Hilda Molina | |
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| Born | Hilda Molina y Morejon |
| Occupation | Neurosurgeon |
| Notable work | founded the neurosurgery center in Havana |
Hilda Molina (born Hilda Molina y Morejon in 1943 in Ciego de Avila, Cuba) is the former chief neurosurgeon of Cuba. Molina was also a deputy in the Cuban National Assembly but has been a critic of the Cuban government since the early 1990s. Her criticisms focus primarily on Cuba's state-governed healthcare system.
In 1987, Molina founded the neurosurgery center in Havana. By 1991, her center had become one of the most important scientific centers in Cuba. The same year, Molina claims she was informed by the then Minister of Health, Julio Teja Perez, that her center was supposed to treat foreigners paying in U.S. dollars. Previously, the center had treated only Cuban patients. Molina subsequently resigned her position at the center and her seat at the National Assembly. Molina claims that she and her son were subjected to mob retaliation in what are termed "acts of repudiation". She had continuously been denied a visa to travel for personal as well as professional reasons until June, 2009 when permission was granted to visit family in Argentina. [1]
Molina had made any request to visit family in Argentina. In 2004, after Molina was again denied a visa by the Cuban government. This letter from Molina was forwarded to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and other international human rights groups. In the letter Molina stated: "The Cuban government impeded me from temporarily visiting Argentina for a reunion, after 11 years of forcible separation, with my son, who is a naturalized Argentine, and with his wife who is an Argentine citizen". She also listed numerous examples where she believed her rights had been violated by the Cuban authorities going on to state that "the arbitrary state organs that delay or deny, provoking the tearing apart of thousands of innocent families, that submerges them in paralyzing fear, so they are incapacitated to reclaim the respect for their rights most elemental." [2]
In July 2006, a week before Fidel Castro's illness led to the Cuban transfer of presidential duties to brother Raúl Castro, the Cuban President was questioned by international leaders and journalists on the issue whilst attending a conference in Argentina. Argentine President Néstor Kirchner took the opportunity to press the Cuban leader to allow Molina, a one-time Castro ally, to leave Cuba to be with her children and grandchildren already in Argentina. [3] At an improvised press conference, Miami's Channel 41 reporter Juan Manuel Cao asked Castro about Molina, a reportedly infuriated Castro asked the reporter, "Who is paying you?" and later accused him of being "a mercenary" for President Bush. [4]
In June 2009, it was reported that the Cuban government reversed its position and would allow Molina to visit Argentina. [5] Molina's story was inspirational to Marcos Aguinis' best selling novel La Pasion Segun Carmela. [6]
A signer of the Madrid Charter , Molina joined the Madrid Forum alliance of right-wing and far-right individuals organized by Spanish political party Vox. [7]
Molina, Hilda (2010). Mi verdad: de la Revolución cubana al desencanto : la historia de una luchadora (in Spanish). Planeta. ISBN 978-950-49-2289-6.
The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five, are five Cuban intelligence officers who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States. The Five were in the United States to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. They were part of La Red Avispa composed of at least 27 Cuban spies.
Orlando Bosch Ávila was a Cuban exile militant, who headed the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), described by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a terrorist organization. Born in Cuba, Bosch attended medical school at the University of Havana, where he befriended Fidel Castro. He worked as a doctor in Santa Clara Province in the 1950s, but moved to Miami in 1960 after he stopped supporting the Cuban Revolution.
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The Cuban dissident movement is a political movement in Cuba whose aim is to replace the current government with a liberal democracy. According to Human Rights Watch, the Marxist-Leninist Cuban government represses nearly all forms of political dissent.
Mirta Francisca de la Caridad Díaz-Balart y Gutiérrez is a Cuban woman who was the first wife of Fidel Castro. They married in 1948, had one son together, and divorced in 1955.
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Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba, Isla de la Juventud, archipelagos, 4,195 islands and cays surrounding the main island. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet. Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula (Mexico), south of both the American state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola, and north of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital. Cuba is the third-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with about 11 million inhabitants. But also the largest country in the Caribbean.
Mariela Castro Espín is the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana, as well as the National Commission for Comprehensive Attention to Transsexual People, and an activist for LGBT rights in Cuba. Castro is an outspoken advocate for the LGBT+ community as well as dissolving some of the antiquated stigmas and stereotypes that surround the community. She is the daughter of former Communist Party First Secretary Raúl Castro and feminist and revolutionary Vilma Espín, and the niece of former First Secretary Fidel Castro.
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Juana de la Caridad "Juanita" Castro Ruz was a Cuban-American activist and writer, as well as the sister of Fidel and Raúl, both former presidents of Cuba, and Ramón, a key figure of the Cuban Revolution. After collaborating with the Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba in 1964, she lived in the United States until her death.
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Polita Grau was the First Lady of Cuba, a Cuban political prisoner, and the "godmother" of Operation Peter Pan, also known as Operación Pedro Pan, a program to help children leave Cuba. Operation Peter Pan involved the Roman Catholic Church and Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh from 1960 to 1962, which were involved in encouraging Cuban parents to send their children to live with U.S families to rescue them from Communism.
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