T&T denies US pressure to end medical study programme with Cuba

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment is as­sur­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ceived no di­rec­tive from the Unit­ed States to halt the long-stand­ing prac­tice of send­ing na­tion­als to Cu­ba to study med­i­cine.

The as­sur­ance comes days af­ter St Lu­cia’s Prime Min­is­ter Philip Pierre dis­closed that his gov­ern­ment had been in­struct­ed by Wash­ing­ton to dis­con­tin­ue the pro­gramme.

Pierre made the rev­e­la­tion dur­ing his ad­dress at the 2nd World Con­gress on Racial and Eth­nic Health Dis­par­i­ties in St Lu­cia, which ran from Jan­u­ary 27 to 31.

“Many of our doc­tors got trained in Cu­ba, and now the great Unit­ed States has said we can’t do that any longer. So, this is a ma­jor prob­lem that I have to face. Some of my col­leagues (prime min­is­ters) have al­ready tak­en a po­si­tion and banned them,” he said, adding, “So, the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment has said that we can’t even train them (doc­tors) in Cu­ba. So, I have a ma­jor is­sue on my hands for rea­sons not known to them or not known to me.”

Sev­er­al Caribbean states have re­lied on Cuban med­ical train­ing for years.

Chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rance Drew is him­self a Cuban-trained med­ical doc­tor. He al­so pur­sued spe­cialised stud­ies in the Unit­ed States.

How­ev­er, ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Prakash Per­sad yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that T&T has not sent any new med­ical stu­dents to Cu­ba this year, though he in­sists the de­ci­sion was made in­de­pen­dent­ly.

“The schol­ar­ship was of­fered there, all right. They’ve been of­fer­ing every year, and this year we de­cid­ed to de­cline it, not be­cause of the US or any­body else, but be­cause of the con­di­tion there that the stu­dents face, be­cause we have to send food for them and a va­ri­ety of things.”

Per­sad not­ed that around sev­en cit­i­zens are cur­rent­ly study­ing med­i­cine in Cu­ba, all from pre­vi­ous co­horts, with some in their sec­ond year and oth­ers fur­ther along in train­ing.

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment in­vit­ed them to re­turn home, cit­ing their liv­ing con­di­tions, but they de­clined. How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor their wel­fare and pro­vide sup­port.

Mean­while, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Michał Paw­ińs­ki, said Wash­ing­ton’s re­cent ac­tions re­flect a long-stand­ing ef­fort to shape the re­gion’s for­eign and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty poli­cies.

How­ev­er, he said the lack of uni­ty among Caribbean states is trou­bling.

“The Unit­ed States is im­ple­ment­ing a di­vide-and-con­quer strat­e­gy. But it’s up to the re­gion to re­spond to whether it is fol­low­ing (Wash­ing­ton’s lead) or play­ing along, or whether it will present a unit­ed ap­proach to­wards the Unit­ed States, which would be very dif­fi­cult to do, be­cause di­vide-and-con­quer has al­ready been ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ed.”

“Now, the coun­tries that have not re­ceived visa re­stric­tions will think three times be­fore they do any­thing with the coun­tries where visa re­stric­tions have been im­posed. This is very much part of the di­vide-and-con­quer (strat­e­gy) im­ple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean re­gion,” he ex­plained.

On T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy stance, Paw­ińs­ki said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ap­proach ap­pears to have helped the coun­try avoid puni­tive mea­sures af­fect­ing oth­er Cari­com states. How­ev­er, he cau­tioned against fram­ing this as a ben­e­fit.

Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan, the for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the UWI, al­so sug­gest­ed that the US is ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing a “di­vide and con­quer” agen­da across the Caribbean.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that T&T has, thus far, re­mained unique­ly im­mune to this diplo­mat­ic squeeze.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath al­so not­ed that T&T has been ex­empt from mul­ti­ple US mea­sures in re­cent times, in­clud­ing visa bans, im­mi­grant visa re­stric­tions, pres­sure to ac­cept third-par­ty de­por­tees, and fall­out linked to Cu­ba-re­lat­ed poli­cies.

“The thing about it is that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ways said that she has a ‘Trinidad and To­ba­go first’ pol­i­cy, which is like the same thing with the ‘Amer­i­ca first’ pol­i­cy. Some of the re­ac­tions (con­cerns) to adopt­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go first pol­i­cy was sim­ply how you nav­i­gate that for­eign pol­i­cy with the Unit­ed States as the hege­mon­ic pow­er in the re­gion. And she has suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged to nav­i­gate that one. So in a way, Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens would ben­e­fit from her pol­i­cy po­si­tion as it stands right now.”

Ef­forts to con­tact the Min­is­ters of For­eign Af­fairs and Health have been un­suc­cess­ful.

For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of de­part­ing from T&T’s long-stand­ing ap­proach to re­la­tions with Cu­ba, ar­gu­ing that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have his­tor­i­cal­ly main­tained a close and mu­tu­al­ly sup­port­ive part­ner­ship with Ha­vana.

“That de­ci­sion on her part was re­gret­table. Up un­til April 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go was in close and con­struc­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with coun­ter­parts of the USA and be­yond and pro­vid­ed very use­ful de­tails and in­for­ma­tion in sup­port of the con­tin­ued role of Cu­ba in pro­vid­ing key health care providers to help serve our peo­ple. This com­mu­ni­ca­tion en­sured that the Cuban med­ical pro­gramme in T&T con­tin­ued unim­ped­ed, and in fact the var­i­ous pro­tec­tions and pro­gres­sive el­e­ments of the Pro­gramme in T&T were re­gard­ed as a good ex­am­ple for the rest of the re­gion.”

Con­tact­ed for an up­date on the pro­gramme, the Prime Min­is­ter said. “I will have to get this in­for­ma­tion for you.”

The is­sue of the Cuban Med­ical Pro­gramme sur­faced pub­licly last March, when then prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young de­fend­ed T&T’s use of Cuban health work­ers. It fol­lowed an an­nounce­ment by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio that Wash­ing­ton would im­pose visa re­stric­tions on Cuban gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and oth­ers deemed to be “com­plic­it” in Ha­vana’s over­seas med­ical pro­grammes. Ru­bio cit­ed con­cerns about al­leged hu­man traf­fick­ing linked to the ini­tia­tive.