US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced a further hardening of sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela with an expansion of an existing visa restriction policy relating to Cuba’s overseas medical missions.
In a statement, Rubio—the child of Cuban immigrants who left before the 1959 Cuban Revolution—described Cuba’s medical missions throughout the world as “forced labor” and “abusive and coercive labor practices.”
For more than six decades, Havana has engaged in cooperation programs with Global South countries to provide healthcare to marginalized and underserved communities. Condemnation of the move to undermine the Cuban initiative was swift.
“The US State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country,” said Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The expanded US visa-restriction policy will apply to “current or former Cuban government officials” involved with the medical brigade program. However, the communique further specified that it would also include “foreign government officials” connected with the program, which raises the possibility that the measure could ensnare dozens of leaders from other countries, with Venezuelans mentioned explicitly in the statement.
According to official figures, Cuban doctors in Venezuela numbered as many as 30,000, with approximately 255,000 serving in the country since the start of the program following a deal signed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuban President Fidel Castro in the year 2000, primarily working in low-income barrios. Havana’s support was key during the Covid-19 pandemic, supplying vaccines that Caracas found hard to secure due to wide-reaching US sanctions.
Throughout the history of its medical cooperation initiative, Cuba has sent over 600,000 doctors throughout the world, the vast majority to Global South countries but also to wealthy countries following natural disasters.
The effort to undermine Cuba’s medical brigades has been a priority for Rubio since his time as a Florida senator. In 2020, Rubio—then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere—presented alongside former Senator and convicted felon Bob Menendez legislation aimed at undermining the program.
The expansion of sanctions on Cuban and Venezuelan officials is the latest move as part of Rubio’s hardline policy toward the allied Latin American nations.
