2129. U.S. Program to Encourage Cuban Doctors to Defect Complicates Normalization of Relations with Cuba

By Victoria Burnett and Francis Robles, The New York Times, December 19, 2015

Cuban doctors and other medical personal in Nepal after the devastating earthquake on April 25.

As he came of age in Cuba, José Angel Sánchez enrolled in medical school for the usual reasons: to help the sick and to make a better living than most in his destitute eastern town. But he had another motive, too.

“It was also a way out of Cuba,” said Dr. Sánchez, 29, who moved to the United States in September, four years after he graduated as a general practitioner.

Dr. Sánchez’s escape route was set up by the United States government, under a 2006 program that offers American residency to Cuban medical workers posted overseas. It is a door through which thousands of Cuban health workers have emigrated — and one that President Raúl Castro is determined to close.

One year after Cuba and the United States announced their thaw, policies like this, which hail from a more hostile era, show that diplomacy after five decades of tensions will not be as easy as the raising of embassy flags. The number of Cuban medical professionals who defected for residency in the United States reached a record this year, putting a crimp in the newly restored relations between the two countries and forcing Cuba to scramble to stop the exodus.

The Department of Homeland Security fast-tracks residency for Cuban medical professionals who defect, but it has been slowed by the swell of applications, accusations of fraud and delays that left hundreds of people like Dr. Sánchez stranded in Colombia for months this year.

In April, 18 months into his two-year medical posting in Venezuela, Dr. Sánchez traveled to Bogotá, Colombia. There, he applied for the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program at the United States Embassy. But the process, which normally takes four to six weeks, stretched to five months. “I always planned to leave — somehow,” said Dr. Sánchez, now a medical assistant in Paterson, N.J.

Cuba denounced the program in recent weeks as the two nations met to discuss American immigration rules that give Cubans special opportunities to enter the United States and become residents.

With so many Cubans worried that the coveted status will melt away now that diplomatic relations have been established with Havana, there has been a wave of people from all professions leaving the island over the past year.

That has created a migration crisis, the Castro government contends, stranding thousands of Cuban migrants in Central America as they try to make their way over land to the United States.

The issue is a potent reminder, analysts say, of the stubborn differences that continue to divide the two governments despite the thaw. Robert Muse, a Washington-based lawyer who specializes in United States-Cuban law, called the medical workers program an “exploding cigar left over by the Bush administration” that President Obama should eliminate.  

“No country is going to welcome engineered defections of its nationals,” Mr. Muse said. The United States, he said, was “not acting in the spirit of normalized relations.”

Cuba’s health system is a source of great international prestige for the government, which provides free training to thousands of Cubans and poor foreign students. The state offers universal, if far from perfect, medical care to its citizens and has won praise — even from the Obama administration — for sending medical brigades to help overseas.

Medical diplomacy is also an indispensable source of income: Cuba rents out the services of tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and dentists to other developing countries in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of oil and cash.

Such rewards, though, are won on the backs of medical professionals who work for little money in tough conditions, doctors say.

Dr. Lino Alberto Neira, an orthopedic surgeon who practiced in Cuba for 23 years before he left for Miami in 2013, said that his monthly salary of $25 back home barely lasted four days. He got by with tips from patients who worked in tourism, he said.

“Someone who cleans floors in a hotel is supporting you,” said Dr. Neira, speaking from Miami. “That’s very humiliating.”

Cuba more than doubled some doctors’ salaries last year, to about $70 a month. But faced with such small salaries at home, many doctors accept a posting overseas to make extra money.

Still, they earn only a fraction of what the host country pays Cuba for their work.

Dr. Mara Martínez, a dentist who is Dr. Sánchez’s fiancée, said she was a staunch supporter of the Cuban revolution but became disillusioned when she arrived in Venezuela to find that she had to work six days a week and sleep three to a room for a salary of $210 a month. Venezuela, she was told by her supervisors, was paying $7,000 per month for her services.

“It’s modern-day slavery,” said Dr. Martínez, 25, who left Venezuela with Dr. Sánchez.

Many of the doctors in Venezuela are stationed in cramped quarters without air conditioning, overwhelmed by the country’s soaring inflation and deteriorating economy. “It was worse than Cuba,” said Dr. Dailanis Barbara Martínez Peralta, a general practitioner who after leaving Venezuela waited seven months in Colombia to come to the United States.

More than 7,000 Cubans have been approved for residency since the program began almost a decade ago, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

According to Homeland Security statistics, 1,663 Cuban medical professionals posted overseas were accepted to enter the United States in the 2015 fiscal year, a 32 percent increase from the year before. The number of doctors admitted to the program has more than tripled since 2011, when 386 people were approved.

Cuban officials have repeatedly assailed the medical parole program as a “reprehensible practice” aimed at “stealing” Cuban talent. A State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the United States “does not recruit Cuban medical professionals,” but simply gives them a voluntary route to residency.

In the spring, American approvals of doctors seeking asylum through Colombia slowed considerably, in what analysts took to be a gesture of good will as the United States prepared to open an embassy in Havana. The State Department denied any connection between the delays and warming relations, and said there were no “immediate plans” to scrap the parole program.

The Department of Homeland Security suggested that the delays were the result of the increased number of applicants. Dr. Martínez said that out of a group of 250 or so medical workers who were stranded, along with her and Dr. Sánchez, all but a dozen were eventually given residency.

An American official who was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly said that the program had been held up because some applicants had presented fraudulent credentials, which caused the government to rigorously review documents.

The Cuban government said it raised the issue of the program during migration talks with American officials late last month, but Cuban officials did not respond to emails or calls requesting further comment.

The day after the talks, Cuba announced that starting Dec. 7, specialist doctors would have to get permission to travel abroad, reverting to a restriction lifted two years ago and deeply angering many medical professionals on the island. The move came just three months after the Cuban government issued a call for doctors who had defected to come home, promising them the opportunity to attend conferences and resume their careers.

Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, said the decision to restrict travel was “part of the chess game,” intended to put pressure on the United States to end the program and revise other regulations that offer residency to almost any Cuban who makes it to a United States border. One surgeon in Havana who asked that his name not be used said that the Cuban government’s restrictions had not surprised him because “so many doctors are leaving.”

“It’s been a long time since you can live off a doctor’s salary,” he said, adding, “Those who aren’t leaving — it’s because they can’t get the money together for a plane ticket.”

According to the United Nations, Cuba has one of the world’s highest rates of physicians per capita. But with so many deployed overseas, medical workers are fewer and less experienced than before the large overseas deployments began in the early 2000s, health workers and ordinary Cubans complain.

Medical professionals from any country who migrate to the United States often find that their credentials are inadequate and that the jobs that are available pay poorly.

In Miami, Dr. Neira is caring for an older Cuban man and studying to be a nurse because his Cuban qualifications are not recognized. In Paterson, Dr. Sánchez, who works on a ragged downtown strip in a job that pays $15 an hour, said he planned to do the same. First, though, Dr. Martínez, his fiancée, will try to get her dentistry license.

There are days, said Dr. Sánchez, especially weekends, when Paterson gets him down. “You start to think about family,” he said. “About your neighborhood. About what everyone would be doing on a Sunday. About the baseball game.”

Still, he enjoys his freedom and appreciates how Americans mind their own business. He would like to move to Miami, where there is year-round sunshine and a big Cuban population. “We depend on our own efforts, on getting our careers off the ground,” he said. “We’re going to make it.”

1769. Fidel Castro Sends Message of Solidarity to Venezuela President in the Face of Escalating U.S. Attacks

By Fidel Castro, Granma International, March 17, 2015

Fidel Castro meets the Five Heroes in his residence. His wife is to his left. 

Honorable President of the BolivarianRepublic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro:

As the press has reported, tomorrow Tuesday March 17, an Alba Summit will take place in Caracas to analyze the outrageous policy of the United States government toward Venezuela and Alba.

The idea of creating this organization came from Chávez himself, wanting to share with his Caribbean brothers and sisters the enormous economic resources with which nature had blessed his native homeland, the benefits of which had however landed in the hands of powerful U.S. corporations, and a few Venezuelan millionaires.

Corruption and squandering were the fundamental motivations of the first oligarchy with fascist tendencies, addicted to violence and crime. The violence and crime committed against the heroic Venezuelan people was so intolerable that it can never be forgotten, and a return will never be allowed to the shameful past of the pre-revolutionary era which led to attacks on commercial centers and the murder of thousands of people, the number of which no one can today confirm.

Simón Bolívar devoted himself entirely to liberating the continent. More than half of the best of his people struggled and died over long years of uninterrupted fighting. With less than 1% of the world’s surface area, Venezuela possesses the world’s greatest oil reserves. For a full century, the country was obliged to produce all the fuel which European powers and the United States needed. Even when today, the hydrocarbons produced over millions of years could be consumed in no more than a century, and human beings, who today number 7.2 billion, will double within 100 more years, and in 200 will reach 21 billion. Only the marvels of the most advanced technology may perhaps allow the survival of the human species for a little more time.

Why are the fabulous means of communication not used to inform and educate about these realities, instead of promoting trickery, which every one in their right mind should recognize?

An Alba Summit cannot be held without taking into account these realities which are so close to us.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has stated in a very precise manner that it has always been disposed to talk with the United States, in a peaceful and civilized fashion, but will never tolerate threats or impositions on the part of this country.

I add that I have been able to observe the attitude, not only of the people of Bolivar and Chávez, but also a special circumstance: the exemplary discipline and spirit of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces. Whatever U.S. imperialism may do, it will never be able to count on them to do what they did for so many years. Today Venezuela can count on the best equipped soldiers and officers in Latin America.

When you met with officers recently, it was evident that they were ready to give their last drop of blood for the homeland.  

A fraternal embrace for all Venezuelans, the peoples of Alba, and for you.

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 16, 2015

11:14 pm

1768. Cuba Backs Venezuela in Conflict with U.S.

By Havana Times, March 17, 2015

The special ALBA summit Tuesday in Caracas. Photo: aporrea.org

Cuban president Raul Castro reiterated today in Caracas the “firm and irrevocable” solidarity of his government with Venezuela, faced with the sanctions adopted by Washington and the Obama administration’s declaring it a threat to US national security, reported dpa news.

Castro said Cuba will defend the position that to attend the Summit of the Americas in April in Panama, it rejects any “attempt to isolate and threaten Venezuela” and will demand “a definitive end of the blockade on Cuba.”

At the opening of the special summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in Caracas today, Castro expressed support for Venezuela before the “interventionist action and threats of the US government.”

“The position of our country is invariable. I reiterate the strong solidarity of the Cuban revolution with the Bolivarian revolution, with President Nicolas Maduro and the civil-military union that it leads. I reiterate the absolute loyalty to the memory of Hugo Chavez, the best friend of the Cuban revolution,” he said.

“The facts show that history cannot be ignored. The US relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean have been marked by the Monroe doctrine and the principle of exercising dominion and hegemony over our nations,” Castro added.

Castro, whose government initiated a thaw in relations with Washington after 53 years, said that the intervention policy has been a “complete failure.”

He added that the United States seeks to destroy the “generous” Venezuelan assistance under the Petrocaribe energy alliance to threaten its “members and separate them from Venezuela.”

“They don’t seem to realize that our people have decided irrevocably to continue their unstoppable advance and battle for a multipolar world,” he claimed.

Castro said the “empire” has tried “unsuccessfully all forms of destabilization against the Bolivarian revolution to control the largest oil reserves” of the world and affect the independence process in the region.

He also described as an “aggressive executive order” US sanctions approved by Obama against seven Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations and declaring Venezuela as a “threat” to US security.

“It shows that the United States can sacrifice peace and the direction of hemispheric relations for reasons of domination. It is groundless that a supportive country like Venezuela, which has never attacked a neighbor, may pose a threat to the world’s most powerful nation, “he said.

Castro added that Cuba supports the position of Maduro, who despite the seriousness of the situation has extended his hand to President Obama to initiate a dialogue “based on international law and mutual respect that will lead to the repeal of the presidential executive order and a normalization of relations.”

“Today Venezuela is not alone. We will not tolerate the violation of its sovereignty and affecting peace in the region. The threat to peace and stability in Venezuela represents a threat to regional peace and stability.”

The United States should understand “once and for all that it is impossible to seduce Cuba and intimidate Venezuela, since our unity is indestructible,” noted Raul Castro.

“We will not tolerate any interference or conditioning of internal affairs. We will not relent in the just causes of South America, nor leave alone our brothers fighting in Venezuela… Our principles are not negotiable,” said the Cuban president.

1566. Kissinger Drew Up Plans to Attack Cuba, Records Show

By Frances Robles, The New York Times, September 30, 2014

Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, with President Gerald R. Ford, was angered by Fidel Castro’s 1975 incursion into Angola. Photo: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, via Associated Press

MIAMI — Nearly 40 years ago, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger mapped out secret contingency plans to launch airstrikes against Havana and “smash Cuba,” newly disclosed government documents show.

Mr. Kissinger was so irked by Cuba’s military incursion into Angola that in 1976 he convened a top-secret group of senior officials to work out possible retaliatory measures in case Cuba deployed forces to other African nations, according to documents declassified by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library at the request of the National Security Archive, a research group.

The officials outlined plans to strike ports and military installations in Cuba and to send Marine battalions to the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to “clobber” the Cubans, as Mr. Kissinger put it, according to the records. Mr. Kissinger, the documents show, worried that the United States would look weak if it did not stand up to a country of just eight million people.

“I think sooner or later we are going to have to crack the Cubans,” Mr. Kissinger told President Ford at a meeting in the Oval Office in 1976, according to a transcript.

The documents are being posted online and published in “Back Channel to Cuba,” a new book written by the longtime Cuba experts William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University, and Peter Kornbluh, the director of the archive’s Cuba Documentation Project.

The previously undisclosed blueprint to strike Cuba highlights the tumultuous nature of American-Cuban relations, which soured badly after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

Mr. Kissinger, who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, had previously planned an underground effort to improve relations with Havana. But in late 1975, Mr. Castro sent troops to Angola to help the newly independent nation fend off attacks from South Africa and right-wing guerrillas.

That move infuriated Mr. Kissinger, who was incensed that Mr. Castro had passed up a chance to normalize relations with the United States in favor of pursuing his own foreign policy agenda, Mr. Kornbluh said.

“Nobody has known that at the very end of a really remarkable effort to normalize relations, Kissinger, the global chessboard player, was insulted that a small country would ruin his plans for Africa and was essentially prepared to bring the imperial force of the United States on Fidel Castro’s head,” Mr. Kornbluh said.

“You can see in the conversation with Gerald Ford that he is extremely apoplectic,” Mr. Kornbluh said, adding that Mr. Kissinger used “language about doing harm to Cuba that is pretty quintessentially aggressive.”

The plans suggest that Mr. Kissinger was prepared after the 1976 presidential election to recommend an attack on Cuba, but the idea went nowhere because Jimmy Carter won the election, Mr. LeoGrande said.

“These were not plans to put up on a shelf,” Mr. LeoGrande said. “Kissinger is so angry at Castro sending troops to Angola at a moment when he was holding out his hand for normalization that he really wants to, as he said, ‘clobber the pipsqueak.' ”

The plan suggested that it would take scores of aircraft to mine Cuban ports. It also warned that the United States could seriously risk losing its Navy base in Cuba, which was vulnerable to counterattack, and estimated that it would cost $120 million to reopen the Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico and reposition destroyer squadrons.

The plan also drafted proposals for a military blockade of Cuba’s shores. The proposal warned that such moves would most likely lead to a conflict with the Soviet Union, which was a top Cuba ally at the time.

“If we decide to use military power, it must succeed,” Mr. Kissinger said in one meeting, in which advisers warned against leaks. “There should be no halfway measures — we would get no award for using military power in moderation. If we decide on a blockade, it must be ruthless and rapid and efficient.”

Mr. Kissinger, now 91, declined a request to comment.

The memos show that Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Ford, and again under President George W. Bush, was also present at the meeting when Mr. Kissinger ordered up the contingency plan. Mr. Rumsfeld, 82, also declined a request to comment.

Some Cuba historians said the revelations were startling, particularly because they took place just as the United States was coming out of the Vietnam War.

“The military piece dumbfounds me a little bit,” said Frank O. Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who now directs the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. “For Kissinger to be talking the way they were talking, you would think Cuba had invaded the whole continent.”