HAVANA, Cuba.- There are reports of the presence of Cuban soldiers behind the Cuban medical missions in Mexico, denounced Prisoners Defenders (PD) together with Mexican politicians in Press conference developed this Thursday at the Casa Blanca Hotel in Mexico City.
A witness consulted by the PD assured that the Cuban doctors hired by the Aztec country during the pandemic they lacked sufficient preparation, they were general practitioners working in primary care and they were mostly military. “When they needed specialists they gave them intensive courses of three or five days”, insufficient to learn something. “When they arrived in Mexico they were panicking about entering therapy because they didn’t know anything,” said the anonymous source.
Regarding those recently hired by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, through an audio shown by PD, the same source assured the presence of several soldiers and that “one hundred percent had their passports taken away and entered through Mexican military airports.” Likewise, he maintained that the Cuban regime is afraid that they will desert: “Cuba is afraid of running out of specialists,” that is why it sends military doctors and that they do not have specialties.
Still, at least 17 doctors have deserted the mission in Mexico, said Javier Larrondo, president of PD. “But there could be hundreds, and they don’t receive help from the Mexican government, quite the opposite. Those who are still in Mexico have refused to give statements out of panic about what could happen to their families and for their own safety, because they fear they could be deported,” added Larrondo.
From Europe, the vice president of the European Parliament, Dita Charanzová, recalled several of the human rights violations against Cuban professionals by the regime that have been documented.
“They work under conditions that constitute contemporary forms of slavery, which is evident in other sectors such as teachers or sailors. Thousands of young children are left without their parents for years due to forced family separation. It is proven that more than 80 percent of the money that Cuba collects for the medical brigades goes to the regime and not to the doctors’ pockets. This violates international labor law and perpetuates the system of family separation condemned in two United Nations rapporteurships and in the European Parliament. It is time for the people to know the truth, to know the true face of the Cuban international missions.”
For his part, Javier Nart, vice president of the Central American Delegation of the European Parliament, argued that these conditions imposed on Cuban doctors -extremely precarious and where they keep almost all their salary- could be considered “labor pimping” .
“They force them to return to their country and, if they don’t, they accuse them of being deserters. They also take away their qualifications. Revolutionary and progressive Cuba is infinitely more reactionary than Francisco Franco’s dictatorship”, he stated.
Question of national sovereignty
The official version is that the Cuban doctors were hired by Mexico due to the lack of specialists in the Aztec nation, but this, according to the Mexican journalist and politician Beatriz Pagés, is a manipulation and a populist invention.
“Yes, there are specialists in Mexico, what is not there is the necessary infrastructure to take those specialists to those remote places. In addition, the government does not guarantee them enough salary or security for their lives, as they are highly dangerous areas due to the existence of organized crime,” he declared.
For Pagés, “the covert presence of the Cuban military violates national sovereignty”, therefore, the Mexican government “is obliged to make transparent the agreements established with Miguel Díaz-Canel, it is essential to know why the Cuban military arrive hidden under a medical identity and what are the tasks that are being carried out in the different cities of the country”.
However, he maintains that this shows that “they have a more political and military mission than a health one. With this, it is confirmed that López Obrador did not go to Cuba to bring doctors but soldiers, to ask for help from Havana to consolidate his autocratic project and the 2024 elections. This brings the country closer to the most radical dictatorships in Latin America, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, which constantly violates human rights, and distances it from democratic nations.”
Likewise, he insists that Andrés Manuel López Obrador is looking for military armor to achieve re-election, and that opening the doors to these “medical missions” brings the country closer “to the dictatorial political project that López Obrador wants to establish.”
Referring to the PD complaints, he said that “this report comes in an extremely worrying context, when the government wants to carry out a reform to militarize public health. It seems that the president intends to make his wish come true by making the Constitutional Army disappear in order to create another one that is, as in Chavismo, under his control, and for that he needs Cuban advice.”
Mexican politician Ricardo Pascoe gave a similar opinion, for whom it was alarming that AMLO arrived in Havana last May, accompanied by the two high-ranking Mexican military commanders: the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy.
“They owe a public answer about what they agreed to on that trip, why today we see a Cuban military presence without having been announced. Although we assume that they are doing what they have done in other countries: intervene in internal security and in political cadres.”
For the Mexican journalist and writer, Desirée Navarro, it is a national security crisis, since the presence of Cuban soldiers in the medical mission violates the law. Therefore, she calls for further investigation in this regard and to prevent immediate action by the government regarding the hiring of Cuban doctors.
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