Does her brain belong to Castro?

Does her brain belong to Castro?
Cuba claims state `patrimony' to keep physician on island
By Gary Marx
Tribune foreign correspondent

April 10, 2006

HAVANA -- Hilda Molina says her brain belongs to her. Cuban authorities
apparently think otherwise.

Molina, 62, claims a top immigration official gave her the word in 1997
and again in 2000: "You can't leave Cuba because your brain is the
patrimony of the state."

Whether Molina's brain is hers may seem like a personal matter. So does
the issue of whether she can travel to Argentina to visit her only
child, whom she has not seen in 12 years, and meet, for the first time,
her two grandchildren.

But Molina is no ordinary Cuban grandmother.

Once a leading physician, Communist Party member and national
legislator, the physically slight but intense woman was a shining star
in Cuban President Fidel Castro's effort to transform Cuba into a
scientific power.

Castro personally backed Molina's effort to start a neurological
rehabilitation institute, which under her guidance pioneered fetal
tissue transplants and other treatments for patients with Parkinson's
and other neurological disorders. But she broke with Castro more than a
decade ago and became a harsh critic of Cuba's tightly controlled
socialist system.

Since then, Cuban officials have refused to allow her to travel
overseas, even to visit her son, Roberto Quinones, a 42-year-old
neurologist who fled Cuba in 1994 to study abroad, and grandsons,
Roberto Carlos and Juan Pablo, who are 10 and 4.

"The pain I feel is more than you can imagine," said Molina, sitting in
the dimly lit apartment she shares with her infirm 87-year-old mother.

Cuban officials declined to comment for this story. But Foreign Minister
Felipe Perez Roque told an Argentine newspaper in 2004 that Molina would
not be allowed to leave Cuba because her dissident activities are
financed by the U.S. government, an accusation Molina denies.

Spain, Argentina join cause

Molina's high-profile campaign to visit her loved ones overseas has
sparked years of controversy, criticism from human-rights groups and
tension between Cuba and Argentina and other nations. As Molina spoke to
a reporter last month, a Spanish Embassy employee knocked on her front
door and handed her a letter from Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero.

In the letter, which Molina read aloud, Zapatero said Spain has taken up
her case with Cuban authorities and would continue insisting that Cuba
"authorize a trip to Argentina to visit your family."

"Ah! That's great," Molina exclaimed.

Yet beyond the personal story, Molina's case lays bare the collective
nature of Cuba's socialist system, where individual rights are subsumed.

Castro has often said that while his country may be cash poor, it is
rich in human capital. Everyone from doctors to engineers to artists
receives free education, along with health care, subsidized rent and
other benefits.

In return, Cubans are expected to repay society through a lifetime of
work for salaries that rarely top $20 a month. They lose control over
many aspects of their lives, including the right to travel overseas or
relocate from one part of the country to another without permission.

Castro supporters argue that limiting overseas travel also is a way to
slow the brain drain that has hurt many developing countries.

As a compromise, the Cuban leader proposed that Molina's son and his two
children visit Havana. Castro guaranteed their safety even though Molina
fears her son would be detained if he came back to the island.

But diplomatic sources say Castro's offer is unacceptable to Argentina
as well as to experts such as Daniel Wilkinson, a lawyer for Human
Rights Watch, who argues that Cuba's refusal to allow Molina to visit
Argentina violates international law.

"The idea of people who are educated by the state having an obligation
to contribute to society is perfectly sensible," said Wilkinson, who
wrote a report last fall critical of Cuba's travel restrictions and
President Bush's tightened sanctions against the island. "But this is an
extreme measure that undermines the right of people to leave any country
including their own. It is one of the most effective tools Cuban
authorities have for intimidating people critical of the government."

For her part, Molina said she doesn't have any government secrets and,
besides, her scientific knowledge belongs to "the international
community, not to the Cuban government."

She fears Castro is pursuing a vendetta against her for breaking from
Cuban officialdom. "He has not forgiven me," Molina said.

Raised in an upper middle-class family in central Cuba, Molina said she
shared her father's enthusiasm for the revolution and earned her medical
degree in 1975 before specializing in brain surgery.

In 1989, Molina founded what is now known as the International Center of
Neurological Restoration in Havana, a prestigious 136-bed facility
designed to provide advanced treatment to even the poorest Cubans.

Her falling out

Castro spoke at the institute's packed inauguration, which garnered a
front-page headline in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily, that
read, "An Institute of Enormous Human Importance."

Molina recalls an emotional Castro visiting the center and meeting with
patients. And Molina frequently traveled overseas to conferences, where
she shared her research with other top neuroscientists.

But, in 1994, Molina said she clashed with Cuban officials after they
insisted the institute begin treating paying customers from overseas.

While authorities saw medical tourism as a way to make money after the
Soviet Union's collapse devastated the Cuban economy, Molina believed
the practice betrayed the revolution's precept of treating everyone equally.

"The biggest disgrace is that someone sick from another country is worth
more here than a sick Cuban," she said.

Molina resigned as the center's director, abandoned her medical career,
gave up her parliamentary seat and returned a box filled with medals she
said Cuban authorities had awarded her over the years.

In the ensuing months, Molina said her telephone line was cut, her mail
arrived opened and government agents followed her. Animal blood, trash
and feces were left at her doorstep, she said.

"I became psychologically ill," she recalled. "I knew that it would be a
long time before I would see my son and knew that I had lost my
profession. My life had been mutilated."

Yet Molina says she is determined to continue her campaign to reunite
with her family in Argentina.

"I'm not willing to surrender."

gmarx@tribune.com
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