Dozens of doctors who acted on an offer of asylum are stranded in Colombia.
By Chris Kraul and Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writers
March 8, 2007
BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA — Family practitioner Alberto Hernandez suffers
anxiety attacks. Dentist Norah Garcia is prone to bouts of
uncontrollable sobbing. General practitioner Cesar Fernandez, 31, has
high blood pressure.
They are among the tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, surgeons and
dentists dispatched from their Cuban homeland as medical missionaries to
some of the world's poorest countries, in the process earning hard
currency for the communist regime. But instead of providing much-needed
healthcare, they have been caught up in a wider struggle between leftist
Latin American leaders and the Bush administration.
Last summer, the administration announced that any Cuban medical
professional sent abroad was eligible for political asylum. Frustrated
with their efforts in a program that took them to Venezuela's barrios,
or hoping to start a new life in the United States, dozens of Cuban
healthcare professionals sneaked across the Colombian border.
Now they're holed up in Colombia, unable to work, while U.S. authorities
mull whether to accept them as political refugees.
"We don't know why it's taking so long. We hope the United States
government hurries up and makes up its mind," said Ariel Perez, a
general practitioner who shares a small apartment with Garcia and
another Cuban dentist in southern Bogota.
The approval process would take one to two months, they were told. But
several Cubans here say the process has dragged on for half a year.
"All our hopes and dreams are wrapped up in [Bush's] decree," said
Garcia, a 46-year-old from Havana whose husband made it to Florida on a
raft three years ago. "The uncertainty is the worst, not knowing what
will happen while we sit here and do nothing."
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which is handling the
applications, declined to comment on the process. But government
officials who asked for anonymity said it could take a long time if
applicants lacked key documentation such as passports and medical licenses.
Colombia has welcomed the Cuban defectors with less than open arms. Most
have been denied visas or work permits while the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security processes the applications. Colombia, though a close
U.S. ally in the region, has no desire to encourage the deserters,
analysts say. Bogota is also reluctant to offend Cuba or Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, for whom the presence of Cuban doctors is an
important policy and public relations initiative of his "21st century
socialism."
Sleeping at a church
Hernandez, a 43-year-old from the Cuban city of Santa Clara, has been
sleeping in a supply room of a local Pentecostal church. He was told in
mid-February that his request for a Colombian residence visa had been
denied and that he had 30 days to leave the country.
"I am in a limbo from which I don't see an exit," Hernandez said, adding
that he is pinning his hopes on getting the U.S. visa before the 30 days
are up. He says he has no idea where he will go otherwise.
Medicine is a foreign policy tool of Castro's: He is training about
12,000 students from 83 countries at the Latin American Medical School
in Havana. Operation Miracle, a program staffed by Cubans and financed
by Chavez, has flown thousands of poor Latin Americans to Havana for
free eye surgery.
The programs are also a source of revenue for a country that has
struggled since the collapse of its main benefactor, the Soviet Union.
In Venezuela, the healthcare professionals' labors are exchanged for
$1.5 billion in annual oil shipments that Chavez sends to Cuba.
In places such as the slums of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, the
Cubans often are the first doctors the poor have ever seen. The working
conditions are difficult. In the El Museo slum of Maracaibo, where
Hernandez worked, there were rampant dysentery, malnutrition and kidney
problems — caused, he thought, by open sewage and appalling hygiene.
Hours were long and the Cubans often suffered resentment from host
country physicians or political opponents of Chavez.
The Venezuelan president, who was sworn in for a third term in January,
is fiercely critical of the United States and has made no secret of his
ambition to succeed Castro as Latin America's beacon of socialism. With
tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue at his disposal, he has
teamed up with Castro to bankroll medical assistance at home and in
several countries to gain prestige and score diplomatic points.
Escalating defections from the Venezuela program and others come as no
surprise. Last year, 30 doctors deserted the program in Bolivia even
before the new U.S. hint of asylum, probably to pursue private practice
in the region. Their departure from the mission after less than six
months was an embarrassment for Havana and the allied government of
leftist President Evo Morales. In 2004, 10 physicians working in South
Africa refused to go back home.
But the desertion rate among the estimated 26,000 Cubans in Venezuela
may be the highest of any mission. In the Maracaibo area alone,
Hernandez said, at least 100 of the 500 doctors sent since the mission
began in 2003 have fled.
Not always welcome
The Cuban doctors are not always viewed as an unmitigated benefit in the
host country.
The nascent media in East Timor have criticized the government for
allowing some of the 300 Cuban medical missionaries serving there to
promote communism. A Paraguayan Catholic bishop complained to officials
in Asuncion last year that some Cuban doctors were imposing "ideological
conditions" for provision of free treatment to rural poor.
In Bolivia, 14,000 members of the nation's medical association waged a
one-day strike last May in protest of the presence of 600 Cuban doctors,
who the Bolivians contended were diverting funds from state hospitals to
pay for their upkeep. In Venezuela, doctors complain that Cubans
practice illegal medicine because their degrees are not recognized in
the country.
Two years ago, the Honduran government asked Cuba to bring its 200
medics home, thanking Havana for the help but saying enough Honduran
specialists had been educated in recent years to cover the country's
needs with its own nationals.
Tight-lipped
Homeland Security officials in Washington, where immigration
applications are processed, won't release figures on how many petitions
it has received from Cuban medical personnel, nor the number it has granted.
Julio Cesar Alfonso, a Cuban refugee and doctor who founded Miami-based
Solidarity Without Borders to offer financial and legal help to Cubans
trying to emigrate, estimates that about 170 applications for political
asylum have been approved among the 200 or so people his group has helped.
The program has proved a complicated one to administer, which is why it
may be taking the Department of Homeland Security longer than expected
to decide on asylum.
Applications from Cuban medical professionals "require us to look
closely to determine whether or not the person is fully eligible for the
benefit," said department spokesman Chris Bentley. "The American public
expects us to do that thoroughly and take as much time as needed to
reach a sound decision."
In addition to the lack of documentation from most of the Cubans who
fled Venezuela, there is also the suspicion that some of the refugees
may be spies sent by Castro to see who is applying.
Such policy repercussions are far from the minds of Fernandez and
Garcia, who fear they will be deported to Cuba if the U.S. turns them
down. That could mean jail or social castigation.
"For the moment," Garcia said, "we have no legal rights at all."
chris.kraul@latimes.com
carol.williams@latimes.com
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/la-fg-medicos8mar08,0,2274457.story?coll=sfla-news-cuba
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