Madrid/“Patients had to be invented to justify all Cubans who appeared as part of the missions and had nothing to do with medicine.” This tells Cuba Archive a Cuban doctor about his experience of several years in the Health Brigade sent to Bolivia by Havana in the time of the Government of Evo Morales.
A doctor of the same mission confirms 14ymedio The testimony of the specialist cited by the organization based in the United States, and adds: “They had private chefs, custodians, drivers, laundry services, maintenance, keys of keys, advisors, domestic, secretaries and support personnel: they were all Cubans and served as doctors.”
The doctor interviewed by Cuba file He denounces a misuse of medicines to pretend that more patients were treated than they really received, in order to make the Bolivian government believe that more specialists were needed. “Surgical procedures were invented to ask for more money and propaganda: unnecessary pterygium operations (flesh) and even invented cataracts,” he says.
“They threw themselves in the trash, paracetamol and diclofenac fundamentally, to say that it was giving the patients”
He also mentions that nursing personnel were forced to break insulin syringes, burn or break graduate mirrors and get rid of analgesics. “They threw themselves in the trash, paracetamol and diclofenac fundamentally, to say that it was giving patients,” he says, among other examples.
However, he maintains, what was sent mostly were not doctors. “I remember that once in an official activity they gave us a brochure that said that in Bolivia there were more than 700 ‘Cuban collaborators’ and, of those, less than 300 was a health personnel. I knew that the minority were doctors. The rest were pure fingers.
It also accuses the mission coordinators of living in the “most luxurious” places, with a session of staff: chefs, security, drivers, laundry service and all kinds of employees, to whom they passed by doctors, when they were actually political commissioners.
The doctor personally accuses the then Cuba ambassador to Bolivia, Benigno Pérez Fernández, to send “huge wooden boxes, more than a meter high” by diplomatic suitcase while their companions had limited their luggage to 40 pounds. “The pilots and the aeromozas laughed a lot from us, they made fun of because we had to travel with several pants and shirts on top of the other to be able to move some things home while the elite could send as much as it wanted,” he says.
Together with the former ambassador – in the position until 2019 -, the doctor mentions other bosses and involves the Argentine doctor Fernando Leanes – representative of the Pan American Health Organization -, whom he accuses of knowing in what conditions the toilets worked without doing anything. “There was attended by President Evo Morales and his family, and Evo was going a lot. Leanes loved to steal camera and portray him. He knew everything, he knew perfectly what we lived.”
“In Bolivia many Cubans abandoned the mission. Ironically, many were the same bosses – the very revolutionary, blatant,”
The doctor, who says he worked at the El Alto Ophthalmological Center, of La Paz, and is now abroad, did not abandon the Brigade for fear of the repercussions he could have for his family. “But in Bolivia many Cubans abandoned the mission. Ironically, many were the same bosses – the very revolutionary, shameless.”
In the same way, he claims to have had difficulty being part of a medical brigade, since – in preceding years – he had obtained a passport with the intention of emigrating to Spain, but the departure was denied. The authorities distrusted him, thinking that he wanted to use his work to leave the island, which is why he was systematically rejected. Until an opportunity came in Bolivia.
The doctor considers that he also played against him the fact of non -military in the Communist Party or the Union of Young Communists and affirms that its members contributed 400 or 600 CUC to guarantee a “rapid output” of the mission. “I know that the missions are bought and even a cafeteria administrator leaves as a medical technician,” he says.
The specialist charged $ 670 – although he had been promised 800 – sometimes with arrears of up to four or five months, and denounces that 100 per month were subtracted, allegedly to pay the rent and basic services that the Bolivian government should assume, “so that the chiefs of the mission must have been stealing,” he argues. The doctor argues to have seen a “payroll” in which he found that 4,000 dollars were paid per worker.
“Upon arriving in Bolivia, immediately that we left the plane, someone from state security was waiting for us to lower the staircases to take our passport. If another flight had to Brigadistas, as in regard to affective or personal relations with nationals of the country in which they were. Visits to other houses were also prohibited and they were told how to respond in possible interviews.
The mission Internationalist in Bolivia finished In 2019when the then interim president Jeanine Áñez canceled the agreement with Havana, claiming that “less than one third were health professionals.”
At that time, 702 left the country doctorsof which it is estimated that 205 had that degree. “They had a salary of 1,040, a per diem of 68 Bolivians per day (USD 9.5), and air transport expenses paid by the State, making a total of about 9,000 Bolivians ($ 1,302) for each of them,” said the president in those days.
