Cuba Cooperation Promoted

It is important to remember that the first US-Cuban scientific agreement was concerted between the US SmithKline & Beecham Co, and the Cuban Finlay Institute, on the unique anti-meningitis B serotype vaccine in 1999.

I personally think that I helped to promote with USA this first agreement and the second agreement of CancerVax Corp & Cuban Molecular Immunology Center on cancer vaccines in 2004. I think that this was indirectly promoted by my pioneer teachings and manuals on the logic of clinical research and trial at a national level from the Cuban Cancer Institute, Plaza University Polyclinic, Clinical Research Center and Vedado University Polyclinic from 1977 and 2005, and by my lobby work since 1998 with the UK head of Westernclinical trials in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and the US National Institutes of Health and international donors in worldwide Global Forums for Health Research at Geneva and Bangkok 1999-2001, and U.S. People to People Ambassadors Program since 2000 to restore research collaboration.

Afterwards, perhaps in "AIDS research", USA and Cuba could begin to negotiate a "third agreement of scientific cooperation since 1958". We have high-technology hospitals and institutes and two biotech centers of genetic engineering and molecular immunology that are anxious to begin full cooperation with the US National Institutes of Health, and other biomedical system of centers, on AIDS research.

I have personally tried from 2000 to 2008 to find a suitable way to influence in the establishing of a fourth scientific agreement with Cuba. Another sphere of fruitful academic cooperation could be between about 40 000 Cuban family physicians, general internists, pediatricians and obstetricians, with their colleagues in USA in "primary health care", "family medicine", "health informatics", and "tele health" scientific research and research training problems and challenges, through the American Academy of Family Physicians, of the one I had the honor to belong as first international Cuban member, thanks to PtPAP, since June 2001. I could become member of the North American and Caribbean Primary Care Research Group too in 2007.

Since 2001, U.S. colleagues from PtPAP and I began to find different ways to increase and improve the collaboration between American and Cubans. In 2003 we developed the implementation of a complementary e-health research tactics South-North-South, as a way to strengthen the research collaboration strategy between North i.e. USA and South i.e. Cuba, and to help reduce talent emigration. Cubans could assimilate and develop American technology, methodology, and environments to perform secure and ethical online tele e-health research through virtual netlabs and netclinics in USA, by Cuba-U.S. teams of researchers, through Internet and other IT. A research collaboration program with the PHC Vedado Polyclinic, the "Vedado e-Health Project", and with other health research projects, could be a starting point on unquestionable scientific and humanitarian bases, to improve research collaboration between USA and Cuba, experience later expandable to other countries. We are trying to publish this collaboration program in two paper 1 and paper 2 in US medical and health journals. Finally, the MINSAP informatics & telemedicine division, authorized me to publish in Spanish, two papers: one on [The informatization of primary health care], and other on [Vedado project: e-health in primary health care].

My nearest US colleagues in these tasks are as follows: Richard A. Dickey, clinical assistant professor, department of endocrinology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, 27157-0001, USA, [email protected]; Robert L. Kriel, professor, departments of neurology, pediatrics, and pharmacy practice, Linda E. Krach, clinical assistant professor, department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55414, USA. [email protected], [email protected]; and Thomas E. Norris, professor, family medicine and health service departments, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, 98195-6340, USA, [email protected].

Very Special and Friendly Contacts Made

Lolita and I are doing the maximum we can to contribute to the peace, trust, tolerance, understanding, love and happiness between the peoples of our both countries, and know that our US counterparts are doing the same. We love to send and receive emails of the US professionals to keep in touch with them, and to maintain the exchange by email. Other thing is that we continue open to answer any question or talk about anything more they would like to know or to do. We have enjoyed very much to meet so many high level professionals and good peoples and to make some many valuable friends in all the States, and of other countries as Canada, North Ireland, England, Holland, etc.

We have had many important meetings and conversations with many US personalities through PtPAP, but three of them have been crucial for us, because their plainness and modesty and how much they have taught to us.

In the one hand, in two special dinners invited by the distinguished Mr. Earl C. Ravenal [email protected], and his lovely wife Mrs. Carol Bird Ravenal [email protected], after a talk to a political scientists & public administrators' delegation in February 2001. Earl was an eminent Officer in the US Pentagon, Professor of Foreign Affairs of the Georgetown University, and Expert in Defense Budget of the Cato Institute. Carol was Professor of the American University in Washington, D.C.

In the other hand, in another very special dinner invited by the lovely and noted Ms. Mary Jean Eisenhower, the farewell dinner of her Mission in Understanding on January 13, 2002 in Cuba. Mary Jean is the granddaughter of "Ike", and as I said before, she was the Chief Executive Officer and now is the President of PtPI. As a result of this meeting, Lolita was invited personally by Mary Jean to visit the PtPI HQ at Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Finally, we were invited to have a dinner in a Havana home restaurant by William Jarvis and Carol Jarvis. Bill was President of PtPI, when they came to Cuba last April 11, 2003 in another Mission in Understanding, some weeks after it was announced the restriction to PtPAP to come to Cuba from the USA.

Applying annually from 1999, Lolita was able to obtain her U.S. Visa to visit Vera, Javier, Patricio, and our new granddaughter Patsy in Hollywood, Fl, finally on December 2005.

We have been wishing a happy good time and return to home to the people through email. We have already more than 500 emails. We have been also congratulating them for different occasions as in Christmas, Valentine, Easter, Mothers, Fathers, Independence and Thanksgiving's Days, and giving them our grief and sorrow for the 9/11 catastrophe.

Works with Other U.S. Academic Programs

We have even shared with some professionals and peoples who have returned to Havana to a course or seminar or for a religious, humanitarian or other missions, or with their "children" and friends. Lolita and I are working intensively to restore a fluent exchange between Cuban and American professionals and peoples.

In the first five months of 2002, while PtPAP gave us holidays until September, we gave wonderful talks to other six groups of Americans. We gave talks on Cuban Health, Science & Education to two medical delegations of the New York Academy of International Medical Studies, in the Havana Melia and Central Park Hotels. We also gave these talks to delegations of the Seminoma University, Contracosta Community College and Sacramento University, Ca, through the Global Educational Facilitation, in the National, England and Both Worlds Hotels.

In addition, we gave talks on Cuban Health & Science, Cubans Daily Life (by Lolita --architect & marketing researcher), and Cuban History (by my brother Ricardo C. Stusser--historian researcher), to a group of 26 students of political science of Prof. Kirk Bowman, Sam Nunn School Georgia Tech Institute, who we met before by a PtPAP delegation of political scientists, and when he began his Cuban Program, while the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was visiting Cuba.

I invite you to read a brief Biosketch of my wife Lolita Stusser (Maria Dolores Espinosa Acosta), daughter of one of the first Cuban woman dentists, Dr. Dolores Acosta Magriñat, born in Key West, Fl, USA in 1903.

We learnt with PtPAP and are in the best disposition to informally intermediate and begin to negotiate as single citizens of the nascent Cuban civil society, any US or Western project of cooperation helping the Cuban professionals and peoples, with the Cuban government authorities of the Ministries for Public Health, Science, Technology and Environment, Academy of Science, Havana University, West Havana Scientific Pole, and other social and economical structures.

I am drafting a manuscript with all the information I gave in the conferences to the US delegations on Health Research and Scientific Progress in Cuba.

I also made a list of Stusser's 54 Lectures on Cuban & Global Experiences on Health & Research Programs.

In October 2003, Lolita and I created a little and very informal Havana People to People Virtual Club for our friends. We also created then an Advanced Consultancy Group for US and other foreign people interested in investment and commerce in Cuba when this could be done freely.

Back to the Havana PtP Club Homepage

Page created on June 21, 2001, and refreshed on September 9, 2009.