Working in Venezuela, a country where they often had to wait in line for hours to buy food, even small gestures were welcome. So Félix Pérez, his daughter and two colleagues — all Cuban health workers sent there as part of the island’s foreign-aid program — jumped at the chance when they were invited to a neighbor’s house for lunch.
Later that day, however, their supervisors accused them
of breaking bread with a member of Venezuela’s opposition.
“They took away our cellphones and our passports — they
essentially took everything so we wouldn’t be able to communicate,” recalls
Pérez, a 50-year-old rehabilitation specialist. “We knew they were going to end
our mission and send us back to Cuba, so we decided to flee to Colombia.”
In this thriving capital, they were expecting quick and
safe passage to the United States under the 2006 Cuban Medical Professional
Parole Program, tailor-made for the island’s health workers. But six months
later, Pérez and his daughter are still waiting for a response from the U.S.
Embassy. Their money has run out and they spend their days playing cards in a
cramped home with other Cubans caught in limbo.
Exiles here say they’ve registered some 250 Cuban health
workers in Bogotá waiting to go to the United States. Most came here expecting
their cases to be resolved within 30 to 90 days, but some have waited as long
as seven months without a response, or only to be turned down.
Colombia’s foreign ministry and the U.S. Embassy did not
immediately respond to interview requests about the delays due to a national
holiday.
The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald visited five group
homes where dozens of Cuban health workers were crammed into small living
quarters, often sharing mattresses and living day-to-day on borrowed money.
Doctors Abroad
The men and women are the face of Cuba’s international
aid. The island began sending medical brigades abroad in 1963 — the first
cohort went to Algeria. Since then, almost 132,000 doctors have worked
as internacionalistas, according to a 2014 article in the
state-run Granma newspaper. Currently, more than 50,000 Cubans are working
abroad.
Governments pay the communist island for the doctors,
making them an important source of revenue. And perhaps nowhere is the program
more vital than in Venezuela, which in 2003 established the “Barrio Adentro”
program — free healthcare centers staffed by Cubans.
In exchange, Venezuela sends crude oil and cash back to
Cuba. During 2003-13 the state-run PDVSA oil company pumped $22.4 billion
dollars into the program. Venezuela Health Minister Francisco Armada told
state-run VTV television there are more than 10,000 Cuban health professionals
in Venezuela, and that since 2003 they had provided 617 million free
consultations and saved more than a million lives.
But many of those health workers complain that once they
arrived in Venezuela they were treated like indentured servants.
Discel Rodriguez, a 42-year-old nurse, said he was forced
to live with five other doctors in confined quarters. They had a 6 p.m. curfew
and were discouraged from making friends in the community.
“At least in Cuba you could live in a house with the
people that you cared about,” he said. “But Venezuela was punishment — it was a
prison.”
As food shortages became a problem, doctors cycling into
the program brought their own beans, garlic and personal-care items from the
impoverished island, he said.
Crime was also rampant. One of his supervisors was robbed
at gunpoint by two youths on a bicycle.
“It made me so angry because I would see little old
ladies getting mugged,” he said. “Venezuela is so sad.”
Rodriguez fled to Colombia early this year with $600
dollars in his pocket, expecting he could survive for a month or two as he
applied for a U.S. visa. Five months later, he’s still waiting for news.
“I’ve had to sell my children’s computer [in Cuba], I’ve
had to sell their television,” he said, as he has struggled to pay his $150
monthly rent. “If we could work or do something while we waited life would be a
little better. But right now things are very tough.”
Answers wanted
Asked about the delays, the U.S. State Department
referred questions to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. That agency
said it could not immediately provide answers to a series of questions.
Florida Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said
she and her legislative colleagues would be sending a joint letter demanding
answers.
“The Cuban Medical Professionals Program (CMPP) was
designed to help those who desert a Cuban medical mission find refuge in the
United States after being forced to serve the Castro regime abroad,” she said
in a statement to the Miami Herald. “If these applicants are eligible under
CMPP, we would like to know why there has been a delay in processing these
visas and what, if any, reason exists for that delay.”
Among the doctors in Colombia, however, speculation about
the delays is one more way to kill time. Some think the recent U.S.-Cuban
rapprochement might be part of the problem. They suspect Cuba is demanding an
end to the program, which the island blames for brain-drain. There are also
rumors that some Cubans tried to enter the program fraudulently, causing delays
for everyone.
In an email, the State Department said it doesn’t recruit
Cuban doctors, rather, “applicants avail themselves of the program voluntarily.”
Dangerous journey
Even so, many said they made the perilous journey
overland from Venezuela only because of the promise of the program. Almost
everyone interviewed had stories of being extorted by the police or robbed
along the way.
A 27-year-old dentist, who did not want to be named, said
Colombian guards stripped him naked and robbed him of 70,000 pesos, or about
$38 — all the money he had.
“People are taking advantage of us every step of the
way,” he said.
Pérez said that Cubans streaming across the border are so
commonplace that people are waiting for them. “We’re being hunted,” he said.
While some of the health workers said they had planned to
abandon their posts, others said they felt they had no choice.
Annie Rodriguez, a 29-year-old rehabilitation specialist,
was sent to the Venezuelan town of Ospino, about 240 miles southwest of the
capital. There, she shared a room with three other doctors. They put up a
cardboard wall for privacy from their male roommates.
“The house had a dirt floor, there wasn’t a kitchen or a
bathroom,” she said. “When it flooded we’d have to put our luggage on the bed.”
In April 2014, she discovered she was pregnant — a
violation of her contract. It meant she would be sent back to the island and
stripped of the salary that had been deposited for her there.
She borrowed money from her mother and finally made it to
the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá seven months pregnant. On Dec. 9, however, her
asylum request was rejected. She said the shock of the news sent her into
labor.
“Ever since then I’ve stayed here in Colombia because I
don’t have any options,” she said, as she held her 8-month-old daughter,
Wilbelys Antonella. “I can’t go back to Venezuela or Cuba.”
She’s been relying on friends and family to help pay her
monthly $180 rent.
Pérez, who had done tours of Venezuela in 2004 and 2011,
said he was also “forced to abandon” his post.
Internacionalistas are given modest stipends but the
bulk of their salary is held in Cuba. When they’re sent home early — as he was
being threatened with — they’re denied even those modest savings. Without that
money, there was nothing to go home to, he said.
In Bogotá, Pérez shares a room with six other people and
doesn’t know how long he and his daughter will have to wait for an answer.
“We’re facing true hardship here,” Pérez said, “all
because we went to eat lunch.”
**El Nuevo Herald staff writer Enrique Flor contributed to
this article.