Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the current Cuban medical "mission" in Brazil's peripheries by examining Brazilian and Cuban perspectives on public health in their divergent national discourses and local practices, their efforts of alignment and delimitation to the Global Health dispositif of the Global North.

Paper long abstract:

One year prior to the FIFA World Cup 2014, protests occurred all over Brazil, criticizing the government's extraordinary investments in the forthcoming championships. Instead, people on the streets claimed more investments in education and a "FIFA-norm" public health system. Shortly after, in August 2013, the Brazilian government adopted the "More-doctors" health program as direct response to the protests. Central to this program is a treaty between the Cuban and Brazilian government, comprising the temporary assignment of more than 10.000 Cuban physicians, sent to work in urban and rural peripheries throughout Brazil. Thereby, the treaty is one further outcome of close Cuban-Brazilian international cooperation since the last 12 years of Workers Party's government in Brazil. At the same time, it is part of the Cuban international medical "missions", sent to more than 60 countries throughout the Global South within the last 50 years.

The paper takes a closer look at this specific South-South cooperation, by examining the Brazilian and Cuban perspectives on public health in their divergent national discourses and local practices, their constant efforts of alignment as well as delimitation to the Global Health dispositif of the Global North. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in one of Rio de Janeiro's newly established "family clinics" situated in the favela Complexo do Alemão, the paper pays special attention on daily negotiations between Cuban physicians and their Brazilian colleagues regarding professional recognition and medical knowledge. I will show that these encompass issues of race, gender, nationality and class.