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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. REUTERS / Adriano Machado

Since the withdrawal of Cuban doctors from Brazil last November, President Jair Bolsonaro has continued to criticize Cuba's international health exchange program. The tone has risen between Cuban and Brazilian presidents since the launch of the new "Doctors for Brazil" program.

For Jair Bolsonaro, this medical cooperation was a deception, which allowed the " Cuban dictator to receive some 250 million dollars a year from Brazil for the work of 10,000 health professionals who lived in conditions similar to slavery ."

Since 2013, thousands of Cuban doctors have participated in a program launched by Dilma Rousseff, covering in particular remote areas of the South American giant. But Jair Bolsonaro believes that these doctors had the mission to foment guerrillas in Brazil.

The Brazilian president is openly questioning their professionalism, still on Twitter, saying that " if they were so good, the Cubans could have saved Hugo Chavez ", in reference to the former Venezuelan president, close to the Cubans, who died cancer.

And these frontal attacks have obviously elicited reactions from the Cuban side

In turn, the head of state Miguel Diaz Canel treated on Twitter his Brazilian counterpart of liar, regretting his enslavement towards the United States. Bruno Rodriguez, the head of Cuban diplomacy, regrets these attacks on Cuban medical cooperation.

According to him, it was an example of solidarity. " 113 million Brazilians have been treated by Cuban doctors, and more than 700 have never seen doctors, " said the foreign minister.

The Cuban doctors who were in Brazil did not all come back

Of the 8,000 Cuban doctors who were in Brazil last November, some 2,500 decided to stay and have since been considered by Cuba to be deserters. The Brazilian president promised that their situation would be regularized and that they would receive their full salary.

In fact, Cuban doctors abroad receive only one third of the income paid by the host country. But in Brazil, these doctors will first of all have to retake a refresher degree.

Cuba denounces persecution against doctor exchange program

This is not the first time that the exchange program is controversial. Jair Bolsonaro was already denouncing a slave system. Last May, a complaint from the NGO "Prisoners Defenders" was filed with the ICC for slavery.

And last week, President Miguel Diaz Canel denounced the offer of US $ 3 million, which would investigate and analyze information on Cuban medical missions abroad.

Indeed, the North American Agency for International Development (USAID) offers a scholarship for the " promotion of human rights in Cuba ".
But for Miguel Diaz Canel, this is seen as a persecution against " Cuba that helps save lives in the world, it is malice and imperial arrogance . "