The United States has announced it is revoking the visas of Brazilian, African, and Caribbean officials over their ties to Cuba’s program that sends doctors abroad, which Washington has described as “forced labor”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said sanctions were imposed on officials “involved in abetting the Cuban regime’s coercive labor export scheme”, which he claimed “enriches the corrupt Cuban regime and deprives the Cuban people of essential medical care”.
“The Department of State took steps to revoke visas and impose visa restrictions on several Brazilian government officials, former Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) officials, and their family members for their complicity with the Cuban regime’s labor export scheme in the Mais Medicos programme,” Rubio said. The Mais Medicos program, established in 2013, aimed to provide medical professionals to underserved areas in Brazil.
Rubio also announced visa restrictions for African officials, without specifying the countries involved, as well as the Caribbean country Grenada, for the same reasons. The Cuban government has called Washington’s efforts to stop its medical missions a cynical excuse to go after its foreign currency earnings. Cuba’s deputy director of US affairs, Johana Tablada, said its “medical cooperation will continue”. “[Rubio’s] priorities speak volumes: financing Israel genocide on Palestine, torturing Cuba, going after health care services for those who need them most,” Tablada wrote on X.
Cuba’s international missions are sold to third countries and serve as a main source of foreign currency for the economically isolated nation, which has been subject to decades-long crippling sanctions by the US. Havana’s international medical outreach goes back to the years following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, as Fidel Castro’s communist government provided a free or low-cost medical program to developing nations as an act of international solidarity. It is estimated that Havana has sent between 135,000 and 400,000 Cuban doctors abroad in total over the past five decades.
Brazilian Minister of Health Alexandre Padilha said his government would not bow to what he called “unreasonable attacks” on Mais Medicos. Cuba’s contract in the program was terminated in 2018 after then-President-elect Jair Bolsonaro questioned the terms of the agreement and Cuban doctors’ qualifications. Washington is already engaged in a heated diplomatic row with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government after imposing sanctions on Brazilian officials involved in Bolsonaro’s ongoing trial over his alleged coup plot in 2022.
Cuba’s healthcare system is public and meant to be universally accessible. However, decades of sanctions and a downturn in tourism due to Trump’s travel ban mean the one-party state is no longer medically self-sufficient. Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has resumed its “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba that typified his first term.
Rubio described the medical program as one where “medical professionals are ‘rented’ by other countries at high prices”, but “most of the revenue is kept by the Cuban authorities”. In 1999, after Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Cuba sent medical staff and educators to the country. In return, Cuba bought Venezuelan oil at below-market prices, developing the idea of Havana exporting medical professionals as a source of revenue. Some 30,000 Cuban medical workers were sent to Venezuela in the first 10 years of the “Oil for Doctors” program. Cuba later received hard currency to set up permanent medical missions in countries including South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, and Qatar.
The US plan has sparked criticism from regional officials, with Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, stating that “some persons in the US Congress have been saying, mainly Republicans, that the doctors and nurses who come down here are part of trafficking in people. I don’t know how it is trafficking in persons. If you call it trafficking in persons, then it loses all meaning because we are paying them, and it’s done very openly and very transparently”. Gonsalves emphasized the importance of Cuban medical professionals in his country, saying, “Without the Cubans, perhaps we couldn’t keep up the service… They know that I would rather lose my visa than let 60 poor working people die”.