Cuba: Hard New Life

(2 of 2)

Many Cuban doctors have settled in Chicago, lured by the city's shortage of physicians, supporting themselves by doing medical research and laboratory work while they study for licenses. The Cubans must first pass a state examination prescribed for foreign physicians, then serve a year's internship, finally pass another state examination before they can practice. Says one 32-year-old University of Havana medical school graduate: "I am glad to start again. It is not easy, but it is better than to be there."

Learn Russian. Back "there" last week.

Cuba's Communist dictatorship branded the fleeing professionals (half of the nation's doctors are gone) as "traitors" and announced that their citizenship was to be revoked. To guard his new Cuba against such treachery, Castro announced that another 1,672 Cuban youths will soon sail to be "educated" behind the Iron Curtain. He also said that he would import 100 Soviet professors to teach Cubans a new language—Russian.