BOGOTA, Colombia -- Ariel Perez was, like thousands of fellow Cuban doctors, a devoted soldier in Fidel Castro's most important overseas mission -- providing medical care to the poor in oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba's most vital ally. But last year, Perez and two Cuban companions, carrying rucksacks with a few belongings and holding just $1,300 among them, sneaked across the Colombian border and promptly defected.
"From the moment I got there, I thought of it -- leaving," Perez, 36, said in an interview in Bogota, where about 40 Cuban physicians and other medical professionals are living after fleeing from Venezuela ...

... "I want the freedom to work, freedom to say what I think politically," she said. "I want to decide for myself what I want to do for myself. That no one decides for me."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/19/AR2007021901045.html