By Ana Hurtado on July 1, 2024 from Havana
Cuban doctors
One of my favorite actors, Joaquin Phoenix, in the Hollywood blockbuster The Joker, had the memorable line:“Is it just me or is the world getting crazier and crazier? A lot of tension, people are angry. Times are tough.”
From time to time the American film industry surprises us with movies that carry within them a strong criticism of the very system that gives it life and distribution. To that savage capitalism that has less and less room for everyone.
The character of Arthur (the Joker) played by Phoenix continues: “I don’t imagine that my death will bring me more pain than my life has; I just don’t want to feel so bad”.
I was re-watching the film yesterday, having seen it in the cinema when it was released. I know there are convinced anti-capitalist minds within the Western creative industry.
But I wonder why the system sometimes allows them to be given a certain voice and to do some thinking, or do they not, or are they only picked up by those who have a real and honest awareness of the world? Be that as it may, a cultural dictatorship will never appear to be one.
So much so, that they even allow this type of messages to slip into big productions in order to believe that we are what we cannot be in the first world: free.
Without pausing to philosophize too much about these messages in big movies, and starting with the Joker directed by Todd Phillips, I will dwell on a detail that will become more important as this opinion piece progresses: health.
It becomes clear that health is not guaranteed in so-called first world countries. In fact, it is a luxury for a large part of the U.S. population that cannot afford a doctor.
In the film, the issue of mental health is glimpsed at. How getting psychological and psychiatric care is a luxury that very few can afford. And how this lack of treatment gives way to delinquency, broken families and degradation.
It makes no sense to live in a healthy body but with a sick mind. But… when the body is not healthy either, what happens?
It is no secret that the medical system in many Western countries is collapsing. Can anyone tell me what happens in the United States when you have no health insurance and no money to pay for it?
It seems that in Europe, in some countries, health has also been a problem for decades. In Spain for example, (and speaking from my own experience), the health system has always been moderately decent. Although in recent years, right-wing administrations in some autonomous communities are trying to privatize it.
What happened during Covid 19? Corpses of elderly people piled up in nursing homes due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. And not because of economic shortcomings. But because of a lack of strategy and also, it must be said, a lack of humanity.
Italy, a country that has touched my heart since I was very young. I know it well, its people, its cities, its customs, its language. Italy makes you fall in love, and it can also make you feel rejected by phenomena such as xenophobia, classism and people when they go to the polls. Italy is in my heart and I have part of it there. The memory of the partisan resistance, burning hearts ready to pay any price to have a fairer world.
But structurally it is aged, in decadence, lacking in renewal . They say that it is easier to go to space than to do an administrative procedure there (the irony is worth the irony).
At this point in the story, Cuba enters the narrative. An Italian friend of mine sent me a message the other day along with a news item from the Italian newspaper Il Post of June 20, which read as follows: “I thought you might like this article. Let me know what you think. I found it a very interesting case because of the political implications it has in my country and because of how little is said about it in the newspapers”.
And the fact is that people know. They know what it is like to work in an exhausting system; they see its deficiencies and are less and less manipulated by information terrorism. In the case of my friend, a doctor in biology, the message is clear: why does the press hide the good that Cuba does for the world while the world struggles to move forward in the midst of so much injustice?
Cuba, a country that is ironically blockaded in multiple fields, survives with dignity and at the same time does not forget the internationalist maxim left by Martí, Che and Fidel. Sending doctors while others send arms and bombs.
The region of Calabria in southern Italy is in agony and is not able to medically attend to the population within its borders. Hospitals and outpatient clinics have few doctors and nurses. Assistance in emergency services is limited and in recent years many have been closed and “deemphasized”.
Some may cry foul over the material needs of Cuba, its hospitals and doctors. But it should not be forgotten that the blockade is not a charlatanism; how can it be possible for a State to want its social and health services to be in bad shape?
Sometimes it can be worse due to a bad management or lack of strategic vision, but what is irrefutable is that the U.S. blockade has suffocated the Cuban people. And that its government struggles daily so that the consequences are not so great for the population.
But what about the case of Calabria, what is the focus there now? Italy is not a blockaded country nor in an imposed economic war. Italy is a capitalist country. And just as in the United States, you can be left without being treated in a hospital, for whatever reason.
This region has accumulated debts of three million euros in recent times and in twenty years the beds in health centers have decreased by up to 60%. Every year thousands of people move to other Italian latitudes for treatment or for simple routine operations.
And it is not that the regional health service does not solve problems; there is something much more serious: as many judicial investigations have shown, crime (the Mafia) has been organizing more contracts for its own business for decades, making it very difficult to change things.
And this being the panorama, we see the glances of Claudio Furlan’s photo. Looks in which we see the socialist legacy of Fidel. In the shine of those eyes is him.
Cuban doctors who go with a work contract to improve their economic possibilities, and although not to fulfill an internationalist mission in the literal sense of the word, to do internationalism. Because that is what they do.
In Calabria there are already 274 Cuban doctors working in hospitals. Seventy more will arrive at the end of July and 153 more at the beginning of 2025, to alleviate the problems of a service that has been disastrous for years.
Those arriving these weeks, in fact, are part of the second contingent foreseen by the existing contract between the Calabrian region and the company Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos, managed by the Cuban government.
Doctors who have not only dedicated themselves to filling gaps, no. They have supported surgeons in many areas including operations. They have supported surgeons in operations, they have helped to open high-risk departments such as intensive care.
Doctors who are part of a country with a consolidated experience in missions of this type, standing out for their high level of competence. They are the same highly trained personnel who were in great demand in third countries during the Covid 19 pandemic.
As was to be expected, at the beginning of this mission, voices were raised to criticize the cooperation agreement. Those who do not want the truth to be known. They questioned, among other things, that the Cuban doctors were forced, that it was human trafficking and a variety of other ideas that only ignorant minds can harbor. But these doctors who are proven, themselves came out to deny it.
Even Calabria, in order to cure itself of these “disruptors” of the truth and in response to the criticism, inserted in the contract with the doctors is a clause that each one must sign on the free participation in the program knowing all the terms and economic conditions.
The president of the region himself, Roberto Occhiuto, who is also the Regional Health Commissioner, stated that the project has been a success and that both colleagues and patients are very happy with the work of the Cuban doctors, for the empathy in the development of their work and for their spirit of service.
But this is not only happening in this southern region of the Mediterranean country. Lombardy, in the north, has also signed agreements with health personnel abroad, in particular with nurses from Argentina and Paraguay.
Without going any further, according to the most recent data from the Association of Doctors of Foreign Origin in Italy (AMSI), foreign doctors working in the country number 28,000, with 24,000 coming from countries outside the European Union and most of them located in Lazio, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna.
Cuba is so conscientiously sure of its humanistic work, that believes so firmly in the ideology that Fidel left in his people, that it will continue to work because humanity is a little better place every day, inside and outside its territory with its efforts and expertise.
The world may continue to be difficult as the character played by Joaquin Phoenix said, and it may even be that every day this planet becomes a little crazier.
But José Martí rightly said that to do is the best way to say. And that is what this Antillean country does. It says by doing. It has the truth as its shield. It saves lives, spirits and souls within and outside its borders.
And it will continue to do so; it is embedded in their nature. It will not be possible to put limits on it, just as it is not possible to put fences around the sea.
Ana Hurtado, photo: Bill Hackwell
But we revolutionaries do not seek forgiveness. We are focused on winning, and not in the way victory is shown to us according to the hegemonic consensus.
Our socialist victory is much broader and more comprehensive.
Many, I am sure, will never be able to understand it, but they will continue to see this Socialist Revolution standing tall and dignified in the face of whatever has to come. In the face of powerful forces. In the face of everything and everyone.
Let them get used to the nature of this people and of the internationalist revolutionaries who are with them. Always.
We will be like Che is not just a phrase. It is a fact. And they know it. And they fear us.
Ana Hurtado is a Spanish journalist, documentary filmmaker, communicator and activist who lives and works in Cuba. She is a regular contributor to Cubadebate and Cuba En Resumen.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English