Honor Ford-Smith is Associate Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Canada. She worked for the Caribbean women’s movement, primarily through her involvement in collaborative theatre in Jamaica.
There is an open letter circulating, addressed to CARICOM and calling for a regional response to the proposed US visa restriction policy on government officials whose countries engage Cuban medical professionals.
The Cuban medical brigades have served the Caribbean working poor in the Caribbean for decades. They have made the blind see, healed the sick and saved lives.
Next week the new American Secretary of State, a Cuban American, will pay us a visit.
Why his visit at this time, just before our upcoming election, just after the threats about taking away the visas of govt representatives that host Cuban health brigades, and just after the accusations of trafficking?
Coming to insist that we put an end to the Cuban medical personnel in Jamaica is to tell us to let our people die, stay sick or go blind rather than continue to be served by our closest neighbour.
Everyone in the region knows what Cuban medical care has meant for us. And we know how weak our own public health care system is. So we know what losing this bilateral engagement with our closest neighbour will mean.
We all have personal experience of how helpful the Cuban health workers have been. I know I do. When my friend was very ill with diabetes it was the Cuban nurses and doctors that made sure he received the care he could not afford privately and lengthened his life.
We also know a little of what the Americans have delivered to us over the decades. One youth on social media said that the greatest ‘aid’ provided by the US over the last decades is guns of all shapes and sizes. They are the largest supplier of guns to the region. It keeps our murder rate really high.
At the same time while many can manage without trips to US, much of the time, no one in the region wants us to lose the remittances that helps close the gap that trickle-down economics has failed to address. And many Jamaicans have family there that they love and want to see.
So what to do? There is still time for us to stand up for ourselves and the health of our own people in rural and poor communities. Together we will be stronger. This is the time to keep this issue before the public eye. It is the time to tell your representative to stand up for the brigades.
It is also the time to call on CARICOM to respond to this issue as a regional priority. Below is the text of the open letter, which can be accessed at: https://forms.gle/agMnJQZLFxRaPJhu7
On February 25, 2025, the United States Department of State through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, announced the expansion of an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy applying to current or former Cuban government officials, including foreign government officials and their immediate family, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labour export program, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions. These missions have been described as ‘labour export programs’ that enrich the Cuban government and countries involved are described as complicit in the exploitation, forced labour and human trafficking of Cuban workers.
We endorse the responses to the US Department of State announcement by current Caribbean leaders including Keith Rowley, Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago; Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines; and Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados; who have deemed the US visa restriction policy as a threat to the sovereignty of Caribbean states. The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines stated that ending such programmes would jeopardize the lives of 60 nationals who are currently part of a Cuban-run hemodialysis programmes to treat kidney failure. Several Caribbean leaders have repudiated accusations that Caribbean countries are complicit in human trafficking. Dickon Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada, has described the arrangement with the Government of Cuba as a “legitimate partnership”; Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, has defended the Cuban doctors and nurses as “core’ to the country’s delivery of health services; Guyana’s President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, has confirmed that the Government ensures that Cuban workers’ contracts and terms of employment align with international labour laws and standards.
Jamaican Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith is on record as indicating that the presence of Cuban health professionals is important to the Jamaican healthcare system, pointing to 400 doctors, nurses and medical technicians currently working in the country. In a social media post, Bahamian Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell pointed out that his government “follows all international best practices in the recruitment of labour.”
This is not the first time that Caribbean leaders have had to defend the work of Cuban Medical Brigades in the face of US criticism. In June 2020 the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) issued a statement expressing “its deep appreciation to the Republic of Cuba for the medical support provided to six (6) member countries of the OECS to assist with efforts to combat the spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the OECS and wider Caribbean region.” The OECS was responding to a recent Bill introduced by a US Republican Senator which classified this assistance from Cuba as “human trafficking” and sought to “extend punitive measures against countries accepting this assistance.”
Historical and current ties between CARICOM countries and Cuba have been long and cordial. In 1972 diplomatic relations were established between Cuba and Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. In 2002 commercial and economic agreements were signed between Cuba and CARICOM countries and by 2017 preferential access to a range of products between the countries of the Caribbean and Cuba were agreed. Over this period areas of cooperation between CARICOM countries of the Caribbean have remained strong in trade, investments, health and agriculture. CARICOM has also been in the forefront in consistently expressing solidarity with Cuba and calling for an end to the US embargo on Cuba and the lifting of crippling US sanctions. We categorically reject these accusations and misrepresentations of Cuban labour exploitation, forced labour and human trafficking in the Caribbean in relation to Cuban medical personnel and medical services. We stand in solidarity with our sister nation Cuba and its selfless and heroic medical professionals who have saved lives, enhanced medical services and delivered expert medical care to countless Caribbean peoples.
We call on Caricom to collectively:
• Firmly reject and repudiate the idea that the governments of the region are involved in human trafficking through the Cuban medical mission.
• Defend the inalienable right of the peoples of the Caribbean to access public health care delivered through the excellent work of the Cuban medical team.
• Firmly defend the self-evident right of member states to determine for themselves which forms of regional cooperation can best meet the needs of the people of the region.
