Cuban Doctors Traded for Venezuelen Oil

Missions

When the eighth leak appeared in the dining room ceiling, you accepted the mission to go to Venezuela as a doctor. You knew that with each month's salary you'd never have been able to tear out the paneling and replace the worn out columns. Also, the resale of some appliances you bought there would help pay for the cost of cement and rebar. In Havana, your bank account would grow with the fifty convertible pesos you'd receive each month for your stay in Caracas. Your wife ordered a laptop and your youngest son asked for Play Station.

The first months you slept badly with the sounds of gunfire coming into the small room shared with five other colleagues. To chase away the nostalgia, you thought about your relatives' faces when they'd learn about all the nice clothes you had gotten at a discount. Meanwhile, the small bank account grew in Cuba, under the condition that you could enjoy it only at the end of your mission.

Someone in the group confessed one night that he was going to cross the border and take off for Miami. You listened to him with the trembling of one who can forget about the leak, the new roof, and the requested laptop, and use your savings to start a new life. Suddenly you remembered the nurse who escaped and has never been able to get her family off the Island. Deserters are punished with separation, marked by the impossibility of being reunited with their families.

So you spent your two years curing people and saving lives, suffering the separation, the fear and the shared housing. With relief, you got news that your wife had started to buy the bags of cement to repair the roof. When it was almost time for you to return, someone announced that an agreement to stay another six months could be made by signing a paper. "No problem," you thought, "with the extra money I'll earn in that time, maybe I'll have enough to repair the walls of the house."

[The English translation of Yoani Sanchez's blog, Generation Y, is available here.]

 

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Comments

[Antonio Varona]

These doctor's that are being send abroad are, by and large, slaves of the communist dictatorship in cuba.. they agree to go away from their families in an effort to gain a small advantage for their families knowing that they are being used a propaganda for their government. They agree to go overseas while their families are held hostage in Cuba; knowing that if they defect it may be years before they see their families again. Yes, they are heroes but for different reasons than you state. They are heroes because they are willing to be separate from their families in order for their lives to be better.

You speak of the sinisterness of the US government and fail to see the one of the Cuban Government. You have a lot of gumption to criticize the author who risks her life and liberty to publish this article from within cuba. SHE is truly a hero. You should learn to listen to those that live within the system instead of preaching from abroad!

[av2ts]

The Cuban doctors who serve in some of the most wretched places imaginable are true heroes who deserve the utmost gratitude, not back-handed insults and patronization. These VOLUNTEERS have helped millions of Latin Americans (in almost every Latin/Carribean country) receive care they would not have gotten otherwise - and help their country earn money.

The US Government knows the program is a massive success and so they devised a truly sinister program to try to sabotage it. Last year, Bush signed an order intended to lure Cuban doctors to the US with a generous offer of financial and social assistance as well as immediate US Residency. All the Cuban doctors have to do is show up at the nearest US Embassy ready to defect. No other Doctor in any other part of the world is able to do such a thing. What a sickening idea - stealing doctors from the poorest to score political points. It would not surprise me if author supports this too... though she is too smart to admit it.