No, not Iraq. That’s to the east. I’m talking about Cuba.

There are three doctors that service our entire municipality of 40,000 people. We know all of them, and occasionally we hang out with them for work, or to go out to eat, or just to practice Spanish with someone who speaks it better than I do. Yes, that’s right- most of the locals have WORSE spanish than mine. But the doctors are all from Huehuetenango, and don’t speak a Mayan dialect; just good old Spanish. Oh, and they have a lot of formal education, unlike the other 39,997 people in our region.

When we have long discussions, we usually get around to talking about Cuba. This is because all three of them did their entire med school there. Did you know that Cuba has the most effective health care system in the western hemisphere (in terms of cure rates, waiting room times, and overall patient attention)? Did you know that Cuba has the highest average lifespan of all western nations? The US is included in these statistics. Of course, you can’t get good plastic surgery in Cuba, and some of the trickier high-tech surgeries are unavailable in Cuba, due to a long-standing technology embargo by the USA. But all the rest of basic healthcare- from routine exams and prenatal care, to c-sections and organ transplants and heart surgery- is completely free. The Cuban government feels that healthcare is a basic human right, just like the right to free speech and the right to an education.

But they do something else that i think is fantastic. They have a top-notch national med school that trains more doctors than they need every year. This school is FREE, and all that is asked of graduates to repay this gift from Cuba is that they spend the first 3 years out of school working to help make humanity better, by serving in underdeveloped nations or underserved places like inner-city slums. That’s it. What’s more, this program is available to anyone who wants to apply, regardless of race, nationality, religion, whatever. 10-20% of the students are foreigners, such as the three Guatemalan doctors that work here. So, in effect, Cuba is donating hundreds of lifetimes of medical care to the poor all over the world. It’s staggering. Dr. Ervin said that in his class, there were med students from Africa, the middle east, and Latin America. But there were also med students from countries you wouldn’t expect, countries I would imagine don’t need to get their doctors trained as a charity project: Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia. Apparently, there are even Americans there, though only a few, and they have to go through a MILE of red tape to do the program. They are almost always from poor minority families, and their promise is to return to places like the Bronx or downtown Atlanta and work in clincs there for 3 years before they pursue their normal medical careers.

I can’t help but think, “This is the sort of thing America should be doing”, and I’m kindof embarassed that a tiny, underdeveloped island nation can do it so much better. Now I am not just spouting a lot of propaganda I’ve heard form these doctors. Much of this information is available to those who care to dig for it, and I’ve heard much of it before. But it gets me thinking about the nature of what the American government tells us. I always heard of Cuba as this evil, communist nation to the south. We aren’t even allowed to go there. But why is that? It’s not the Cuban government that prohibits us from visiting. Heck, they’d LIKE us to see what they’re doing right, and maybe spend some of our tourist dollars in the process. The US government doesn’t allow it. Is that Liberty? Is the Freedom? Back in the 80s,I remember hearing about Russians defecting during the cold war. They had to break the law to leave their country. Do I have to “defect” from America if I want to take a week vacation in Cuba? And why doesn’t this BOTHER anyone, why doesn’t anyone talk about that in high school civics class?