“Do not spit on the dish that nourished you,” reads the headline in the Ministry of Public Health text disseminated on social networks
14ymedio, Madrid, October 20, 2025 — There is no right to criticize according to the Cuban Ministry of Public Health. In a statement published on Facebook, it makes clear its thoughts about Cuba’s free education system: more than a citizen’s right is a mechanism to silence the population, it follows from the text. It states that the health workers who were trained on the Island say the most bitter things about the system. “They insist on insulting the medical education that made them doctors. It is not criticism; it’s ingratitude. It is not testimony: it’s treason.”
The post, originally taken from the profile of the Public Health Union in Santiago de Cuba, is signed in the name of the Ministry and has been disseminated by various social media accounts, including that of Santiago’s television. The title is forceful: “Do not spit on the dish that nourished you,” reads the headline. The text calls the doctors who criticize their working conditions “resentful,” among other things.
The publication recognizes that there is a lack of resources, workers are tired and many things need improvement, “but this does not erase the fact that the Cuban doctor is trained with excellence, ethics and vocation.” The main reproach includes that of having emigrated, an act which it considers “legitimate,” with a but. “Using your freedom to spit on what has educated you is wretched,” the text says, a phrase particularly striking by implying that only in exile is this freedom achieved.
“Not all who stay are accomplices. Not all who leave are brave.”
“Not all who stay are accomplices. Not all who leave are brave,” adds the message, which also deplores the accusation that weighs on the Cuban State of enslaving doctors on international missions based on these testimonies, although it does not do so clearly, but with hints.
In addition, it insists that those who speak against “Cuban medicine” –which they say “does not need propaganda” — “denigrate” it. “Do not destroy that which gave you the tools to be who you are. Be proud. Change it. But do not trample on it,” adds the text. It ends with: “Cuban medicine is a beacon, and the light is not extinguished by the poison of those who forget where they came from.”
The publication of this message occurs without an apparent reason to justify the unexpected attack, although doctors who decide to leave medical missions have been despised for decades by the official discourse. Not for nothing, all of them are subject to criminal proceedings, which may result in up to eight years’ imprisonment and a ban on returning to the country.
Cuban doctors who have worked abroad have for years been denouncing the practices of the Cuban regime, which, in addition to keeping the money that can reach 90% of their salary, confiscates their passports in order to prevent them from fleeing, prevents them from engaging with residents in the the country where they are working, and compels them to engage in government-friendly propaganda. To all this is added increasingly complex economic conditions, as the officials have tried to deposit the dollars owed the doctors on a Classic card instead of delivering the currencies in cash, as they expected.*
Because of these practices, the US government has considered for years that Cuba enslaves its doctors, and in recent months, the Trump administration has pressured several countries to modify their agreements with Havana and hire the doctors directly, something that has already been achieved with the Bahamas, Grenada and Jamaica.
*Translator’s note:In 2022, the Human Rights Foundation issued a report calling the Cuban doctors on international medical missions “victims of human trafficking.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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