Mexico’s purchase of slave labor from Cuba a violation of USMCA

The labor protections in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement are very clear, yet Mexico chooses to ignore them and continues to purchase Cuban doctors enslaved by the communist Castro dictatorship. It is a blatant violation of the USMCA.

Arturo McFields explains in an Op-Ed in The Hill:

Mexico is violating USMCA by supporting exploitation of Cuban doctors

Mexico has not played fair. It had already violated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade by allowing China to use it as a back door for its exports. The new Mexican government is also weakening the legal framework of the country and undermining its own institutions.

And now, in the field of labor, Mexico is violating the agreement once again by receiving 199 Cuban doctors this month in a modern slavery scheme.

The USMCA is clear about its commitment to the protection of labor rights. Its preamble establishes the decision to “promote the protection and enforcement of labor rights, the improvement of working conditions, the strengthening of cooperation and the Parties’ capacity on labor issues.”

The Cuban medical missions are a direct violation of Article 23 of the USMCA which calls for “the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor.”

Earlier this year, a bipartisan resolution in Congress expressed great concern over the human rights violations under the Cuban international brigades. Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Chairwoman Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) denounced these missions as a new form of modern slavery.

In 2023, Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, warning that the “Involvement in these missions is a clear violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” and “also inconsistent with our nation’s commitment to fundamental freedoms and universal human rights.”

The letter sent by Rubio and Menendez also noted: “The Mexican constitution explicitly prohibits exploitation of persons through ‘slavery,’ ‘labor exploitation,’ and ‘forced labor or services.’”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has registered complaints about 64-hour work weeks, sexual harassment against female doctors and prison sentences of between three and eight years for those deserting from the “Cuban international missions.”

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