14ymedio, Havana, August 25, 2022 — The president of the Prisoners Defenders Association, Javier Larrondo, said this Thursday during a conference, that “there are State Security agents” among the 641 Cuban doctors hired by Mexico. The conference, entitled “The military truth behind Cuban medical missions in Mexico,” was attended by several members of Mexican civil society and took place in the Casablanca Hotel in Mexico City.
Larrondo added that the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “is allowing slavery on Mexican soil” and “financing” the Cuban regime. He also specified that, when the health workers entered the facilities of the Mexican Air Force, they were under less control than that usually executed by the military, unlike what happens with ordinary passengers.
In addition, “no one has seen the degrees of the Cuban doctors,” whose presence has already been evaluated by some analysts as a “risk to the security” of the State, Larrondo noted.
Another member of the conference, Beatriz Pagés, former deputy and director of Siempre magazine, pointed out that the mission of medical groups is “more political, more military and indoctrination than healthcare.”
She recalled that this procedure has been carried out by Cuba in other countries, and that it responds to “the advice of those who helped Hugo Chávez and now Nicolás Maduro to preserve themselves in power in Venezuela.”
By introducing the military with the support of Havana, López Obrador intends to “consolidate his autocratic project and have the presidency guaranteed in 2024,” Pagés said. The Mexican government is “increasingly approaching the most radical dictatorships in Latin America, where human rights are violated, journalists, priests and free-thinking women and men are imprisoned and it’s moving away from democracy,” the journalist warned.
Diplomat and politician Ricardo Pascoe, who served as Mexico’s ambassador to Cuba from 2000 to 2002, explained that the visit to the island of the Mexican president last May also had a military connotation. General Luis Cresencio Sandoval González, Secretary of National Defense, and José Rafael Ojeda, Secretary of the Navy, were traveling in the official delegation, 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.” The result is a strengthening of the “capacity for internal repression” of a regime that is extending as long as possible the “last days before its fall.”
Cuba learned this system of labor exploitation from North Korea, Pascoe explained. The Asian country “invented” an effective way to “rent its people to other countries. There are millions of North Korean slaves working in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and China.” With that money, Pyongyang “develops its nuclear weapons.”
Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos, S.A., a Cuban company internationally accused of human trafficking, agreed with Mexico to hire more than 600 doctors, for the monthly payment of $1,308,922.
For her part, the vice president of the European Parliament for Latin America, Dita Charanzová, explained that “80% of what is charged for the missions goes to the regime. It’s time for the people to know the truth and the other side of Cuban medical missions.”
During the conference, the testimony of a Cuban doctor who was in Mexico during the pandemic was disseminated. He revealed that upon their arrival in the country their passports are withdrawn. Seventeen colleagues escaped from his group, who left the hotels where the Mexican government hosted them. “Cuba doesn’t release the specialists for fear that they will leave,” said the man, who also said that the detachment sent by Cuba is composed of military and general practitioners “who work in primary care clinics.”
This data confirms the suspicion of Dolores González Meza, a union leader in the medical sector, who indicated last Sunday that Cuban doctors are not specialists and that they have limited themselves to offering “ambulatory care, prevention and health promotion.”
The doctor consulted by Prisoners Defenders also mentioned that, on his trip to Mexico, 123 Cuban health workers took a course of just five days on the treatment of COVID-19, when the duration on the Island itself is one year.
“We had a preparation with some Sabina ventilators that had nothing to do with those in Mexico, which also has advanced technology. Their technicians are at a higher level than Cubans,” the man said.
According to several reports written by the Cuban health workers themselves, they were limited during the pandemic to “making beds, taking vital signs, conducting surveys, and handing sponges to patients for bathing.” This contrasts with the triumphalism of the Cuban authorities, who even arrogantly managed to claim the decrease in mortality caused by the coronavirus in Mexico.
In addition to these speakers, Javier Nart, Vice President of the Delegation of the European Parliament for Central America, journalist and novelist Desirée Navarro and lawyer Emiliano Robles, were part of the press conference. Prisoners Defenders, a non-profit association based in Madrid, focuses on the defense of “human rights and pro-democratic defense through legal action.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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