Cuban Doctors on Mission in Mexico Claim They've Gone Over Two Months Without Pay

Several Cuban doctors currently part of a medical mission in Mexico have reported to Diario de Cuba that they have not received their salaries for more than two months, and the authorities have yet to provide a definite payment date.

"We've gone more than two months without pay and without any clear response, only misinformation," one of the doctors stated in a report by journalist Anarella Grimal. This same doctor added that the issue affects both payment channels: "There's no payment from the Banjército account—allegedly the payment from the Commercializadora—nor from the [Banco del] Bienestar account, which represents the Mexican side of the mission. We are forbidden from speaking out or making any claims."

Since March, Cuban doctors in Mexico receive two monthly payments totaling 44,716.40 Mexican pesos, equivalent to just over $2,000: a "maintenance" allowance for personal expenses and "support" for housing and transport.

The first payment is usually made around the 18th of each month through an account managed by the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos (CSMC), a company under Cuba's Ministry of Health that acts as an intermediary between the Mexican government and the Cuban professionals. The second payment is typically deposited around the 5th through the Banco del Bienestar. This time, both payment channels failed simultaneously.

The mission's authorities acknowledged the issue in an internal communication shared with Diario de Cuba: "I inform you that the welfare support payment is delayed due to administrative changes. There's still no fixed date for the deposit. Efforts are ongoing to make it effective as soon as possible." A week after this message, only half of the owed amount was deposited. "Finally, they paid half. There's a lot of misinformation; even the supervisors don't know," one of the doctors reacted.

The financial scheme of the mission adds another layer of complexity: part of the payments is channeled through Banjército, the National Bank of the Army, Air Force, and Navy of Mexico, via a service called Banje-Nómina. Doctors also have accounts with Banco del Bienestar, which fragments the traceability of each deposit's origin and complicates determining who authorizes each transfer.

The non-payment occurs amid increasing international pressure on Cuban medical missions. On July 23, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos S.A. (CSMC) for involvement in forced labor schemes, along with the Central Unit of Medical Cooperation and the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda. By the end of that month, the CSMC's account with Italy's BPER Bank, linked to the mission in Calabria, was frozen, according to six sources consulted by Diario de Cuba.

In Mexico, the non-payment to the Cubans coincided with salary delays that in August affected about 9,000 IMSS-Bienestar Mexican workers, who protested in more than a dozen municipalities in the State of Mexico. Payments began to stabilize following the protests.

The Mexican government has not made public the bilateral framework agreement signed with Cuba, keeping the mission's full financial circuit in the dark. In February, President Claudia Sheinbaum maintained that payments go directly to the professionals "because then they say they're being exploited," and that "they are paid what they should be paid."

Shortly before Diario de Cuba published its report, Banco del Bienestar began depositing part of the funds into the doctors' accounts. The Cuban medical mission in Italy is currently considering having doctors physically transport cash to Havana to bypass the frozen account at BPER Bank, a sign of the extent to which U.S. sanctions are dismantling the financial framework of Cuban missions abroad.