Three Cuban doctors who are part of the medical mission in Mexico reported to Diario de Cuba that they have gone over two months without receiving their salaries and that the authorities have not provided them with a specific payment date.
“It's been over two months without payment or any response, just misinformation,” stated one of the professionals to journalist Anarella Grimal in a report. The same doctor added that the situation affects both payment channels: “There has been no payment from the Banjército account — which is supposedly the payment from the Marketing Company — nor from the [Banco del] Bienestar account, which is the Mexican part of the mission. And we are prohibited from speaking or making any claims.”
Since March of this year, Cuban doctors in Mexico receive two monthly payments totaling 44,716.40 Mexican pesos, equivalent to just over 2,000 dollars: a "maintenance" allowance for personal expenses and a "support" allocation for housing and transportation.
The first payment arrives approximately on the 18th of each month through an account managed by the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos (CSMC), a company affiliated with the Ministry of Health of Cuba that acts as an intermediary between the Mexican government and Cuban professionals. The second payment is deposited around the 5th through the Banco del Bienestar. In this instance, both channels failed simultaneously.
The authorities of the mission acknowledged the issue in an internal communication shared with Diario de Cuba: "I inform you that the payment for welfare support is delayed due to administrative changes. There is still no fixed deposit date. We are working tirelessly to ensure it is made effective as soon as possible." A week after that message, only half of the owed amount was deposited. "Finally, they paid half. There is a lot of misinformation; not even the chiefs know," reacted one of the doctors.
The financial scheme of the mission adds another layer of opacity: part of the payments is routed through Banjército, the National Bank of the Army, Air Force, and Navy of Mexico, via a product called Banje-Nómina. The doctors also have accounts at the Bank of Well-Being, which fragments the traceability of the origin of each deposit and makes it difficult to determine who initiates each transfer.
The non-payment occurs in a context of increasing international pressure on Cuban medical missions. On July 23, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the Cuban Medical Services Marketing S.A. (CSMCJosé Ángel Portal Miranda. Since the end of that month, the CSMC's account at the Italian bank BPER, linked to the mission in Calabria, has been disabled from operating, according to six sources consulted by Diario de Cuba.
In Mexico, the non-payment to Cubans also coincided with salary delays that in August affected around 9,000 Mexican workers from IMSS-Bienestar, who protested in more than a dozen municipalities in the State of Mexico. Payments began to be regularized after the protests.
The Mexican government has not made public the bilateral framework agreement signed with Cuba, which keeps the entire financial circuit of the mission opaque. President Claudia Sheinbaum stated in February that payments go directly to the professionals "because then they say they are being exploited," and that "they are paid what they are owed."
Shortly before Diario de Cuba published its report, the Banco del Bienestar began depositing part of the money into the accounts of the doctors. The Cuban medical mission in Italy is currently assessing that doctors physically transport cash to Havana to bypass the frozen account at BPER bank, a sign of how far U.S. sanctions are disrupting the financial framework of Cuban missions abroad.
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