We just learned that Mexico is going to bring in more Cuban doctors.  So is Mexico facing a doctor shortage, or does Cuba need more dollars by renting its medical personnel? 

This is the AP story:

The system also will seek to double the approximately 600 Cuban doctors who have been offered jobs in Mexico.

While many Mexican hospitals lack specialized doctors — especially in rural or violence-plagued areas — the country's health care system has even starker deficits of medicines, hospitals and equipment.

Patients' relatives often have to go and search for medications, surgical supplies and donated blood in order to get the care their loved ones need.

That is largely the result of decades of under-investment in the health care system.

Underinvestment in health care?  Never heard that before.  However, we know that Cuba uses these "doctors" to promote a larger agenda.  This is from Senator Marco Rubio's letter to the secretary of state:

The U.S. Department of State's annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) and annual Human Rights Report finds that Cuba's international medical missions are a form of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. According to the Department's 2022 reporting, Cuba's Unidad Central de Cooperación Médica, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment manage a system whereby Cuban doctors and medical personnel are forced to work overseas under opaque contracts. Not only does the Cuban regime confiscate the passports, professional credentials, and salaries of the victims of these programs, they also threaten these professionals and their families should they attempt to leave. 

Yes, these doctors can't defect because their families would be punished.  Senator Rubio also points out that this is a violation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that prohibits "forced or compulsory labor."  How is sending someone to another country to work not considered forced labor?  It's a clear-cut example.

Why is President López-Obrador doing this? Why Cuba?  Aren't there doctors in other countries?  The answer is that AMLO, as they call him south of the border, is a leftist who wants to help the corrupt and abusive communist regime in Cuba.  He also believes in "hugs rather than bullets" in dealing with criminal organizations.  He also believes that our fentanyl crisis is a family problem in the U.S., or that we are not hugging enough, or something like that.

In the meantime, Mexico is participating in human-trafficking of Cuban medical personnel, people who go to Mexico at the service of a Cuban dictatorship desperately looking for dollars any way they can.

AMLO friend or foe?  I'm starting to wonder.

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Image: Eneas de Troya.