La Comunal, Guantánamo. - Unmasked ruffians, runaways of a page of Bohemia of April 15, 1972, 72 years ago, Don Juan and the "healer of Piñi" suddenly come to mind, in this community of Realengo 18.
In remote places like this one, and in years like 1953, from which they come, the darkness of the time guaranteed a "sugar cane harvest" without downtime, into the pockets of the swindlers and those who protected them out of convenience.
Don Juan Rodríguez was from Cienfuegos, and "the healer of Piñi" was from Potrerillo, a former location of Las Villas; vulgar impostors with a halo of miracles. With his sharp pen, Samuel Feijóo exposed them.
Neither of the two characters has anything to do with Liliana, the doctor who walks smiling through the rural geography of La Comunal, Realengo 18. The memory of seeing the young woman flashes back to the past and contrasts with the reality that some would like to erase from memory.
The comparison came silently, as if brought by the sleeplessness of Liliana Montoya Bou, guardian of the health of the 418 people who live in 151 homes throughout the hostile geography of La Comunal. If only Samuel Feijóo could see her! Perhaps he would rest free of his indignation for the mockery that he denounced in Bohemia more than 70 years ago.
OBLIVION, DECEIT, STRANGE RECIPES AND A DENUNCIATION
"Don Juan Rodríguez", says Feijóo, "practiced his healing on Good Fridays, all night long". For patients with hernia or asthma, depending on the case, he would place their bare feet on the roots of a ceiba tree or measure their height with a string; "magic" that, it was said, "cured the patient". But, "not a single case of healing was verified," the writer-journalist complained. Every year a greater number of asthmatics and hernia patients returned".
Another terrible episode involved "the healer of Piñi, who, accused of the death of a child from Potrerillo", denied his guilt. He did not admit to charging for his "services", nor did he want to be photographed. But, "we took pictures of his brick house, with a power plant, water pump and television in the middle of the mountain!", says Samuel.
Later he learned that the little sorcerer had "more than 80,000 pesos, three farms, a hotel, various comforts, and faithful fans that support him. This money came from heaven", he joked, and he even went to San Juan de los Yeras to find a doctor who knew what had happened.
"That vulgar healer killed the child -said the doctor- powerful influences have moved to defend the villain, because he can find more than 300 votes among the sick; the politicians support and protect him". This is the embryonic key to evil.
Under the protection of such low passions, in the shadow of such cruel indifference, in collusion with politicians and demagogues, a plague of charlatans was able to turn poverty and ignorance into a business.
The "cures", denounced by Samuel Feijóo, still hurt. They are a disgusting mockery of swindlers, for a multitude of sick, ignorant and marginalized people without access to medical services. "Barbaric recipes" the writer called them: "For pneumonia: horse manure boiled with pumpkin flowers; for listlessness, a decoction of pigeon droppings".
For choking, "a poultice of pig excrement with edible oil; and entrails of roasted vultures, if the disease is asthma".
The accuser traveled the fields of the Island, his rebellious pen punishing this situation like a whip, a frequent cause of unexplained deaths.
FROM DECEPTIVE ABUSE TO TRUTHFUL HUMANISM
According to Feijóo’s account, when the healer of Piñi was asked about his alleged responsibility for the death of a child, he gave a cynically sincere answer: "if the doctors want to fight intrusiveness, they should give free appointments to the poor, without distinction; they will see".
A rooster can't crow louder. Health in Cuba was a privilege of the elite, a business, an unattainable utopia for the humble masses, especially if they lived in remote places where everything began and ended with campaign promises.
Perhaps no pen, like that of Pablo de la Torriente Brau in Realengo 18, has better described this reality of the Cuban countryside and the indifference of the powers that be: "As for the "services" of the Health Secretariat – criticized by the author of Tierra o Sangre (Earth or Blood) – they are limited to authorizing the good mountain wind to purify the environment and to maintain the empire of the whipworm and the tropical flea of the dirt-floored bohíos".
A year and five days had passed since Fulgencio Batista's coup d'état, when Samuel Feijóo denounced the official neglect of the health in most of the Island. Three months and 11 days remained before the Moncada attack.
"It is inconceivable is that there are children who die without medical care", Fidel said before the court that tried him for the events of July 26. Five years later, one month and two days after the triumph, he returned to the subject in front of a crowd in Guantánamo. "You go to the countryside and you find uninhabitable bohíos, which are breeding grounds for parasitism and all kinds of diseases".
THE REMEDY
Fidel was stung by this reality; he began to change it. His first major milestone came to light on January 23, 1960, with the Rural Medical Service, which became the pillar of a health system often cited as a model by international organizations of the highest credibility.
The pioneers of this program were the 357 health care professionals who were deployed to hard-to-reach geographic areas. The expansion and impact of this service was remarkable. Statistics show that between December 1960 and June of the following year, just over one million patients were served by doctors in rural areas of the country.
Health education and vaccination programs, as well as the first campaigns against polio and malaria, are among the main results of this initiative, which has also led to an increase in institutional deliveries and prenatal care for pregnant women, thus helping to reduce infant and maternal mortality.
Rural hospitals were created for the program, which emphasized preventive medicine from the beginning and laid the groundwork for the 1984 initiative with the Family Doctor and Nurse Program. The vaccination campaigns against 13 diseases, as well as the prevention campaigns, testify to this experience and its usefulness.
The qualitative growth has also been numerical. Today, of the nearly 11,550 clinics on the Island, more than 3,500 cover rural areas. Almost a third of them are located in the Turquino Plan.
Granma International went to one of them, La Comunal of Realengo 18, where it witnessed Liliana's talk about the condition of 18-month-old Liander, who looked up at her from the arms of Yaniris, his pregnant mother in her twenties.
When Yaniris and Liander left, the 27-year-old, the specialist in General Medicine went to look for the hamlet. She stopped at the home of four-year-old Eddy Jesús, examined him and pampered him. Then, at the home of Raudenia, who lives alone and is ill, she took her blood pressure and encouraged her.
A few days later, during the October disaster in Guantánamo, Liliana came to mind in San Antonio del Sur, in the care of some doctors from Ciego de Ávila, who were attending to an old man who was overwhelmed by the disappearance of his daughter, who has been swept away by the floods. She was seen aboard a helicopter and reproduced in Tania María, the young pediatrician who saved lives in remote places in Imías.
In times of siege, of harassment, of scarce resources, she is seen in her rural practice, overflowing with humanity. Thanks to young people like Liliana, who are thousands, tens of thousands, soulless like Don Juan and the "healer of Piñi" will never return to this Island.
OFFICIAL VOICE OF THE COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CUBA CENTRAL COMMITTEE
