Augusto Monterroso was a Honduran author who wrote the shortest short story ever written in any language. In the same book where that story was published, another fictional short story about brain drain appeared. This satirical piece started by saying:

The brain drain phenomenon has always existed, but it seems that nowadays it is beginning to be thought of as a problem. However, it is common knowledge, and sufficiently established by universal experience, that every brain worth anything at all either leaves on its own, or is taken away by someone else, or is sent into exile. In fact the first is the most common, but as soon as a brain comes into being it finds itself in a position to benefit from any one of these three possibilities. (Monterroso 2011)

Now, as Monterroso also says, no one takes our “brains” away, and if it happens is in a very low scale, because our “brains” just leave whenever they can, mostly due to there are unappreciated in Latin America (Monterroso 2011). Sadly that is another truth, one with many factors to analyze, but a truth at last. Behind the story of each brain that was “drained” was one that was misused. This paper underscores some considerations about the “brain drain” situation in Cuba and the United States policy towards this issue. It also provides some background for the better understanding of this phenomenon and its relationship with the developed-undeveloped countries duality.

The phrase “brain drain” was coined in the 1960s, when the United States began to hoard UK doctors. In that case, one developed country took advantages of another; the US emerged from the Second World War in 1944 with 80 percent of the world’s gold reserve in bullions; the UK had been severely hit and deprived of its empire during the course of the war. Today economic and social statistics show that “brain drain deals a double blow to weak economies, which not only lose their best human resources and the money spent training them, but then have to pay an estimated $5.6 billion a year to employ expatriates” (Castro 2007).

Meanwhile a World Bank report entitled, “International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain,” made public in October 2005, yielded the following results: “In the last 40 years, more than 1.2 million professionals from Latin America and the Caribbean have emigrated to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. An average of 70 scientists a day has emigrated from Latin America in the course of 40 years” (Cagral 2005).

The brain drain phenomenon has continued with globalization, leading to devastating impacts around the world. For example, there are 150 million people around the world involved in science and technology activities, and the 90 percent is concentrated in the seven most industrialized nations, like USA and UK, curiously the same nations where the terminology was coined. A number of countries, particularly small nations in Africa, the Caribbean and Central America, have lost over 30 percent of their population with higher education as a result of migration.

In recent years, encouraging this type of emigration has become an official state policy in a number of North countries, which use incentives and procedures especially tailored to suit this end. A clear example is the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act, approved by the US Congress in 2000, increased the temporary work visa (H-1B) allotment. The aim of this increase in the visa cap was to encourage the entry of highly qualified immigrants into the United States who could occupy positions in the high-technology sector. Though this figure was reduced in the 2005 fiscal year, the flow of professionals towards this country has remained steady. Similar measures were promulgated by the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia.

Turning now to Cuba, the country has a long way to escape this situation. The reality is that a lot of young people, especially educated professionals, are fleeing the island in droves. Tens of thousands have emigrated in the past two years. Even though the exodus has alarmed the government, it remains largely unreported, a taboo topic for state media. One of the reasons this topic is censured is due to its sensitive political implications. As the Journalist Harold Dillas wrote about this phenomenon,

If Cuba has technical resources that exceed its economic need owing to the hypertrophy of the educational system and the reduction of its bureaucratic apparatus, and if it has a social and economic system that frustrates people’s aspirations, it’s understandable that people will emigrate with their degrees in hand. (Dillas 2012)

However, there are also other factors that exceed the Cuban government’s will to solve the brain drain. Most of them are external factors and they are related with USA. Some data shows that between 1959 and 2004, Cuba has graduated 805,902 professionals, including medical doctors, and the United States’ unjust policy towards our country has deprived us of 5.16 percent of the professionals who graduated under the Revolution (Castro 2007). These numbers are from 2007, ten years ago, and so much has changed since then in Cuban-US policies.

The situation became so grave since then that even The New York Times published an editorial article in 2014 about the issue: “There is much to criticize about Washington’s failed policies toward Cuba and the embargo it has imposed on the island for decades. But the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which in the last fiscal year enabled 1,278 Cubans to defect while on overseas assignments, a record number, is particularly hard to justify” (New York Times 2014). It was hypocritical for the United States to value the contributions of Cuban doctors who assisted in international crises like the 2010 Haiti earthquake while working to subvert that government by making defection easy. As the editorial also stated “American immigration policy should give priority to the world’s neediest refugees and persecuted people. It should not be used to exacerbate the brain drain of an adversarial nation at a time when improved relations between the two countries are a worthwhile, realistic goal” (New York Times 2014).

On the other hand, the Cuban government has argued that it will not permit the emigration of professionals who are essential for national development, considering this as a measure to protect the country from the brain drain policies practiced by developed countries that negatively impact on Third World economies. “I believe –wrote Harold Dilla- that Cuba, like any other country in the world, has the right and is obliged to defend its human resources and the investments it has been made in them. But it cannot do this in just any manner” (Dilla 2012).

Perhaps Cuba needs to clearly lays out the rules that it is adopting for its protection. Measures like every professional must fulfill a national social service obligation to pay for their studies or else they should not receive their diploma. Otherwise they could financially reimburse the government if they don’t wish to perform any social service. But all of this should be quite clear and subject to contractual agreements.

The main reason for people inside and outside the country commonly forgets about the effects of USA policy on this issue is precisely because of the Cuban government’s stance on it. Governments shouldn’t have the right to prevent a person from leaving the country or returning freely for professional reasons, as well as no government should have the right to approve policies incentivizing brain drain. Therefore Cuban government should realize that every Cuban high-level professional is a veritable mine of knowledge, experiences and relationships; they represent authentic social capital that should be availed upon through positive policies. But maybe, if Cuba could find a way, not even the USA policies would make our “brain” leaves the Island, and then it would be added as an exception to Monterroso’s short story.

Bibliography

Caglar Ozden, Maurice Schiff. “International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain
Drain”. October 2005. http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTDECPROSPECTS/0,contentMDK:22756591~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:476883,00.html

Carrol, Rory. “Cuba suffers exodus of the best and the brightest as economy remains
in the doldrums” In The Guardian. May 9, 2010.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/09/cuba-raul-castro-emigration

Castro, Fidel. “The brain drain” In Cubadebate. July 17, 2007.
http://en.cubadebate.cu/reflections-fidel/2007/07/17/brain-drain/

Dilla Alfonso, Haroldo. “Cuban Immigration Reform & Brain Drain” In Havana
Times. October 31, 2012. http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=81250

Monterroso, Augusto. “La exportación de cerebros”. November 9, 2011.
http://www.taringa.net/post/arte/7866120/La-exportacion-de-cerebros-po
r-Augusto-Monterroso.html

It is so funny, and embarrasing, to see myself from audience the perspective. I laugh a lot actually because just now I realized what my parents and my best friends always told me about my way of making a point. In Cuba we have a precise word to describe that: guapería. But I don’t think there’s a word for that in English so I will go with the only thing I can think of is somehow similar to guapería, and it would be something like “rapper mode”.

I am not a quite, calm, Zen person; I do not know how to speak low or soft; and I do not have a girly voice. Instead I am very hyperactive, to loud and tuff, and my voice is in a very low range tone for a girl. So yes, I tend to sound impositive, and to maximized my gestures and to intimidate because it looks like if I were fighting….but I’m not! I just get excited when I am talking about something I care about. But still… it was super funny to see myself and notice what others see.

Perhaps one has to be a little bit of an actriz to stand in front of an audience and get lost in the moment and be patience with oneself and project what is in ones mind, because it so different the way you thing you are going to speak and react than the way you actually do it. And it takes a lot of practice, and a lot of confidence in order to be coherent, consistent, and make your point and to make the audience really undesrtand what you are saying.

I dont know if I can modified my loudness but I will definitely try to change my pojection, my guapería, my “rapper mode”, and of course, I will try to improve my English speaking skills, because that determines also the quality of anyone speech. I am sure that all of us, speaking in our native language are much better, so we need to learn how to be as good in English.

Sometimes I think you have to be Latin American to understand and feel in your whole body the magical essence of my south. At least you need to have a special soul, a very sensitive one, to picture the slaves in the palenques when the rhythm is playing; or the criollos praying to Caridad del Cobre for a better life; or the Mapuches fighting for their lands and rights; or Gardel singing “Volver” while a random couple dances tango; or just to understand the meaning of the yellow butterflies of Mauricio Babilonia and take it as a regular event.

I arrived here barely a month ago, and I remember noW my first class about Latin America in America, I mean, USA. It was an Economy class and the teacher told us to read Funes the Memorious by Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinian author, one of the best in Latin America. I was so excited and a little shocked because, what were the chances to read just that short story here? For me it was a well-known story, one of those I had been reading since the beginning of my love for Borges and Latin American literature. It was like facing the essential. And also it was a sign of destiny: one of the few book I took with me when I left Cuba was precisely a collection of Borges’s poetry, essays and short stories.

I read Funes again, and went to class hoping to have the most amazing discussion about the surreal character and his particular gift. Then I realized that the teacher and me were the only ones really captivated by the story, the way Borges told extraordinary things, narrated a continent in a few pages. In the end my classmates talked about economy, Latin America, Funes, but they hadn’t understood anything. They didn’t understand how Funes, the character, was the memory of things, the memory of people, the memory of my part of this great continent.

And I thought: what would happen if they read García Márquez? Would they feel something, anything? Would they care? Would their imagination burst with One Hundred Years of Solitude? In this novel, García Márquez created the trend of magic realism. He invented a new way to talk about Latin America, and put into words the most authentic soul of our history and traditions. My classmates, studying Latin American issues, didn’t know _ and they still don’t _ who that man was.

Because of that novel I really felt as part of the land for the first time. It happened more than ten years ago, reading the story of Coronel Aureliano Buendía’s family, killed by fire, born and raise in Macondo, a little town lost in the middle of nowhere, blessed and cursed by their people and the universe and by history, with a common life full of normal magic events, just like Latin America. That time I could felt in my bones the weight of an entire civilization. I saw how people believe without any god or with all of them; or the way of dying is grew a pair of wing out of nothing and just fly to the sky; and the way of love is turned into a millions of yellow butterflies; and live is just a matter of curiosity, but in a big, transcendental way, that turns out to be just the normal, obvious way to do it.

One year after reading García Márquez’s novel –I was 14 years old– a friend of mine invited me to my first toque de santo, an afrocuban religious ceremony where people offered food, music and dancing to yoruba saints. It is the moment to sacrifice animals as an offer and to communicate with those saints. These ceremonies usually are an overwhelming experience for the beginners because of the animal’s blood, the strong music of batá drums and the unnatural force of the dancers. There is a spiritual violence in the performances, like an aggression, but it is actually just a very personal feeling and a demonstration of individual faith.

Afterwards, my English friend and I started to talk about it, and I was shivering, and shocked, trying to process what I had seen because it had been very powerful to me. But he, well, he was only excited with the experience. For him had been just another exotic thing to watch in Cuba. For him had been a bunch of black people getting crazy with some music.

He couldn’t felt the rumba in his blood; the saint’s words speaking through human’s mouth; the ancient deaths embodying live men. He couldn’t felt the magical essence of a strongly rooted tradition, a deeply ingrained faith. And more than that, he couldn’t felt the history behind that ceremony, years and years of slavery and struggle and fighting to reach freedom.

Like my English friend, my American classmates from USA can’t feel those tradition, perhaps because they are not their own, perhaps they get lost in translation. The difference is that my English friend was just visiting Cuba as a tourist, and my classmates want to change the world and help other countries and people. But how can you help others if you can’t get into their world, their tradition, their culture? I know, there is a difference between feeling and understanding, but sometimes just understanding is fine; it could be the first step to reaching my south, that part of the world beyond USA border.