By David Gonzalez. June 12, 2001.
The New York Times
HAVANA — The brave, the proud, the few. The Marines? Not for Mirtha
Arzu, though the lure of scholarship money almost led her to enlist a year ago
in the Bronx. Instead, she joined an even more select group of adventurers: the
first Americans to study medicine in Cuba courtesy of President Fidel Castro.
Ms. Arzu and another student from the Bronx are among eight young people
from the United States who received scholarships to the Latin American School of
Medical Sciences. They are undergoing a six-year course of study alongside
aspiring doctors from 24 Latin American, Caribbean and African nations. Chosen
from more than 100 applicants from disadvantaged families, they intend to return
to the United States and practice medicine in the same poor communities where
they grew up.
The scholarships, which will be extended to another group that is scheduled
to arrive in September, are the latest twist in Cuba's longtime emphasis on not
only healing hearts and minds, but also winning them over. Mr. Castro has long
sent medical workers overseas to help struggling nations, and Cuba's own medical
system — though beleaguered by shortages — has been praised by some
experts as a model for community and preventive medicine, especially in the
third world.
Showing up the United States has also been one of Mr. Castro's passions,
which is most likely another reason he suggested the scholarship program last
year to members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were visiting Havana.
American students are participating with the permission of the United States
government, which recognizes the program as a cultural and educational exchange.
Conservative critics, however, say the students are being used as mere
propaganda tools.
Ms. Arzu disagrees. "I'd rather be used for something positive than
something negative," she said. "At least I'm going to go back and show
my community what I was used for."
The application and screening process for the program was carried out by
members of Pastors for Peace, a group based in the United States that has
opposed the trade embargo against Cuba and has itself sponsored caravans to take
medicine to the island. Applicants had to be high school graduates, 18 to 25
years old, from disadvantaged backgrounds. While the ability to speak Spanish
helped, it was not required.
Upon joining about 5,000 students already at the school, the students began
intensive studies in basic science. Five of them were also placed in Spanish
classes; Ms. Arzu, 22, whose parents are Honduran, was able to skip that.
One recent day, she sat in a physics class where the professor was lecturing
on time, change and velocity, topics she knew well, not from any lab, but from
her own upbringing. She was raised in the South Bronx by her mother, an
immigrant who worked as a home attendant before saving up to finish her own
studies and become a social worker. Ms. Arzu had lived on her own since she was
16, and over the years she had juggled her studies at Long Island University, a
passion for singing and acting, and various jobs: at an investment bank, at a
clinic and in a housing project, where she was a security guard.
Her early experiences with medicine were not exactly auspicious.
"I remember being in Lincoln Hospital with my mother for over six hours
and crying because she was in pain," she said. "She was in the
emergency room and nobody saw her. What I noticed is that doctors have forgotten
about the people. Yes, there is good money; it can help you survive. But if you
are going to take care of others, you have to make sure they are really O.K."
She was living near the Kingsbridge Armory last year with her roommate, and
the two had planned to join the Marines together. But her uncle had told her
about the Cuban scholarships, and the thought of studying medicine seemed like a
dream come true. Literally.
"I had a dream I was in a white house in Honduras with a child, a girl
with AIDS," she said. "A nurse took the girl in her arms and said,
'She's going to die. Mirtha, she's going to die.' I said, 'No, she's not going
to die!' And then I woke up."
Eric Khalil Marshall, the other Bronx student at the medical school, had
already had another awakening of sorts by the time he decided to apply. In his
late teens, with his fiancée at the time about to have their child, he
joined the Navy. But in two years he grew disillusioned with what he saw as
racism and unequal treatment. While other sailors got the jobs the recruiter had
promised, he said he was kept waiting for a chance to work as an electronics
technician.
"There were people that I had higher rank than, and more time, who were
doing their jobs, while I was washing dishes and buffing floors," said Mr.
Marshall, who grew up in the central Bronx.
He took an administrative discharge two years into his three-year hitch,
returned to New York and tried to be a professional in-line skater. He
ultimately became involved with various political and social action groups,
including the Black Panther Collective. His political awakening, a teacher at
his old high school who encouraged him to apply for the program and an aunt who
is a physician in Harlem all influenced his decision.
"I want to be a natural doctor, a holistic doctor," he said. "There
are a lot of issues going on in my community that do not have to be like that.
People are homeless and I'm from the so-called richest country in the world. Why
don't we have health care for everybody, things that people who have less than
us, like in Cuba, have? I'm proud to be an American, but the people have to have
more say-so."
For the next two and a half years, the students will take basic science and
premedical courses at the school's main campus, which is a seaside complex of
laboratories, dormitories and classrooms in what used to be a naval academy.
After that, they will begin their formal medical education and work in one of
the island's hospitals.
Administrators at the school, who said the students had adjusted well, are
sensitive to criticism that the young people are being indoctrinated.
"This is a medical school with the qualities that we have," said
Dr. Juan Carizo Estevez, the rector. "What it does have is a human goal. We
teach with love and humanity and tell the students we work with every day that
their hearts will grow more and more when they return to their communities to
work. It is a less commercial view of medicine, where they see the patient as a
patient, and not as a number on a budget. If that is politics, then everything
should be as political. It's human."
When it comes to relations with the United States, however, the political is
inevitable. Officials said they hoped that the program would help Americans
better understand Cuba, while highlighting the United States' shortcomings.
"If there is the consequence that it helps for cultural understanding
between the people of Cuba and the United States, we welcome it," said
Dagoberto Rodriguez, the Foreign Ministry's director of North American affairs.
"The objective Cuba has is to help resolve the serious problems of health
in the United States."
The students said they were aware of the criticism that Cuba has endured
over its human rights record, but they also believe that United States policy
over the years has not helped. Nor has the United States acknowledged, they
said, the successes Cuba has had in public health, which have eluded its
Caribbean and Latin American neighbors.
"There are a lot of problems everywhere you go; that's part of living,"
Mr. Marshall said. "There are more problems in the United States than here.
We have everything we need there, but we do not share it with those who are
needy. Yeah, there are problems everywhere you go. Critics can look at that. But
what Cuba is doing is the beginning of social change."
Mr. Marshall and Ms. Arzu both say they want to practice in the Bronx, a
place they left behind but cannot forget. They are reminded of it each time they
get on one of the school buses, which are painted blue and white, like the old
General Motors workhorses that cruised the Grand Concourse years ago. They
remember it in Baracoa, a neighborhood where they buy ice cream and sodas at a
store that reminds them of the many bodegas back home.
Yet as homesick as they might be, they display a certain ease among their
classmates.
"Did we ever meet so many different people?" Ms. Arzu said. "Yes,
in New York. That is why I feel at home. Khalil and myself, we got to know
people from all walks of life because of the life we had in New York. We lived
with them in New York."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | 