The leader of the conservative opposition details his accusations against López Obrador´s Government.
14ymedio, Mexico, May 19, 2024 — The Government of Mexico is secretly financing the Cuban regime through the importing of doctors since the COVID-19 pandemic, according the leader of the National Action Party (PAN in Spanish) in the Senate, Julen Rementería, speaking on Wednesday.
According to the data provided by the leader of the main opposition party in the Upper House, the sponsorship is achieved thanks to the inflation of the salaries granted to Cubans hired in Mexico under the Health system payroll. He suggested that this employment relationship could be a facade to carry out other activities in the country since there are no documents that support the Cubans’ medical training.
The Cuban government is “paid up to 144,000 Mexican pesos (approximately USD 8,734) per month for each person who comes from Cuba because we cannot even say that they are doctors because they do not prove it with any document. What lies behind it? Well, the financing, from Mexico to a dictatorship, to that of the island of Cuba,” he added at a press conference.
An investigation by 14ymedio revealed in February 2023 that the Government of the Island will pocket USD $2,042 per month for each specialist and USD $1,722 for the services of a general practitioner
The Veracruz senator harshly criticized the visit of Zoé Robledo, director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security, to Havana, where on May 13 he held a meeting with President Miguel Díaz-Canel to “strengthen health cooperation.” That commitment is interpreted as an attempt to reach the goal of 1,200 doctors agreed with Havana – 768 Cubans have arrived so far – before the end of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year presidential term in four months.
Rementería expressed his disagreement with this announcement after considering that “they are taking away a salary from Mexican doctors” without, in his opinion, being transparent about the reason for the decision ordered by the nation’s president himself, after making an agreement with the Cuban regime. “There are 51,000 Mexican doctors who are unemployed, and are we going to ask Cuba for doctors?” he reproached.
14ymedio documented last April how Mexican doctors belonging to the Health Institute for Welfare were fired before the arrival of a group of colleagues from Cuba. The island’s health workers were assigned to establish a base on the mountain of Guerrero, which was a stronghold of the guerrillas in the 1970s and currently faces a growing wave of insecurity with cartels, such as the Familia Michoacana or Guerreros Unidos, fighting over drug routes with bloodshed and fire.
Rementería urged López Obrador’s Administration to curb the importing of Cuban doctors, especially because so far neither of the two governments has publicly explained their employment situation. Nor has it responded to accusations of practicing a form of “modern slavery,” according to reports published by several organizations, such as Prisoners Defenders, which point to the withholding by the authorities in Havana of up to 90% of the salaries allegedly paid to its aid workers.
The PAN member’s denunciations against the alleged financing of the Cuban regime come just a few days after the opposition candidate for the Presidency, Xóchitl Gálvez, promised to cancel the bilateral agreement should she win the elections on June 2.
Translated by LAR
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