U.S. Relations With Cuba

Thank you for your June 2 Opinion article (“The Cuba Thaw,” by William A. Orme Jr.) and the June 3 editorial (“When Will Cuba Wake Up to Reality?”). Just this past February I visited Cuba with a delegation of physicians and attorneys. The medical people on our tour spent an intensive week looking at a wide range of health facilities and talking with Cuban colleagues. We found a health-care system that is arguably the best in Latin America. Life expectancy exceeds that of our country and the infant mortality is roughly equal to ours. There is a family doctor for every 120 families and Cubans seemed healthy, happy, relaxed and confident.

I saw not one picture or billboard of Fidel Castro anywhere. We saw perhaps 10 police officers the whole week we were there. We had late-night rum sessions with artists, dissidents and reform-minded Communist Party members. We honestly did not find the “oppressive communist system” your editorial mentioned. Cuba’s Latin-flavored socialism-in-the-sun is hardly dour Eastern European Stalinism.

To be fair, there is a long history of human rights problems in Cuba. There is great pressure for liberalization, not made any easier by the constant threat of U.S. invasion (remember the Bay of Pigs) and the U.S. trade embargo. The 30-year-old embargo has even affected Cuban health care. Actions have ranged from petty, spiteful acts, such as denying a Cuban pediatric heart surgeon a visa to attend a meeting at a U.S. hospital after he had spent a hard-earned 700 U.S. dollars to register for it, to life-threatening actions such as obstructing purchases of terbutaline, one of the few drugs not produced in Cuba, which prevents premature labor in pregnant women. Hardly something U.S. citizens and taxpayers can be proud of.

We also saw state-of-the-art medical equipment from Japan, Korea, Britain, France, Germany and Canada. When I stepped off the plane in Havana and walked out to our Swedish-made tour bus, I saw the car rental lot filled with brand-new Nissans. Our government’s policy is “protecting” our own corporations from making a profit in the 10-million-person market of Cuba. The people who are isolated are not Cubans, but U.S. citizens. Isn’t it time someone called a halt to this stupid policy?

STEPHEN F. TARZYNSKI, MD

Santa Monica