Subject: Death Threat Against Cuban Doctors ESA: "They will be brought to justice if they do not leave the country" December 2, 2000 The Mexico City daily, Excelsior, reported today that an unknown "Anti-Communist Secret Army" (ESA) issued a death threat today against a brigade of 459 Cuban doctors working in the remote villages of Guatemala, accusing them of promoting "totalitarian communist ideas". The Cuban doctors are volunteers who have been rendering their medical services in Guatemala free of charge since hurricane Mitch devastated vast regions of the country in 1998. Excelsior' correspondent in Guatemala, Haroldo Shetemul, reports that the death threat was sent by fax to the Guatemalan daily, Siglo XXI(Twenty-First Century), which printed the entire text. It states in part:"If they do not immediately abandon the country, the executions will begin". ESA claims that they have "detected that the Cuban doctors (whom they refer to as "Cuban mercenaries cloaked in the noble medical profession") have been promoting the benefits of the totalitarian regime of Fidel Castro Ruz, inculcating ideas of a communist nature". The arrival of the Cuban doctors in Guatemala has been severely criticized by Guatemalan doctors because, as they contend, the Cubans are not recognized by the state University of San Carlos and are not affiliated with the Guatemalan doctors' professional organization according to law, says the group's president, Eduardo Garcia. The Cuban doctors only work in remote regions of the country where Guatemalan doctors will not go. During the two years since their arrival, they have conducted over 2 million medical examinations which have included 712,308 children and performed 11,543 surgeries in 10 of the 22 sectors of the country. Guatemalan Public Health Minister, Mario Bolan~os says that he regrets the threats adding that there is a group in the country with an interest n seeing the Cubans leave. "If that group (ESA) really exists, it must be determined where they are because we can not return to the barbarism of past decades....I believe that they are just trying to scare the Cuban doctors", Bolan~os assured. ---------------------------------------- press review by The Carlos Balin~o Institute Oviedo, Florida Albuquerque, New Mexico
