Blood money: The Cuban regime's secret industry

According to Susana Gaviña of Spain’s ABC, the legacy of 60 years of socialism in Cuba is nothing more than a parasitic economy that is incapable of generating wealth on its own.

From Soviet aid to Venezuelan oil, Cuba’s communist regime has long sought methods to keep its finances afloat without worrying about generating a long-term development model.

In recent months, however, economic troubles and decreased foreign aid has “led the Cuban government to intensify foreign trade in some of its star products, such as the sale of blood and blood derivatives, without the knowledge of Cuban donors.”

Blood is just one of the many human products sold by the regime. Foreign governments – and corporations – can also buy the services of doctors, engineers, educators, sailors or athletes.

But in recent years, Cuban NGO Archivo Cuba has been sounding the alarm about the blood trade – something that has gone generally undetected by the media.

Archivo Cuba Director Maria Werlau first learned about the vampiric practice in 2013, "through a journalist who called me to tell me that Cuba's first export to Uruguay was blood.”

“That's when I started to look into this topic,” she recalls.

According to Archivo Cuba, between 1995 and 2019, the regime received upwards of $800 million dollars for the sale of blood.

In 2011, for example, foreigners paid $63 million dollars for Cuban blood.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Cuba’s allies appear to top the customer lists and the majority of buyers hair from countries like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador.

Polemically, however, Cubans are largely unaware that their bodily donations are being sold on the black market. The regime regularly encourages its citizens to give blood in order to “save lives” on the island or to support humanitarian efforts abroad.

To bring light to the issue, Werlau is writing a book that addresses the Cuban regime’s sale of blood and other bodily parts on the black market. She will also explore the business behind health tourism, transplants and the biotech market in Cuba.