Cuba and Venezuela reach out to Bolivia with helping hands

.. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have made a fast and extensive start in providing President Evo Morales' three-month-old left-wing government with humanitarian aid, winning the thanks of its beneficiaries as well as political points.

It's part of what Morales, in a veiled taunt to the Bush administration, calls an "axis of good."

Melani's cataracts were removed free by one of about 700 Cuban doctors who have gone to the farthest corners of Bolivia. Cuban teaching materials are helping Mamani learn to read and write.

The Bolivian Medical Association objects, saying the country has 10,000 unemployed doctors of its own. But 75-year-old Melani feels only gratitude toward the eye doctors at a newly equipped center in La Paz ..

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