By Georgie Ann Geyer. Universal Press Syndicate.
The Salt Lake Tribune. Tuesday, November
7, 2000
WASHINGTON -- It would certainly seem now that Hugo Chavez is going the
Cuban way.
The Venezuelan president seems to have fallen in love with Fidel Castro
with all the sweet, unheeding innocence of the schoolgirl who has fallen for the
swashbuckling rapscallion that her mother hated. Why, during Fidel's visit last
week to Caracas, the two jolly and theatrical caudillos even dressed alike -- in
"twin" military uniforms -- as they took over the airwaves for hours
and hours of excruciatingly boring political talk.
But serious meaning was lurking behind the theatrics. The Chavez promise
to provide impoverished and energy-hungry Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil a day
is being explained away in Caracas as simply a counterpart to similar agreements
to provide low-cost oil to the Caribbean countries. That isn't, however, all
there is to it.
From the time that the dashing Hugo Chavez took over in early 1999,
there have been well-placed stories about Cuban intelligence infiltrating,
training and transforming his new intelligence system.
Now, in a supplementary agreement to the oil deal, Venezuela will be
paid not in cash but in human beings -- as in medieval times.
Along with doctors, Cuba will send up to 3,000 physical education
teachers and sports coaches to pay for the oil. Which makes clear again that
Chavez, for all his charm and verve, ought to get a better grasp on tallying up
the political and social credits and debits of his great friendship with the
Cuban master calculator.
What an exchange it is! Chavez gives friend Fidel one-third of Cuba's
energy needs, takes off his hands many of the most impatient, unemployed elites,
and at the same time graciously imports into his own country a huge band of
well-trained ideologues. Castro can also have a good laugh at it all, since the
United States, which purchases about half of Venezuela's oil and pays its bills
in cash, could now be seen to be subsidizing Cuban energy consumption.
And what do President Chavez and, more important, Venezuela get?
Already, Venezuelan physicians, businessmen and energy specialists have
complained bitterly. Why, they ask, should Venezuela, in deep trouble itself, be
at once subsidizing a totalitarian Cuba, endangering its own citizens' jobs, and
inviting into its troubled social milieu organized and militant ideological
vipers? Why should Venezuela, with a declining national income, be giving away
its only riches to the very man whose first act as the leader of Cuba in 1959
was to try to overthrow Venezuelan democracy?
But the berserk equation does not even end there. Chavez's extravagantly
emotional welcome to the Cuban leader has cost him dearly, especially in terms
of his judgment, across the world. ("This is not just a matter of
friendship," he said. "It is a geopolitical vision of the integration
of our peoples.")
Worse, it has made the young Venezuelan president, in whom so many have
had such hopes, look like a premodern man. Barter economies are primitive; money
economies symbolize modern states. Such deals tarnish Chavez's many attractive
and hopeful qualities and proclaim to the world that, after all, he represents
more of the economic mind-set of the Latin past instead of the future.
For anyone familiar with modern Latin American history, Castro's five
days in Venezuela are eerily "deja vu." They resound with memories of
Castro's bizarre six-week 1971 trip through Chile, when his first "pal,"
the doomed Chilean Marxist Salvador Allende, was president. In that nearly
parallel case, Castro had already provided Allende with intelligence organizers
and with all those innocent "sports coaches" who somehow couldn't find
work at home. Then, too, Castro was gettin temperamentally capable of putting
aside the Spanish cultural model of the omnipotent caudillo using emotions to
control his people. Can he become a modern leader, dealing with many centers of
power and espousing rational solutions?
If he can do that, he can be one of the great leaders of Latin America
and the developing world. But it's not at all clear yet that he can. | 