Cuban kharisiris?

Ok, sort of a cheap-shot provocative title to get ya’ll to read this. But that doesn’t change the content of the long article published in Wednesday’s La Razón.

A young woman from Oruro, Beatriz, who three years ago obtained a scholarship to a Cuban medical school, died while abroad. Her parents were told that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. When her body was returned to the family in Bolivia, they had an autopsy performed and found most of her internal organs had been removed, including her brain. Her sister claimed that Cuban authorities wanted to perform an autopsy in El Alto, using Cuban doctors, but instead the family was able to conduct the autopsy in the Hospital de Clinicas.

The article quotes family members as saying that they told authorities they did not want anything to be taken from the body (using the term sacar). It also asserts that the Cuban authorities are threatening to break off diplomatic ties with the home municipality of the family if the family members continue investigating.

The article ends by delineating a case from 2002, almost identical to this one.

Let’s look structurally at what happened: a young woman died while far away from her family, in a country that provides significant health care aid to Bolivia. Beatriz was young, so her death was unexpected. No one close to her knows the details of what happened. When her body arrived, her family was suspicious enough to demand an autopsy conducted by non-Cuban doctors. They found that most of her organs had been removed. The family then claims that they were threatened and told to keep it quiet by Cuban authorities.

Regardless of if Beatriz’ organs “really” were stolen – though I am inclined to think something fishy happened – I cannot help but be reminded of the figure of the kharisiri.  Kharisiris have often been represented as outsiders, as whites, even sometimes as doctors.  Usually they are visitors to a community in the Andes, where they then suck out the fat and life source of their victims.  Here, we have bodies being returned to Bolivia from Cuba with their vital organs – the ones fundamental to life itself – missing.

Who better to suck fat and take vital substances than doctors, with their intimate knowledge of the human body? And where better to do so than away from the watchful eyes of kin, when the victim is herself also training to be doctor and not suspicious of health care settings?

I wonder if this narrative is an updated (post-millennial?) version of the kharisiri story, one modified and suited for mobile, increasingly urban and transnational populations.  At least that’s one relatively simplistic reading. The figure of the fat-suckers are marked by nationality and occupation – Cuban doctors. (Remember the hesitance by Beatriz’ family to have Cuban doctors working in El Alto perform the autopsy.) That Cubans are now the subject of fear, anxiety, and suspicion is new to me if not, upon reflection, surprising, as rumors that Cubans are taking over the medical establishment and/or are working as spies have caused controversy before (meaning that alignments and alliances between countries in the Latin American left are more complex and problematic than is often assumed by casual observers).

After all, Beatriz was from Curahuara de Carangas, Oruro, not a major urban center, yet she was able attend a Cuban medical school (belying stereotypical if outdated assumptions of rural populations being static or fixed in place).  This is consistent with analyses – most notably by Mary Weismantel – that discuss the kharisiri as a potent distillation of the fears, anxieties, and understandings of the operative power relationships under capitalism.    Here the Cubans, then, are the ones holding the purse strings, power, and promise of a better future if you follow their rules and do so on their turf.  No longer does the kharisiri find you in your natal community, entering as an outsider, but rather you are always a target by virtue of leaving your community.  The need to do so, of course, is often driven by economic forces beyond one’s control.