Cuban researcher María Werlau, founder and executive director of Archivo Cuba, was recognized this Monday as a “heroine” by the US State Department, as part of the 2024 Human Trafficking Report, presented the day before by said institution. Along with nine other people, Werlau was honored “for her individual work in the fight against human trafficking.”
U.S. Special Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking Cindy Dyer said recognition of Werlau is justified for “her persistent and courageous efforts to amplify the voices and stories of survivors of forced labor and slavery.” exploitation in Cuba’s labor export program, including its medical brigades.”
“It is a great opportunity to take this issue beyond the Cuban community,” Werlau told Martí Newswhile emphasizing the importance of the US keeping the Cuban regime in the worst category of said report, level 3, then, he said, “There are many people who still do not know that doctors and export workers are modern slaves and the main source of income for the dictatorship”.
“Even my colleagues who have received this recognition did not know that there are Cuban medical missions in some of those countries, so it is a great boost,” he added and celebrated that the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, together with Dyer, pointed out that “Cuba is not making significant efforts” to change its situation regarding this issue.
“This helps us make countries realize that Cuban medical brigades and workers abroad are a propaganda instrument of the dictatorship to extract incometo stay in power and to intervene and influence the countries where these supposed medical brigades are sent,” Werlau stressed.
In this sense, the researcher founded the Cuba Archive project in 2001, as a non-profit organization established in Washington, DC, whose mission is promote human rights through research And the information.
Werlau, furthermore, She is the author of the book The forgotten victims of Che Guevara, in which he included unpublished testimonies about the Argentine’s “dogmatic and ferocious personality to kill.” Werlau’s father and his two brothers were in Che’s troop and told him that the Argentine “was brave, he fought, unlike Raúl and Fidel, who ran.” They also told her that Guevara did not hesitate to “order people to be killed for anything, like lighting a cigarette at night when it was prohibited because they could be discovered,” the researcher told DIARIO DE CUBA in 2021.
Regarding the current opposition to the regime in Cuba, he said on that occasion that it should collect demands from the entire population and incorporate them into a social movement with citizens, who may not even know their rights.
“Now in Cuba there can be the opportunity for the regime to destabilize itself from the top”, considered. That, together with the boredom of Cubans, can cause a situation of disaster that will bring “a transition that, hopefully, will be peaceful.”
