The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), once again thanked Cuba for its support in the fight against COVID-19, by sending specialized doctors and nurses who helped combat the disease at a very complex time.
During his usual morning press conference, the president explained that if solidarity had not been received at that time, not only from the Caribbean nation, but also from several countries that even helped to obtain medicines, such as Argentina, China and the United States; the Mexican health system would have collapsed.
AMLO said that this support and the containment measures adopted made it possible not to reach the forecast of more than five thousand hospitalized patients, when only three thousand therapeutic beds were available; nor were there enough doctors.
Under these circumstances, he added, help arrived from Cuba, and he specified that this solidarity has nothing to do with political ideology, but with love for the people.
The head of state insisted that those who caused the damage to the Mexican public health system were corrupt and conservative neoliberal governments, who did nothing to train the necessary professionals and, on the contrary, rejected the poor who wanted to study medicine and specialize.
“This selfishness and the focus on the privatization of education created the absence of specialists in this critical situation”, remarked López Obrador, who announced the government’s plan to give 20 thousand scholarships for medical studies abroad.
He commented that instead of assessing the reality that Mexico was experiencing, the arrival of the Cuban doctors unleashed a torrent of “corrupt conservatism”. He pointed out that everything was discredited, quackery and there was a lack of seriousness, motivated by a dense, reactionary and conservative conception of public need.
AMLO questioned the motivation for the criticism of Cuba’s aid. “It is all pure propaganda, very irresponsible”, he said, and he pointed out that those who allude to the fact that Mexico is being taken down the path of communism do not even know what that is.
The Mexican president reiterated his gratitude to the government and people of Cuba, and said the two countries have very good relations.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation, North America bureau