Unbelievable but true, the Trump administration’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has declared all-out war on Cuba’s Henry Reeve international medical assistance programme that’s been helping the world for the past two decades.
Also, unbelievably true is that the brigade was established in 2005 to offer Cuba’s medical help to American citizens who suffered the impact of Hurricane Katrina that year.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brigade has also distinguished itself as a true leader in both the global North and South, offering emergency assistance.
Cuban medical brigades are sent by Havana to nations worldwide as part of bilateral agreements, as with CARICOM member-states, from as far back as the 1980s.
Doctors, nurses and other Cuban medical personnel sent to any other country naturally have to be paid by Havana for their services and given stipends by the host nation.
From 2004, millions in Latin American and CARICOM nations have also benefitted greatly from the free Operation Miracle (Milagro) eye care program launched that year by Presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
These medical programmes are all humanitarian, with equal attention and care for all who seek.
The Henry Reeve brigade has been thanked for giving life-saving medical emergency care to the needy in the Americas (including the USA and Canada) and the Caribbean, as well as in African, Asian and Pacific nations.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the internationalist value of the Cuban medical brigades to the fore when Cuba dispatched teams to scores of nations, including almost every Eastern Caribbean nation and territory.
The wider world also got to better appreciate the value and unrestricted ambit of Cuba’s international medical care programs when it became known that among those cared for by the Milagro eye programme in Cuba was a Bolivian citizen who helped kill Cuba’s Argentine-born national hero, Che Guevara.
Cuba didn’t disclose that information as it doesn’t boast about its health care for millions, as the program is about restoring health above all else.
But the next big global acclamation came when Havana dispatched a brigade of Cuban doctors, nurses and medical personnel to Italy to help handle its early COVID-19 crises.
The elderly were among the most affected, and the Italian government’s welcome of the arrival of the flight with the Cuban brigade made colourful news headlines around the world.
That gesture gained enough deserving commendations for Cuba for the Henry Reeve Brigade to have been nominated for Nobel Peace Prizes twice- in 2015 and 2021.
The brigade was first nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2015- ten years after its formation in the USA- by the Annual Conference of Norway Trade Unions.
The second nomination was in 2021 by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), also supported by Professor Honor Ford-Smith of York University and Professor Carole Boyce Davies of Cornell University, a Sinn Féin Assembly team (of parliamentarians) from Ireland, several British parliamentarians and the Workers’ Party of Ireland.
However, the 2021 prize went to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Interestingly, US Secretary of State Rubio is of pure Cuban descent, and one would have thought his State Department researchers would have fed him with information about the Cuban medical brigades’ achievements – all easily available online.
But, obviously out to do the most damage he can to the land that gave birth to his parents, Secretary Rubio has become the first top US foreign affairs Head Honcho to claim the decades-old brigade is being used by the Cuban government as part of an exploitative international overseas labour programme.
On the contrary, it’s the USA and Canada that have – also for decades – been implementing and encouraging exploitative farm labour programmes milking the blood and sweat of Caribbean and Latin American citizens, packed into farms to pick apples and cherries, for the ridiculous, extremely-low wages American and Canadian workers refuse to work for.
It’s also in the USA and Canada that immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America have been among those historically enticed from nations near and far to work in hotels and casinos, restaurants and mega stores, for the lowest wages nationals simply refuse to work for.
The late Prime Minister of Dominica, Rosie Douglas, shared an interesting story in Saint Lucia at a public rally about how he had personally called Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to complain about being discriminated against in his application for a farm labour job in Canada.
Thanks to the call, Rosie ended-up being assigned to a pig farm ‘to clean pig shit’ – and when he was elected Prime Minister decades later, one of his first private VIP invitations to his inauguration was to ‘Mr Canadian Pig Farmer’.
Today, Mr Rubio s preparing to come to the Caribbean to try to explain to CARICOM leaders why they should dump the reliable free Cuban medical care programs in exchange for free medical care on US war ships that will call in Caribbean ports from time to time – or pay the impossible costs of medical care in the US.
But the responses of CARICOM leaders so far — from Barbados’ Mia Mottley and Trinidad & Tobago’s Keith Rowley to St. Vincent & The Grenadines Dr Ralph Gonsalves and Grenada’s Dickon Mitchell — have all made it clear that member-states totally reject the threat to revoke Prime Ministers’ visas if their governments don’t obey this particular US diktat.
Caribbean leaders now need the urgent support and backing of all citizens who’ve benefitted from Cuba’s outstanding and longstanding generosity regarding healthcare for Caribbean people.
CARICOM member-states should summon the Opposition and all political parties to agree to a united plan to resist this callous move to deny continuing healthcare to millions in scores of nations worldwide.
It’s the least the Caribbean can do right now – and before Secretary Rubio arrives on what is hoped will be his Mission Impossible!