Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the entanglement of divergent temporal and affective horizons in international medical work contexts of the "More-Doctors-for-Brazil" program. Sensitive emergent socialities between Cubans and Brazilians create moments for envisioning a dignified living despite crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Between 2013 and 2018, Cuba maintained one of its largest cooperation with Brazil: nearly 18,000 Cuban health professional were sent to work within the framework of the Brazilian health program "More-Doctors for Brazil", to cover the state of emergency in the Brazilian precarious public healthcare system. These kind of South-South partnerships garnered increased attention in the last few years as they are considered as welcome alternative in the international aid system due to shared experiences of postcolonial pasts and neo-colonial dependencies in the present. Considering 'crisis' as enduring condition of living rather than an exception, South-South partnerships thereby introduced divergent notions of time and temporalities of international aid. However, challenging established temporal notions of crisis also raises the question of a divergent temporality of care.

In this paper, I will take a closer look at the entanglement of divergent temporal and affective dimensions of experiences, narrations, and interactions in this international constellation of caregiving. Based on findings of a 15-month hospital ethnography in marginalized areas of Rio de Janeiro, I will focus on local encounters and emergent socialities between Cuban physicians, Brazilian patients and medical staff. I will show that the sensitive moments of interaction -sensitive in regard to the embodied, emplaced, and political dimension of past and present- hold the possibility of a fragile intersubjectivity that creates its own temporal and affective dynamics, undermining, at least for moments, powerful regimes of care by disclosing the horizon of a dignified living despite crisis while enabling a vision of future.