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That Cuba is not a dictatorship but a “blocked” country, which sends doctors instead of arms and whose health system is admirable. The Colombian vice president, Francia Márquez, has raised a storm in the five minutes in which he spoke of the Island in a long interview on Monday with the journalist Vicky Dávila for the magazine Week.

During his visit to Cuba, last February, to inaugurate the Havana Book Fair, of which Colombia was the guest country, Márquez already declared that the Cuban health system was to be admired, and that is precisely why the interviewer asked him.

Those statements, the vice president defended herself, “were taken out of context.” However, she then explained that she said so at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, where about a thousand Colombians study who cannot pursue the same degree in Colombia because “it is very expensive.”

“While other countries send troops and weapons to many nations, Cuba sends doctors, and they cannot hide that,” said Márquez, who referred to the island as “a country blocked” by the United States “for more than sixty years.”

“I respect the autonomy of each town, and the sovereignty of each town, and each town decides how to organize itself politically”

“Because it has been a dictatorship, right?” Dávila replied, to which the vice president repeated: “But why? In other words, it has been a blocked dictatorship, a dictatorship as you say, but it does not send weapons, it sends doctors Isn’t that admirable?”

The journalist insisted that Márquez tell her if he thought the island is a dictatorship or not, but the vice president evaded the question over and over again, settling: “I respect the autonomy of each people, and the sovereignty of each people, and each people decide how to organize themselves politically”.

When Dávila reminded him that the Cubans “have not been able to decide”, the number two in the Government of Gustavo Petro reiterated: “Because it has been blocked.”

“Because it has been in the hands of the same family,” the interviewer told him. “It has been blocked by the United States,” replied Márquez, who, to Dávila’s next statement (“You know how long Fidel Castro stayed, that’s a dictatorship”), objected, shrugging his shoulders: “Well, haven’t we had, Vicky?”

The dialogue continued, as the journalist told her that in Colombia they had had democratic elections and that if her country were a dictatorship, neither she nor Petro would be in power. “But what? With results where inequity and inequality is the greatest in the world,” argued Márquez, who sentenced: “The dictatorship and democracy of a country is not measured only by the electoral,” but “by the transformations social”.

“The dictatorship and democracy of a country is not measured only by the electoral”, but “by the social transformations”

On the other hand, he wished that Colombia had a health system “so solid”, like that of Cuba. And he recounted that millions and millions of Colombians are condemned to “queue to be cared for,” to “give them medicine” or to “authorize surgery,” and that there are women “dying pregnant” due to lack of care sanitary.

During the conversation, Márquez demonstrated that she was oblivious to the daily reality of Cubans, who face queues due to shortages of medicines every day and suffer in impoverished hospitals and health centers.

And not only that, but it ignores the complaints from numerous international instances that have documented that the missions Cuban women, the country’s first source of income ahead of remittances and tourism, are nothing more than forced labor.

Nor did he refer to the letter sent to him, and made public, by the Committee of Citizens for Racial Integration, alerting the vice president, the first black in her country, that “a considerable part of Cuban activists” today deprived of freedom are women and Afro-descendants, marked by political violence”.

Another point that he seems to ignore is the one that concerns the peaceful image of the Island, which has sent soldiers outside its borders, as happened in Angola –the war where the most Cubans have died– or in Ethiopia, which has served as a sanctuary for Cubans. ETA or even Colombian terrorists and, without going any further, was the scene of the most important nuclear crisis in history, when the then Soviet Union installed medium-range missiles.

In any case, the vice president demonstrates the affinity felt towards Cuba by the Administration of Petro, a former guerrilla of the April 19 Movement (M-19), winner of the elections last June.

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