A Cuban doctor identified as Raícesa Mora published a powerful testimony on Instagram this Saturday in which she dismantles the regime's medical mission program, labeling it as a "complete lie" and "trafficking of Cuban medical professionals."
The video, shared by the account @magjorgecastro, arrives one day after the United States imposed sanctions on the two state entities that manage the program —the Commercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos (CSMC) and the Unidad Central de Cooperación Médica (UCCM)— as well as on the Cuban Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, and the director of the UCCM, Gretza Sánchez Padrón.
"The government of the Cuban dictatorship presents [the missions] to the world as acts of heroism, altruism, solidarity, and benevolence, when in reality, it's all a lie," Mora states in the testimony.
The doctor accurately describes the exploitation mechanism: the doctors sent abroad receive barely 20% or less of the salary that host countries pay Cuba for their services. "What they do is exploit Cuban medical workers, blackmail them, coerce them, and take them far from their homes," she denounces.
This is compounded by other forms of control: "They confiscate their passports, monitor them, and deny them contact with nationals of the country they are in."
And those who decide not to return to the island pay an additional price: "If those doctors decide not to return to their country, they cannot re-enter Cuba for eight years."
Mora is unequivocal about the fate of the money generated by the program: "Not a single one of those pesos has been invested in improving Cuban medical care," but instead has served to "fill the coffers and pockets of the dictators."
The testimony coincides with the most intense international pressure the program has faced in decades. In April 2026, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) published a 199-page report —based on 71 testimonies— that documented forced labor, document retention, wage confiscation, and reprisals against doctors and their families, and recommended that American countries withdraw from the Cuban medical missions program.
The European Parliament had approved an amendment in April 2025 that described the Cuban medical brigades as "modern slavery" and "forced labor."
According to estimates from the U.S. State Department, the program generates over 4.9 billion dollars annually for the regime.
The sanctions of July 24 were based on Executive Order 14404, signed by Donald Trump on May 1, 2026, as part of a sustained pressure campaign that since February 2026 has led a dozen countries to terminate or reduce their contracts with Cuba.
The regime responded this Saturday: Miguel Díaz-Canel referred to Cuban doctors on missions as "heroes," in an attempt to counteract the impact of the sanctions and testimonies like that of Mora.
The doctor ended her statement unequivocally: "They traffic with people, profit from modern slavery, which is exactly that, the trafficking of Cuban medical professionals. Cuba is a dictatorship, down with communism, homeland, life, and freedom."
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