Abstract
Cuba is continuing attracting the attention of the international scientific community for some important and unexpected achievements in applied science such as health biotechnology. They represent outcomes of the 1959 decision of Cuba to develop an advanced scientific system in order to address the most urgent problems for the development of the country and to overcome the condition of subalternity. This ambitious objective was tackled in a very original way, making a broad and wide-ranging recourse to every effective support and collaboration, with Soviet but also Western scientists and institutions, in addition to a peculiar Cuban inventiveness. Indeed, immediately after the revolution, Cuba developed an advanced and articulated scientific system, and achieved a level of excellence in leading scientific fields, like biotechnology, quite independently from the Soviet Union, which was behind in this field. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, that could have put the achievements of the Revolution at risk, posing again the threat of subalternity, under an intentionally worsened American embargo, did not change this trend: once more Cuba addressed this challenge reconfirming the strategic choice of supporting its most advanced and profitable scientific sectors, especially the capital-intensive and typically American field of health biotechnologies. This strategy proved to be once again a well-chosen course of action.
Highlights
Subalternity vs. Hegemony, Socially Oriented Scientific Choices, Health Care in Cuba, Biotechnology in Cuba, Full-cycle Research-production, South-South Cooperation
The nuclear program was developed in close collaboration with the USSR, the European socialist countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
“Ten of these institutions [of the Western Havana Bio-Cluster] are at the core of the system as they supply economic support to the whole effort with their production capacities and exports. They are performing more than 100 research projects which have generated a product pipeline of more than 60 new products most of which are protected by intellectual property, and more than 500 patents have been filed overseas” [24]
Summary
In its recent history, after the victory of the Revolution in 1959, the Caribbean island met the challenge of overcoming subalternity in two occasions In both cases, in very critical conditions and a strongly disadvantageous international situation, Cuba addressed this challenge in an original way, relying on the development (in the second case a relaunch) of an advanced scientific system. «Cuba’s outstanding achievements in health biotechnology are a source of inspiration for the developing world They are all the more impressive considering that the island is a small, relatively poor country that has suffered serious economic difficulties for more than a decade.
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