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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Venezuelans cheer and protest presence of
doctors from Cuba
By Frances Robles. Frobles@Herald.Com
CARACAS - When poor Venezuelans like Jenny Preciado
fall ill, they must leave their distant slums
and arrive at public clinics by 6 a.m., lest they
miss being one of 20 patients assigned a number
for a chance to see a doctor that day.
''Sometimes it is so packed, you just don't get
a number,'' Preciado said, standing outside her
barrio's new makeshift clinic, manned by a Cuban
doctor. "This town is never letting this
new doctor go.''
While the poorest of Venezuela's poor beam over
the arrival of up to 1,000 Cuban doctors who have
been assigned to low-income neighborhoods and
even make house calls, their influx has enraged
others who see them as another example of leftist
President Hugo Chávez's quest to ''Cubanize''
this nation.
Doctors, literacy trainers, sports coaches and
agronomists have openly poured into Venezuela
in past months. Allegations of Cuban advisors
in the armed forces, police and Chávez's
presidential offices bubble up occasionally but
have never been proven. Internet gossips talk
of Cuban ships and planes bringing arms to pro-Chávez
militias but offer no evidence.
Venezuela's increasing reliance on Cuban experts
illustrates the ever-warming relations between
President Fidel Castro and Chávez, a self-proclaimed
''revolutionary'' who has said that Cubans ''swim
in a sea of happiness.'' It has even become a
source of concern in Washington.
A recent editorial in the El Nacional newspaper
declared that "Venezuela is being colonized
by Cuba. For everything, the government looks
to Cuba, consults with Cuba and tries to read
the signs coming from Cuba. We cannot do anything
without approval from Havana.''
RICH VS. POOR
But the Cubans' presence here also underscores
the deep-seated divisions between Venezuela's
rich and poor. While Chávez's mostly middle-
and upper-class opponents decry the Cubans' services
as political brainwashing, few Venezuelans seem
willing to take their places.
''The doctors here in Venezuela are involved
in politics, not taking care of patients,'' Preciado
said. "We want our children taken care of,
and that's it.''
Preciado lives in Cipres, one of the many slums
in the hills surrounding Caracas. Plagued by poverty
and crime, the barrios are considered a no man's
land where no Venezuelan doctor dares journey.
''Pregnant women in these neighborhoods have
never been to the doctor for prenatal care, and
give birth at home on the floor,'' said Rafael
Vargas, a former Chávez chief of staff
who now runs the Cuban doctor program. "There
are 10-, 14-year-old kids who have never been
to the dentist.''
In Cipres, Dr. Félix Ramón Viltres
Gutiérrez works in a clinic in the back
of a grocery store, where a 101 Dalmatians cartoon
bed sheet separates the waiting from the potato
chips.
His one-room office has a shelf with neat piles
of medicines and a desk. In 2 ½ months,
he has seen 1,000 patients, who suffered mostly
from asthma, diarrhea, parasites and hypertension.
''We think what we're doing is right: helping
people,'' said Viltres, who has also worked in
Nicaragua and Haiti. As for the clamor: "That's
a political problem.''
Cuba has sent thousands of doctors and teachers
to work in poor countries all over the world in
the past decade as a sign of ''internationalist
solidarity'' with underdeveloped nations -- and
sometimes as a way of earning income for the Havana
government.
The Venezuelan government initially said that
in exchange for the doctors' services, Cuba received
preferential oil prices, but Vargas said there
is no such swap. The doctors, he said, are paid
about $250 a month by Venezuela.
Viltres came under fire this month when the fiercely
anti-Chávez media reported that a child
he had seen later died of meningitis. It turned
out that while Viltres was the first to see the
7-year-old, several Venezuelan doctors had seen
him as well.
The Venezuelan doctors association has filed
a complaint in court seeking to bar the Cubans
from practicing. They have been quick to cite
alleged cases of malpractice, arguing that the
Cubans are under-qualified and unlicensed.
''We're not xenophobes,'' said Douglas León,
president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.
"We have information that these people, almost
100 percent of them, are not doctors. These are
people masquerading as doctors, wearing white
robes with stethoscopes around their necks.''
The Venezuelan Medical Federation asserts there
are 9,000 unemployed or under-employed physicians
in this country, so there was no need to hire
the Cubans. The government says it placed four
ads seeking doctors, and there were few takers.
The Cubans, Chávez claims, have saved 300
lives.
'THANK YOU, FIDEL'
''The program has been doing an extraordinary
job,'' he said in a recent speech. "Thank
you, Fidel.''
The absence of Venezuelan doctors in crime-plagued
barrios underscores the very factors that helped
put Chávez in power. Although Venezuela
is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, at
least 70 percent of its populace lives in poverty,
and half endures extreme poverty.
Chávez, a former paratrooper, swept into
office five years ago promising to change all
that. He calls the rich ''the squalid ones,''
and says they do nothing to help the poor.
His critics note that the number of poor rose
under his government, and surveys show he has
a 30 percent approval rating.
When Chávez was briefly ousted in a military
coup last year, it was the desperately poor who
came down from the hills to demand his return.
And as unemployment rises along with inflation,
Chávez now needs their support as his critics
push for a recall referendum.
''They are as much about indoctrinating as they
are about providing services,'' Miguel Diaz, an
analyst at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, said of the program.
"I compare it to missionaries. They teach
and provide healthcare, but at the expense of
suffering through their preaching.''
''I think Chávez is using the Cuban doctors
for political purposes,'' Diaz said. "On
the other hand, the fact that Venezuelans themselves
have never provided support to the marginal communities
that the Cubans are now serving speaks a lot to
what divides Venezuela.''
The State Department has kept an eye on the issue
since the literacy trainers began arriving earlier
this summer.
''We support people who want to learn to read
and write,'' a State Department official said.
"But we're concerned over the increasingly
close ties between the two countries. We expect
the Cuban trainers will be limited to their literacy
camp.''
Vargas scoffs at the outcry. The oligarchs, he
said, are simply against Chávez's revolution
on behalf of the poor.
Meet the narcos and 'capos' of the Cuban
drug trade
Manuel Vazquez Portal. Posted
on Thu, Aug. 14, 2003
BONIATO PRISON, Cuba -- On March 19, I was unexpectedly
dumped into Villa Marista prison. Cell 47 was
my lodging. There, I lost my name. I became known
as 239682. There, I saw the first alleged capo
(lord) of the Cuban drug trade.
The cell was minute. Four of us lived there.
We were as packed together as people traveling
in a camel [Cuban bus]. When we turned around
on the sleeping mat, we had to be very careful
not to poke each other's eyes out with our noses.
During those stressful days, I was accompanied
by three picturesque characters: Mumúa,
Cachirulo and Hectico the Butcher. They looked
nothing like drug traffickers:
o Mumúa was a little man barely 5 feet
tall who liked horses. Later I found out, from
him, that his name was Osvaldo.
o Cachirulo was a black man, always smiling and
nervous, with half of his skull made out of platinum.
He had headaches every day and sported more scars
than the glove of a cane cutter. All his teen
years and part of his youth had been spent in
prison.
o Hectico the Butcher -- though what he sold
in his butcher shop was hamburger made of soybean,
sausage made of the same and some sort of meat
paste -- was the youngest of the three.
They all assured me that they had nothing to
do with the drug trade. Of course, they would
say that. We were in Villa Marista, where even
the mosquitoes carry hidden microphones. But there
was something else. No evidence was ever found
to incriminate any of them. The charges were based
on allegations that What's-His-Name fingered Whoozis',
and You-Know-Who named So-and-So.
When I left on April 24 for Boniato Prison, saddled
with an 18-year sentence, Mumúa, Cachirulo
and Hectico the Butcher remained at Villa Marista.
I don't know what became of them.
At Boniato Prison, I was placed permanently in
''Boniatico,'' the complex's highest-security
unit, a harsh place even for the officers and
the guards. My cell here is No. 31. It's smaller
than the one in Villa Marista, but at least I'm
alone.
''Alone'' means living with the stench of the
toilet, the water that drips from the ceiling,
and the sun, rain and insects that enter through
my window. ''Alone'' is the 23 hours a day I spend
without a companion -- well, not quite, because
I've made friends with some mice, cockroaches,
spiders, centipedes, scorpions, lizards, flies,
mosquitoes and ants who come to visit.
In the first few days, I was taken to the courtyard
(one hour a day, less than that on weekends) with
Normando Hernández [independent journalist
sentenced to 25 years] and Próspero Gaínza
[civic activist sentenced to 25 years]. Then came
the order that we should be taken separately.
That's when I again came across alleged capos
of the Cuban drug trade, this time from the island's
eastern sector. I had the same impression as before:
If these people are drug traffickers, I'm Scrooge
McDuck.
Talking with some of them, I heard the same stories:
isolation cells, brutal interrogations, all kinds
of pressures -- Did Piridingo deal with Muchilanga?
Did Muchilanga deal with Burundungo? However,
proof (what elsewhere is considered real evidence)
there was not a shred. Just the same, the sentences
rained down as if all of South America's cocaine
had come to this Caribbean island and our ''narcos
and capos'' had gained universal control of the
drug trade. The convict with the shortest sentence
was hit with 15 to 20 years.
Among those I talked to were José Eduardo
Girón Cabrera, Juan Alsaba Suárez,
William Orlando Morales Durán, Santiago
Mestre Mustelier. All had similar stories: prosecutors
determined to convict, defense lawyers who can't
really perform their task, State Security officials
creating ''proof,'' strange witnesses, etc.
Here they are, in isolation cells, eating their
porridge rich in flour -- a swill that sends people's
blood pressure skyrocketing, upsets stomachs this
side of an ulcer and puts everyone on edge.
These are our capos. None was found to possess
a real shipment of drugs, large amounts of money
or accounts in national or foreign banks. No processing
labs were found -- nor firearms, yachts, planes,
luxurious mansions, false passports or links to
organized crime in other parts of the world. Only
some 1950s jalopies used for transportation.
So, one asks: What kind of narcos and capos are
these who aren't even mentioned in the Cuban papers?
Manuel Vázquez Portal, an independent
journalist, is one of 75 prisoners of conscience
sentenced by the Cuban regime to lengthy terms
in April.
www.CubaNet.org
¡Vaya
"capos"! / Manuel Vázquez Portal
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