From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 13:47:37 -0700 To: "CubaNews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [CubaNews] Cuba, Venezuela Increasing Ties Saturday August 4 12:10 PM ET Cuba, Venezuela Increasing Ties By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, Associated Press Writer CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - With growing Cuban expertise and trade, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trying to consolidate his leftist revolution while insisting he's not walking in Fidel Castro's footsteps. In recent months, dozens of Venezuelan officials and ruling party leaders have visited Cuba to admire the achievements of Castro's revolution and sign trade and consulting pacts. Hundreds of Venezuelan medical patients are being treated in Cuba, and more than 200 Cuban doctors and nurses work in Venezuela. The same goes for 600 Cuban sports specialists, whose labor underscores a ``synergy'' between Cuba and Chavez's government, according to Cuban Ambassador German Sanchez Otero. The exchanges are part of a deal in which Venezuela sells Cuba oil at preferential rates in exchange for Cuban advice in tourism, sugar, health and other areas. Venezuela provides Cuba 53,000 barrels of oil a day - by some estimates worth $500 million a year. Though Washington views the relationship warily, Chavez insists he isn't creating a Cuban-style regime. What the leftist president does share with Castro is a deep friendship and a conviction that rampant free markets have failed to alleviate global poverty. During an October visit to Venezuela, Castro emphasized that Chavez has to work within an established market economy and multiparty political system. Venezuela's 43 years of democratic government, its independent news media and globalization's encroachments bar the way to a ``Cubanized'' Venezuela, argues political analyst Carlos Hernandez. Chavez shouldn't be seen as a Marxist but rather an elected ``authoritarian populist'' who ``dreams of being a boss-like figure like Fidel Castro,'' Hernandez said. That hasn't calmed the fears of some investors and leaders of Venezuela's fragmented opposition, who blame Chavez's incendiary rhetoric in part for capital flight. In June, Chavez decided to create citizens' groups charged with taking care of their neighborhoods. To some, the move evoked images of Cuba's infamous revolutionary block committees. Most criticism has been leveled by Venezuela's teachers, who oppose Cuban funding and Cuban-inspired curricula in public schools. A key Chavez program affords millions of poor children a chance to go to school. But many teachers condemned a course on the late Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, and a May protest ended in clashes with pro-Chavez activists in front of the Cuban Embassy. To be sure, expertise is sorely needed in this South American nation of 24 million, half of whom live in poverty. Caracas Mayor Freddy Bernal notes that, with Cuban help, Caracas will have a new drug rehabilitation center next year. Havana's distinguished preservationists will help draft a plan to restore colonial Caracas. ``Enough already with this paranoiac perception that some sectors have against the Cuban people,'' said Nicolas Maduro, a ``Chavista'' congressman and labor leader who recently visited Cuba. Maduro brushed aside criticism of Cuba's human rights record, saying that, as a labor leader, he was impressed by a Cuban assembly of state-owned businesses where employees ``openly debated their problems.'' To first lady Marisabel de Chavez - who also recently visited Cuba - the exchanges are a chance ``to learn from our Cuban brothers what the word 'sacrifice' means - how they have achieved so much with so little.'' _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
