El presidente cubano, Fidel Castro, ofreció hoy el envío de mil 100 médicos y 26.4 toneladas de medicamentos para los damnificados del huracán “Katrina” que ha devastado varios estados del sur de los Estados Unidos.
Aseguró que “si quieren mil médicos, y si quieren cinco mil” Cuba estaría dispuesta a enviarlos para salvar vidas de los norteamericanos y también equipos médicos, “sin pedir nada” y “por el tiempo que sean necesarios”.
“Expreso la buena voluntad de nuestro pueblo, los sentimientos amistosos de nuestro pueblo con el pueblo norteamericano”, afirmó.
EFE, publicado en El Universal
Lecciones de humildad. Mientras que el gobierno cubano ofrece la ayuda de sus excelentes médicos, en Estados Unidos se respira un ambiente de decepción e impotencia por la tardía e ineficiente ayuda de la administración de George Bush.
But perhaps most of all there was shame, a deep collective national disbelief that the world’s sole remaining superpower could not - or at least had not - responded faster and more forcefully to a disaster that had been among its own government’s worst-case possibilities for years.
Around the nation, and indeed the world, the reaction to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation stretched beyond the usual political recriminations and swift second-guessing that so often follow calamities. In dozens of interviews and editorials, feelings deeper and more troubled bubbled to the surface in response to the flooding and looting that “humbled the most powerful nation on the planet,” and showed “how quickly the thin veneer of civilization can be stripped away,” as The Daily Mail of London put it.
The New York Times, 2 de septiembre de 2005
En la ciudad más afectada, Nueva Orleans, reina el saqueo, la desesperación, la devastación, la violencia, la anarquía. “Explosiones y disparos” se escucharon el día de hoy, la calca de una zona de guerra. Pero las imágenes aéreas son impresionantes, similares a las vistas con el tsunami asiático. La diferencia es que nunca se hubiera pensado que esto pudiera suceder en La potencia mundial, el aís más poderoso del mundo.
Los estadounidenses están molestos con la lenta reacción de su gobierno. La editorial del NYT como muestra:
The situation in New Orleans, which had seemed as bad as it could get, became considerably worse yesterday with reports of what seemed like a total breakdown of organized society. Americans who had been humbled by failures in Iraq saw that the authorities could not quickly cope with a natural disaster at home. People died for lack of water, medical care or timely rescues - particularly the old and the young - and victims were almost invariably poor and black. The city’s police chief spoke of rapes, beatings and marauding mobs. The pictures were equally heartbreaking and maddening. Disaster planners were well aware that New Orleans could be flooded by the combined effects of a hurricane and broken levees, yet somehow the government was unable to immediately rise to the occasion. (Leer Completa)
