They are back home, forced and forced. After political alternations in Brazil, Ecuador or Bolivia, several thousand expatriate Cuban doctors were expelled after the cancellation of their contracts. In one year, some 9,000 Cuban doctors employed abroad had to return home. A considerable financial loss for Cuba, the export of these professionals representing the first inflow of foreign currency on the island.
For Havana, the culprit is obvious: the United States. The American secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, also congratulated the countries concerned for "having refused to allow the Cuban regime to benefit from the traffic in doctors", of which "75% of the salary" is kept by the Cuban authorities , according to undersecretary Michael Kozak.
"Exploiting slave labor"
The United States accuses the socialist government of "exploiting a slave labor force" and of sometimes using these doctors as political militants in their country of assignment. Their ally, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, claims that intelligence officers had infiltrated the ranks of the doctors.
Sending doctors abroad "remains the main source of external revenue for the economy, and these contracts are difficult to relocate because they depend on agreements with governments, very sensitive to political cycles", observes the Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, from Javeriana University in Colombia.
The invoice for these forced returns? It does not yet appear in official statistics, which reported revenue of $ 6.398 billion in 2018. This amount allows to finance the free local health system.
The Cubans do not intend to stop there. Faced with threats from Washington, Havana has already taken the lead by redirecting its contingent to China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Vietnam and South Africa.
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