News · International
Sheinbaum denies Cuban doctors are paid more; Salazar asks Washington to invoke the USMCA
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on October 23 that it is “absolutely false” that Cuban doctors earn more than Mexican ones and that they are hired directly, a day after congresswoman María Elvira Salazar asked Washington to demand that Mexico dismantle the program during the review of the USMCA trade agreement.
Sheinbaum responded on Friday at her morning news conference to the reports about pay differences between Cuban and Mexican doctors: “It is false, absolutely false”. Cuban doctors, she said, “earn exactly the same as a Mexican doctor earns”, and hiring is done “directly and not through companies”, in remarks translated by Yamacoa.
The president cited figures attributed to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) on a doctor's net monthly income after the first year of work: 36,896 pesos before the announced raise and 39,120 pesos after it. She added that the Cuban specialists “help a great deal in many remote places where they are working, because there are no specialist doctors who will go to those places”.
A day earlier, Salazar sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, asking that during the review of the trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (USMCA, T-MEC in Spanish) Washington hold Mexico to account for the hiring of more than 3,000 Cuban doctors. “I urge you to do what no other United States presidential administration has done: inform the Mexican authorities that their use of Cuban forced labor constitutes a violation of the USMCA, and request that the government of Mexico dismantle that program and free these doctors”, wrote the Republican congresswoman from Florida's 27th district, in wording translated from the Spanish text of the letter.
In the letter, Salazar maintains that these professionals work “separated from their families, with travel restrictions and receiving only a tiny fraction, at times as little as 5%, of their salaries”, and recalls that the State Department's 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report describes Cuba's medical missions as a form of human trafficking. The congresswoman proposes that Mexico adopt the measure Jair Bolsonaro took in Brazil: paying the doctors directly.
Salazar also recalls that the USMCA states that the signatories “shall prohibit the importation into their territory of goods” produced with forced labor and that they recognize “the goal of eliminating all forms of forced or compulsory labor”.
Sheinbaum has kept toward Cuba the foreign policy of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador: she has sent oil to the island, stepped up the hiring of Cuban health professionals and expanded agreements to buy medicines made in Cuba, in addition to several shipments of humanitarian aid in recent months, according to Martí Noticias, an outlet of the United States government.
Sources: Martí Noticias · Milenio
Data updated: 2026-10-24T16:00:00.000Z