Hundreds of Cuban doctors arrive in Mexico
This week in the Wall Street Journal, I came across another article condemning Cuba’s practice of “medical diplomacy.” In an opinion column, Editor Mary O’Grady expressed her concerns over the recent influx of Cuban doctors in Mexico:
One reason Cuban medical “brigades” are raising Mexican eyebrows is that Cuba has a reputation for sending medical personnel abroad to do work for which they are not trained. At the same time, Havana also has a record of using teaching, social work and medical care as cover to spread Castroism and build intelligence networks in democratic countries. (link)
Although the medical personnel were reportedly sent to treat COVID-19 patients, O’Grady and others suspect more sinister motives. Knowing that Mexican President Andres Manual Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has a penchant for the kind of leftist politics championed in Cuba, some observers fear that the medical arrangement signals a diplomatic and ideological warming between the two countries, a friendship that Washington would go to great lengths to break up.
The Mexico dilemma is only a small part of the U.S.’s ongoing frustration with Cuban medical internationalism. We'll see why after a bit of context.
Cuba has for decades sent brigades of doctors and nurses overseas to help host countries with their medical industries, often arriving in response to a crisis. In 2015, for example, thousands of Cuban medical professionals and volunteers arrived in West Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak. And thousands more Cuban medics have worked in Africa since the 1960s.
Perhaps Cuba's largest contingent of medical staff works in Venezuela, where doctors are traded for oil in a unique international agreement. Venezuela has helped Cuba keep the lights on while Cuba has provided free healthcare to Venezuela's most impoverished communities.
The Cuban government has sent a significant number of medical professionals abroad to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of personnel are deployed in Italy where the pandemic has taken a severe toll.
What's so bad about all this? For starters, evidence suggests that Cubans are often paid very little in these arrangements, while their government cashes out on their hard work. It is reported that Cuban medical professionals do not have much say in whether or not they are sent abroad; declining a mandate would effectively end their careers at home. And the reports of political and intelligence work – these are not unfounded.
To Cuba’s foes, medical internationalism is seen as a a realpolitik strategy to gain political influence abroad. Cubans are often portrayed as the victims of a human trafficking campaign to satisfy political motives. To Cuba's allies, the medical personnel are viewed as generous, altruistic and brave.
So, which is it? Below are two stories that paint Cuba's medical internationalism in two entirely different lights. Both happened in Venezuela, but several years apart. The first story is an excerpt from a 2004 Financial Times article, when the Cuban-Venezuela relationship was just getting started. The second story is from a 2019 New York Times, as both Venezuela and Cuba suffer domestic economic crises.
Story #1
Vilma Gonzalez, a single mother from Petare, a poor barrio of Caracas, is as thankful to Fidel Castro as she is to Hugo Chavez that her daughter Yulacey no longer cries with pain in the middle of the night.
Yulacey's broken tooth was fixed for free by a Cuban dentist, one of thousands dispatched from the island to work in Venezuela's poorest neighbourhoods under a programme backed by the Chavez government.
"What Chavez, and I suppose Castro too, has done is very positive," says Ms Gonzalez. "We never had a doctor visit the barrio before and I've never had the money to go to take the kids to a private clinic."
Story #2
Yansnier Arias knew it was wrong. It violated the Constitution, not to mention the oath he took as a doctor in Cuba.
He had been sent to Venezuela by the Cuban government, one of thousands of doctors deployed to shore up ties between the two allies and alleviate Venezuela’s collapsing medical system.
But with President Nicolás Maduro’s re-election on the line, not everyone was allowed to be treated, Dr. Arias said.
A 65-year-old patient with heart failure entered his clinic — and urgently needed oxygen, he said. The tanks sat in another room at the ready, he recalled.
But he said his Cuban and Venezuelan superiors told him to use the oxygen as a political weapon instead: Not for medical emergencies that day, but to be doled out closer to the election, part of a national strategy to compel patients to vote for the government.