Dennis Minott | Jamaica forsakes faithful healers to flatter power

There is a particular kind of silence currently permeating the corridors of Jamaica House, one that does not suggest the quietude of deep thought but rather, the hollow stillness of a moral vacuum. As of March, the Andrew Holness administration has achieved what five decades of geopolitical turbulence could not: the systematic dismantling of a brotherhood forged in blood, sweat, and the healing hands of the Cuban Medical Brigade.

To observe Dr Andrew Holness, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, and Dr Christopher Tufton preside over the “Doctors’ Departure Lounge” is to witness a masterclass in craven political bartering. After fifty years of faithful service – service rendered in the forgotten valleys of Portland and the overstretched wards of the Kingston Public Hospital – the Cabinet of AD 2026 has chosen to trade a sovereign partnership for the fleeting, erratic approval of a Washington establishment that remains as fickle as it is demanding.

This is not “enlightened diplomacy” as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have us believe through its sanitised press releases. It is a betrayal of the highest order. By allowing the technical cooperation agreement to expire and then feigning an “inability to agree on terms”, this Cabinet has, essentially, handed Cuba a pink slip on behalf of Uncle Sam. They speak of “labour standards” and “passport possession” with a sudden, convenient piety, yet these same ministers have overseen a local health system where Jamaican nurses are burnt out and our own infrastructure crumbles. To suddenly find “untenable” the very arrangement that kept our ophthalmology clinics running and our rural clinics staffed is a height of hypocrisy that borders on the pathological.

GRATITUDE

Where is the gratitude? Since 1976, Cuban doctors have been among the foot soldiers of our public health. They did not come for the US dollars that Johnson Smith now suddenly finds so problematic to process. They came because of a humanist internationalism that Jamaica once understood as a pillar of Global South solidarity. They stood by us through hurricanes, through the austerity of IMF mandates, and through a global pandemic. In return, the Holness Cabinet has offered them the cold shoulder of bureaucratic obstruction and the indignity of being caught in a “great power” squeeze.

The names attached to this infamy will not be easily scrubbed from the record. Minister Kamina Johnson Smith, whose tenure has been marked by a pivot towards a neoliberal compliance that borders on servility, has framed this as a matter of “international legal obligations”. This is the parlance of the timid. It is the language used by those who lack the spine to tell a superpower that Jamaica’s healthcare needs are not a bargaining chip for a “Gold Card” or a security waiver.

Similarly, Dr Christopher Tufton, the Minister of Health and Wellness, now speaks of “contingencies” and recruitment from the diaspora. Let us be plain: you do not replace five decades of integrated, institutional knowledge with a “screening process” for private recruits from the Philippines, Ghana, or Nigeria. You do not mend the “Eye Care” programme by severing the very hands that performed the surgeries. To suggest otherwise is to treat the lives of the Jamaican poor – those who cannot afford private care or a flight to Miami – with a terrifying flippancy.

STRIPPED BARE

And what of the prime minister? Dr Andrew Holness, a man who speaks often of “transformation” and “prosperity”, has presided over a transformation of Jamaica into a client state. Under his watch, the “shame-trees” at Jamaica House have indeed been stripped bare. There is no shade left for the principles of Marcus Garvey or Michael Manley or EPG Seaga. By yielding to US pressure regarding “forced labour” allegations – allegations denied by the very doctors serving in our wards – this Cabinet has effectively branded our Cuban brothers and sisters as victims in a narrative they did not write, all to satisfy a 20th-century blockade mentality that has no place in a 2026 Caribbean.

History will be an unforgiving editor. It will record that in the year 2026, when the Cuban people were battling a draconian oil blockade and economic strangulation, their closest neighbour – the nation they helped heal for half a century – chose to stick a knife in their back. This is a self-inflicted wound to our national character. We have traded a proven partner for the hope of being noticed by a power that views us only as a strategic asset on a map.

To the Cabinet: You have managed to save your standing in Washington while losing your soul in the Caribbean. You have sacrificed the health of the grandmother in St Thomas and the child in Hanover to appease a geopolitical whim. We indite you not just for a failure of policy but for a failure of heart. The doctors may be in the departure lounge, but it is this Government that has truly checked out of its moral obligations. Bravo, indeed. The betrayal is complete.

Dennis A. Minott, PhD, is a physicist, green energy consultant, and long-time college counsellor. He is the CEO of A-QuEST. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com