(Stenographic Versions – Council of State)
Journalist (Telesur): Welcome to Telesur and Prensa Latina. Can you tell us what are your impressions and comments about this Twenty Sixth Summit that has been held here in the city of Antigua Guatemala?
Bruno Rodríguez: I believe this has been an excellent Summit. It was very well organized by the Republic of Guatemala. It has been a meeting of compromise, of discussion of the issues that are the true priorities for our peoples, such as Sustainable Development and social inclusion.
I have carefully listened to the statements made by the Heads of State and Government as well as the heads of delegations, and it seems to me that this meeting has further consolidated the patrimony of the Ibero-American Summits and at the same time has established a program until the next Summit to take place in the Principality of Andorra.
Journalist (Telesur): Foreign Minister, you made some statements on some specific issues that the Government of your country wanted to discuss, didn’t you?
Bruno Rodríguez: Yes, in my speech, in a very prudent way, as is right and proper in these summits, I addressed the situation created with the More Doctors Program in Brazil in which, as is known, Cuba has had a broad participation through the Pan-American Health Organization.
But, just as the governments of President Lula and President Dilma, of the Workers’ Party, during all these years got 38 million Brazilians out of poverty and established very advanced social programs, such as the Zero Hunger Program and others, unfortunately, since the judicial and parliamentarian coup d’état, there has been a regression of social policies. Even under such difficult circumstances, Cuba continued participating in the More Doctors Program, being aware that it was providing services to low income Brazilian families that were badly needing them.
All along these years, the More Doctors Program has guaranteed, for the first time in the history of Brazil, the presence of medical personnel in 700 municipalities; and in approximately 1 100 of them it managed to ensure100 per cent health coverage.
Right now there are more than 8 000 Cuban doctors working in Brazil; more than 60 per cent of them are women. All of them are specialists of well-established prestige, competence, experience and moral probity, true to their social and humanitarian commitment.
The Cuban doctors are currently working in 2 885 municipalities, which are not in the populous cities, the beaches of Rio de Janeiro or the residential areas of Sao Paulo or Brasilia, but in the northern, semi-arid zones, the rural municipalities, the areas far away from urban centers, particularly the indigenous districts, where they guarantee medical assistance to more than 90 per cent of the population. In 1 575 municipalities there are only Cuban doctors from the More Doctors Program.
The next government of Brazil, the government that has been recently elected, does not have the least moral authority to question Cuba in any field, neither in the field of international medical cooperation nor in the field of human rights. This government is an apologist for the Brazilian unilateralist, supremacist, military dictatorship, which promotes a racist and xenophobic platform. Some of its most notorious members have uttered terrible phrases, such as ‘racial whitening’, which is something unacceptable to the peoples of our America. It has launched a campaign that encourages hatred, division and social violence; it has promoted a savage neo-liberal program which will plunge tens of millions of Brazilians back into misery and poverty, from which they escaped thanks to the social programs carried out by the Workers’ Party. In essence, it has promised to privatize the country and put it up for sale.
It has dubbed Cuban doctors as ‘slaves’, which is outrageous and unacceptable, particularly in a country that has just recognized that, between the years 1995 and 2005 –from the end of the twentieth century to the beginnings of the twenty first century-, 50 000 Brazilians were pulled out of slavery and has likewise recognized the existence of thousands of them.
It is both insulting and surprising that it has dubbed Cuban women doctors who, as I said, account for more than 60 per cent of Cuba’s medical staff in Brazil, as “women in white”, an unknown qualifier.
With the imposition of totally unacceptable conditions that infringe on the agreements signed by the Pan-American Health Organization, the Government of Brazil and the Government of Cuba; the derogatory treatment that the new government gives to Cuban doctors, particularly women doctors, the More Doctors Program has been blown up into pieces and the continued participation of Cuba in said program has been made impossible.
The political manipulation of humanitarian programs and so sacred causes such as the right of persons - particularly low income families- to health is unacceptable.
These decisions taken by the Brazilian government will most certainly have painful effects on millions of Brazilian low income families, to whom we express Cuba’s all-out solidarity and reiterate that the government that will take office next January 1st in that country bears full responsibility for what has happened. Unfortunate circumstances have been created which make it impossible for Cuba to continue offering its cooperation.
Maité Marrero (Prensa Latina): What has been the general response from our doctors there in Brazil?
Bruno Rodríguez: I was precisely meeting yesterday with a representation of around 400 doctors who work here in the Republic of Guatemala, who were very strongly in support of the decision adopted by the Ministry of Public Health and the Government of Cuba, in solidarity with their colleagues who work in Brazil, and expressed their full disposition to take on the health missions that benefit the Latin American and Caribbean peoples and satisfy the needs of our own people.
It’s been only a few hours, hardly 24 hours, since the announcement of Cuba’s official declaration in this regard. I have known that the reaction of our health professionals is that of regret over the present circumstances and also of sorrow for the patients who will be left without their services, with whom they had established close bonds of affection. But at the same time they have assumed with utmost firmness the decision that has been adopted and, as far as I understand, they support it. A first group already returned a few hours ago, knowing that their services are highly appreciated and recognized all over the world, also by the Brazilian people and by our own people, and that they are much needed in Cuba as well as in other countries.
Journalist (Telesur): Foreign Minister, I just wanted to ask you, how do you see the statements that are being made by the government-elect of Brazil? Do you envisage any possibility for the region to start becoming flooded with these xenophobic and racist discourses in a very delicate context?
Bruno Rodríguez: I look at the situation with great concern. I would like to be prudent. This is a government that has not taken office yet, but the campaign it has launched is quite unfortunate, for it has been based precisely on messages of hatred, division, polarization, social violence, with obvious racist approaches, which happen to be discriminatory against women and minorities, following a savage neoliberal capitalist program that has been straightforwardly announced, showing admiration for the supremacist and unilateralist policies of the US Government, which has recently invoked the Monroe Doctrine against the peoples of Our America. So we will have to wait and see what happens during the next few months.
I am sure that the Brazilian people will mobilize in the defense of the social achievements that others are also intending to reverse.
Thank you, very much.