Healthcare in times of crisis
HAVANA TIMES – Since late September, Cubans living abroad have had an easy way to contact Yimi Ferro, the “healer” from San Cristobal. All they have to do is message him on WhatsApp and transfer money to his Zelle account. Ferro then contacts the sick person on whose behalf the emigrant is intervening, speaks with them via video call, and sends them his blessings.
That concludes with the first part of the treatment. The second begins several days later, when the patient receives vitamins prepared by Ferro himself, which he claims can combat several deadly diseases, including cancer.
Every so often, Ferro features people in his videos who have supposedly recovered from deadly tumors. His blessings and vitamins allegedly brought them back to life when doctors had already given them up as hopeless cases.
“You made it [you survived] because you came to see me. You were at the Hermanos Ameijeiras [one of the country’s leading hospitals], but they didn’t know what to do with you. Luckily, your father called me and listened when I told him to bring you here without wasting a minute,” Ferro tells a young woman during one of his Facebook livestreams.
The young woman backs up his account, recalling that just three months earlier she could barely walk. In another broadcast, a middle-aged woman celebrates having been cured of breast cancer that had already metastasized to her brain and other parts of her body. According to her account, doctors had been astonished days earlier by the remission of her disease, which she attributed exclusively to Ferro’s spiritual intervention and his vitamins.
Each of these stories generates thousands of reactions on Facebook, the social network most frequently used by the healer from Artemisa Province, who lives near kilometer 70 of the highway connecting Havana with the western province of Pinar del Río. No further directions are needed to find his house, where hundreds of people often gather on Mondays and Fridays, the days he sees patients.
Each patient must bring 100 pesos (around 0.12 USD) and containers to take home the vitamin preparations Ferro prescribes. “We use these voluntary contributions to sustain the project and help many people in need,” he has repeatedly insisted.
However, no one audits the total amount of money collected or where it ultimately goes. Nor does anyone verify the accuracy of the diagnoses, the effectiveness of the treatments, or whether there have been cases in which Ferro’s interventions interfered with conventional medical procedures.
That last concern is not unfounded. Internationally, the case of technology magnate Steve Jobs, who died in 2011 from pancreatic cancer after delaying treatment for months in favor of alternative medicine, continues to be debated. In Cuba, few people would likely make such a decision voluntarily, but many find themselves forced into it by circumstances.
The island’s economic crisis has taken a devastating toll on public healthcare. Patients suffering from illnesses such as cancer are among the hardest hit. In mid-October, the government acknowledged that approximately 70 Cubans die each day from cancer and that 300 of the 395 medications on the country’s basic list of essential medicines are unavailable.
This situation has caused survival rates to plummet across all population groups, with the greatest impact on children and young people, whose chances of survival are now 20% lower than they were just a few years ago.
The Need to Believe
Faith in folk healers extends even to prominent figures in culture and sports. A year ago, actor Jorge Martínez devoted an Instagram post to describing his experience with Cristobal, a healer from the municipality of Fomento, in Sancti Spíritus Province, whom he had sought out for help in battling cancer that was threatening his life for the second time.
A decade earlier, the well-known actor had suffered from lung cancer. More recently, tumors reappeared, this time in his throat, with such aggressiveness that it seemed unlikely he would survive. Martínez turned to the country’s best specialists, relied on the support of friends and admirers, and explored alternative treatments.
That was how he learned about Cristobal, a middle-aged farmer visited by dozens of people on each of the days he offers consultations. “I have never said that this person was the one who cured me,” the actor clarified several times in his message, while emphasizing that the healer’s intervention had been a great help to him “at a very dark and difficult time.”
Their location in rural areas or on the outskirts of cities is one distinguishing characteristic of Cuba’s folk healers. Another is how short-lived their projects tend to be, at least those that attract the most media attention. It is not unusual for a healer to disappear from the public spotlight after gaining notoriety through a celebrity visit or widespread attention on social media.
That was what happened with Jorge Goliat, a Havana resident who, at the beginning of this decade, performed operations on dozens of people every day, armed with nothing more than a well-sharpened machete and an assortment of medicinal plants and herbal infusions.
When the Reuters news agency visited him at his modest home in the Abel Santamaría neighborhood in April 2021, more than a hundred people were patiently waiting to undergo one of his “X-rays,” produced from the marks left on a sheet of paper by a candle flame.
Using this contraption, Goliat claimed he could diagnose even the most complicated cases. Then, a superficial cut with his machete was supposedly enough to remove tumors, stones, and hernias, or restore sight or hearing. He did not accept payment for his services, only contributions starting at 50 pesos to cover the expenses of his “clinic.”
It did not take long for Goliat to attract the attention of the authorities, who sent police officers and officials from the Ministry of Public Health to visit him, suspecting a large-scale scam or practices that endangered people’s health.
It was the beginning of the end. Shortly afterward, he decided to become a kind of itinerant shaman, treating patients in small communities in Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces, in Havana’s surrounding countryside.
When the digital news outlet 14ymedio went looking for him a few months later, all it could establish was that he had several people helping him gather patients in towns throughout the region. Once the list of prospective clients was sufficiently large, Goliat would arrive to treat them during a major “healing session.” Then he would leave again.
“He receives 50 pesos for his work and 150 for the people who help him. But beyond that, anyone can be more generous if they wish. Some give as much as 1,000 pesos,” commented one of Goliat’s collaborators in the town of Henequen, in Artemisa Province. It was understood that a larger contribution guaranteed priority treatment.
Little more has been heard of Goliat since then. Many have speculated that he left the country or at least abandoned the western part of the island. One persistent rumor was that he was fleeing relatives of a former patient who blamed him for the person’s death.
Years later, Yimi Ferro has gained notoriety in a nearby area, employing similar practices and achieving even greater success.
“Let people have their hopes. You have to believe in something, especially when you’re in a situation as desperate as suffering from cancer,” one woman responded to a Facebook comment questioning Ferro’s healing abilities.
Dozens of people supported her. Some of them may even have traveled to Ferro’s farm in search of a remedy that conventional medicine has been unable to provide.