The Mexican government announced Tuesday that a new contingent of 2,700 Cuban doctors will arrive in the country to fill the shortage of specialists under a controversial agreement that, according to opponents and representatives of the Mexican medical profession, seeks to financially support the island to the detriment of local professionals.
The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has frequently and publicly defended Cuba, claims that the country is suffering from an inhumane and unjust blockade and has signed agreements with Havana to receive hundreds of doctors from the Caribbean nation, the first during the coronavirus pandemic.
“In the latest agreement, in addition to the 950 Cuban doctors who are already working in 23 states of the country, 2,700 of these specialties are being added… mainly in internal medicine, pediatrics and emergencies,” said the director of social security, Zoé Robledo, to journalists.
The opposition and representatives of the Mexican medical profession have denounced that the money paid for the service is actually a form of financial support to Havana and that some doctors do not have a degree.
He also claims that there are around 50,000 local health professionals who could take over his duties, which the government denies, pointing out that Cuban specialists are sent to areas where Mexican doctors do not want to work.
According to Havana, the export of its doctors, who have been deployed in 50 countries in Africa and the Caribbean, is its main source of foreign exchange earnings, while the United States claims that members of these missions are subjected to “forced labor,” a term that Cuba considers “slanderous.”
In a report released in 2022, the NGO Prisoners Defenders reported that Cuban doctors entered Mexico on military planes without going through immigration services and that they worked in “slavery” conditions, receiving a tiny fraction of what Mexico paid for their services.
In addition to receiving the Cuban doctors, the López Obrador administration began regular oil exports to Cuba from the state-owned company Pemex in 2023. Shipments in the second half of last year were valued at $400 million.
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