Cuba claims state `patrimony' to keep physician on island
 
By Gary Marx
Tribune foreign correspondent
 

HAVANA -- Hilda Molina says her brain belongs to her. Cuban authorities apparently think otherwise.

Molina, 62, claims a top immigration official gave her the word in 1997 and again in 2000: "You can't leave Cuba because your brain is the patrimony of the state."

Whether Molina's brain is hers may seem like a personal matter. So does the issue of whether she can travel to Argentina to visit her only child, whom she has not seen in 12 years, and meet, for the first time, her two grandchildren.

But Molina is no ordinary Cuban grandmother.

Once a leading physician, Communist Party member and national legislator, the physically slight but intense woman was a shining star in Cuban President Fidel Castro's effort to transform Cuba into a scientific power.

Castro personally backed Molina's effort to start a neurological rehabilitation institute, which under her guidance pioneered fetal tissue transplants and other treatments for patients with Parkinson's and other neurological disorders. But she broke with Castro more than a decade ago and became a harsh critic of Cuba's tightly controlled socialist system.

Since then, Cuban officials have refused to allow her to travel overseas, even to visit her son, Roberto Quinones, a 42-year-old neurologist who fled Cuba in 1994 to study abroad, and grandsons, Roberto Carlos and Juan Pablo, who are 10 and 4.

"The pain I feel is more than you can imagine," said Molina, sitting in the dimly lit apartment she shares with her infirm 87-year-old mother.

Cuban officials declined to comment for this story. But Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told an Argentine newspaper in 2004 that Molina would not be allowed to leave Cuba because her dissident activities are financed by the U.S. government, an accusation Molina denies.

Spain, Argentina join cause

Molina's high-profile campaign to visit her loved ones overseas has sparked years of controversy, criticism from human-rights groups and tension between Cuba and Argentina and other nations. As Molina spoke to a reporter last month, a Spanish Embassy employee knocked on her front door and handed her a letter from Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

In the letter, which Molina read aloud, Zapatero said Spain has taken up her case with Cuban authorities and would continue insisting that Cuba "authorize a trip to Argentina to visit your family."

"Ah! That's great," Molina exclaimed.

Yet beyond the personal story, Molina's case lays bare the collective nature of Cuba's socialist system, where individual rights are subsumed.

Castro has often said that while his country may be cash poor, it is rich in human capital. Everyone from doctors to engineers to artists receives free education, along with health care, subsidized rent and other benefits.

In return, Cubans are expected to repay society through a lifetime of work for salaries that rarely top $20 a month. They lose control over many aspects of their lives, including the right to travel overseas or relocate from one part of the country to another without permission.

Castro supporters argue that limiting overseas travel also is a way to slow the brain drain that has hurt many developing countries.

As a compromise, the Cuban leader proposed that Molina's son and his two children visit Havana. Castro guaranteed their safety even though Molina fears her son would be detained if he came back to the island.

But diplomatic sources say Castro's offer is unacceptable to Argentina as well as to experts such as Daniel Wilkinson, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch, who argues that Cuba's refusal to allow Molina to visit Argentina violates international law.

"The idea of people who are educated by the state having an obligation to contribute to society is perfectly sensible," said Wilkinson, who wrote a report last fall critical of Cuba's travel restrictions and President Bush's tightened sanctions against the island. "But this is an extreme measure that undermines the right of people to leave any country including their own. It is one of the most effective tools Cuban authorities have for intimidating people critical of the government."

For her part, Molina said she doesn't have any government secrets and, besides, her scientific knowledge belongs to "the international community, not to the Cuban government."

She fears Castro is pursuing a vendetta against her for breaking from Cuban officialdom. "He has not forgiven me," Molina said.

Raised in an upper middle-class family in central Cuba, Molina said she shared her father's enthusiasm for the revolution and earned her medical degree in 1975 before specializing in brain surgery.

In 1989, Molina founded what is now known as the International Center of Neurological Restoration in Havana, a prestigious 136-bed facility designed to provide advanced treatment to even the poorest Cubans.

Her falling out

Castro spoke at the institute's packed inauguration, which garnered a front-page headline in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily, that read, "An Institute of Enormous Human Importance."

Molina recalls an emotional Castro visiting the center and meeting with patients. And Molina frequently traveled overseas to conferences, where she shared her research with other top neuroscientists.

But, in 1994, Molina said she clashed with Cuban officials after they insisted the institute begin treating paying customers from overseas.

While authorities saw medical tourism as a way to make money after the Soviet Union's collapse devastated the Cuban economy, Molina believed the practice betrayed the revolution's precept of treating everyone equally.

"The biggest disgrace is that someone sick from another country is worth more here than a sick Cuban," she said.

Molina resigned as the center's director, abandoned her medical career, gave up her parliamentary seat and returned a box filled with medals she said Cuban authorities had awarded her over the years.

In the ensuing months, Molina said her telephone line was cut, her mail arrived opened and government agents followed her. Animal blood, trash and feces were left at her doorstep, she said.

"I became psychologically ill," she recalled. "I knew that it would be a long time before I would see my son and knew that I had lost my profession. My life had been mutilated."

Yet Molina says she is determined to continue her campaign to reunite with her family in Argentina.

"I'm not willing to surrender."
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gmarx@tribune.com

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