Bluefields Warms Up to Its Cubans : Nicaragua: The Sandinistas welcomed Havana’s help. Even though they’ve been voted out, many are hoping the aid workers will stay.

For 48 hours after President Daniel Ortega lost the Nicaraguan election last month, the Sandino Regional Hospital in this fishing port was in an uproar.

The hospital’s 15 Cuban doctors, apparently fearing attack by partisans of the victorious U.S.-backed coalition, shut themselves inside the former British vice consulate that serves as their two-story residence.

That left a dozen Nicaraguan physicians facing a waiting room full of outpatients--along with 69 surgery, maternity and pediatrics cases they were inadequately prepared to handle. When community leaders finally coaxed them back to work, the Cubans were besieged not by anti-Communist mobs but by sick people shouting: “Don’t go before you operate on me!”

The work stoppage--and the urgent appeals to end it--dramatized the vital importance of Cuban aid to the city that, a decade ago, staged the first uprising against Havana’s supportive role in the Sandinista revolution.

And it was a sign of the hard-earned acceptance of Cuban aid workers in needy places such as Bluefields, a shift that could oblige President-elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro to maintain ties with the Sandinistas’ closest ally, Fidel Castro’s Communist government.

“We couldn’t handle it alone,” said Donald Weil, the hospital’s director, recalling the Cubans’ brief absence. “Since that little trial, people in Bluefields agree that the Cubans should stay, even those who were against them in the first place.”

About 1,000 Cuban doctors, engineers, construction workers, teachers and agricultural experts are working in Nicaragua on loan from the Havana government--one-third of them in Bluefields--along with a few dozen Cuban military advisers. While barely one-tenth of its peak level in the early 1980s, the Cuban presence in Nicaragua is still controversial.

Bluefields, a melting pot of 38,000 people, shares Cuba’s Afro-Caribbean heritage. But its close ties with the United States before the 1979 Sandinista takeover shaped a strong anti-Communist prejudice.

“When I was in secondary school, we had to pray after every single class that God will free us from the influence of Cuba,” said Johnny Hodgson, a member of the Sandinista governing council. “If you didn’t mention Cuba and communism in your prayers, it was as if you were not praying.”

In 1980, Bluefields erupted in three days of violent protest after the Sandinista government announced that additional Cuban teachers and doctors would arrive to join the estimated 300 already here. Scores of the crowd of about 5,000 demonstrators were arrested, but most of the Cuban teachers were eventually withdrawn.

Attitudes began to shift when Hurricane Joan leveled much of the city in October, 1988, and Cuban relief planes were the first to land. Five months later, 300 Cuban workers started a $20-million project to build 1,000 homes.

After Chamorro’s newspaper, La Prensa, criticized the housing project as a Cuban plot to “colonize” the east coast, 15 Bluefilenos traveled to Managua to remind her that no one but Castro was helping.

Since her election, Chamorro has offered to have friendly relations with all countries. Her aides say Cuba is no exception, even though they do not expect any warmth from Castro.

The Cuban leader began to define the new relationship last week by announcing that military assistance to Nicaragua will end before Chamorro takes office April 25. The future of other aid programs depends, he said, on whether she accepts them and can guarantee the safety of Cuban aid workers.

Chamorro’s top adviser on coastal affairs, Alvin Guthrie, a veteran of the anti-Cuban uprising here, said the president-elect has no problem with that.

“The Cubans can definitely stay and continue doing their jobs as long as they don’t interfere in our local problems,” he said.

The 200-member Cuban medical mission, headquartered in Managua, is awaiting a formal commitment from the new government. Meanwhile, six Cuban doctors ending their two-year rotation have left for Havana and have not been replaced. Other doctors, including all 14 stationed in Puerto Cabezas, have been summoned to Managua, according to the mission, to keep them safe from the U.S.-backed Contras.

But at the 120-bed Sandino hospital here, the Cubans are back at work on a heavy patient load.

“I don’t know what would happen without them,” said Dominga Diaz, who was in the waiting room with her ailing daughter.

Weil, the hospital director, said a sudden departure of the highly specialized Cuban doctors would cause “very grave problems.”

For example, he said, none of his Nicaraguan doctors, all recent medical school graduates, are trained to perform Cesarean sections.

Eight doctors from Bluefields have left Nicaragua in the past decade, but Weil said he doubts they will be returning soon.

“We’re going to need the Cuban doctors for a time,” said Marvin Taylor, a local leader of Chamorro’s National Opposition Union.

He said Cuban doctors are not held in the same suspicion as Cuban teachers, the main targets of the 1980 riots.

“A Cuban doctor, they’re going to cure your body but not your brain,” Taylor said. “But it’s not possible for a Cuban to teach you and not try to cure your brain.”

Indeed, the Cuban doctors here come across as dedicated, apolitical professionals. Over dinner of squid, rice and fried plantains at their residence, they spoke with admiration of American medical technology and affection for the Bluefilenos , whom they regard as kin.

Asked about Castro’s growing political isolation in the world, Ernesto Diaz Trujillo, a 40-year-old intensive care specialist, said he hopes that will not undermine his medical mission.

“Each country has to determine its own way,” he said. “If you drink white wine and I drink red, there’s no reason we can’t toast.”

At the headquarters of the Jose Marti Construction Brigade, supervisor Mario Cuervo was equally bullish about the Cuban housing project.

“It would be painful to leave this work unfinished,” Cuervo said.

So far, 100 prefabricated homes have been put up on three tracts around the city, each with running water and sewer connections. Luxurious by local standards, the houses are free for Bluefilenos helping to build the first 120. Another 360 residents are working for wages and learning a trade.

“With 100 years of working hard before, we never could get a house like this,” said Juana Borge Mayorga, showing a visitor her new three-room dwelling on a ridge overlooking the Caribbean.

Borge, now pregnant with her seventh child, worked 15 years with her husband in a fish plant until Hurricane Joan “picked us clean,” destroying the plant and their waterfront shack.

“The Cuban people have good hearts,” she said. “We hope they stay. There are lots of people still waiting for houses.”

Leaders of Chamorro’s coalition, which outpolled the Sandinistas on the coast, said they doubt that the Cubans will finish the houses. They have begun seeking American aid to rebuild Bluefields.

“With all the problems Cuba has getting aid from the East Bloc, I think it will be difficult for them to stay here,” Guthrie said. “But I hope they stay. It will be an experience for them. They will see how we practice democracy.”