Cuban medical professionals provide healthcare to patients at a medical center in Guatemala. Photo: Cubadebate.
The Guatemalan government announced the termination of the medical collaboration agreement with Cuba under which Cuban health professionals worked in remote and impoverished areas of the country since 1998.
On Tuesday, February 10, the Guatemalan Ministry of Health announced that the 412 Cuban medical collaborators currently working in the country, of whom 333 are specialist doctors, will be replaced “gradually” by “national human resources.”
The decision, justified by a “technical analysis” to “strengthen the national healthcare system,” comes amid US pressures on Cuba and the rise of right-wing governments in Latin America that are aligned with this policy.
US persecution against a symbol of solidarity
Cuba’s international medical collaboration, with over six decades of history and a presence in 56 countries, follows the principles of solidarity and South-South cooperation.
However, this mission has been a specific target of a US campaign to suffocate and discredit it, which has intensified since Donald Trump’s first administration.
The US narrative, which accuses these programs of “modern slavery” and “human trafficking,” is aimed at undermining one of the main sources of foreign exchange for Cuba, as well as depriving vulnerable populations of medical care.
The Cuban international medical mission began in 1960 with the dispatch of a first brigade to Chile, devastated by an earthquake. It was forged in the following decades as a pillar of Cuba’s foreign policy.
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The mission was later strengthened by large programs, such as the Barrio Adentro Mission in Venezuela or the Mais Médicos program in Brazil. It gained recognition by responding to global health crises, from the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone to sending doctors to the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.
The continued US economic and political aggression against Cuba has entered a new and brutal phase of energy asphyxiation, with the recent executive order threatening sanctions on third countries for supplying fuel to Cuba. This escalation is a brutal act of aggression aimed at provoking hunger and despair among the population, as openly declared by the Trump administration. However, Cuba, its political leadership guided by the ideals of Fidel Castro, the revolutionary continuity with President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and its people, has had the resilience to defend the nation’s right to self-determination and sovereignty.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
