Is a visa worth turning your back on Cuba?

Mar 11, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – In recent weeks, Caribbean diplomacy has been tested by a threat that is at once simple and unsettling. The threat was possibility that Caribbean leaders could lose their United States visas if their governments continue participating in Cuba’s long-standing medical cooperation programme, commonly known as the Cuban Medical Brigade.

For decades, Cuban doctors have served in small and developing countries around the world, including many in the Caribbean. In places with limited medical personnel, these doctors have filled critical gaps in public health systems. In the Caribbean, their presence has been particularly important in saving lives

What has caused the present controversy is not the programme itself, but Washington’s view of it. The United States has argued that the arrangement exploits Cuban medical personnel. But the real reason is that the programme is one of the few ways in which the Cuban government gets hard currency. The United States wants to cut even this small lifeline.  It therefore has signalled that governments continuing to participate in the programme could face consequences. Among the measures reportedly threatened are visa sanctions against leaders whose governments support the programme.

Several Caribbean leaders responded swiftly and publicly to the suggestion that their visas might be withdrawn. Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados spoke bluntly about the issue. She made it clear that the presence of Cuban doctors in the region is not a political matter but a practical necessity. As she put it, Caribbean governments would not abandon a programme that has helped keep their citizens healthy simply because of outside pressure.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley was even more direct. “If the price of helping my people is the loss of my visa,” he said in substance, “then so be it.” His message was unmistakable: the welfare of Trinidad and Tobago’s citizens must come before the convenience of travel privileges abroad.

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines also dismissed the idea that the threat of visa restrictions could dictate his country’s policy. Gonsalves has long been outspoken in defence of Caribbean sovereignty, and he reiterated that no foreign government should determine the health policies of independent states. In short, these leaders responded with clarity. They signalled that while relations with the United States are important, those relations cannot come at the cost of abandoning programmes that serve their people.

But here in Guyana, the silence has been noticeable. Our leaders have not spoken with the same firmness. There has been no ringing declaration that Guyana will stand by a programme that has benefited its health sector. Instead, developments suggest a different trajectory. It now appears that the Cuban medical programme in Guyana has come to an end.

The government has explained that the Cuban government itself discontinued the arrangement after discussions began. But that explanation raises more questions than it answers. Why were discussions necessary in the first place?

If Guyana had intended to continue the programme as it had existed for years, there would have been little reason for negotiations that might place the arrangement in doubt. The very fact that talks began suggests that the government was already reconsidering the programme. And one must also ask a practical question. How could the Cuban government send doctors to Guyana without receiving payment for their services? These doctors were deployed under an agreement between governments. That agreement included financial arrangements. No country sends hundreds of trained professionals abroad simply out of sentiment.

The Guyanese government now says that it intends to pay the doctors directly rather than through the Cuban government. But that raises another serious concern. The doctors did not come here as free agents seeking private employment. They came as part of a formal international agreement between the Government of Cuba and the Government of Guyana. By paying them directly, Guyana risks undermining that agreement and effectively treating those doctors as individuals who can simply detach themselves from the programme that brought them here. That approach raises ethical as well as diplomatic questions.

It is difficult to see how a government can enter into an agreement with another state and then proceed to restructure the arrangement in a way that disregards the role of that state. The Cuban government deployed those doctors under a framework it designed and managed. To bypass that framework is, at the very least, diplomatically awkward. More broadly, the entire episode raises an uncomfortable question: did Guyana quietly step back from the programme because of the threat of visa sanctions? If that is the case, it would be a disappointing development.

Guyana has faced American sanctions before and survived them. In the 1980s, when President Forbes Burnham opposed the United States invasion of Grenada, Guyana paid a price. The country was excluded from benefits under the Caribbean Basin Initiative. Yet Guyana endured that period without catastrophe. The sanctions did not bring the country to its knees. Life went on.

That history reminds us that sovereignty sometimes carries costs. But those costs are rarely as devastating as they are imagined to be. In the present case, no economic sanctions were even threatened against Guyana. The talk was about visas — essentially the ability of leaders to travel freely to the United States. Therefore, if policy decisions are being shaped by concerns about travel privileges, that would be a troubling standard. The Caribbean leaders who spoke out understood that point. They made it clear that principles cannot be traded for visas. Guyana, unfortunately, appears to have chosen a quieter path. Whether that path will prove wise — diplomatically or morally — is a question that many will continue to ask.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Caribbean diplomacy, Cuba, Peeping Tom, visa

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