Cuba’s ambassador to that country, Juan Loforte, says the Cuban Government did not receive money from the agreement.
14ymedio, Havana, March 5, 2026 – This Thursday the last group of 172 members of the medical brigade left Honduras, a program for which the country spent $10,259,617 over two years, including salaries and housing, transportation, and baggage expenses. The agreement promoted in 2024 by the Island’s ally, Xiomara Castro, allowed the arrival of electricians and nursing technicians for whom the Cuban Government received monthly payments of 1,600 dollars.
In response to statements by nationalist congresswoman and vice president of the National Congress Johana Bermúdez, who requested an investigation to determine whether spies were among the group, one of the doctors leaving from Guillermo Anderson International Airport in La Ceiba joked on Wednesday: “We are spies, but of diseases.”
A review of the agreement, carried out by Ángel Eduardo Midence, deputy minister of the Health Secretariat (Sesal), also revealed the arrival of economists and administrators who had nothing to do with medical practice. The official said last Sunday that it would be up to the State’s regulatory bodies to deepen the investigation and impose sanctions.
Cuba’s ambassador to Honduras, Juan Loforte, who saw off the brigade members on Wednesday and Thursday at Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport in the city of San Pedro Sula, rejected the accusations. The diplomat acknowledged the monthly salary payment of 42,346 lempiras but denied that the money was transferred to the Cuban Government. “They were paid directly to the doctors; they received their full salary here, in their accounts,” the diplomat said.
“Our doctors were well paid and had honorable working conditions,” he insisted to the media covering the departure of the Cubans.
However, the entity responsible for regulating the hiring of medical missions on the Island is the Cuban Medical Services Marketing Company, a firm internationally accused of human trafficking. According to a complaint in 2023 by Cuban geriatrician Juan Andrés Echemendía—who was sent to Mexico as part of these brigades—the money paid for the doctors goes into the regime’s coffers. He said that they “do not receive a salary.”
“Our salary is in our country, in Cuba,” the specialist insisted, explaining that they “receive a stipend” for personal expenses.
Defending the medical brigades, Loforte stated that the doctors were assigned to 17 of Honduras’s 18 departments and to five ophthalmology centers built by the Government, where nearly 7,000 surgeries were performed on patients with eye problems, in addition to 500,000 consultations. “Figures that reflect the commitment and solidarity vocation of Cuban medicine,” he said.
Loforte insisted that the doctors arrived in the country because their services were needed, but “if they are no longer required, the Government has every right to dispense with their work.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Communications Minister José Augusto Argueta clarified that the Government of Nasry Asfura decided not to renew the agreement because it failed to meet basic requirements for the group to be classified as a medical brigade.
According to Honduran regulations, Argueta explained, a medical brigade can only remain in the country for a period of 90 days, but the Cuban doctors had been working there since 2024. In addition, the doctors’ work was supposed to be free of charge and they had to be accredited before the Medical Association of Honduras, which did not occur.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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