Doctor's struggle to leave Cuba exemplifies Castro's tyranny

Doctor's struggle to leave Cuba exemplifies Castro's tyranny
By Alvaro Vargas Llosa
Published: Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009 12:10 a.m. MDT

BUENOS AIRES — A few weeks ago, Hilda Molina, a delicate, soft-spoken
neurosurgeon, obtained an improbable victory against Cuba's regime when
she left Havana and joined her son and grandchildren in Argentina.
Listening to her story in a Buenos Aires restaurant, I could not keep
from thinking that the real measure of the Caribbean tyranny is not how
it treats its enemies but its friends.

Molina was her country's first female neurosurgeon. In 1989, she founded
the International Center for Neurological Restoration. It quickly gained
attention; by the early 1990s, Molina's prestige in the scientific
community was so great that Fidel Castro decided to use her politically.

The party prevailed on her to become a deputy in the National Assembly,
an activity she found "extremely boring" because she and her colleagues
were "expected to rubber-stamp" decisions made "upstairs." She played
along, she says, "for the sake of my vocation."

Castro became a frequent visitor to her center — until in 1991, the
health ministry informed Molina that she and her staff would have to
devote their better efforts to treating foreigners able to pay in
dollars at the expense of Cuban patients. When she protested, she was
reminded that she had an elderly mother and a son, neurosurgeon Roberto
Quinones.

Understanding the threat, she advised Quinones to use the occasion of a
professional trip overseas to defect. He did just that, settling in
Argentina, where he and his Argentine-born wife eventually had two children.

With her son out of Cuba, Molina resigned her position at the center and
her seat in the National Assembly, and returned all her medals. That was
the beginning of a 15-year ordeal. She was the object of numerous "acts
of repudiation" — pogrom-like aggressions against dissidents in Cuba —
and constantly vilified by the authorities. When her grandchildren were
born, she begged to be allowed to visit her family in Argentina — to no
avail.

"My only comforts," she says, "apart from my mother, were a few brave
friends critical of the regime who helped me in the worst circumstances."

She became close with dissidents such as Dagoberto Valdes, Martha
Beatriz Roque and the Ladies in White, as the relatives of 75
journalists and human-rights activists jailed in 2003 are known.

A few years ago, when Argentine President Nestor Kirchner asked Castro
to let Molina visit Buenos Aires, the dictator replied, "Never!" In a
foreword to a book titled "Fidel, Bolivia y algo mas," Castro accused
Molina of being "excellent material for blackmail." By then, she had
become an international cause celèbre.

Castro claimed she was really interested in owning the neuroscience
center for "capitalist exploitation," a charge that begs the question:
Had 50 years of communism not eradicated capitalist greed from the
island? Then he accused her of cloaking a controversy about stem-cell
research under political pretexts, which begs the question: Had 50 years
of communist rule not eradicated bourgeois morals?

She has also been criticized by a small minority of Cuban exiles in
Miami because her center participated in some studies related to
embryonic-nerve-tissue transplantation in search for a cure for
Parkinson's disease — a type of research also conducted in the United
States, Britain, Sweden, Poland, Spain and Mexico, and done under a
strict international protocol.

In 2008, her mother, in her 90s, was allowed to leave. Molina was sure
she would never see her mother again. But the neurosurgeon, who
recovered her Catholic faith some years ago, was eventually granted
permission to travel, in part thanks to help from the Catholic Church
(no, 50 years have not eradicated that, either). She arrived in
Argentina a few weeks ago.

To President Cristina Kirchner's credit, the Argentine government, an
ally of the carnivorous left that is itself attempting these days to
restrict freedom of the press, has not placed limits on her — except
that pro-Castro mobs harassed her during a recent visit to the Argentine
Congress.

As I listened to Molina, I kept thinking that her story was not about
the tragedy but about the perfect farce that is Cuba's communism. What
else can be said about a regime that reserves its medical institutions
for capitalist dollars in the name of abolishing capitalism and that for
15 years, in the name of anti-imperialism, prevents a woman from
crossing borders in order to join her son? Yes, one perfect farce.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and
the editor of "Lessons from the Poor." His e-mail address is
AVLlosa@independent.org.

Deseret News | Doctor's struggle to leave Cuba exemplifies Castro's
tyranny (24 September 2009)
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705332060/Doctors-struggle-to-leave-Cuba-exemplifies-Castros-tyranny.html