By Mark Fineman, Times Staff Writer.
Los Angeles Times. Tuesday, May 1, 2001
HAVANA--With 10 days' notice, they walked away from their lives. They
were eight Americans--all twentysomething, all low-income minorities and all now
committed to spending the next six years in Communist-led Cuba.
Their mission: to become doctors for America's urban and rural poor in
an exchange program that is both pioneering and politically charged.
Meet some of the freshman class of Americans at Fidel Castro's Latin
American School of Medical Sciences on the outskirts of this capital:
Karima Mosi, 22, was only a year away from getting her bachelor's
degree in world literature at UC San Diego. Last month, she traded the comforts
of Southern California for a six-to-a-room dormitory without hot water, air
conditioning or toilet seats.
Mirtha Arzu, the 22-year-old daughter of Honduran immigrants, would
have graduated this month from Long Island University. When Arzu, an intern at a
New York foreign-investment firm, told friends and relatives where she was
going, she recalled, "they said, 'Cuba? Well, have a nice life.' "
And Wing Wu, 23, whose parents fled Communist China for Minneapolis
decades ago, conceded that they "were a little freaked" when she left
home for Havana.
Now they're all freshmen again, the first U.S. citizens to join more
than 4,000 premed students from throughout the Caribbean and Latin America
enrolled in the 2-year-old program.
The American students and their Latin colleagues get a six-year medical
education sponsored entirely by Castro's government. In exchange, they promise
that, upon graduation, they will practice six more years in underserved towns
and neighborhoods back home.
As with all things involving U.S.-Cuban relations, however, the
Americans' presence here has generated heated debate.
Anti-Castro groups in the U.S. charge that the program is sheer
propaganda--Castro's attempt to demonstrate the capitalist gap between America's
wealthy and what he calls "the Third World in the United States."
Cuban American doctors who have exiled themselves in the United States
assert that the students' education will be below U.S. standards and that the
graduates will become "indentured serfs to Cuba's communism."
But the State Department, at odds with Castro's government for four
decades, has signed off on the program, ruling it a "cultural exchange"
that doesn't violate the United States' punishing economic embargo of the
country.
And the students themselves--all politically aware, keenly committed
and infused with an idealistic zeal--say they're proud if their presence is
making a strong statement back home.
"The main reason I came here is to study medicine," said
Mosi, a San Diego native who has been active in social movements for years and
was selected through a local group called Friends of Cuba. "But I'm aware
that it has a political component as well.
"I hope my presence here will show my family and friends that
maybe Cuba isn't such a bad place after all, and I hope it will also show the
effect of the U.S. embargo here."
Said Sophia Ali, 21, the daughter of Guyanese immigrants in New York: "I
did want to be a doctor. . . . But I came here because I have worked with
political [causes] in the U.S. I think the embargo should be lifted, and I know
my coming here is a statement that it should be lifted."
Mosi said she was so moved by a speech Castro gave at New York's
Riverside Church in September, in which he detailed his offer to accept as many
as 500 U.S. medical students, that she decided to seek one of the scholarships.
During a recent interview in Havana, she marveled over the fact that in
the speech, "he said doctors are to work with people--not for profit, but
for the people."
The Cuban president's address, heard over loudspeakers by a crowd that
overflowed into the streets around the church, was not merely a long defense of
four decades of Communist rule that have produced 67,500 Cuban doctors from a
base of just 3,000 in 1959.
It also was a dissertation on how capitalism has shortchanged the
health and welfare of America's poor, as well as an impassioned call to arms for
African Americans, Latinos and Asians to fix the system.
Addressing critics of his medical school invitation, Castro said, "They
will argue, as is only logical, about the training.
"I am absolutely certain that our doctors could be subjected to a
rigorous examination by any fair tribunal, and they will successfully pass any
tests needed to carry out this mission honorably."
The school's rector, Juan Carizzo Estevez, who has recruited thousands
of impoverished aspiring doctors from the region since Castro inaugurated the
program in March 1999, said the Americans will need to take a series of board
exams in the U.S. before they can practice in their hometowns.
The program provides two years of basic science in Havana and four
years of clinical and university instruction in the Cuban provinces. For the
American students, the school also will bring in U.S. experts to prepare them
for the board exams, Carizzo said.
Critics have been even harsher in judging the selection process for the
Americans, which they assert was more political than professional.
It was managed by New York's Interreligious Foundation for Community
Organization, or IFCO, which is headed by the Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., a
firebrand pastor known for his humanitarian efforts in Central America and Cuba.
A fierce opponent of the U.S. embargo, Walker staged a 94-day "fast for
life" in 1996 after U.S. authorities arrested him and seized computers he
was bringing to Cuba without a required Treasury Department license.
In addition, several of the students say they were processed initially
through Congressional Black Caucus members, who frequently visit Cuba and
condemn the impact of the U.S. sanctions against Castro. It was during one such
visit, last June, that Castro first offered the U.S. scholarships.
Walker responded to his critics, saying: "When a country that's
blockaded by another country turns around and offers to give free medical
training to kids from the country that's blockading it, it's a political
statement.
"It's a moral statement. It's a diplomatic gesture. It's a
theological statement. It's a public relations gimmick. Call it what you will.
But the bottom line: It's training kids from this country who wanted to be
doctors and couldn't under our system."
Walker said the eight Americans were chosen from 50 who applied for the
program.
But as they settle into an unfamiliar culture and begin initial courses
that include intensive Spanish-language classes, the politics of the program
clearly are secondary to Mosi and most of her U.S. colleagues.
"I'm here to become a doctor and then to go back to the United
States and practice free health care," said Khalil Marshall, 20, a Bronx
native who was honorably discharged from a two-year stint in the Navy nine
months ago and says he had no means of going back to school in the U.S.
"I don't care about making money," he said. "I've never
had it, so I won't miss it."
Nadege Loiseau, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, is the eldest of
the group at 25. "At my age," she said, "scholarships aren't
exactly flying my way."
Loiseau has made probably the greatest sacrifice of the group: She left
her 2-year-old son with her parents in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. For the lifelong
South Floridian, the first few weeks in Havana have been stunning.
"In South Florida, we do get the brunt of the negative view of
Cuba. The anti-Cuba propaganda is constantly in your face," she said,
citing the Cuban American lobby in Miami, which Castro calls a "mafia."
"I guess the most amazing thing for me has been how warm everyone
here is to us and how the real Cuba is nothing like we see on television and in
the newspapers in Florida."
San Diegan Mosi said she's proud of her decision. "It's an
historic thing we're doing, and hopefully other students will follow our lead."
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times | 