Jonathan White

The Trump administration has found a new target in its long war on Cuba: the island’s doctors. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Washington is now moving to destroy Cuba’s overseas medical missions – one of its last remaining sources of dollar income – having already blocked its fuel, sanctioned its officials and choked off remittances. Marco Rubio has toured the Caribbean threatening visa bans against any official who keeps employing Cuban medics, denouncing the programme – bizarrely – as “forced labour” and “state-sponsored human-trafficking brigades”. Since 1963 – the first mission went to newly independent Algeria – Cuba has sent what Fidel called an “army of white coats” to heal the poor of the world. Some 24,000 Cuban health workers currently serve across more than 50 countries, from tiny Caribbean islands to the rural villages of southern Italy. They staff the clinics no one else will. In Honduras, residents gave the departing Cuban medics a tearful ovation. Jamaica’s prime minister, standing beside Rubio, pushed back to his face: the Cuban doctors “have been incredibly helpful to us”. St Lucia’s leader said plainly that “our medical system would basically collapse without them”. And when the US leaned on St Vincent and the Grenadines, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves responded firmly: “I will prefer to lose my visa than to have 60 poor and working people die.” That is the choice the United States is forcing on the region: get rid of the Cuban doctors, or be punished. The world’s richest country would rather the poor of the Global South go blind and die than tolerate Cuban solidarity. Why? Because those missions are not only Cuba’s largest export – some $5.3 billion in 2024, half of all its foreign earnings – but the clearest proof of what a small socialist country can offer humanity. That is the real target. Not “trafficking”, but the threat of a good example: a blockaded island of 11 million that sends doctors where empires send gunboats. To wage war on Cuba’s doctors is to admit you have nothing to offer the world. Solidarity with Cuba has never been more urgent. ¡Venceremos!