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Originally Posted by Flagg
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I witnessed this in 2007 in Peru. My team was in country and the embassy gave us a change of mission to see what we could do to help during the Pisco earthquake.
I would drop the US doctors at a preplanned sight for the day and then go scout out future locations and talk with firefighters and police. One day I stumbled into an area and there was a Cuban hospital set up there. I went up to the nearest doctor and started a conversation with him. It’s hard to put into words, it was more body language and observation, but there was a “bodyguard” near him and he looked scared shitless! There was fear in his eyes. Not fear of me... the whole thing was surreal. Almost as if his eyes were crying to help him defect! Begging. I felt very badly for him. Especially with our motto hanging in my brain.
Side note: Later when we ended mission, on our way back to Lima, we had heard that the Venezuelan contingent had brought in tuna cans to help with food, however, the cans supposedly had a picture of Chavez and, the then, opposition leader to the current president. We looked for these cans for a souvenir but never actually saw one.