The Tragic Reality of Cuba’s Medical Brigades 

With Marco Rubio’s unanimous confirmation as secretary of State, now is the time to stand up to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Rubio has a history of standing up to the Cuban regime while in the Senate, there is no reason he won’t continue to do so in his new position. In fact, the Trump administration has already reinstated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.  

January marks National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and it’s important to remember that modern slavery comes in different forms. In 2008, Ramona Matos Rodriguez, a family medicine physician from Cuba, was sent to work in San Agustin, Bolivia, a small town in the Amazons. Her passport was seized by a Cuban security agent at the airport. She was not allowed to possess any other identifying documents, and she and her fellow doctors were forced to fill out paperwork with false statistics about made-up patients or else face retribution from the Cuban regime.

Matos was one of thousands of medical personnel trafficked abroad into forced labor — all for the profit of the Cuban regime.

Cuba has a long history of sending its armed forces and medical personnel to foreign countries under the guise of “aid.” Fidel Castro sought to export his brand of revolutionary violence across Latin America — as in the failed “invasion” of Bolivia by Castro’s associate, Che Guevara. Cuba’s communist regime also has a long history of sending military advisors and troops to prop up dictators, advance authoritarian parties, and attack democratically elected governments in Angola, Mozambique, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Yemen, Algeria, Syria and elsewhere.

The other tragic but less-known human capital export of Cuba is its so-called “Medical Brigades.” Havana has sent tens of thousands of medical workers around the world since the 1960s, from poverty-stricken African nations to Portugal and Italy. Undoubtedly, in most cases, these medical professionals do provide needed health care in often difficult environments. But the regime’s reason for sending them is not really about spreading the “good news” of communist brotherhood. Rather, it is financial: the Cuban regime makes a major profit from these programs.

This op-ed was originally published in The Hill by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Dr. Eric. Patterson, President and CEO and VOC.