00:00I am very glad that at this meeting, which has summoned authorities from science and
00:09technology from our countries, that you have made solid progress on creating a unified
00:18ALBA team for a center to develop artificial intelligence for ALBA-TCP.
00:25That's a great decision, a great step.
00:29Luckily, in our countries we have lucid minds, scientists, first-class scientists, who will
00:39guarantee an impeccable work on this line of work.
00:48It's also very important all the proposals made so that scientific institutions of our
00:56countries at different levels might develop areas that have to do with microbiology, biotechnology.
01:07It was Fidel Castro in the 1980s who started talking about biotechnology when most people
01:14didn't know what that word meant.
01:17The first time I heard, I remember having heard, the idea of developing an independent
01:27biotechnology model was in 1986 by Fidel Castro.
01:33There was no Internet.
01:34There was none of that.
01:36The only thing that we had was the edition of Grama International, the Cuban journal,
01:45which reached our embassy here.
01:53And it spoke about nanotechnology, physiology, chemistry, regenerative medicine, catalytic
02:01medicine, biology, computational chemistry, telecommunications, archaeology, medicinal
02:10chemical chemistry, and many other areas of scientific sharing for developing the future.
02:23The world ahead will be defined by the development of science, technology, and knowledge.
02:28And we are ready to join that world and develop our capacities.
02:32Today we can say from ALBA, and if we say it together, because the unity of our peoples
02:42is larger than our integration, because integration is about different parts coming together,
02:49but union is fusion of all our strengths of the knowledge of education and its expression
02:59in innovation technology.
03:05The union gets built as a network, and it establishes multidimensional foundations for
03:20every aspect of society in this century.
03:25It's very important creating a bank for scientific projects for the great capacity Cuba has,
03:34which is an avant-garde country in this regard.
03:41And the capacities that we have been developing with a great mission of science and technology,
03:49the capacities of each of our country, the issue of telemedicine, an advanced method
04:02which is already being implemented in many of our countries.
04:10If anyone has developed that concept, and today we can start sharing that concept, it
04:17would be Cuban medicine.
04:19So I want to congratulate and thank from Caracas, from ALBA, to all governments and peoples
04:30of the Caribbean for their loving, strong reply to this garbage of a political man,
04:43Marco Rubio, of staining the moral and honor of Cuban doctors, of Cuban medicine, in that
04:51recent tour he had through the region.
04:56He came looking for wool, and he left without any single thing.
05:10We have lots of things to talk about Cuban medicine.
05:19Deep in our countryside, deep in our low-income neighborhoods, we have the loving hand of
05:28Cuban doctors who have saved many people.
05:35With science and love, they have been taking care of people through missions founded in 2003.
05:46In April, it will be 22 years of such missions.
05:53In Venezuela, we have witnessed through that mission what humane medicine, healing medicine, means.
06:02President Bruno, salute on my behalf Cuban General Raul Castro Ruz and President Canel
06:12Bermudez and all the Cuban people which might be watching this work meeting right now through
06:21Telesur, they know that developing this mission of health, when it started in Venezuela for
06:37many years, it was a target of the Venezuelan right, a permanent target, and they attacked
06:48the mission, but the people noticed the humility, the knowledge, the attitude, the disposition
07:00of Cuban doctors right there in their neighborhoods or in their area, and it's one of the great
07:09achievements of the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro.
07:14In Venezuela, we have, just like in Cuba you have Fidel and Che Guevara as a paradigm of a revolutionary
07:23doctor, we also have a paradigm in Venezuela which was canonized by Pope Francis declaring
07:33him a saint, Saint José Gregorio Hernández, a good man, who using the values of Jesus Christ,
07:47he wanted to become a monk, a priest, but he couldn't, but he served God and he served our
07:58Lord Jesus Christ through social medicine, which as a concept did not exist a hundred years ago,
08:08but today does, and José Gregorio Hernández here in north of Caracas, close to where you were today,
08:18climbing to the north of the mountain, there was a parish, La Pastora, he had his house over there,
08:27the house is still there, he was a man of science as well, he was one of the pioneers in Venezuela
08:37and in Latin America of microbiology. He wrote an impressive treaty on microbiology a little over
08:51a hundred years ago, a man of faith, he was a missionary, what we would call a missionary,
08:58and he took care, he was very famous for his skills as a doctor, he would take care of the
09:07most simple people. We could say that he was the founder of the medical missions because he went
09:21to every house where there was a person sick, and he would apply changes in those houses,
09:32the changes that he thought were needed for the health of the family, and he would assign
09:38treatments, and if the person would not have money to buy medicine, he would buy them himself from
09:47his own pocket. When in 1902, the European countries' powers came over here with over
09:5620 warships and attacked the Guayra port, the port of Zulia, do you know why that happened a
10:06hundred years ago? A little over a hundred years ago, they were coming to claim the debts generated
10:15during the independence wars, the debt that they said Venezuela had with them, and it was
10:23on the contrary. It was Europe who was in debt with us because of slavery for taking our pearls
10:32or gold for reaping the continent of natural resources, and they sent warships with a
10:40strategy to occupy Venezuela. And that man, who was a man of faith and with his science,
10:50as soon as he heard of what was happening, he went and registered with the army, and he wanted
11:02to have a rifle to defend his country. A man of faith, a social service man, an example of
11:10Christian morality, which is the true socialist morality, and more than anything, he was a patriot
11:17ready to defend his country against imperialist aggressors. He is our paradigm. And with José
11:24Gregorio, 22 years later, we are celebrating his sanctification, and we are celebrating that the
11:34Barrio Adentro mission today has first-rate Cuban doctors and specialists, which, with their humane
11:50practice, are decrying everything that Marco Rubio has been saying. So, if you allow me,
11:57from our Bolivarian heart, we are thanking Cubans' doctors for their bravery. To all of you,
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