CUBA AUTHORIZED TO THE DR HILDA MOLINA TO TRAVEL TO ARGENTINA

Hilda Molina

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced that Hilda Molina, a Cuban-Argentine physician who was not allowed to leave the communist country, had received an authorization from Havana to visit her family in Argentina.

"I wanted to tell you the good news," the president told journalists over the telephone.

Since 1994, Molina had repeatedly asked that the Cuban government grant her an authorization to visit her son, Roberto Quiñones, who left the island years ago and currently lives in Argentine with his wife and two children. The communist government had rejected the possibility on the basis that the doctor's knowledge was "Cuban property."

"Molina is at the Argentine Embassy in Havana, with her passport with an authorization to leave the country," said the President, who described the decision of the Cuban government as "an important gesture from President Raúl Castro."

Fernández de Kirchner did not specify when would Molina arrive in Argentina.

Molina, aged 67, was a high-ranked member of the Cuban Communist party, a member of the Legislative Assembly and the director of one of the most important clinics in the island.

However, in 1994 she distanced from the leaders of the party as a result of differences regarding the administration of the clinic. That year, Molina resigned to her post in the health centre and the legislature, as a way of protesting the government's health policies.

Unofficial sources said the possibility of granting her a travel permit was one of the issues discussed at a private meeting between the President and Castro in January. On that occasion, the President also visited the ailing former leader of the Caribbean island and brother of President Castro, Fidel Castro.

Dr. Hilda Molina was once a leading figure in the development of Cuba’s state-run health care system. Hailed in the official press as a “great scientist,” photographed repeatedly with Fidel Castro, and elected to the national Congress, Dr. Molina, a neurologist, founded the International Center for Neurological Restoration (Centro Internacional de Restauración Neurológico, CIREN) in 1988 to coordinate Cuba’s neuroscientific work.

I began sending ceaseless letters to the Ministry of Public Health, the Attorney General’s Office, the Council of State, the Immigration Department, and finally, three years later, in 1997, they responded,” Dr. Molina told Human Rights Watch. “A military officer from the Immigration Department told me that I could not go because my brain was the property of this country.” Three years later, after Dr. Molina sent further letters to the government, the same officer again told her verbally that she could not leave “because it was an order that must be obeyed,” she said. Dr. Molina never received a response in writing.¹⁹

In December 2004, Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa pressed Havana to allow Dr. Molina to travel. President Kirchner sent Castro a personal letter asking that the Cuban leader grant Dr. Molina’s grandchildren, by that time three and nine years old, the opportunity to meet her.²⁰ Castro replied by offering to allow Dr. Molina’s son, Dr. Roberto Quiñones, and his family to visit Havana instead. But Dr. Quiñones declined this offer, fearing what might happen upon their arrival. He himself had had difficulties leaving the country in 1994 and did not want to risk being subject to any form of retaliation.²¹

Since she resigned from CIREN, Dr. Molina has had no source of income other than the remittances sent by her son in Argentina. She suffers from a wrist injury which was not properly set in 2002, causing significant muscle atrophy and pain. In addition, she cares for her own eighty-six-year-old mother, who is ill and nearly blind. She and her son have continued to request that she be allowed to leave and return to Cuba without restriction.²²