Cuba Is Teetering

In A Perfect Storm Crisis 

        This AP photo highlights the fact that JetBlue Airlines will be the first to make U.S.-to-Cuba commercial flights in over half-a-century. The regularly scheduled flights will begin next month, on August 31st, between Fort Lauderdale and Santa Clara. The fares will be $99 one-way. It will begin with three flights a week before going to daily service on October 1st. JetBlue says it will start flights to Camaguey on November 3rd and to Holguin on November 10th. Eight other airlines, including American, have also obtained permission for flights to Cuba. Ten Cuban cities will welcome the historic U. S commercial planes.

       JetBlue's executive vice-president, Marty St. George, said, "It's a new day for Cuba travelers and one we have thoughtfully prepared for." JetBlue has permission to fly to Cuba from Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and New York's JFK. Mr. St. George says he will announce later flights to Havana -- the busy, coveted capital.

      The "new day" and the new normal for Cuba also has drawbacks as reflected by the updated Reuters photo above. It shows Cuban children playing in front of a street mural with an image of Hugo Chavez that depicts him as "Cuba's best friend." He surely was as President of Venezuela from 1999 till he died of cancer in 2013. Chavez idolized Cuba's Fidel Castro and, in exchange for thousands of Cuban teachers and medical personnel working in Venezuela, Chavez sent Cuba over 100,000 barrels of oil each day. Cuba produces in excess of 50,000 barrels a day and needs about 140,000 barrels each day to provide its energy needs. So when Hugo Chavez lived, Cuba actually refined and sold some excess oil. But...no more. 

Venezuela's current President is Nicolas Maduro.

      Like his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also idolizes Cuba's Fidel Castro. In the three years since Chavez died, Maduro has made at least 15 trips to see Fidel.

        This photo was used this week by both Reuters and Voice of America to point out that economic conditions are so dire in Venezuela that its impact on Cuba is becoming massive. At least fifty beloved zoo animals in Venezuela have starved to death in recent days because of severe food shortages. Venezuelans have crossed the border into Colombia to purchase food, diapers, toilet paper and other necessities.

        Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Cuban President Raul Castro remain close friends but Maduro's economic and political problems are now weighing heavily on Cuba. Castro notified the Cuban people: "A certain contraction in the fuel supplies agreed upon with Venezuela is negatively affecting our energy supplies, despite the firm will of President Maduro and his government to fulfill them." That statement came after Venezuela's oil to Cuba decreased by 20 percent. Maduro's pro-U.S. political opponents, if and when they can oust Maduro, would very likely, but gradually, cease the oil shipments to Cuba entirely.

      In exchange for the oil shipments, Cuba has 31,000 doctors and dentists serving Venezuela's poorest areas, plus hundreds of teachers. But one of the last anti-Cuba acts devised by the George W. Bush administration was a regime-change program encouraging, with bonuses, these doctors, dentists and teachers to defect to the U. S., where other regime-change U. S. laws provide Cuban immigrants, and only Cuban immigrants, instant residency, financial and citizenship privileges. The government of Colombia recently said 750 of these Cubans crossed over its borders and instantly asked for U. S. visas. So, even prior to Venezuela's debilitating economic problems, the doctors-for-oil program was teetering on the brink of disaster, just as the nations of Venezuela and Cuba are now. Teetering and being pushed over the cliff. 

       The New York Times used this photo to illustrate a major article written by Victoria Burnett. It revealed that Cubans like the lady above now fear blackouts and power shortages before this year is out. In addition to the major problems in Venezuela, low nickel prices and a weather-related poor sugar harvest are among the perfect storm nuances that have converged to challenge Cuba's economy, off-setting some positive gains resulting from better relations with America since Obama replaced Bush #2 as U. S. President.

       The blog The Cuban Economy warns of a dire economic "chill" engulfing Cuba. It concludes that "warnings of rationing revive memories of post-Soviet austerity in Havana." Indeed, Revolutionary Cuba struggled but survived in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended billions of dollars worth of subsidies to Cuba, creating a "Special Period." Now a second one looms just over the horizon.

      A close observer of the Cuban economy is Jorge Pinon, the renowned Latin American energy expert at the University of Texas. Mr. Pinon believes that Cuba's economic crisis will worsen as President Maduro's problems in Venezuela deepen. And Mr. Pinon believes that dire financial problems in Cuba will push the island politically closer and closer to the United States as a necessary and practical economic reaction.

        As the above quotation indicates, Cuba's Josefina Vidal very badly wants to continue the "constructive spirit" that she has meticulously forged with the United States during President Obama's administration.

     
     
      But suggestions that the current economic crisis will force Cuba to make "unwarranted concessions" to the United States irk Josefina Vidal. She says, "As a sovereign country since the 1959 revolution ended American and Mafia dominance of the island, Cuba has doggedly survived the 1960 Operation Mongoose assassination attempts against our leaders by the U. S., the Mafia and Cuban exiles; the 1961 military attack known as the Bay of Pigs; the American economic blockade in effect since 1962; and all other major obstacles confronting us. The so-called 'perfect storm' hitting us now includes the Venezuelan situation, low oil prices, low nickel prices, a sugar shortfall, and other normal and unexpected economic challenges. But let's not forget that the continuing U. S. blockade along with the unending array of Congress-mandated and lavishly funded regime-change programs still represent the main obstructions into the lives of everyday Cubans on this island. The so-called U. S. experts who say otherwise are pure liars, and such lies are repulsive to me."

       Recently several major American publications made headlines by suggesting that Cuba was ready to extradite Joanne Chesimard back to the U. S. as a "drastic means" of "cozying up to the United States." 

      But Josefina Vidal herself ended such speculation regarding Joanne Chesimard with this forceful statement: "We have explained to the U. S. government that there are some people living in Cuba to whom we have legitimately granted political asylum. That includes Joanne Chesimard. As a black woman, we remain unconvinced that she received a fair trial in the U. S. The U. S. has given asylum to dozens and dozens of Cuban criminals, some accused of terrorism, murder and kidnapping, and in every case the U. S. government has decided to welcome them, including the protection of Luis Posada Carriles and many others in Miami."  

       Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assatur Shakur, was the first woman placed on the FBI's Most Wanted List. There remains a multi-million-dollar bounty on her head. She was a member of the Black Panthers in 1973 when a car in which she and two male Black Panthers were riding was stopped on a New Jersey highway. In a shoot-out, State Trooper Werner Foerster was killed along with a male Black Panther. Chesimard and the other male Black Panther were wounded as was a second police officer. In six criminal procedures and three trials, Chesimard was finally convicted of killing Mr. Foerster although she always has maintained her innocence. In 1979 she escaped from prison and ended up in Cuba, where she has remained. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has recently made headlines by calling her a "cold-blooded killer" while loudly insisting that President Obama should "strongly" demand her extradition from Cuba.

      Meanwhile, Luis Posada Carriles, shown here in a photo from The Guardian, is the most notable of what Josefina Vidal called "The dozens of Cuban criminals" protected and welcomed in the United States. Posada, now 88-years-old, was born in 1928 in Cienfuegos, Cuba. Since 1959 he has made war against Fidel Castro and he admitted to Ann Louise Bardach and the New York Times that there has been "collateral damage."

        Cuba and many other nations consider Luis Posada Carriles history's all-time greatest Latin American terrorist. Indeed, in a famous New York Times interview conducted by Ann Louise Bardach, he admitted decades of anti-Castro terror attacks against Cuba, including a famously fatal hotel bombing in Havana.

       But in Cuba and across the Caribbean and Latin America, Posada Carriles is most famous for being tied to the October 6, 1976 bombing of a civilian Cuban airplane. All 73 aboard Cubana Flight 455 perished.

      Right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the Batista dictatorship in 1959, Luis Posada Carriles and many other anti-Castro zealots were trained at the now-infamous Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, and later were on the U. S. payroll in many famous anti-Cuban endeavors.

      Many declassified U. S. documents, such as the above Nov. 5, 1976 letter to Henry Kissinger, indicates the U. S. government was/is well aware of Posada's involvement in the bombing of Cubana Flight 455.

     In 2016 as the United States and Cuba try to enter A New Era, their mutually represented and misrepresented history -- especially since the 1950s -- has been complicated and conflicted. But it is indeed a two-way affair in which neither nation has been totally right nor totally wrong. In the past year both Josefina Vidal and President Obama have acknowledged that fact. And at long last, it is perhaps time that everyday Cubans and everyday Americans cease to be the primary victims of self-serving animosity.

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