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To
free Cuba, support Venezuelan referendum
By Diego E. Arria. Posted
on Thu, May 20, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
The best way to hasten democracy in Cuba
is not by increasing ineffective economic
sanctions. It's by helping Venezuela to
regain its own democracy, which is being
stolen bit by bit by Hugo Chávez,
Venezuela's increasingly dictatorial president.
Chávez currently provides his ally
and mentor Fidel Castro with about 100,000
barrels per day of essentially free oil.
It's difficult to see how Castro could deal
with a sudden cut-off of that oil flow.
The depth of the relationship between the
old dictator and his Venezuelan admirer
is the reason why both will go to any length
to keep Chávez in power. That includes
quashing the present attempt to get rid
of Chávez by holding a recall referendum.
The Sandinista experience in Nicaragua of
holding -- and losing -- elections is a
lesson for the Caribbean duo. Both know
that a free election in Venezuela could
kill two birds with one stone.
Who could have imagined that the Castro
regime would end up in control of Venezuela
without firing a single shot almost 50 years
after the democratic government of Rómulo
Betancourt defeated a Cuban-backed insurgency
by Venezuelan communists?
For sure, not Castro. Not even in his wildest
dreams could he have expected such a turn
of events. Now, in the final years of his
life, Venezuela's oil wealth is Castro's
for the taking. Thousands of Cuban military
and intelligence officers are garrisoned
in Venezuela, directing the so-called Bolivarian
Revolution. Meanwhile, thousands of young
Venezuelans are been indoctrinated in Cuba.
Castro's ambassador in Caracas is more influential
than Chávez's own ministers; and
none other than Chávez's brother
is Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba, while
Chávez consults Castro daily. Thanks
to Chávez, Cuba is no longer a solitary
island in the Caribbean; its revolution
now is anchored in the continent.
Should not the United States and democratic
Latin American countries be concerned with
the emergence of the Castro-Chávez
alliance? The wily, time-tested Cuban political
strategist and his pupil are armed today
with the huge resources of Venezuelan oil.
This new ''special relationship,'' which
replaces the old Soviet-Cuba one, has been
forged when there is an enormous potential
for unrest in Latin America. Indeed, Chávez
has opened wide Venezuela's doors to every
type of subversion coming from Cuba or terrorist-controlled
areas of Colombia. The Caribbean has become
a Bermuda Triangle of security where an
unholy alliance of Cuba, Venezuela and that
part of Colombia controlled by terrorists
and financed by oil and drugs, represents
a major threat to international peace and
security.
Maybe someday the Organization of American
States will address Venezuela's subversion
of peace and trampling of the principles
of the Democratic Charter of the Americas.
But I fear that the OAS will take no action
against the Chávez regime. For a
long time now, many of Venezuela's Latin
American neighbors have been living in denial,
watching indifferently as Venezuela sheds
its democracy and turns into an authoritarian
state. Meanwhile Chávez has successfully
used Venezuela's oil to buy the support
of a large voting block within the organization.
More than ever, Venezuela's oil has become
its curse. Chávez grants to a few
U.S. oil companies exceptionally advantageous
terms to do business in Venezuela. They,
in turn, have reciprocated his largesse
by lobbying strongly in Washington in Chávez's
favor. The result: The authoritarian Chávez
enjoys enormous latitude regardless of his
well-known hostility toward the United States
and his alliance with Castro.
An eerie prediction
Forty-one years ago, Blas Roca, the Cuban
Communist Party leader, eerily foretold
the importance of Venezuela for the Cuban
regime. ''When the people of Venezuela are
victorious, when they get their total independence
from imperialism, then all of the Americas
will be aflame, all of the Americas will
push forward, all of the Americas will be
liberated once and for all from the ominous
yoke of U.S. imperialism,'' Roca told a
meeting of Latin American communists parties
in Havana on Jan. 24, 1963. "Their
fight helps us today, and their victory
will mean a tremendous boost for us. We
no longer will be a solitary island of the
Caribbean facing the Yankee imperialists,
for we will have land support on the continent.''
Diego E. Arria is a visiting scholar at
Columbia University and Venezuela's former
U.N. ambassador.
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