Despite 'El Bloqueo,' Americans Go to Cuban Medical School

HAVANA--At odds with the United States since 1959 and determined to hold his ground until the end, Fidel Castro's parting gift to a world fed up with America's superiority complex may well be batches of young Americans who survive medical school in Cuba.

I traveled to Havana to learn about the students' odyssey from my friend Carmen Landau, who was among the first Americans invited into the Latin American School of Medical Science (ELAM). That's Fidel Castro's public health diplomacy project that offers free medical training to 5,000 young people from the Americas and Africa. The young Americans I met said a free medical education was a dream that couldn't come true in the United States, but did here.

With little to no supervision or mentoring, the first 26 young American students were billeted in an old naval academy, now the ELAM campus on the outskirts of Havana. Unlike the students from Latin America and Africa, the Americans were given refrigerators in their dorm rooms, trotted out for diplomatic visitors and interviewed on television.

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