Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
At the end of 2019, the United Nations (UN) qualified as “forced labor” the conditions in which Cuban doctors work, “as well as other professionals…” who are part of the internationalization Missions that, since 1963, the Cuban government deploys abroad. In November of that year, The Cuban government was informed of this document, which was drafted by a special rapporteur commissioned by the General Secretariat of the international organization.
According to studies on the history of the medical brigades, around 400,000 Cuban brigade members have participated since 1963, although only half of them are doctors. They have participated in 164 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Six hundred twenty-two of these doctors filed a complaint with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court about “a modern form of slavery”. Apart from withholding their salaries, which they should receive in countries other than their own because the Cuban State keeps it, the Criminal Code of Cuba punishes with eight-year prison sentences all officials who do not complete their medical missions or decide not to return to Cuba.
The families of the brigade members are kept in Cuba as a form of blackmail to the internationalist, who is tempted not to return to the island. This blackmail is borrowed from the North Korean model, which “rents” millions of its compatriots to Asian countries, keeping their families hostage in that island nation.
Cuban workers abroad are obliged to “voluntarily” hand over between 75% and 90% of the salary they receive to the Cuban government. They often live in truly precarious conditions, depending on the country and its urban or rural location. Additionally, there is a claim, which would have to be verified, that the income obtained by the Cuban government from its international brigades represents the most significant income received by that country, even more than the remittances sent by individuals to their families.
The PAN senators’ coordinator, Julen Rementería, explained the information on the payment made by Mexico to the Cuban government for the services of 585 Cubans, not necessarily doctors, for the amount of “almost” 256 million pesos for three months of work. That is 433,000 pesos for each Cuban during those three months. It would be equivalent to a monthly salary of 144,333 pesos per month for each Cuban when the average wage of a Mexican doctor is 17,000 pesos.
President López Obrador came up with a lie to justify the eventual arrival of more Cubans to Mexico. “We have no doctors in Mexico”, offending the thousands of unemployed licensed doctors his government fired. All the medical associations in Mexico raised their voices against what the President said.
Evidently, López Obrador wants to give away a lot of money to Cuba. Of course, public money, not his own. It would be better if he put the money in a plane of our complacent army to send it to Cuba, instead of making the insulting farce of bringing some doctors and security agents from Cuba, pretending that they will help us, just to disguise the donation.
The pending issue for the Mexican government is the small detail of being complicit in the “forced labor…” of Cubans.
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