MADRID, Spain.- The Cuban doctor residing in Mexico, Belkis Trimiño Chantez, denounced Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) for violating the law on migration and professional practice in the field of medicine by hiring doctors Cubans.
In an interview given to the local media The Voice of the Border, Trimiño Chantez explained: “One cannot practice in any country without a professional or responsive license. It would have to be a situation that really deserves it, like a specialty for which there was no person available in Mexico.”
The doctor assured that she was aware of these immigration laws since in the 1990s, when Nelson Mandela ruled South Africa, she was in a medical brigade sent by the Cuban regime to this country.
Regarding that “mission”, he explained that Mandela “set the conditions for the hiring of these doctors and listened to the recommendations of his colleagues who selected the most qualified”.
However, currently the Cuban regime sends “doctors who are with the government and who, apart from doing their job as doctors, must be politically convenient,” he stressed.
During their stay in South Africa, the contract obliged the doctors not to get involved politically in anything with that country. The working conditions, thanks to Mandela, were not slavery like those of other Cuban doctors. Of the salary they received, they sent 30% to Cuba as support, explained Trimiño Chantez.
“In other missions, the Cuban government keeps more than 80% of the doctors’ salaries,” he denounced.
In his statements, he also pointed out that Cuban doctors in many cases “are forced to accept these missions out of desperation to earn income and support their families.”
Recruitment of Cuban doctors by the AMLO government
After concluding his visit to Cuba at the beginning of this month, Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that an agreement on health had been signed with the Cuban authorities that included the hiring of 500 doctors from the island.
The agreement, established between the head of Health of Mexico, Jorge Alcocer Varela, and his Cuban counterpart, José Ángel Portal Miranda, mentioned the inclusion of future agreements on medicines and vaccines; scientific research and any other area that is established in writing.
Instead, the official documents They made no reference to the conditions under which the Cuban specialists would be hired.
They did not mention the salary to be received by the island’s doctors, nor the percentage that would end up in the hands of the Government, which is usually almost the entirety, as the doctors themselves have said for years on international “missions.”
When the agreement was announced, the NGOs Prisoners Defenders, Outreach Aid to the Americas and the International Foundation for Liberty (FIL) denounced in Mexico the conditions of slavery in which Cuban doctors work.
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