[News] Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Bolsonaro's Brazil Begs for Cuban Doctors – After Expelling Them
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news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Mar 18 10:46:02 EDT 2020
https://orinocotribune.com/amid-coronavirus-pandemic-bolsonaros-brazil-begs-for-cuban-doctors-after-expelling-them/
Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Bolsonaro's Brazil Begs for Cuban Doctors –
After Expelling Them
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Brazil’s far-right government requested the return of thousands of
Cuban doctors to help fight the coronavirus. Months ago, President Jair
Bolsonaro smeared the doctors as “terrorists” and expelled them.*
By Ben Norton – March 17, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has overwhelmed the health infrastructure of
countries around the world. Desperate to contain the deadly virus,
hard-hit countries, including even rich European nations like Italy and
Britain, have reached out for expert medical help from Cuba, China, and
Venezuela.
Even Brazil, currently under the control of a far-right administration
that has joined the US in demonizing Cuba’s socialist government, has
fallen back on the small nation for much-needed medical support —
requesting help from the very same Cuban doctors it expelled months ago.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly called for the
restoration of the military dictatorship, threatened his political
opponents with violence, and backed terrorist attacks on Venezuela
<https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/17/brazil-paper-reveals-bolsonaro-terror-plot-venezuela/>.
Bolsonaro has also taken aim at Cuba, praising the far-right military
dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
<https://www.dw.com/en/bolsonaro-chile-is-not-cuba-thanks-to-augusto-pinochets-dictatorship/a-50292225> for
supposedly preventing Chile from becoming like Havana.
Before Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018, 10,000 doctors Cuban
doctors were inside Brazil, working in some of the poorest, most remote
regions of the country. Their assistance arrived thanks to an agreement
between Havana and the country’s left-wing Workers’ Party government,
which sought Cuban help to treat those that the Brazilian health system
had long failed to reach.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Bolsonaro slammed the Cuban
doctors in his country as a nefarious fifth column, denigrated them as
“terrorists
<https://mundo.sputniknews.com/america-latina/202001091090078546-cuba-desmiente-acusaciones-de-bolsonaro-que-tildo-de-terroristas-a-medicos-cubanos/>,”
and pledged to expel them.
When he took power following a US-backed soft coup against the Workers’
Party government, Bolsonaro made good on his promise. He kicked out many
of the Cuban doctors, leaving impoverished rural regions without medical
personnel.
By February 2020, however, the Brazilian government began to reverse
course. The Bolsonaro administration had been unable to find doctors who
would serve in these remote areas, so it agreed to allow the 1,800 Cuban
doctors
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/cuban-doctors-will-again-assist-the-poorest-in-brazil--20200218-0003.html> who
remained in the country to return to the communities they had previously
served.
And now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Brasilia’s right-wing occupant has
done a complete about-face.
RELATED CONTENT: Venezuela Requests 5 Billion Dollars of IMF Emergency
Credit Line to Fight Coronavirus
<https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-requests-5-billion-dollars-of-imf-emergency-credit-line-to-fight-coronavirus/>
In a press conference on March 15, Brazilian Secretary of Health João
Gabbardo beseeched Cuba to send back the doctors who were expelled
<https://revistaforum.com.br/coronavirus/coronavirus-bolsonaro-apela-para-cubanos-excluidos-do-mais-medicos/> to
prevent the country’s health system from collapsing as it battled a
spreading pandemic.
Gabbardo declared that 5,000 of the Cuban doctors re-deployed to Brazil
will be assigned to primary care centers across the massive country.
The Bolsonaro administration’s reversal was particularly embarrassing
considering that, just last year, the president claimed the Cuban
doctors were not real medical experts, but ideological brain-washers
training poor Brazilians to become communist guerrillas.
“The PT [Workers’ Party] sent about 10,000 costumed doctors to Brazil
here, in poor places, to create guerrilla cells and indoctrinate people.
So much so that, when I arrived, they left, because I was going to go
after them,” Bolsonaro claimed in a conspiratorial screed
<https://revistaforum.com.br/politica/bolsonaro/pt-botou-10-mil-fantasiados-de-medicos-para-fazer-celula-de-guerrilha-e-doutrinacao-diz-bolsonaro/> in
2019.
The grim reality of the coronavirus crisis has forced even Cuba’s sworn
enemies to seek help from its world-renowned medical system.
Brazil has the fifth-largest economy on Earth, as well as the
sixth-biggest population, with more than 210 million people. Cuba,
meanwhile, is a relatively poor country with just around 11 million
people, and is suffering under a suffocating US sanctions regime. But
thanks to its socialist system, Havana has highly skilled and ethically
committed doctors to spare – even to nations that have assisted the US
bid for regime change against it.
The Workers’ Party responded
<https://pt.org.br/apesar-do-preconceito-de-bolsonaro-medicos-cubanos-retornam-para-combater-coronavirus/> to
the news in an official statement: “President Bolsonaro owes apologies
to the Brazilian population and to all the Cuban doctors who were
practically expelled from Brazil facing attacks, lies, and fake news.”
Os médicos cubanos virão trabalhar nos rincões do Brasil por meio do
Programa Mais Médicos, implantado pelo ex-ministro da Saúde e
deputado federal Alexandre Padilha (@padilhando
<https://twitter.com/padilhando?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>) (PT-SP), no
governo Dilma Rousseff ⭐https://t.co/rG1nsb04On
— PT Brasil (@ptbrasil) March 16, 2020
<https://twitter.com/ptbrasil/status/1239664771240284161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
US government and corporate media smear Cuban doctors, spreading
conspiracies
It is not just Brazil’s far-right government that has spread absurd
conspiracies about Cuban medical experts.
The US government has for many years targeted Cuba’s international
doctors program, spreading lies and falsely likening it to human
trafficking.
The George W. Bush administration created a counter-program in 2006
called the Cuban Medical Professional Parole to essentially bribe the
Cuban doctors to defect.
<https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-usa-doctors-idUSL1N14S1LY20160108> The
Bush-era program offered residence in the United States to thousands of
Cuban medical professionals if they agreed to switch sides and help the
US embassy in the country where they were serving abroad.
Corporate media outlets have also echoed the US government’s propaganda
targeting Cuba’s doctors program.
The New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/world/americas/venezuela-cuban-doctors.html> published
a dubiously sourced story falsely claiming that the government of
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was using the medical attention
provided by Cuban doctors “as a political weapon” to “compel patients to
vote for the government.”
The Times’ accusation was based on anonymous opposition supporters and
former Cuban doctors who defected to live under the right-wing
governments of Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador, which each advance policies
aggressively targeting Cuba for regime change.
RELATED CONTENT: Delcy Rodríguez: Three New Cases of Coronavirus
Confirmed in Venezuela this Tuesday
<https://orinocotribune.com/delcy-rodriguez-three-new-cases-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-venezuela-this-tuesday/>
The Times’ propaganda talking points were dismantled by journalists
<https://fair.org/home/pathological-deceit-the-nyt-inverts-reality-on-venezuelas-cuban-doctors/> Lucas
Koerner and Ricardo Vaz, who live in Venezuela. Koerner and Vas
demonstrated meticulously how the “article [was] riddled with factual
inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.”
It is true that Venezuela’s medical system has been devastated by the US
government’s sanctions
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/11/life-resistance-venezuela-ben-norton-us-blockade/> and
an exodus of many of its own medical professionals.
Cuba has played an integral role in supporting Venezuela’s battered
health system, while Washington’s economic war systematically dismantled it.
This March, Cuba dispatched a team of medical experts to Venezuela to
help the country contain the Covid-19 crisis.
A Cuban specialized technical delegation arrives in Venezuela led by
Cuba's Director for the Ministry of Public Health, José Ernesto
Betancourt, as part of the work by the Presidential Commission to
combat #Covid19
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Covid19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>.
🇨🇺🇻🇪 pic.twitter.com/AjmJELt7RX <https://t.co/AjmJELt7RX>
— Camila (@camilateleSUR) March 16, 2020
<https://twitter.com/camilateleSUR/status/1239382859711946752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
Venezuela seeks regional collaboration, is rejected by Colombia
Venezuela, for its part, has also encouraged regional collaboration to
try to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
The country’s leftist government even extended an olive branch to the
far-right governments in Colombia and Brazil, which have cut ties with
it, recognized US-backed coup leader Juan Guaidó
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/> as
supposed president, and supported violent terror attacks on Venezuelan soil.
Venezuela called for peaceful dialogue with Colombia and Brazil,
emphasizing that the countries should work together to try to contain
Covid-19.
The hardline Colombian government of President Iván Duque initially
announced that it was going to coordinate with Venezuela’s actual,
elected government — but soon after, under apparent US government
pressure, it partially backtracked
<https://www.eltiempo.com/politica/gobierno/duque-no-tendra-dialogo-directo-con-maduro-para-enfrentar-coronavirus-en-venezuela-473274>.
Colombia later clarified that it would only work through the Pan
American Health Organization and that there would be no direct
communication with Venezuela.
Ecuador outsources coronavirus tests and rams through neoliberal
reforms
While countries around the world are seeking medical help from Cuba to
contain the coronavirus, Washington’s allies in Latin America are
failing to meet the basic needs of their populations.
The US-backed, right-wing government of Lenín Moreno in Ecuador
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/07/ecuador-revolt-lenin-morenos-neoliberal-drone-zangano/>,
which has joined Brazil and Colombia in supporting the Trump
administration’s coup efforts against Venezuela and attempting to
politically and economically isolate Cuba, decided to outsource
coronavirus testing
<https://www.expreso.ec/guayaquil/costos-pruebas-coronavirus-ecuador-laboratoriosprivados-6959.html> to
private for-profit corporations.
Ecuadorian companies are charging $250 to $300 per coronavirus test — in
a country where the minimum wage is just $400 per month.
At the same time, the repressive Moreno administration – which violated
its own laws in handing over WikiLeaks publisher and Ecuadorian citizen
Julian Assange
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/14/lenin-moreno-julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador/> to
British authorities – has capitalized on the Covid-19 crisis to push
shock doctrine-style neoliberal reforms.
Moreno announced that he would reduce the already low salaries of public
sector workers, laying off employees, and slashing the budget of state
institutions.
An Ecuadorian teachers organization
<https://twitter.com/RedMaestrxsEC/status/1237827899849351168> denounced
these neoliberal reforms, declaring in a statement, “Once again, the
government of Lenín Moreno is revealing itself to be neoliberal and at
the service of the large groups of economic power, and is an enemy and
executioner of the poor majority.”
The response of governments in Latin America to the coronavirus pandemic
shows a clear trend: The closer a country is to the United States, the
worse and more dangerous its conduct has been. Meanwhile, nations
targeted by the US for regime change and crippled by its global economic
warfare are banding together to protect the health of the international
community.
Source URL: The GrayZone
<https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-brazil-cuban-doctors-bolsonaro>
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