The Eternal Persecution of the "Deserters" / Juan Juan Almeida

Juan Juan Almeida, 6 September 2017 — A recent email leak in Cuba confirms that although the island’s Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) facilitates the travel procedures for the collaborators it sends to missions in different countries, the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), which controls the regime’s organs of repression and citizen control, has absolute power to obstruct departures and avoid desertions.

On 7 August 2017, Cuba’s Central Unit of Medical Cooperation (UCCM) requested the Department of Foreign Relations (MINSAP), via email, to prepare five transit visas for Spain who were planning imminent travel to join the Cuban Medical Brigade in the African archipelago that forms the Republic of Cape Verde.

This singular cyber-message, brief and to the point, said that the collaborators must collect their transit visas on 12 September at the Spanish consulate in Havana, and must present themselves the day before at UCCM’s headquarters, located on CUJAE Highway in the capital municipality of Marianao.

The doctors involved are Neuvis Vázquez del Llano (surgeon), Manuel Luis Rodríguez Lavernia (surgeon), Aida Silvia Fuentes Abreu (pediatrician), Pablo Raúl Rosell (surgeon) y María Elena Pérez Jiménez (anesthetist).

So far so good. UCCM is the institution in charge of ensuring Cuba’s commitments with regards to International Medical Collaboration are met, and it is normal that it should also be in charge of the visas and travel of the collaborators.

The story’s dark and irregular point comes to light when, by magic and hours apart, a second email, dated Wednesday 9 August, is sent from Roberto Morales, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health, to the Cuban embassy in Madrid, with a copy to the African state, instruction that by orders of Jesús López-Gavilán, chief of the MINIT department that deals with health, that when the collaborators’ flight date is confirmed, it is imperative that an official of Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Madrid go to Barajas International Airport (the misspelled missive explains), because after an investigation and check of communications with family members abroad, it was determined that one of the five physicians, without specifying which, but repeating the names of the five mentioned above, has shown what are describes as strong indications and intentions to defect.