Opinion | Cuba’s Power Grab Inside Washington

Cuba is working to get control of PAHO, an arm of the World Health Organization, for the same reason that China wants to control the WHO itself: A public-health authority that can be used in a nontransparent manner is a powerful vehicle for propaganda and maybe worse.

President Biden has announced a new U.S. initiative with PAHO to fund the preparation of 500,000 medical personnel in the region over the next five years, and Havana is licking its chops. Unless the U.S. recovers PAHO’s integrity and transparency, the program is likely to be used by the regime to deploy many more human intelligence assets around the region disguised as “healthcare workers.”

Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico are now headed by socialists, and most are friendly with

Vladimir Putin.

On Aug. 7, with the inauguration of former M-19 guerrilla

Gustavo Petro,

Colombia will join the left-wing rat pack. In recent weeks, followers of José Carlos Mariátegui—founder of the Communist Party in Peru, who preached “Indo-American socialism”—have been blocking roads in Quito in an effort to bring down Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso.

The survival or revival of democratic institutions in the region largely depends on the courage and commitment of the locals. But the U.S. can help by pushing back against power grabs like the one Cuba is making for PAHO.

The export of Cuban medical workers to foreign countries where they are paid slave wages, stripped of their passports, denied family visits and local friendships, and forced to live under constant surveillance is no ideological theory. Venezuela’s independent daily TalCual reported this month that 17 Cubans who had been enslaved as healthcare workers in that country were caught trying to cross the Colombian border. The news outlet said that at least six were returned to Cuba, where they face prison sentences of up to eight years.

A complaint filed in U.S. federal court in Washington by four Cuban victims of Havana’s human trafficking offers first-person testimony about life inside the notorious “medical missions” run by Cuban intelligence. The class-action lawsuit alleges that Brazilian Workers’ Party President

Dilma Rousseff

used PAHO as a financial intermediary to hide payments to Havana for their work. The second amended complaint of May 12, 2020, states that the trafficked medical personnel were “paid only a fraction—10% or less—of the fees the Brazilian Government paid PAHO for their services, while PAHO paid at least 85% to the Cuban government, and retained a brokerage fee of 5% for itself.”

According to the complaint, “the Ministry of Health acknowledged the payments to PAHO and that the retention of a large fraction of the salaries earned by the Cuban medical personnel, and PAHO’s payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Cuban government, was never reported officially.”

Earlier this year the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a federal judge’s November 2020 ruling that PAHO doesn’t enjoy “absolute” immunity to allegations related to commercial activity in the U.S. PAHO told me in April that it “had no role in trafficking or forced labor,” but it is making a second jurisdictional challenge.

This is what makes the candidacy of Mexican

Nadine Gasman

for the top job at PAHO absurd. Her husband,

Joaquín Molina,

is a former Cuba representative to PAHO and one of the defendants, along with PAHO, in the class-action lawsuit. Mr. Molina is now an adviser to Mexico’s President

Andrés Manuel López Obrador,

who wants to bring forced Cuban labor to Mexico.

Seeking prestige, Brasilia is backing

Jarbas Barbosa

for the post, despite his vocal 2013 support for using Cuban medical personnel as forced labor in Brazil. He’s not named as a defendant in the class-action lawsuit, but Brazilian

Alberto Kleiman

is. The complaint alleges that as a consultant to the Brazilian health ministry, Mr. Kleiman helped cook up the “criminal conspiracy” and later became a PAHO official. Mr. Barbosa was in charge of the oversight office of Brazil’s health ministry at the time. Mr. Kleiman’s lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

When Brazil’s President

Jair Bolsonaro

took office in 2019 he said he’d pay Cuban workers directly rather than paying Havana. The Cuban regime ended the program in Brazil.

As the largest contributor to PAHO by far, the U.S. has a responsibility to see that the institution is a force for good. A smart place to start would be to reject Ms. Gasman and Mr. Barbosa.

Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.