"It cost me exile": Cuban nurse denounces fraud and infiltrated military personnel in medical brigades in Mexico

"I paid the price of exile." With that phrase, Arisleydi López, a Cuban nurse, summarizes the personal cost she claims to have incurred after exposing what she describes as a fraud within the medical brigades sent by the Havana regime to Mexico during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a testimony given to Fuerza Informativa Azteca (FIA), the informational arm of TV Azteca, a Mexican media outlet openly opposed to the Morena government and whose owner has been accused of tax evasion—allegations that President Claudia Sheinbaum has brought to public debate—López recounted that the personnel sent as "solidarity collaboration" included military and members of the Communist Party of Cuba, many of whom lacked the necessary training to care for patients.

According to the nurse, the supposed specialists received just five days of training before being deployed, while Mexico was paying millions of dollars for a service that she claims did not match reality. "You can't sell personnel for 16 million dollars when you trained them in five days," she said.

López, who was part of the first brigade sent to Mexico between April and July 2020, stated that after reporting these practices, he had to flee to the United States, leaving his family behind.

Your testimony is not new. La Patilla, a Latin American digital media outlet, had previously published her accusations regarding the internal workings of these missions.

The revelations coincide with journalistic investigations and reports cited by FIA that point to a broader pattern. Organizations such as Cuba Archive and Prisoners Defenders have warned that medical brigades also operate as political and economic tools of the Cuban regime, with infiltration by intelligence personnel and a lack of transparency regarding the use of funds paid by recipient countries.

In the case of Mexico, investigations by El Universal have documented that the Mexican government has allocated more than 105 million dollars to this program without having clear evaluations of its impact, while health authorities admit to lacking metrics on the actual performance of Cuban doctors.

For Arisleydi López, behind the discourse of solidarity lies another story. One that, she asserts, not only deceived recipient countries but ultimately shattered her life and forced her into exile.