Slave labor as a discursive strategy to affect international Cuban medical agreements

Abstract

Introduction: Cuba has more than sixty years of medical cooperation and solidarity. After the economic crisis of the 1990s, the country also exported health services to earn foreign currency, without abandoning its solidarity component. The United States implements a strategy of boycotting international Cuban medical agreements with the pretext that they promote slave labor, although the real objective is to cut off the income of foreign currency and affect the image.

Objective: To describe the association between slave labor and international Cuban medical agreements evolved.

Methods: analyzed the strategy of boycotting to the international Cuban medical agreements of the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations between 2020 and 2023, through mix method, with a triangulation concurrent design, and theorics and empirics methods was carried out.

Conclusions: The communication strategy against international Cuban medical agreements presents them as slave labor. Bush victimized doctors, encouraged the abandonment of missions and made the first references to human trafficking and forced labor. Obama brought the issue to a periodic government report, addressing it as exploitation and forced labor, acknowledging concerns about foreign exchange earnings, while publicly recognizing professionals. Trump promoted and achieved the closure of missions, aligned political discourse with journalistic discourse and addressed the issue such as human trafficking and modern slavery. Biden promotes medical cooperation in the continent, but without including Cuba, to reduce its merit and prominence, while financing projects that seek to document manifestations of slave labor in medical missions.