Edited with Canva.
Hello, hivers. Today, in The Latin American Report, we comment on the relations between Paraguay and Taiwan, which block the South American nation from connecting diplomatically with China; and then we stop in Brazil, where Lula has once again boosted an ambitious and sometimes controversial health program that benefits mostly the most remote and neglected communities. So, let me tide over the reporting task now.
Since Honduras earlier this year jumped ship from the now dozen countries that defy China by recognizing Taiwan, Paraguay is one of the last two relevant allies in Latin America left to the Asian country —the other being Guatemala—, in response to historical and ideological rather than perhaps economic ties that conservative President-elect Santiago Peña has stated and firmly demonstrated he will uphold. This Saturday, on a visit to Taipei, Peña said that Taiwan offers better prospects than China to push Paraguay's economy forward, although the critical agricultural sector —ideological bias aside— has long been pressing for a sharp turn at the helm to make viable its potential soybean and beef exports to the Chinese market, which they consider more advantageous. Peña stated that technically his country has no restrictions with China, and that they would like to trade more with the Asian giant, but that they can´t depend on a single market due to the imbalance between both economies, a concern that, despite taking the firm step of changing Taipei for Beijing, is also hovering over Tegucigalpa. The path to growth that the young economist foresees is obvious: create industrial infrastructure to generate added value to agricultural productions. But the latter is something that China can do as well and has surely proposed.
The candidate who competed against Peña had considered in his statements the option of following in Honduras' footsteps, alluding that he did not see a balance between the costs and benefits of sustaining the alliance. However, Paraguay —in fact, one of the ten largest suppliers of beef and soybeans in the world— manages to place a volume of its exports in China through third parties, although for example last year they amounted to an unrepresentative 22 million dollars, in a sidereal imbalance with imports from China, which totaled about 4,700 million dollars.
President-elect Santiago Peña in Taipei (source).
Brazilian President Lula da Silva recovered —from his more left-oriented perspective, oriented to public spending— a program that under his influence was introduced by his political heir Dilma Rousseff, and which had as one of its flags the participation of hundreds of Cuban doctors. The latter was a point of tension internally and also from outside, with a lot of actors including Washington accusing the PAHO-Cuba-Brazil triad of "enslaving" or coercing to "forced labor" the 11,000 Cuban doctors who were involved (there are lawsuits in progress against PAHO for its role in particular, acting as an intermediary between the Brazilian government and Cuba to facilitate the payments). Jair Bolsonaro bought the argument and effectively ended the effort once he came to power.
Lula promulgating the new version of the program (source).
It all boils down to the fact that the Cuban government has historically withheld most of the income from the hiring of doctors who provide services abroad, under the concept that what they receive is a stipend and not a salary. But doctors voluntarily attend these "missions", and even under these highly debatable conditions —I personally think they are too disadvantageous—, they have obtained income that has enabled them to ostensibly improve their quality of life. I have the same close relatives and friends who were in this program and in others, and I can directly defend this. For example, when many years ago it was said over and over again that the average salary in Cuba was 20 dollars, without context, that was a fact but it was misleading as well, because the first thought of a citizen in any country was what he could do there with that, but those conditions could not be extrapolated to Cuba. Something similar happened to discuss the payments received by Cuban professionals abroad. Although their income was quite small about the total amount they were entitled to in principle, with those dividends they were in a very advantageous position in the Cuban context. This new stage opened by Lula, that in any case will favor the training and employment of Brazilian professionals instead of hiring abroad, will cover the provision of health services to 96 million people, with the participation of 28,000 professionals.
This is all for our forty-fourth report. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
Edited with Canva.
