Avellon Williams
HAVANA, CUBA- In a conference last week, Javier Larrondo, the president of the Prisoners Defenders Association, said “there are State Security agents” among the 641 Cuban doctors hired by Mexico. Several members of Mexican civil society attended the conference at the Casablanca Hotel in Mexico City, entitled “The military truth behind Cuban medical missions in Mexico.”
According to Larrondo, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “allows slavery on Mexican soil” and “finances” the Cuban regime. In addition, he stated that health workers entering Mexican Air Force facilities were under less control than those normally executed by the military, unlike ordinary passengers.
Larrondo also noted that “no one has seen the degrees of the Cuban doctors,” whose presence has already been evaluated as a “risk to the security” of the State by some analysts.
Beatriz Pagés, former deputy and director of Siempre magazine, also pointed out that medical groups have a “more political, military, and indoctrinatory mission than healthcare.”
“This procedure has been adopted by Cuba in other countries, which complies with the advice given to Hugo Chávez and now Nicolás Maduro by those who helped them maintain power,” she recalled.
Introducing the military with Havana’s support will “consolidate Lopez Obrador’s autocratic project and ensure his presidency in 2024,” Pagés said.
“Mexico is moving toward becoming one of the most radical dictatorships in Latin America, where human rights are violated, journalists, priests, and free-thinking women and men are imprisoned, and democracy is being eroded,” the journalist warned.
Mexican diplomat and politician Ricardo Pascoe, who served as Mexico’s ambassador to Cuba from 2000 to 2002, explained that the president’s visit also had a military connotation.
Among the delegation were Luis Cresencio Sandoval González, Secretaries of National Defense, and José Rafael Ojeda, Secretaries of Navy, with the task of “organizing political cadres, as in Venezuela.”
According to Pascoe, López Obrador’s government is financing a regime that replaces “the lack of economic development with slave labor.” This strengthens a regime whose “last days before its fall” are being extended as long as possible by strengthening its “capacity for internal repression.”
Pascoe explained that Cuba learned this system of labor exploitation from North Korea. This Asian country developed an efficient method of “renting” its people to other countries. Millions of North Korean slaves work in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. “With that money, Pyongyang develops nuclear weapons.”
Cuban company Comercializadora de Servicios MédicosCubanos, S.A., accused of human trafficking internationally, signed a contract with Mexico to hire more than 600 doctors for $1,308,922 a month.
Dita Charanzová, vice president of the European Parliament for Latin America, explained that 80% of the missions’ fees go to the regime. “The people need to understand the truth and the other side of Cuban medical missions.”
The conference featured the testimony of a Cuban doctor who was in Mexico during the pandemic. According to him, when they arrive in the country, their passports are withdrawn. A group of seventeen colleagues escaped from hotels where the Mexican government was hosting them. He also said Cuba does not release the specialists for fear they will leave, and the detachment it sent included military personnel and general practitioners “who worked in primary care clinics.”
According to Dolores González Meza, a medical union leader, Cuban doctors are not specialists and have limited themselves to providing” ambulatory care, prevention, and health promotion.”
Furthermore, the doctor interviewed by Prisoners Defenders said that, on his trip to Mexico, 123 Cuban health workers took a five-day course on COVID-19, whereas on the island itself the course lasts for a year.
“In preparation, we used Sabina ventilators that were not the same as those in Mexico, which have advanced technology.” “Their technicians are at a higher level than Cubans,” he said.
In several reports written by Cuban health workers themselves, they were only allowed to “make beds, take vital signs, conduct surveys, and hand out sponges for bathing during the pandemic.” Contrary to this triumphalism, the Cuban authorities even arrogantly claimed a decline in mortality attributed to Coronavirus in Mexico due to the coronavirus.
Additionally, the press conference included Javier Nart, Vice President of the Delegation of the European Parliament for Central America, journalist Desirée Navarro, and lawyer Emiliano Robles. As a non-profit organization located in Madrid, Prisoners Defenders defends “human rights and pro-democracy through legal actions.”
