Bolivia severs relations with Cuba over dispute about controversial medical program
Bolivia’s interim government announced Friday that it suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba, the latest escalation over a dispute about a controversial medical program administered by the government in Havana.
The Bolivian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the break was due to “inadmissible comments” by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla and “the constant hostility” by the Cuban government against the “democratic process” in Bolivia.
The Bolivian Foreign Ministry also blamed Havana for affecting the bilateral relationship “systematically.”
After former President Evo Morales left the country, amid a political crisis and violent protests, Bolivia’s new interim government rapidly clashed with Havana over the presence of Cuban doctors.
One of Bolivian interim President Jeanine Áñez’s first decisions after taking office was to cancel the medical services program administered by the Cuban government thanks to an arrangement with Morales. She sent about 700 Cuban officials packing.
This week Áñez revealed that the Bolivian government had spent close to $147 million to fund the program but that 80 percent of that money went to the government of Havana, not the doctors. She also said that most Cubans in the official program were not doctors.
In response to her comments Wednesday, Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, posted on Twitter that those statements were “vulgar lies of the self-proclaimed coup plotter in Bolivia” and another example of “her servitude to the United States.”
On Friday, the Cuban government did not immediately comment on Bolivia’s decision to suspend ties.
The export of medical services is one of the most lucrative sources of revenue for the Cuban government, raising about $6 billion in 2018.
Other Latin American countries, like Brazil and Ecuador, also have shuttered the Cuban medical program, which has come under intense scrutiny and criticism after several Cuban doctors who had served in the program in different countries came forward to denounce irregularities in contracts, low salaries, and other practices described as servitude or human trafficking.
Cuban doctor Ramona Matos, who worked on the official mission in Bolivia in 2008, said at a press conference last year that mission officials made her invent false patients and destroy medications to justify the budget they received from the Bolivian government, a practice that other doctors said was also common in Cuban medical missions in Brazil and Venezuela.
Several Cuban doctors also sued the Pan American Health Organization for serving as an intermediary in a program in which the island’s government keeps most of the money allocated to doctors’ salaries and withholds their passports, the lawsuit claims.
In November of last year, two United Nations special rapporteurs sent a letter to the Cuban government to inquire about accusations of trafficking in persons regarding the Cuban medical missions but did not obtain a response from Cuban authorities.
In particular, the United States has carried out an intense public and diplomatic campaign so that governments in more than 50 countries that still hire Cuban doctors through the program stop doing so.
Bolivia’s decision also illustrates the growing isolation of Cuba in the region, where it has lost left-wing allies and has received criticism for its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
On Thursday, Cuba’s appointed president Miguel Díaz-Canel dismissed criticism of the medical missions.
“They accuse us of trafficking in persons in such a sensitive issue for Cubans as the medical missions, and all our willingness to bring solidarity to the neediest and to share what we have,” Díaz-Canel told reporters.
Follow Nora Gámez Torres: @ngameztorres
This story was originally published January 24, 2020 at 1:23 PM.