By Dennis A. Minott 

For nearly half a century, Cuba’s medical missions have been a lifeline to countless Jamaicans and others across the Global South, offering skilled, compassionate care where wealthy nations provided mostly neglect, indifference, or profit-driven exploitation. 

Now, Marco Rubio, first Secretary of State of the second Trump administration—dripping in hypocrisy and imperial arrogance—seeks to smear this noble effort as “forced labour”. This is not just an insult; it is a calculated act of cruelty, a direct assault on the very lifeblood of those most in need.

This is the same brand of American deceit that sneers at our nations as “shitholes” while ensuring we remain shackled to their overpriced pharmaceuticals and predatory medical systems. Rubio—a man whose servility to empire is rivaled only by his lust for political favour—dares to criminalize and victimize Cuban doctors, nurses, and other critical health professionals (as well as we the wretched among whom they cheerfully labour), while his own government upholds a global health apartheid that rations care based on wealth and geography.

But even more disgraceful than this, Washington-driven wickedness are the Jamaican sycophants who will bow, scrape, and grovel, pretending that this vicious assault on our healthcare lifeline is somehow principled policy. Have we no spine? Have we no memory? 

The true allies of the Caribbean people are not those wielding American sanctions as weapons against the sick and vulnerable. History will judge harshly those Jamaicans who betray their own in service of Washington’s imperial disdain.

Jamaica—and CARICOM—must not cower. Cuba’s gift to humanity is not for sale. I know this not from theory but from lived experience. Cuban doctors and nurses, working hand in hand with their Jamaican counterparts, saved my life at the under-resourced Port Antonio and Annotto Bay hospitals. They have trained 19+ members of my A-QuEST group to do likewise for the wretched of the earth in “shithole” places—carrying forward a tradition of selfless service. I have seen Cuban compassion firsthand while I worked in Ethiopia (for UNIDO) and Mexico (at el IMP), lands that refuse to cower, just as Cuba itself does—undaunted despite relentless U.S. Trumpian government malevolence.

Cuba’s unwavering solidarity with the Global South is a moral triumph. Rubio’s disgraceful attack on it is yet another imperialist crime against the most vulnerable.