What Is Next For Cuba If Chavez Dies

As Hugo Chavez Fights For His Life, Cuba Fears For Its Future

Venezuela is not the only Latin American nation that is monitoring every moment of president Hugo Chavez's illness. His ally Cuba has relied on him for economic help, and that could soon come to an end.

Away from the constitutional wrangles and impassioned crowds of Caracas, the future of Venezuela after Hugo Chavez is being plotted this weekend in an elegant pre-revolutionary mansion in Havana's old playboy quarter.

The firebrand Venezuelan president is fighting for his life in a nearby hospital, stricken by severe respiratory problems and a lung infection after his latest round of surgery for cancer.

His illness left him unable to be sworn in for his fourth term as president last Thursday, having won a close-fought election in October.

But for his Cuban hosts, much more is at risk than simply the loss of a fellow left-wing Latin American radical who has long venerated Fidel Castro. His death would also put at risk the remarkable oil-fuelled largesse that has allowed Cuba to cling to its experiment in tropical communism.

Thanks to the close personal relationship between Mr Chavez and Mr Castro, energy-rich Venezuela supplies more than 100,000 barrels of dirt-cheap oil a day to Cuba - an estimated 50 per cent of the island's petroleum needs.
Venezuela also hires tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers to work in its barrio slums, propping up the Cuban economy to the tune of some $6 billion a year in total. Without that subsidy, Havana would have long ago been forced to introduce market reforms to its communist regime.
Nothing has been heard or seen of Mr Chavez for more than a month and few expect him to recover - if indeed he is still alive. So it is little wonder that Cuba is desperate to exercise maximum control over his passing - and in particular manoeuvre a handover of power to Nicolas Maduro, his vice-president.
Mr Maduro, who arrived back in Havana on Friday night for fresh talks at the government-owned "protocol villa", shares Mr Chavez's absolute loyalty to Cuba. But there are others within the Venezuelan elite who are less convinced of the merits of subsidising Cuba with an economic lifeline at a time when inflation and debt are soaring in Venezuela itself, despite the country's oil wealth.

Also arriving in Havana on Friday to pay what might be their final respects to Mr Chavez were Cristina Kirchner, Argentina's populist president, and Peru's left-wing head-of-state Ollanta Humala, For months, Mr Maduro has been commuting in an unmarked government jet between Caracas and Havana, ferrying messages from the ailing president as well as liaising with the Cuban leader, Raul Castro, and his older brother Fidel.
Amid all the intrigue, Mr Chavez is being treated at the jewel in Cuba's health system, the Medical Surgical Research Centre (known by its Spanish acronym CIMEQ), the same hospital where Fidel Castro was treated for a near-fatal stomach condition after his collapse in 2006.
Chavez aides have given no update on his condition for more than a week, fuelling speculation that he is close to death. Unlike after previous surgeries, there have been no photos or videos since the mid-December operation, not even a phone call to state radio or television.
More than anything, it is this silence of the normally garrulous leader that indicates the seriousness of his condition.
The lack of specifics about Mr Chavez's health is not surprising for top-level patient in Havana. Mr Castro's own medical condition is treated as a state secret and and Mr Chavez's decision to undergo surgery in Havana meant that he could be assured near total privacy. What is known, though, is that he has undergone surgery four times as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy since his cancer diagnosis in mid-2011. That he chose to entrust his life to Cuba's medical system rather than his own is also regarded by many Venezuelans as a telling indictment of the state of health service in his own country.
Although President Chavez declared himself to be "cancer free" last year during a hard-fought election battle, it is believed that he was told from the start that the prognosis was grim.
And the Cuban connection may have further harmed his health last year when his Cuban mentors insisted that he return to the electoral fray in Venezuela, even when doctors would have preferred him to rest after previous surgery.
"The key to Cuba's influence lies in the visits made to Cuba by Chavez on a continuous basis, almost monthly," Gustavo Coronel, a Venezuelan opposition politician and oil industry executive, told The Sunday Telegraph.
"The number of these visits is in the hundreds over the years, starting in 2000 and becoming routine affairs as Chavez became dependent on Castro's advice.
"Chavez was hooked on Castro.
"It is Castro that convinced him to treat his ailments in Cuba. This would probably cost him his life, as it is now suspected that the procedures he underwent in Cuba did not include the best modern protocols."
Whether Mr Chavez lives or dies, and who succeeds him, matters as much to Cuba as Venezuela itself. Indeed, his health amounts to a vital economic statistic in Havana.
It would be a "disaster" for Venezuelan subsidies to dry up, according to Carmelo Mesa-Lago,a Cuban-born US economist. "If this help stops, industry is paralysed, transportation is paralysed and you'll see the effects in everything from electricity to sugar mills," he said.
Even as Chavez-directed funds have poured into Havana, Cuban advisors work in the very highest echelons of the Venezuelan executive. The president's elite security team is trained by Cubans, and the Venezuelan intelligence service is now run under a similar structure to Cuba's feared G2 Intelligence agency, itself based on former East Germany's Stasi network.
The mass marches which regularly take place in Venezuela, in which loyal supporters are encouraged to attend political rallies with the promise of free alchohol and transport, are indentkit copies of the revolutionary model perfected in Cuba under Fidel Castro.
It was the Castro brothers, experts in political longevity against the odds, who were instrumental in working out how "21st century socialism" in Venezuela, and in turn Venezuela's generous handouts to Cuba, could survive without Mr Chavez himself.
The doomsday scenario for Havana would be fresh elections in which the opposition triumphed. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph before the October vote, Henrique Capriles, the Venezuelan opposition leader who lost the presidential race to Mr Chavez last year, pledged that he would halt the "gifts" of free or heavily-subsidised oil ideological allies on day one in office.
But there is also danger for the Castro brothers within the Chavista camp if a more nationalist-minded faction was to prevail. The Cubans are particularly wary of Diosdado Cabello, a former army comrade of Mr Chavez who is now the head of Venezuela's National Assembly, who is thought to be rather cooler about the bilateral relationship.
Under the Venezuelan constitution, if Mr Chavez dies or is finally designated too sick to govern, then Mr Cabello would become caretaker president until new elections were called. So it was the Castros who persuaded Mr Chavez to leave his sick bed on Dec 9, travel to Caracas, and very publicly endorse Mr Maduro as his chosen successor.
Mr Chavez has not been seen since his return. It looks increasingly likely that his last public act was also his final political gift to his beloved mentors in Havana.

The Death Of Hugo Chavez Will Rock The Region

The likelihood that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is close to death will pitch rivals against one another in a battle for power and oil riches, and trigger political shock waves across the region. 

 

The orchestra played and loyal lawmakers erupted in adulatory applause as Hugo Chavez invoked Fidel Castro and Jesus Christ as his revolutionary role models.

His right hand raised, the fiery Venezuelan leader echoed the famous call to arms of his Cuban mentor. "Fatherland, socialism or death," he proclaimed, then added with a typical flourish: "I swear by Christ, the greatest socialist in history." That was six years ago as "El Commandante" was sworn in for his third term as president and blew kisses to rose petal-tossing crowds when he returned in an open-topped car to his palace to watch a military parade.

On Thursday, the ideologue - who has used his country's oil riches to bankroll left-wing bed-fellows across Latin America, forged a cosy alliance with Iran and assailed the US from its back yard - is due to be celebrating his next inauguration.

But there will be no joyous scenes. For this weekend, he is lying close to death in a Cuban hospital bed, quite possibly being kept alive on a ventilator, suffering from respiratory problems and a severe lung infection after his fourth round of surgery in 18 months for an undisclosed type of pelvic cancer.

His illness has already sparked a constitutional crisis in Venezuela, where he won a hotly-contested election in October but has not yet started a new term. His death would send shock waves across the region and could endanger the survival of Cuba's communist regime which is dependent on his largesse for cheap oil.

And despite their protestations of socialist solidarity, his senior lieutenants have already begun a power struggle to replace the 58-year-old former paratroop commander who has ruled the country as a one-man show since 1998.
With the president's demise, several factions will be vying for control of the country's political future and oil wealth -- the diehard ideologues known as Chavistas; his former comrades in the powerful armed forces; the rich and powerful Chavez clan, led by his older brother Adan; and the new breed of politically-connected tycoons who have enriched themselves hugely even as its leader pursued his "21st century socialism".
On Friday night, Nicolas Maduro, the country's vice-president and Mr Chavez's anointed successor, gave the clearest indication that the inauguration might not take place on Thursday, claiming that Mr Chavez could instead be sworn in by his Supreme Court appointees, at a later date and unspecified location - if still alive.
That stance will infuriate opposition leaders who insist that the constitution requires Mr Chavez to take the oath on Jan 10 or for new elections to be called within 30 days. But their view is unlikely to win the day in a country where the ruling party dominates all branches of government.

And on Saturday, Diosdado Cabello was re-elected as National Assembly leader, putting him inline to become caretaker president if Mr Chavez does not recover.
The vote cemented his position as the third most powerful figure after the president and Mr Maduro, his potential rival.
"As a patriot ... I swear to be supremely loyal in everything I do, to defend thefatherland, its institutions, and this beautiful revolution led by our Comandante Hugo Chavez," Mr Cabello said as he took the oath. Outside, red-clad Chavez supporters chanted their support for their absent leader.
Amid this manoeuvring, the newspaper El Nacional lamented an "information vacuum" and compared the situation to the secrecy that surrounded the deaths of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong in China.
And indeed, the parade of high-profile visitors to Mr Chavez's Havana hospital in recent days has resembled the scene at the bedside of a dying mediaeval monarch surrounded by kin and court paying tribute.
His elderly parents and six brothers -- who have flourished politically and financially on his coat-tails in his home state of Barinas -- have visited, along with four children by two ex-wives and miscellaneous other relatives.
But just as significant were the two major political figures who flew in to the Cuban capital -- Mr Maduro and Mr Cabello - the men at the centre of the palace intrigues.
The upper hand for now is undoubtedly with Mr Maduro after Mr Chavez last month urged Venezuelans to back him as his successor. He is a former bus driver and bear of a man who has displayed not only slavish devotion to Mr Chavez at home but also shares his idolising of the Castros.
"If Maduro runs and wins in new elections, he'll amount to little more than a puppet of Havana," said Gustavo Coronel, a former Venezuelan congressman. "This would amount to Cuban regency." But for all his fealty to the cause, Mr Maduro is also widely regarded as an unsophisticated political operator who parrots Chavez lines without the charisma to galvanise followers or strength to unite feuding factions.
Mr Cabello is by contrast not only a more astute political player, he is also a former army officer who took part in the failed Chavez coup of 1992 and hence commands considerable support in the country's powerful armed forces.
He is also said to be the beneficiary of close ties with the country's politically well-connected "Boligarchs" – oligarchs who have flourished under the "Bolivarian revolution", named after the South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar venerated by Mr Chavez.
As National Assembly president, he may also be called on to serve as acting president if new elections are called. So if Mr Maduro seems to be flailing after death of his mentor, few doubt that Mr Cabello would see his chance.
For both men, wooing the kingmakers in the president's family will be crucial. Indeed, Adan Chavez, a former ambassador to Cuba, education minister and now governor of the family fiefdom of Barinas, was just 18 months ago being touted as a dynastic successor when his brother suffered his first bout of cancer.
But the prospect of a Castro-style fraternal handover later faded, not least as Adan lacks the political skills of his younger sibling.
Nonetheless, how the power struggle plays out will be watched very closely on the grassland expanses of Barinas where Mr Chavez was born, the second of seven sons of the local schoolmaster, in a small dirt-floor home in Sabaneta.
They were suitably humble origins for the man who would turn into a left-wing firebrand. But the talk in Barinas now is of how the Chavez clan has prospered since politics here became a family affair.
Mr Chavez's father, Hugo Sr, ran the state as governor for a decade, assisted by his son Argenis as his top aide. Argenis moved on to head the National Electricity Board and the state is now governed by Adan.
Another brother Anibal twice served as the mayor of Sabaneta, the president's birthplace, while Adelis Chavez is vice-president of the bank that handles the state accounts.
Yet another brother, Narciso, was made responsible for state co-operation projects with Cuba. Various other relatives also have senior positions with government agencies.
The family's prosperity flourished with their political power. Their small chicken and pig farm is now a sprawling state-of-the art ranch. And in Barinas, they live in a luxury mansion in a high-walled compound in the most exclusive neighbourhood and travel in convoys of heavily-armed SUVs that screech through the streets.
Opposition figures in the state have claimed that they own up to another 20 estates through frontmen and that they have benefited from construction projects.
In Venezuela's poorest state, the ostentatious displays of wealth, including the penchant of the president's mother Elena Frias for expensive designer clothes, are a growing source of resentment, although the family deny opposition claims of corruption and nepotism.
Noel Zamudia, a local party official and childhood friend of the president, told The Sunday Telegraph that "the revolution" would live on, whatever the fate of Mr Chavez.
"The president himself said that revolution is not about a man and the people understood that. Those who fail to understand this are right-wing militants who despise the people. If Hugo dies, if that is God's decision, then the revolution will continue its path." But Miguel Oraa, an opposition leader in Barinas, predicted that the death of Mr Chavez would end the edifice of his rule. "There is no revolution without Chavez," he told this newspaper. "People say 'I am a Chavista, not a revolutionary'. Chavismo without Chavez does not exist, it falls apart. The empire collapses completely." Indeed, opinion polls last year indicated that Henrique Capriles, the opposition leader, would beat any Chavista candidate in fresh elections. But an election held in the wake of Mr Chavez's death could deliver a powerful and decisive sympathy vote for a Chavez heir.
Whoever succeeds him, the Venezuelan leader will be bequeathing his successor a dire and destabilising economic prognosis, for all the country's oil riches.
The very fact that he has repeatedly sought medical treatment in Cuba over the last 18 months for his recurring cancer is a damning indictment of his stewardship of Venezuela, say his critics.
He has undergone surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment there because the financially-stricken communist Caribbean outpost has a better health service than Venezuela, despite being much poorer.
Mr Chavez has instead lavished the windfall of the world's largest known oil reserves to support his left-wing allies abroad and cement the loyalty of the dependant poor at home.
Mr Coronel, a former oil industry executive who tracks corruption in his homeland, estimates that Mr Chavez has spent a mind-boggling $1 trillion of state funds to support foreign allies or domestic political constituencies who support him.
But that lavish cheque-book socialism has taken a disastrous toll on coffers that should be flush thanks to high oil prices.
The country has a surging fiscal deficit and its economy is crippled by the sort of price and currency controls favoured under state socialism. Inflation is soaring, the overvalued Venezuelan Bolivar is sliding on the black market and the country's total debt, now about $160 billion, has increased five-fold under Mr Chavez.
"It's a perfect example to the rest of the world on how not to run an economy," said one Caracas capital market broker.

 

Venezuela Is Now More Dangerous Than Afghanistan

venezuela, the most violent country in South America, recorded a new high of 21,692 murders this year along with a surge in kidnappings, prison riots and random shootings.

 

The number of victims was up by 12 per cent from last year when there were 19,336 deaths, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory said in its annual report.

High profile killings included that of a three year-old child, Edgar Torres, who was fired on 10 times while he was asleep in bed, after a gunman had come in to kill a teenage relative.

In August more than 20 people were killed in a battle between two heavily armed groups inside the Yare I prison. More than 300 prisoners died in Venezuelan jails in the first half of the year.

The Mexican ambassador Carlos Pujalte and his wife were seized from their car in a wealthy area of Caracas and held for several hours before being released alive in a slum in January.

Unlike other Latin American countries Venezuela is not involved in a drug war or on-going battle with guerrillas.

But according to the Observatory, a think tank set up by public and private universities, it now has a murder rate of 73 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 67 in 2011.
The rate is well above neighbouring Colombia, and Mexico which has been engaged in a bloody drug war, and is closing in on Honduras, the country with the highest murder rate.
There are more murders in Venezuela than in the United States and the 27 countries of the European Union combined. In Caracas the murder rate is more than 200 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Observatory said: "Killings have become a way of executing property crimes, a mechanism to resolve personal conflicts and a way to apply private justice."
President Hugo Chavez, who is recovering from cancer surgery in Cuba, rarely talks about violent crime.
In 2010 when the newspaper El Nacional published a picture of a dozen murder victims at a morgue, a court ordered the newspaper to stop publishing images of violence.
Venezuela's murder rate has soared since Chavez took office in 1999, growing from 4,450 murders in 1998 Criminologists expected the rate to fall with decreasing poverty, but income inequality has fallen dramatically and murders are going up.
In a report earlier this year The Brookings Institution said: "No one would guess Venezuela's crime crisis from looking at these (poverty) figures.
Above all, it offers a cautionary tale about the limits of easy explanations, prescriptions and predictions when it comes to crime."
Estimates put the number of legal and illegal firearms in circulation at between nine and 15 million, in a country of 29 million people.
In June this year the government banned private gun ownership, meaning only the army police and security groups could buy them. It also offered an amnesty allowing people to give up illegal firearms.
Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, announced the number of murders there fell 19 per cent this year to the lowest level since records began in 1963.
There were a total of 414 homicides in 2012, compared to 515 last year. In 1990, the city saw more than 2,260 murders.

 

Venezuela: arrival of the first batch of Chinese aircraft Shaanxi Y-8

The first batch of military transport aircraft Shaanxi Y-8 Chinese manufacturing arrived in Venezuela, said the president of the Latin American Hugo Chavez quoted Friday by the local media.

"They crossed Africa and Brazil to land in Libertador air base in Maracay (north)," reported the Venezuelan leader.

Shaanxi Y-8 is an adaptation of the Antonov An-12, manufactured in the Soviet Union. Caracas and Beijing signed the contract for the purchase of eight of these devices in early 2011.

According to the Venezuelan Minister of Communications and Information Ernesto Villegas, aircraft purchased by Caracas are not part of the offensive arsenal and will be used to transport passengers and cargo within the country, including the civilian purposes.

The military-technical cooperation between Venezuela and China is developing dynamically. Last summer, Caracas announced a purchase of Chinese weapons for a total of $ 500 million to equip the Navy.

Venezuela serious about producing drones

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is pursuing plans to develop a home-grown defense industry topped by a drone built reportedly with Chinese, Iranian and Russian help.

Drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles and associated systems have won over Venezuela's military procurers who see the UAVs as a conveniently cheaper supplement -- if not yet an alternative -- to expensive combat aircraft.

Chavez has been hinting at a drone development program since early this year even as he was preoccupied with treatment to cure him of an unspecified cancer and his bid toward re-election.

Earlier in October Chavez won 54 percent of the national vote, calling it a "perfect victory."

Since defeating opposition leader Henrique Capriles, Chavez has redoubled efforts to inject new life into a fledgling defense industry. The drone project is part of that effort.

Chavez announced after a meeting with military and defense officials that Venezuela has made its first drone in partnership with China, Iran and Russia and hopes to start exporting quantities of the craft.

"It is one of the three planes that we have manufactured here, and we are continuing to make them ... not just for military use, (as) much of its equipment is for civilian use," Chavez said.

The drones were developed in cooperation with "Russia, China, Iran and other allied countries," Chavez said during the address broadcast on radio and television.

Chavez has yet to outline the kind of assistance received from China, Iran or Russia but has said said the drone developed locally is intended as a surveillance tool and will not be armed.

Technical details of the drone are still sketchy but Gen. Julio Morales, president of the state-run Venezuelan Military Industrial Co., said the drone is about 13 feet long and 10 feet wide and equipped to take photographs and video.

The craft has a 60-mile sweep and can fly for about 90 minutes and reach an altitude of 9,000 feet, Morales said.

U.S. officials remain skeptical about the Venezuelan drone project and cite examples of previous statements by Chavez that made exaggerated claims about Venezuela's military achievements.

Published media reports said the drone was assembled from parts made locally in Venezuela and built by engineers trained in Iran. Details of Venezuelans undergoing training in Iran remain vague, but the two countries have discussed wide ranging technical cooperation since an exchange of visits in 2010.

Chavez said Venezuela also aimed to develop its own assault rifle, modelled after the Russian AK103, which offers versatile uses and can be adapted to operate with laser and conventional sights and be used as a grenade launcher.