14ymedio, Juannier Rodríguez Matos, Houston, 3 November 2021 — When I was a child I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to save lives. I wanted to help a lot of people in Cuba. And I wanted what my parents told me not to be true: “Doctors are slaves in Cuba.”
Over time I realized that, being a freethinker, it was practically impossible to exercise such a noble profession in the land captured by Fidel Castro. We know how the communists prevent many from studying this career for expressing opinions contrary to the process imposed in Cuba. And so that they did not take me by surprise, I became a biologist, my great innate love.
Today I feel a mixture of immense respect and gratitude for people who dedicate themselves to medicine, an admiration that I can compare with almost nothing. Knowing that their job is to save lives makes them, for me, heroes of humanity.
Some time ago I read a wonderful article on BBC News about a doctor at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, USA. As his patients in the emergency room could not see his face with the personal protective equipment, and to comfort them, the respiratory therapist Robertino Rodríguez decided to place a photo of himself smiling on the equipment.
Rodríguez’s initiative was imitated by hundreds of doctors and nurses, who even posted cartoon photos to encourage hospitalized children infected with the Wuhan virus.
This is how the doctors I want for Cuba act.
Today, November 2, 2021, I watch on Facebook the video of the doctor-agent, or agent-doctor, Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González, agent Fernando.
During that uncomfortable material that only reflects how low it can go, I experienced a set of sensations, a mixture of sorrow, frustration, fear and desire to continue doing good for Cuba.
Grief, because Dr. Carlos Leonardo is Cuban. I am ashamed when I see my compatriots staging such miserable roles, because the work of State Security agent is a real task to turn human beings into monsters that they do not know about love.
Frustration, because I know other doctors in Cuba with a high percentage of probabilities of being agents of the political police, exercising their work comfortably, and instead I know of so many doctors expelled for not wanting to serve the repressive apparatus.
Fear, because when I saw the needle at the end of the material, the famous needle with which they inoculate HIV, the famous needle with which they ruin lives, I thought of Ariel Ruiz Urquiola; I thought of his sister Omara, who was almost killed by adverse treatment; I thought of Oswaldo Payá and those doctors who wrote the cause of death that State Security ordered them to write.
I thought of my dissident friends and Cuban activists who are treated by those doctor-agents, those whose oath is not Hippocratic, but ‘Fidelist’. My friends are in danger in Cuba. I pray for them always.
But I also clung to the idea of continuing to put my strength and best thoughts in my beloved homeland, which has suffered for several decades from the weight of an ideology that is not Cuban at all. For my Cuba, all the good things in the world.
Agent Fernando has thrown away more than 25 precious years of his life. Agent Fernando is willing to violate any ethical principle because he owes everything to State Security. Agent Fernando is nothing more than a servile talent, a slave to communism; sadly a bad person.
We also ask for everything good in the world for him. We defeat hatred with love, and we always remind all those Fernandos agents that there is still room for them on the side of good.
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
