Monday, October 31, 2005

Continente americano reemplaza a Europa en comercio con Cuba

Posted on Mon, Oct. 31, 2005

Continente americano reemplaza a Europa en comercio con Cuba

ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

LA HABANA - El continente americano se convirtió este año en el primer
socio de la isla en reemplazo de Europa, suministrador tradicional de
productos a la isla, aseguró el ministro de Comercio Exterior al
inaugurar la 13ra Feria Internacional de La Habana.

"La distribución del comercio por continente ha tenido cambios
importantes", indicó Raúl de la Nuez ante empresarios de más de 40
países presentes en el foro de negocios.

"América que hasta hace pocos años representaba apenas el 25% del
intercambio total con Cuba, en estos momentos ocupa el primer lugar con
el 49%", expresó De la Nuez.

Según el ministro Europa pasó a un segundo lugar en materia de
intercambio con un 29%; mientras Asia y Medio Oriente, tienen una
participación del 19%.

Instalada en Expocuba, en las afueras de la capital, la Feria anual
cuenta en esta ocasión con 1.900 compañías_incluyendo las cubanas_ y
ocupa 14.000 metros cuadrados.

De la Nuez destacó la visita por segundo año de empresas
norteamericanas, esta vez se trata de 188 firmas y una delegación de 380
empresarios de 31 estados, dijo.

Estados Unidos mantiene un fuerte embargo a la isla desde hace cuatro
décadas, pero en 2001 gracias a una enmienda del Congreso se permitió la
venta de alimentos a La Habana pero con restricciones en el pago.

De la Nuez recordó que la Feria, abierta hasta el sábado, se desarrolla
en momentos en que la isla reportó un crecimiento 7,3% del Producto
Interno Bruto (PIB) para el primer semestre del 2005, "determinado por
el incremento de 13 de las 22 ramas industriales, así como del sector
turístico".

Además, explicó el ministro, se continuaron potenciando los vínculos con
China y con Venezuela. Con el país sudamericano la isla firmó la
Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas (ALBA) --un mecanismo de
integración regional-- y se convirtió en la primera socia comercial de Cuba.

Paralelamente, en la primera jornada comenzaron las firmas de acuerdos.

En el pabellón que ocupan empresas estadounidenses, el director de
agricultura de Michigan, Mitch Irwin y las autoridades locales
rubricaron una carta de intención para comprarle a ese estado
norteamericano comestibles por 10 millones de dólares.

"Tenemos una participación mayor (de empresas norteamericanas) este año
a pesar de las restricciones" comentó Pedro Alvarez, presidente de
Alimport en conversación con la AP el domingo.

"Pero la administración (del presidente George W. Bush) ha creado
obstáculos serios para las compañías pequeñas y medianas", agregó.

Desde que Cuba comenzó a aprovechar esa excepción del Congreso en el
2001, firmó contratos por más de 1.400 millones de dólares de artículos
agrícolas estadounidenses, indicó Alvarez.

Sin embargo, según precisó las ventas cayeron desde el pasado año,
porque las sanciones impuestas por Washington se endurecieron obligando
al pago de los productos de manera directa en efectivo y antes que
salgan de los puertos norteamericanos.

Marvin Leherer, de la Federación de Productores de Arroz de Estados
Unidos, aseguró que las ventas del grano a Cuba disminuirán un poco este
año, "sobre todo por los problemas de pago" debidos a las sanciones
impuestas por Estados Unidos.

La corresponsal de AP en La Habana, Anita Snow, contribuyó con esta
información

http://www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/world/americas/13045261.htm

Venezuela y Cuba signan acuerdo de transporte en el marco de Petrocaribe

Venezuela y Cuba signan acuerdo de transporte en el marco de Petrocaribe

12:23 P.M., 30 Octubre 2005
CARACAS, Oct 30 (AFP) - La estatal Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) y el
Ministerio de Transporte de Cuba signaron un convenio de integración
para crear una empresa que realice envíos de hidrocarburos en el marco
del acuerdo energético Petrocaribe, según un comunicado difundido este
domingo.

"Para poder llevar mayores beneficios a los pueblos de los países
caribeños, este acuerdo es la continuación del proceso de integración
energética y de complementación en el área de transporte", señaló en el
comunicado Asdrúbal Chávez, director de Pdvsa y presidente de PDV Marina.

Chávez suscribió el acuerdo junto al asesor del Ministerio de Transporte
de Cuba, Álvaro Montero.

Dicho convenio prevé la utilización de la flota de Pdvsa y Cuba, y
establece los lineamientos básicos para proveer un "transporte
eficiente, seguro y económico a los países signatarios del acuerdo de
PetroCaribe". Inclusive, cabe la posibilidad de incorporar barcos de
otras empresas.

Petrocaribe, oficializado en junio en la ciudad venezolana de Puerto La
Cruz, aspira a suministrar 196.300 barriles diarios de crudo y derivados
a los países del Caribe, en condiciones preferenciales: pago con
productos y dos años de gracia, y un financiamiento del 40% si el precio
del barril supera los 40 dólares, como ocurre actualmente, a una tasa de
interés de 1%.

Este convenio tiene como socios a Jamaica, Cuba, República Dominicana,
Dominica, Granada, Surinam, Belice, San Vicente y Las Granadinas, San
Cristóbal y Nevis y Antigua y Barbuda.

© 2005 AFP

http://www.mipunto.com/punto_noticias/noticia_economia.jsp?tipo=ECONOMIA&archivo=051030162310.9w0kn1yj.txt

La Habana niega haber dado apoyo financiero a Lula

Posted on Mon, Oct. 31, 2005

La Habana niega haber dado apoyo financiero a Lula

EFE
BRASILIA

La embajada de Cuba en Brasilia negó ayer que el gobierno de su país
hiciera un aporte de $3 millones a la campaña electoral del 2002 que
condujo al socialista Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a la presidencia brasileña.

''El gobierno de Cuba rechaza categóricamente estas calumnias; confirma
que jamás ha interferido en los asuntos internos de esta hermana nación,
y responsabiliza totalmente de esta maniobra propagandística a los
agresivos planes del imperialismo contra Cuba y contra Lula'', expresa
un comunicado divulgado por la embajada.

La nota calificó de injurioso el reportaje divulgado por el semanario
Veja en la edición que comenzó a circular ayer y que relata el supuesto
apoyo de Cuba a la campaña electoral de Lula.

Según la revista, los recursos cubanos llegaron al comité electoral de
Lula en Sao Paulo entre uno y dos meses antes de las elecciones de
octubre del 2002.

La publicación sustenta la información en declaraciones del abogado
Rogerio Buratti, quien es reo en un caso por corrupción, y del
economista Vladimir Poleto. Ambos fueron asesores del actual ministro de
Hacienda, Antonio Palocci, uno de los principales hombres de confianza
de Lula.

La noticia ofreció municiones a los partidos de la oposición, que ya
habían anunciado públicamente su intención de abrir un proceso en el
Congreso para intentar retirar a Lula del cargo por supuestas
irregularidades en sus cuentas de campaña.

''Quienes orquestan esta campaña de mentiras contra Cuba y contra el
gobierno brasileño buscan afectar las relaciones bilaterales entre
nuestros dos países'', afirma la nota de la embajada.

Según el comunicado, esas versiones buscan frenar los planes cada vez
más amplios de cooperación entre ambos países y en especial un proyecto
en implementación que permitirá que médicos cubanos atiendan diaria y
gratuitamente en la isla a unos cien brasileños con problemas de visión.

El proyecto Operación Milagro Brasil, según la embajada, incluye la
donación por parte de Cuba de ``un centro oftalmológico equipado con la
más alta tecnología que se conoce en el mundo, que permitiría a Brasil
realizar hasta 100,000 operaciones gratuitas anualmente''.

La nota atribuye la supuesta invención del aporte financiero a la
campaña de Lula a un intento de desviar la atención de los brasileños
sobre las investigaciones de corrupción que afronta el gobierno del
presidente George W. Bush, quien se dispone a visitar Brasil.

http://www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/world/cuba/13039003.htm

CAMPANA "DESESPERADA" POR LA MEDICA CUBANA

CAMPAÑA "DESESPERADA" POR LA MEDICA CUBANA
Noticias del Día Minuto a Minuto

Autor: Redacción

Fecha de Publicación: 31/10/2005 19:01

Roberto Quiñones, hijo de la médica cubana Hilda Molina, emprendió hoy
una "campaña desesperada" y pidió a los jefes de gobierno de todos los
países que participan de la IV Cumbre de las Américas que los
respectivos jefes de gobierno intercedan ante el mandatario de Cuba,
Fidel Castro.

Quiñones calificó de "lamentable" la actitud de Diego Maradona de
"ensalsar" a Fidel Castro y reveló que lo que mas le "duele" es que el
ex futbolista no lo haya recibido a él y a su familia, aduciendo que
tenía "una agenda muy llena".

El médico cubano hizo llegar a las embajadas de las naciones que asisten
a la cumbre de Mar del Plata, un boletín informativo, ilustrado con las
fotos de su madre, Hilda Molina, y de su abuela, Hilda Morejón.

"Hilda Molina pide a Fidel que le permita viajar a Argentina para
conocer a sus nietos", versa el título del texto, que sostiene que "la
neurocirujana de 62 años aprovecha la Cumbre de las Américas para pedir
la solidaridad de todas las abuelas del continente americano".

Consultado sobre Maradona, quien días atrás viajó a Cuba para
entrevistar a Castro, Quiñones sostuvo que "me duele que se ensalse a la
persona que en nuestro caso ha impedido la reunificación de nuestra
familia" y que "tiene encarcelado a más de 300 personas por solo opinar
diferente".

"Lo veo como algo lamentable, la manera de ensalsar al señor Fidel
Castro", aseguró el médico Quiñones, que desde hace años reclama que el
gobierno de La Habana permita viajar a su madre y a su abuela para que
conozcan a sus dos hijos que viven con él y su esposa en Buenos Aires.

Indicó que "mis hijos son admiradores en lo deportivo de Maradona. Pero
mi hijo mayor no entendía y me decía cómo, siendo un gran deportista,
alabara a quien le impide ver a su abuela".

No obstante, Quiñones reveló que lo que mas dolor le provoca es que
"tratamos que Maradona nos recibiera y la respuesta fue que tenía su
agenda muy llena, que estaba haciendo el programa y que no tenía la
suficiente fuerza moral para pedirle, por un caso como el nuestro, a
Fidel Castro".

Según trascendió, un legislador de Compromiso para el Cambio intercedió
ante el diputado electo del PRO Mauricio Macri, quien habría acercado a
Maradona la inquietud y el pedido de los Quiñones.

"Tiene su agenda llena para atender a mis hijos, que lo único que le
iban a pedir es por su abuela, pero tiene tiempo para dedicarle cuatro
horas a Fidel", exclamó Quiñones. Precisamente el médico cubano que
reside hace mas de diez años en la Argentina, mañana a las 19 hs
brindará una charla sobre "La libertad y los derechos humanos en Cuba:
el caso de Hilda Molina".

Invitado por el vicedecanato de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad
de La Matanza, Quiñones dialogará con los alumnos de la carrera en la
sede ubicada en Presidente Perón 2450, de la localidad bonaerense de San
Justo.

"No me pongo en contra del pueblo de Cuba, pero estoy en desacuerdo con
el gobierno en cuestiones de derechos humanos", aclaró Quiñones.

http://www.cronica.com.ar/article/articleview/1130796665/1/20/

Protestan evacuados pinarenos en refugios

SOCIEDAD
Protestan evacuados pinareños en refugios

PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - 28 de octubre (Rafael Ferro Salas, Abdala Press /
www.cubanet.org) - Ciudadanos albergados debido al paso de huracanes por
Pinar del Río protestaron antes las autoridades de la provincia.

La protesta se llevó a efecto en el preciso instante en que la
secretaria del Partido Comunista en la provincia (máxima autoridad de
gobierno) visitaba el albergue ubicado en la carretera al poblado Las
Ovas (a 12 kilómetros de la ciudad de Pinar del Río).

Los albergados expresaron inconformidad debido a las malas condiciones
higiénico - sanitarias del sitio y por la baja calidad de los alimentos
que les dan.

Hay personal albergado que lleva más de dos años en esas comunidades de
tránsito y aún las autoridades no les han dado ninguna respuesta acerca
de la construcción de las viviendas que perdieron en ciclones pasados.

Cuando hay amenaza de ciclón las autoridades cubanas tienen como medida
de prevención llevar a los albergues habilitados a los ciudadanos que
residen en zonas de alto riesgo para los vientos y las penetraciones de
las aguas de mares y ríos.

Recientemente el huracán Wilma pasó cerca de la provincia y albergaron a
un cuarto de millón de personas. Hubo localidades que sufrieron
penetraciones del agua de ríos en zonas rurales principalmente y también
invasión de las aguas del mar en las costeras.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y05/oct05/31a2.htm

Sobre las buenas malas costumbres (II)

SOCIEDAD
Sobre las buenas malas costumbres (II)

Raúl Soroa

LA HABANA, Cuba - Octubre (www.cubanet.org) - El estalinismo no sólo nos
aportó su mentalidad estrecha, su odio a la cultura occidental, nos
trajo aire siberiano preñado de olor a GULAG, nos dotó de nuestros
propios y tropicalizados Félix Edmundovich, Yezhov, Beria -nuestros
compañeros chekistas. Nos dejó a nuestros comisarios encargados de
formar al hombre nuevo comunista.

Esos vientos siberianos, huracanados en el Caribe, se llevaron entre
otras cosas, junto a nuestras libertades económicas, civiles y
políticas, los buenos modales, la cortesía, la amabilidad, los buenos
días, las muchas gracias. Los por favor, los pase usted se convirtieron
en rezagos del pasado que había que borrar.

Expresarse correctamente, dar el asiento en un transporte público a una
mujer, a un niño, a un anciano, emocionarse ante una obra de arte,
llorar a un muerto, se transformó en signo de debilidad. Nos convertimos
en rudos camaradas proletarios. Se satanizó todo lo burgués. Convertidos
los burgueses en viva estampa de la degradación y la vileza, se satanizó
todo lo que ellos representaban, incluidas las buenas costumbres. La
radio, la televisión, el teatro y mucha literatura se dedicaron a
enaltecer los "valores morales proletarios" y a demeritar con saña "lo
viejo", los "rezagos del pasado explotador". La caballerosidad era
debilidad, la finura se convirtió en motivo de burla.

Hoy nos quejamos de la falta de urbanidad que aqueja a la sociedad
cubana, aquellos vientos trajeron estas lluvias. En la calle impera el
sálvese quien pueda, en las colas la ley del más fuerte. Las ciudades se
han convertido en selvas donde ancianos, mujeres y niños luchan en
tremenda desventaja. Nadie da el asiento en una guagua a una embarazada,
es normal recurrir a la violencia para ocupar un puesto en una cola o
para tratar de subir a una guagua.

La imagen de las mujeres sudorosas, cargadas de jabas y paquetes o con
niños en los brazos, de pie en un camello o en una guagua, mientras
hombres jóvenes las contemplan indiferentes desde sus asientos, es un
cuadro común.

Recuerdo hace unos años un viaje terrible que tuvimos que hacer mi
esposa embarazada y yo, sobre la cama de un camión adaptado para
transportar pasajeros. Mi esposa, con una barriga enorme, tenía turno
con el médico. La mayor parte de los que iban sentados en los bancos de
madera del camión eran hombres. Nadie le dio el asiento en ese viaje que
duró más de 45 minutos, ni tan siquiera cuando, mareada por los tumbos
constantes del camión, vomitó. Incluso alguien protestó por el vómito.
Increpé a los indiferentes pasajeros sin encontrar solidaridad ni apoyo
ni respuesta. Entonces me di cuenta de que no entendían, que no se
percataban de que estaban haciendo algo incorrecto.

Manifestaciones como "por qué tengo que darle el asiento, ella es igual
que yo, ¿no somos iguales los hombres y las mujeres?" se escuchan a diario.

La retirada en derrota de las buenas costumbres abrió el espacio a las
malas costumbres. Nuestra sociedad se marginalizó. El prototipo de
hombre no es el señor, ni siquiera el obrero. Es el asere, una especie
de buscavidas pícaro, vago, bravucón, vulgar y descortés. El de la mujer
no es la mujer trabajadora. Es la jinetera, la luchadora, la buscavidas,
la variante femenina del asere.

A la mujer cubana le ha tocado la peor parte. Incorporada al trabajo,
dejó de ser ama de casa para convertirse en ama de casa y obrera 24 por
24. Ante la debacle de la familia, el papel del hombre cubano como
suministrador tuvo que ser asumido por ella, a quien además le ha tocado
hacerlo en muy difíciles condiciones, responsable en solitario del
sustento familiar en muchos casos, de las tareas domésticas, de la
educación y cuidado de los hijos. Todo eso en medio de una sociedad que
no le muestra la más mínima consideración ni respeto.

Con la llegada del Período Especial, el tener una hija se convirtió para
muchas familias en pasaporte para salir de la miseria. El único proyecto
de vida de esas jóvenes es casarse con un extranjero que la saque del
país, no importa para dónde -Haití, Benín o la Luna- y proporcionarle
cierto confort a su familia, o al menos lograr que no se mueran de hambre.

Juana la cubana se convirtió así en Eva la jinetera, heroína de su
barrio, envidia de sus amigas, salvación de sus padres y hermanos
varones que viven de sus ingresos.

El paraíso proletario de los camaradas estalinistas tropicalizados es un
bodrio, un bunker repleto de podredumbre, un lugar del que todo el mundo
quiere salir a bordo de cualquier cosa, una balsa, una lancha, una beca,
un viejo(a) enamorado(a). Si es paraíso de algo es de la falta de todo.
Si alguna vez alguien buscó el lugar idílico de lo marginal, en eso se
ha convertido nuestra Isla. El culto a lo prosaico, expresado como
contraposición a lo burgués, viene dado por la falta de referente obrero
real, en un país donde pensar tal cosa es un absurdo. ¿Qué tenían que
ver nuestros obreros tabaqueros o azucareros con el obrero ruso o polaco
o alemán? Nuestros obreros estaban más cerca de sus compatriotas
burgueses que de aquella imagen del hombre soviético que maneja la
fragua. El icono era el pequeño burgués. Al eliminar el referente
mediato, al hacerlo trizas, lo más cercano a ese prototipo soviético en
Cuba era el lumpen proletario, el chuchero, la prostituta. La otra
estampa, la de los camaradas del Este, sobre todo la de los rusos, era
motivo de rechazo, por lo tanto no pudo prender nunca, no pudo
convertirse en modelo a imitar. El criollo, aseado por naturaleza,
rechazaba a esos hombres toscos y sucios, a esas mujeres desaseadas, con
las piernas y las axilas sin afeitar.

Esa marginalidad de la sociedad cubana queda expresada no sólo en la
conducta. El lenguaje y el arte son reflejo de esta situación. Si tiene
dudas, compare la letra de una de nuestras canciones de los 30, 40 ó 50
con las de ahora, o converse durante unos minutos con algunos de
nuestros estudiantes universitarios. La frontera fue derribada, borrada,
y costará mucho trabajo restablecerla.

Al ser aplastada la individualidad por el Estado, el ser humano desde su
nacimiento, desde la familia, desde la escuela y el barrio es penetrado
sistemáticamente por una jerarquía de valores que niega en primer lugar
su individualidad. A esa persona en formación la van a enseñar, va a
aprender su nulidad ante el poder, su indefensión ante la autoridad, su
subordinación. Va a asimilar mecanismos de defensa innobles y amorales
para sobrevivir en un medio hostil a su individuación. Ese ser en
formación va a aprender a integrar una masa sin identidad propia. Ese
amalgamiento social, esa mezcla donde se priorizan los antivalores ha
traído como resultado este hombre que hoy vemos caminar por nuestras
calles, el hombre nuevo comunista, con una cultura de campamento y una
moral de barrio bajo.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y05/oct05/31a6.htm

Acusan a Chavez de usar estrategia cubana de romper equilibrio familiar

Acusan a Chávez de usar estrategia cubana de romper equilibrio familiar

Vivian Castillo, El Universal. Venezuela, 27 de octubre de 2005.

Existe un ataque sistemático en contra de la familia como grupo social
por parte del Estado venezolano, así lo denunció Pic-Ling Fung,
integrante del movimiento Alianza Popular, en rueda de prensa realizada
este miércoles.

Ling Fung explica que la finalidad del Gobierno es poner en práctica la
estrategia fidelista de desmembrar a la familia venezolana y debilitar
la lucha política.

La dirigente asegura que este plan se lleva a cabo a través de los
poderes públicos con detenciones, expropiaciones, persecuciones
políticas y también creando la dependencia del pueblo del Estado.

En tal sentido anunció la creación del Comité Pro Defensa de la Familia,
el cual tiene como objetivo fundamental "luchar por principios y valores
de la familia como núcleo de una sociedad democrática y en libertad".

La vocera de esa organización política afirmó que todos los integrantes
de la familia "debemos combatir el acoso a que tiene sometido este
régimen a la familia venezolana".

Ling Fung recalcó que el modelo castrocomunista que está adoptando el
Presidente es muy peligroso para la familia venezolana. "Recordemos que
en Cuba la educación de los hijos no depende de la familia sino del
adoctrinamiento del Estado, los hijos no responden a los padres y los
jóvenes que tienen pensamientos propios son perseguidos como en
Venezuela ahora".

La vocera de la organización Alianza Popular esgrimió como ejemplos de
su teoría los casos de Alexandra Belandria Ruiz Pineda, la joven
dirigente del Movimiento Cambio y el de los presos políticos.

Para culminar, Ling Fung se refirió a las carencias de la familia
venezolana, "que no tiene sistemas de salud eficientes y que la
educación de los hijos pasa por el adoctrinamiento político".

Por su parte, la dirigente del Movimiento Cambio, Alexandra Belandria
Ruiz-Pineda, intervino para referirse al papel de los jóvenes en este
momento histórico del país y explicó que es una perseguida política del
actual régimen, que busca callar la voz de la juventud, "por eso quiero
explicar que Cambio es un movimiento no violento, que desea un futuro
mejor".

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y05/oct05/27o7.htm

Women with a cause

Posted on Mon, Oct. 31, 2005

Women with a cause
OUR OPINION: CUBA'S LADIES IN WHITE GET DESERVED BOOST, PROTECTION

The Ladies in White, Las Damas de Blanco in Cuba, received deserved
recognition last week from the European Parliament for their courageous
efforts to free political prisoners. Their Sakharov Prize for Freedom of
Thought, one of Europe's most important human-rights awards, provides
moral backing for Cuba's beleaguered dissidents even as it rebukes the
Cuban regime for its repression of basic freedoms.

Indeed, the Cuban women shared the 2005 award with Reporters Without
Borders, a Paris-based organization that has tirelessly lobbied to free
more than 20 independent journalists imprisoned in Cuba. This follows
the 2003 Sakharov Prize awarded to Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.

The Ladies in White are a group of wives and other relatives of 75
activists jailed during the regime's 2003 crackdown on dissent. The men
now face lengthy prison terms for loaning out books, petitioning for
constitutional changes and criticizing the government -- what is routine
in free countries. The women organized spontaneously, moving from
consoling each other, to going to church together, to demanding freedom
for their husbands. After Sunday mass, they began to march in silent
protest, dressed all in white, gladiolus in hand. They've circulated
petitions and written letters to top-level regime officials demanding
the unconditional release of the so-called Group of 75.

The group faces attacks from regime-sponsored mobs and routine
intimidation. Foreign-press coverage, however, spread their fame and
gave them a measure of protection from reprisals. By further
highlighting their struggle, the Sakharov Prize will add to that protection.

Miriam Leiva is one of the Damas de Blanco. Her husband, prominent
dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe, was conditionally released last year.
''This prize is an acknowledgment by the international community,'' she
said, ``and a clear message that the world is watching with great
attention the human-rights situation in Cuba.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editorial/13040069.htm

¿Que tan soberana es Cuba?

Posted on Mon, Oct. 31, 2005

¿Qué tan soberana es Cuba?

RAFAEL ROJAS

Veamos, ¿cuál es la soberanía adecuada para un pequeño país del Caribe,
como Cuba, a inicios de la era global? ¿La que se basa en la convivencia
respetuosa con sus vecinos de las dos Américas y la diversificación de
vínculos internacionales con Europa, Asia y Africa, o la que sostiene el
régimen actual, aferrada a la confrontación con Estados Unidos, el
intervencionismo ideológico en América Latina y el pleito recurrente con
las democracias europeas?

Reformulemos, mejor, la misma pregunta: ¿qué país es más soberano? ¿El
que es capaz de negociar su autodeterminación con una potencia vecina,
sin anular las libertades públicas de sus ciudadanos nacionales y
emigrados o el que confunde la soberanía del pueblo con la del gobierno,
la de la nación con la del Estado y sólo concibe la independencia como
una guerra simbólica con el vecino más rico y poderoso?

Bajo Fidel Castro, los diplomáticos y políticos cubanos han olvidado
que, entre 1934 y 1952, hubo una generación de estadistas que aprendió a
conciliar soberanía y democracia, libertad e independencia. Casi siempre
recordamos a antiplattistas republicanos como Manuel Márquez Sterling y
Cosme de la Torriente. Hoy me gustaría evocar a otro: el laborioso
historiador de Cárdenas, Herminio Portell Vilá, borrado, como tantos
otros republicanos eminentes, de la historia de Cuba por el mesianismo
castrista.

La Enmienda Platt, como es sabido, fue derogada, en 1934, por medio de
una negociación entre los gobiernos de Franklin Delano Roosevelt y
Carlos Mendieta y Montefur. Quienes, por parte de Cuba, encabezaron
aquella negociación en Washington fueron el Secretario de Estado y
veterano de la guerra de independencia, Cosme de la Torriente, y el
importante intelectual y diplomático republicano Manuel Márquez Sterling.

Al entonces joven historiador y revolucionario antimachadista Herminio
Portell Vilá, conocido ya por obras como Historia de Cárdenas (1928),
Narciso López y su época (1930) y Martí, diplomático (1934) le tocó una
tarea no menos decisiva: defender la abrogación de la Enmienda Platt en
foros latinoamericanos y combatir, como ''delegado plenipotenciario'' de
Cuba ante la VII Conferencia Internacional Americana, celebrada en
Montevideo, en diciembre de 1933, el intervencionismo de los embajadores
norteamericanos Benjamin Sumner Welles y Jefferson Caffery.

Pero la labor de Portell Vilá no sólo fue decisiva para la abrogación de
la Enmienda Platt y la legitimación internacional del antimachadismo,
sino para dotar de contenido realmente interamericano la formulación de
la política del ''buen vecino'' de Roosevelt. Como delegado a la
conferencia de Montevideo y como miembro de su Comisión de Derecho
Internacional, Portell Vilá fue uno de los firmantes de la Convención
sobre Derechos y Deberes de los Estados de América que estableció en su
artículo octavo que ``ningún estado tiene derecho a intervenir en los
asuntos internos y externos de otro''.

Sin embargo, para Portell Vilá, lo mismo que para Márquez Sterling, la
única manera legítima de respetar ese principio era por medio de la
consolidación de un régimen republicano y democrático. Sólo con ''un
gobierno libre y constitucional'', decía en su célebre discurso en
Montevideo, con un ''congreso elegido'' y amplios derechos civiles y
políticos, los estados podían lograr la credibilidad internacional
necesaria para defender sus soberanías.

Hoy, cuando vemos a diplomáticos castristas --toda una contradicción en
los términos--, como Felipe Pérez Roque y Ricardo Alarcón, justificar la
ausencia de democracia en Cuba con el argumento de la defensa de la
soberanía, vale la pena recordar la mejor tradición de la diplomacia
republicana. Las ideas de verdaderos diplomáticos como Portell Vilá y
Márquez Sterling son la mejor refutación de la premisa fundamental del
castrismo: un país latinoamericano sí puede y debe ser independiente y
libre, a la vez, soberano y democrático.

Más allá de lo gastada o inoperante que pueda resultar la doctrina de la
soberanía nacional, en estos tiempos de interconexión global, es bueno
advertir que, hoy, en América Latina, no es Estados Unidos, sino Cuba,
el país que menos respeta aquel artículo octavo de la Conferencia de
Montevideo por el que tanto lucharon los diplomáticos de la república.

http://www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/opinion/13039010.htm

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Repression a Cuba, il faut agir

Le gouvernement français et l'UE doivent faire pression sur le régime de Castro pour obtenir la libération de Víctor Rolando Arroyo et Félix Navarro.
Répression à Cuba, il faut agir

Par Laurent FABIUS
samedi 29 octobre 2005
Laurent Fabius député PS de Seine-Maritime et ancien Premier ministre.


Lors de la vague de répression des dissidents cubains au printemps 2003, soixante-quinze combattants de la liberté ont été condamnés à des peines allant jusqu'à vingt-huit ans de prison. Ils sont soumis à des conditions de détention barbares. Quatorze ont dû être libérés l'an dernier pour raisons de santé.
Parmi les prisonniers encore détenus, Víctor Rolando Arroyo et Félix Navarro, condamnés respectivement à vingt-six et vingt-cinq ans de prison, ont mené, pour protester contre ces conditions de détention, une grève de la faim de plusieurs semaines. Leur situation reste précaire, ils sont affaiblis et malades.
En maintenant en détention Arroyo et Navarro, le régime Castro démontre une fois de plus son caractère odieux. Nous ne pouvons rester silencieux.
Fin septembre, l'Union européenne a protesté auprès du régime cubain. Aujourd'hui plus que jamais, nous devons nous mobiliser. J'appelle le gouvernement français et l'Union européenne à faire pression sur le gouvernement cubain pour qu'Arroyo, Navarro et les autres prisonniers politiques cubains retrouvent la liberté.
J'apporte mon plein soutien au mouvement des «Dames en blanc», épouses et proches des prisonniers politiques cubains qui luttent pour leur libération. Leur combat est exemplaire. Tous les démocrates doivent le soutenir.

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=334633
 

Cuba's acceptance of aid raises doubts

Cuba's acceptance of aid raises doubts

Castro may be posturing after U.S. rebuff of his Katrina offer.

By Gary Marx
Chicago Tribune

October 29, 2005

HAVANA · The surprising decision by Cuban President Fidel Castro to
accept an offer by the U.S. government of humanitarian assistance could
signal a temporary improvement in the tattered relationship between the
countries.

But few experts believe the proposed visit by three U.S. aid officials
to assess the damage wrought by Hurricane Wilma will break the political
deadlock in which President Bush is seeking to oust Castro while Castro
opposes U.S. polices around the globe.

In fact, the aid mission could be scuttled even before it gets off the
ground, illustrating the difficulty of any potential rapprochement
between the two nations.

Although in recent months officials from the two countries have rejected
mutual offers of assistance after hurricane disasters, Castro announced
Thursday evening that he would welcome the experts from the U.S. Agency
for International Development to the island despite emphasizing that
Cuba had not solicited international assistance.

It's unclear when or if the aid experts will arrive on the island.

Yet, while U.S. officials are offering to send a disaster assessment
team and perhaps provide emergency assistance, Castro said he is
interested only in opening a dialogue with American officials over how
to improve relief efforts throughout the region.

"We are going to discuss, let's get an agreement, and really help each
other mutually in cases of disaster," Castro said on national television.

Hurricane Wilma caused some of the worst flooding in Cuba in years
despite passing north of the island.

While there were no reported deaths, more than 100,000 were affected by
the flooding in Havana, and 369 homes were damaged or destroyed,
according to the Communist Party daily Granma.

At least 118 electrical poles were downed in the western province of
Pinar del Rio, and tobacco and fruit crops suffered severe damage,
according to local newspapers.

Yet, despite the extensive damage, Castro may have accepted the offer
more for political reasons than economic ones, according to experts and
diplomats.

Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American
Dialogue, a Washington-based policy group, recalled that Castro
denounced the U.S. for rejecting Cuba's offer to help victims of
Hurricane Katrina and may not have wanted to open himself up to similar
criticism.

Last month, Cuba offered to send more than 1,500 physicians to the
devastated U.S. Gulf Coast region. U.S. officials said the Cuban doctors
were not needed because enough American doctors had volunteered to help.

But Erikson said Castro also could be using the aid mission to
"recalibrate" relations with the United States.

Erikson recalled that Castro shifted policy and began purchasing large
quantities of U.S. agricultural products after Hurricane Michelle
devastated the island in 2001.

"This is an opportunity to feel out the U.S. a little bit to see what
type of people they send; are they professionals or political hacks?"
Erikson said. "It's an opportunity to learn about U.S. intentions."

The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Co. newspaper.

Copyright © 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-acuba29oct29,0,1306373.story?coll=sfla-news-nationworld

Castro dice a EEUU y UE que Cuba no quiere ayuda humanitaria

Castro dice a EEUU y UE que Cuba no quiere ayuda humanitaria
28 de Octubre de 2005, 08:56PM ET

La Habana, 28 oct (EFE).- El líder cubano, Fidel Castro, arremetió hoy
de nuevo contra Estados Unidos y la "podrida" Europa y aseguró que Cuba
no necesita ninguna ayuda humanitaria.

Castro calificó de "mentecato" al coordinador de EEUU para la Transición
en Cuba, Caleb McCarry, y se refirió a su reciente viaje a Europa.

"Andaba por Europa pidiendo entre sus secuaces europeos del imperio y
unos pocos mercenarios ayuda para la transición", denunció durante un
discurso en un acto de graduación estudiantil en La Habana.

"Que venga la podrida Europa, a ver qué hace. Una vez nos insultó y
ofendió pretendiendo quitarnos una ayuda humanitaria que nunca nos dio",
recordó, en alusión a las sanciones políticas, hoy en suspenso, que
adoptó la Unión Europea en 2003 en protesta por las condenas a 75
disidentes y la ejecución de tres secuestradores.

"Cuando nos siguieron ofendiendo, el pueblo desfiló ante dos de sus
embajadas", añadió refiriéndose a las movilizaciones contra las
embajadas de España e Italia cuando estalló la crisis entre Bruselas y
la UE, hace dos años.

"Que no se equivoquen (...), no queremos ninguna ayuda humanitaria, si
acaso ya nosotros hasta se la podemos mandar", insistió.

"Europa no puede con nosotros, con nosotros no puede nada", continúo,
porque "Cuba no necesita al imperio yanqui, no necesita de Europa (...)
somos una revolución fortísima".

"La naturaleza no nos podrá doblegar, ni el imperio podrá doblegar el
espíritu de nuestro pueblo", reiteró.

Castro se refirió también a la lucha contra la corrupción emprendida por
su Gobierno y advirtió de que habrá "el mínimo de oportunidades para los
parásitos, para los que reciben la moneda que nos saquea (el dólar
estadounidense)".

"Hay que seguir la pista de los nuevos ricos que no quieren pagar y de
los sobornados que se dejan sobornar", aseguró.

Volvió a insistir en pedir explicaciones a Estados Unidos sobre la
presencia en su territorio de Luis Posada carriles, anticastrista y ex
agente de la CIA acusado por La Habana de terrorismo.

Castro pidió también la libertad de los cinco agentes cubanos condenados
en EEUU bajo cargos de espionaje y criticó a la UE, que "no se rasga las
vestiduras" por su encarcelamiento.

Más de 3.000 estudiantes asistieron a la ceremonia presidida por Castro
en la Ciudad Deportiva de la capital cubana. EFE

mar/lgo

http://www.univision.com/contentroot/wirefeeds/lat/5653809.html

Wind of change blows through Cuba's relations with America

Wind of change blows through Cuba's relations with America
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 29 October 2005

Fidel Castro has agreed to allow three United States aid officials to
visit Cuba in the aftermath of destruction caused in Havana and the
westcoast by Hurricane Wilma, but denied on state television that he had
gone so far as to accept direct help from Washington.

Nonetheless, the mere fact of an aid delegation being welcomed into the
country is an unprecedented step by the Castro regime. Until now, the
question of assistance from the US in times of natural calamity has
never been put under consideration.

Speaking on television on Thursday night, the 79-year-old Cuban leader
tried to play down the political significance of the visit. "Cuba has
not solicited international aid,'' he said. He cast the visit in the
context of improving co-operation within the Caribbean to deal with
future shared emergencies.

"We have no objections at all to the three officials visiting us, to
know their assessment and exchange views on these matters," he said. "We
won't close the door." He added that he shared "the point of view" that
countries in the area should "provide mutual assistance in situations of
disaster''.

Although Cuba evacuated 600,000 people before Wilma struck on Monday,
its power took many by surprise. Properties along the west coast were
destroyed or flooded. In Havana, the storm surge broke through the
majestic Malecon sea wall and left parts of the city waist-deep. Many
historic and largely neglected buildings are in danger of crumbling as
the water recedes.

The approach by Washington was made on Tuesday in a letter from the new
US Interests Section chief in Havana, Michael Parmly.

The delegation will be made up of three officials from the US Agency for
International Development, and if US aid is eventually extended to help
with the clean-up in Cuba, it will be funnelled through non-governmental
aid charities.

Since taking power in 1959, President Castro has been stalwart in never
accepting assistance from the United States. Similarly, when Cuba
offered to send more than a thousand doctors and tons of medical
supplies to Lousiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,
the US declined.

However, if America does provide aid after Wilma, it is not expected to
lead to any wider thaw in the chill between the countries. Washington
remains determined that Cuba should enter a transition to democratic
rule when the Castro era ends and restrictions on the country have been
tightened since President George Bush entered the White House.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article323160.ece

Raul a Hurdle to Cuba, Venezuela Unity

Raul a Hurdle to Cuba, Venezuela Unity

Zimbabwe Independent (Harare)
COLUMN
October 28, 2005
Posted to the web October 28, 2005

By Gwynne Dyer

"IT wouldn't be outrageous," said Ana Faya of her suspicion that Cuba
and Venezuela might unite one of these days.

After all, the senior analyst at the Canadian Foundation for the
Americas (Focal) in Ottawa pointed out, the idea of uniting Latin
American countries has been around since the revolutions of Bolivar and
San Martin against Spain almost two centuries ago.

And she certainly knows how Cuban Communists think: for 10 years, until
she fled to Canada in 2000, she was an official of the Central Committee
of the Cuban Communist Party.

The Cuban regime's biggest problem by far is: who succeeds Fidel Castro?

The official answer is his youngest brother Raul, currently
vice-president and defence minister, but ideologically committed Cuban
Communists still have problems with the idea that political power can be
inherited. They also suspect Raul of being soft on capitalism.

Fidel has had a remarkably rapid recovery from a fall last October that
broke his arm and shattered his kneecap in eight places, but he will
turn 80 next August.

He has ruled Cuba for 46 years, but he will soon have to be replaced. If
the revolution is to survive, his replacement had better be a man with
contemporary revolutionary credentials, a man with the charisma and
resources to keep the show on the road. A man, perhaps, like Hugo Chavez.

Chavez is Venezuelan, not Cuban, but that may not be as big a problem as
it seems. Many people on the left in Latin America, including
"Bolivarians" like Chavez and most of the Marxists, have always seen the
division of the region into more than a dozen Spanish-speaking countries
as a misfortune, not a law of nature.

Cuba and Venezuela are already closely tied economically and
politically, and Chavez, though neither a Communist nor a dictator,
shares Castro's social goals and his hostility to the United States. It
just might work.

As an analyst, Faya monitors what senior people in the Cuban regime and
in the governments of neighbouring countries are saying in public,
because it probably bears some relationship, however distant, to their
real intentions. And here is what she has been hearing recently.

On October 5, at the signing of the 6th Joint Commission on the
Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement between Cuba and Venezuela, Cuban
vice-president Carlos Lage Dávila said: "Our country has been accused of
not having a democracy, but in events like this one we realise that we
are one of the most democratic countries of the world, because we have
two presidents, Fidel and Chávez."

And Chavez replied: "Cuba and Venezuela have joined together, and at
this point, the world should know that our fate is sealed, that these
two homelands, which deep down are one, are opening a new road at
whatever cost."

It could be just the usual windy rhetoric, but suppose it isn't.

Suppose there actually is a plan to unite the two countries, with Chavez
and Castro as co-presidents, and to leave Chavez in power over both
countries when Castro, 30 years his senior, finally dies. "Castro has
the power and the credibility," Faya noted. "It's a real possibility."

But, she added, "It should take place while Castro is still in charge."
It's certainly not a plan that would appeal to Raul.

Where would Castro have got such a radical idea? One of his political
idols as a young man was the Egyptian revolutionary Gamal Abdel Nasser
whom he met soon after taking power on his famous trip to New York in 1960.

And at that time, Nasser was busy uniting Egypt and Syria in the United
Arab Republic.

It didn't last very long, but that doesn't mean that a similar
experiment in Spanish-speaking America would also be doomed to failure.

One great attraction of a political merger with Venezuela for Castro is
that Cuba would suddenly gain access to the cashflow and the political
clout of a major oil producer.

As for Chavez, his motives and his loyalties are transparently Bolivarian.

Visiting Italy last week, he went to Monte Sacro, near Rome, where Simon
Bolivar made his famous oath to free Latin America from Spanish rule
exactly two centuries ago.

Bolivar had said: "I shall not give rest to my arm nor respite to my
soul until I have broken the chains that oppress us by the will of the
Spanish power."

Chavez declared that Venezuelans "should not rest their arms or their
souls until we have broken the chains that oppress our people due to the
will of the North-American Empire."

Impractical, hopelessly idealistic stuff, in the sense that Cuba and
Venezuela would be only 35 million people together, totally outmatched
by the almost 300 million people and twenty-times-bigger economy of the
United States - but Washington is severely distracted by its faltering
Middle Eastern adventure at the moment.

History is full of surprises, and this could be one that really
overturns normal expectations. Uniting with Venezuela would not preserve
Castro's system unchanged after his death, for it is old, authoritarian,
and out of tune with the times.

But it might win Cuba enough time to make a peaceful transition to a
democratic system that retains the main gains of his revolution in terms
of equal access to education, healthcare and social support.

Chavez will never be a Cuban and he cannot rule that island in the
long-term - but in the short-term, he could save it a great deal of misery.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200510280631.html

Cubans take refuge in city

October 26, 2005
Cubans take refuge in city
By Sarah Green

TORONTO -- More than 20 singers with Cuba's famed national choir were
holed up in safe houses in Ottawa and Toronto yesterday after a
well-planned defection in the middle of a Canadian tour.

"Some of them tried to cross the border (to the U.S.) because they have
family there," said Ismael Sambra, president of the Cuban Canadian
Foundation.

Sambra said the singers, about half the 40-member choir, are staying
with Cuban and Canadian friends after defecting Sunday and Monday and
they plan to apply for refugee status this week.

WANT BETTER LIVES

"Most of them want to improve their lives and to stay here, to learn
English," Sambra said.

The choir arrived in Canada last week and is slated to perform Saturday
in B.C.

The defection echoes a similar escape made by a dozen young Cubans while
visiting Toronto in 2002 for World Youth Day. The Catholic pilgrims took
advantage of the crowd of 800,000 worshippers at Downsview Park during a
mass with the late Pope John Paul to slip away from Cuban security
officials.

http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2005/10/26/1278431-sun.html

Cuba: Woman journalist transferred from house arrest to prison

Fecha emisión: 28/10/2005
Fecha publicación: 27/10/2005

Cuba: Woman journalist transferred from house arrest to prison

Lamasiel Gutiérrez Romero, a journalist who had been under house arrest
since August, has been transferred to prison because she continued her
journalistic activities in defiance of a court order, the independent
Nueva Prensa Cubana agency reported on 24 October.

The report, which has been confirmed by the Cuban Commission for Human
Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), said Gutiérrez was
incarcerated in the Mantonegro women’s penitentiary in Havana province
on 11 October. She is the Nueva Prensa Cubana correspondent on the Isle
of Youth, where she lives.

Gutiérrez, who was sentenced on 9 August to seven months of house arrest
for “resisting the authorities and civil disobedience,” joins the 23
other journalists currently imprisoned in Cuba.

http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=113288&src=0

Oftalmologos uruguayos protestan por el envio de pacientes a Cuba

Jueves, 27 de octubre de 2005

Sociedad/Noticias

Oftalmólogos uruguayos protestan por el envío de pacientes a Cuba
Médicos cubanos estarían visitando hospitales del sur de Uruguay en
busca de pacientes que trasladar a la Isla.

AFP/ Montevideo. Profesores de las Cátedras de Especialidades
Quirúrgicas de la estatal Universidad de la República, de Uruguay,
rechazaron un proyecto por el que se enviarían pacientes uruguayos a
Cuba para someterlos a cirugías oftalmológicas, informó este miércoles
una portavoz de la Facultad de Medicina.

Los facultativos remitieron su protesta al decanato por el reclutamiento
que se realiza en hospitales públicos de pacientes con diagnósticos
quirúrgicos, que serían enviados en grupos de entre 25 y 30 personas por
semana a la Isla.

Tres médicos cubanos recorren con ese propósito hospitales del sur de
Uruguay (Montevideo y Canelones) en el marco de un proyecto entre La
Habana y el gobierno uruguayo, a través del cual se busca asegurarles
tratamientos a las personas de más bajos recursos, según la versión oficial.

Los oftalmólogos uruguayos reclaman de la autoridad universitaria la
compra de los equipos que harían posible las intervenciones quirúrgicas
en Montevideo, y proponen financiar la operación con el ahorro de los
pasajes de avión a la Isla.

Además han expresado preocupación ante el hecho de que médicos cubanos
ejercen la medicina en Uruguay sin el aval necesario de la Facultad de
Medicina local.

URL
http://www.cubaencuentro.com/sociedad/noticias/20051027/a28bebcf9308b05b1483b223725fa87f.html

Hugo Chavez and the Venezuela - Cuba Alliance: Preparing for War against the People

Hugo Chavez and the Venezuela - Cuba Alliance: Preparing for War against
the People
By John Sweeney

Miami – October 26 – President Hugo Chávez says he wants good bilateral
relations with the United States and mutual respect between Caracas and
Washington , D.C. Chávez also claims that he doesn’t want to engage in
any wars with anyone, and says his greatest dream is that all of the
world’s countries and cultures should eradicate poverty and co-exist
peacefully. Chávez made these remarks during October in various speeches
and interviews. At the same time, however, Chávez continued to loudly
beat the rhetorical drums of war in Venezuela and internationally during
October.

During his weekly “Alo Presidente” program the first Sunday in October,
however, Chávez addressed private landowners that are organizing
themselves to legally and peacefully resist the Bolivarian revolution’s
illegal expropriations of their property in these threatening terms: “We
don’t believe in threats, and we won’t be threatened. If you take that
road, be aware of the consequences, because we will act with the
greatest assertiveness and we won’t allow the country to be set ablaze.
The permissive Chávez of 2000 is gone. I will not allow it.”

Chávez did not explicitly say what measures he would take against
landowners that try to resist his will democratically. In recent months,
however, all of the property expropriations and government-supported
invasions of privately-owned agricultural estates and industrial
facilities have been supported at gunpoint by Venezuelan army and
National Guard troops.

President Chávez beat the war drums some more in an interview Oct. 19 in
Paris with BBC’s Robin Lustig. In that interview, Chávez repeated his
lengthy litany of accusations against the U.S. government. Chávez said
he has “intelligence” that proves the U.S. plans to invade Venezuela to
seize control of its petroleum and natural gas resources. Chávez also
charged again, as he has hundreds of times in the past 42 months since
April 11, 2002 , that he was the victim of “a coup attempt that was
prepared by the U.S.” Chávez also repeated his charge that the
“imperialist terrorist government” of President George W. Bush “protects
terrorism.” However, Chávez added, “I wish our political differences
could be toned down.”

Judging as much by his actions as his words, the world Chávez lives in
is one of betrayal, conspiracy, conflict and bloodshed. He claims the
U.S. government is plotting to assassinate him, that the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) sabotaged PDVSA’s production operations, and
that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducts espionage
activities in Venezuela . In the past year, Chávez also has threatened
several times to suspend oil exports to the U.S. , and has vowed that
any U.S. military invasion of Venezuela would trigger “a 100 years war”
in Latin America. Still, these are just words.

However, Chávez also has taken some explicit steps to prepare Venezuela
– or, more accurately, his presidency and revolution – for both internal
and external armed conflict.

For example, Chávez acquired 100,000 AK-103 and AK-104 assault rifles
from Russia, and reportedly is negotiating the purchase of another
150,000 AK assault rifles from the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea
(DPRK). Chávez also is buying a new fleet of Russian transport and
attack helicopters, and he wants to buy Mig-29 Fulcrum and Sukhoi
Flanker advanced fighters from Russia . Further, the Chávez government
is seeking to buy advanced Tucano turboprop fighter/bombers from Brazil,
and missile patrol boats and military cargo aircraft from Spain. The
navy is shopping for two diesel/electric submarines.

The Chávez government also has met quietly with DPRK officials to
discuss the possible purchase of medium-range missile technology, and is
seeking cooperation from Argentina, Brazil and Iran to develop a
Venezuelan nuclear power capability for “peaceful purposes” which the
government claims is related to extracting and upgrading heavy crude
from the Orinoco Tar Belt.

A new national security doctrine

During four decades of pre-Chávez democracy, Venezuela ’s national
security doctrine and war gaming in the armed forces (FAN) were based on
four conflict scenarios, three of which were territorial conflicts with
neighboring countries. These external conflict scenarios included (1) a
war with Guyana over the Essequibo region, (2) a war with Brazil over
territorial control in Venezuela’s Bolívar and Amazonas states, and (3)
a war with Colombia over the Gulf of Venezuela. The fourth conflict
scenario was internal and based on the assumption that the core internal
threat was an insurgency/civil war sparked by the radical left with
clandestine Cuban government support. However, the Chávez government has
completely discarded the FAN’s longtime doctrinal pillars and core
conflict scenarios.

Since the start of 2005, Chávez has laid the strategic and legal
foundations of a new national security doctrine and an expanded military
capability that is based on the core assumption that Venezuela ’s
greatest enemy is the United States. Chávez has defined both a new
national doctrine and a national development mandate for the FAN. The
new Organic Law of the Armed Forces (LOFAN) approved in September 2005
creates a civilian military reserve that could total up to 2.6 million
volunteers in a few years.

Chávez’s national security doctrine to oppose the anticipated U.S.
military invasion is an “asymmetrical war” in which a new Territorial
Guard consisting of hundreds of thousands of active duty military
personnel and civilian military reservists that would operate as
irregular guerrilla forces against conventional U.S. forces in a
conflict without any rules of engagement. Senior chavista generals have
stated publicly that Chávez’s “no rules war” would involve Bolivarian
militants operating like radical Islamic militants in Iraq where car
bombs and ambushes in urban areas decimate civilians on a daily basis.

Cuba also is an important political, strategic and tactical pillar of
the Bolivarian revolution’s national security doctrine. In fact,
Chávez’s new national security doctrine is a copy of Cuba’s security
doctrine. Chávez’s civilian military reserve is organized along nearly
identical lines as the Castro government’s civilian militia. Chávez has
also created elite paramilitary groups inside his government that
operate independently from the FAN, the political police (DISIP) and
other security entities, the same way that Castro has set up
paramilitary security forces at the Cuban Interior Ministry that operate
independently from Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).

Three conflict scenarios

Venezuela’s new national security doctrine envisions three basic
conflict scenarios: (1) a U.S. military invasion, (2) a conflict with
Colombia, and (3) an internal military revolt or armed insurgency
against the Chávez government. In all three scenarios, the mutual
defense pact agreed to by Chávez and Castro requires Cuba to come to
Venezuela’s aid.

The U.S. invasion scenario is based on the strategic premise that
Washington, D.C. wants to seize control of Venezuela ’s oil and gas
reserves.

A second conflict scenario juggled by the Bolivarian revolution is a
military incident with Colombia in which the U.S. would play a
behind-the-scenes role encouraging and supporting Colombia. This
scenario replicates strategically the Cold War-by-proxy that raged in
Central America during the 1980s between the U.S. and the Soviet
Union/Cuba alliance.

A conflict between Venezuela and Colombia could involve both
conventional military forces and unconventional forces like special
operations troops or irregular armed groups. Retired Venezuelan Admiral
Ivan Carratú Molina said in Bogotá recently that Chávez and Castro want
to provoke a military incident with Colombia to further destabilize U.S.
strategic interests in Latin America. Chávez is sympathetic to Colombia
’s Marxist militant groups. Militant groups like the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), National Liberation Army (ELN), the Popular
Liberation Army (EPL), and the Bolivarian Liberation Front (FBL) operate
inside Venezuelan territory mainly in states that share borders with
Colombia. General Nestor González González, a leader of the military
mutiny against Chávez in April 2002, recently charged, from wherever he
is hiding, that the FARC have 32 permanent camps inside Venezuelan
territory.

The Colombian government is strengthening security on its side of the
border, and plans to deploy 20,000 troops in coming months to northwest
Colombia along the border with Panama. The Uribe government is also
creating new brigade-strength units that are being deployed in northeast
Colombia along the border with Venezuela. These expanding Colombian
troop deployments will push FARC and ELN units even deeper into
Venezuelan territory, and Colombian troops likely will pursue the
rebels. In fact, there have been some unconfirmed reports that Colombian
troops recently have deployed into Venezuela several times on precision
attacks against FARC camps.

A third conflict scenario managed by the Bolivarian revolution’s
military strategists is endogenous. Conflict erupts as a result of an
internal disruption such as a military coup attempt or a civilian
insurgency against the Bolivarian revolution. This is the scenario that
Chávez always downplays as he focuses on repeatedly accusing the U.S.
government of planning to kill him and invade Venezuela. However, an
internal conflict is the main scenario that the FAN and civilian
military reserves are organized and deployed to repulse.

This raises several questions.

How viable are any of these scenarios? Do the FAN and FAR have the
weapons, transport and command-and-control capabilities to carry out
their assigned missions under any of these conflict scenarios? What, if
any, would be the role of conventional and unconventional forces? What
are the current readiness levels of the FAN, FAR and Colombian armed
forces? How broad, in fact, is the popular support for the revolution
that forms an explicit and vital component of the Chávez government’s
“asymmetrical war” plan and the Castro government’s “war of all the
people” plan? How strong, really, are loyalties to the Bolivarian and
Cuban revolutions within the FAN and the FAR? Beyond the rhetoric of
conflict that emanates from Chávez and Castro, is there real willingness
among the Venezuelan and Cuban “peoples” to actually fight to defend the
Bolivarian and Fidelista revolutions? One or two of these questions can
be answered with reasonable factual accuracy.

The responses to questions relating to depth of popular support and
willingness to fight can only be speculative at best. That said,
however, there are enough hardcore committed chavistas to ensure that if
an asymmetrical conflict ever does erupt in Venezuela – whether from an
external invasion or internal revolt – the bloodshed and destruction
could be substantial. President Chávez is not bluffing when he threatens
to respond massively and immediately against anyone who threatens his
hold on power. The next time a conflict erupts in Venezuela like it did
in April 2002, Chávez is determined that he will not be caught off guard
or betrayed again by his generals.

The LOFAN and National Security

The new LOFAN, with 137 articles, essentially adopts the Cuban model of
military organization, command and control. The Chávez government claims
the new LOFAN vaults the FAN into the 21st century. The truth, however,
is that the LOFAN constitutes the military pillar of what, for lack of a
better descriptive word, can be called Cubazuela.

The new Organic Law of the National Armed Forces (LOFAN), approved in
September by the National Assembly, establishes the legal,
organizational and command and control structures of Venezuela ’s new
national security doctrine adopted in July 2005. Senior government and
military officials claim the LOFAN contains a mix concepts adapted from
the United States, Cuba , and other European and Latin American
countries. However, this claim is utter nonsense. The LOFAN is mainly
based on the Cuban military model.

The LOFAN legally enshrines three core missions for the Bolivarian FAN.
First, protect the president, his family and his closest associates at
all times. Second, maintain internal order against endogenous threats to
the president. Third, defend Venezuela against external threats.
Although Chávez routinely rants about the need to strengthen the
country’s FAN to resist a military invasion by the United States, the
new LOFAN explicitly defines the Bolivarian FAN’s primary mission as
defending the stability of the Chávez regime against internal threats
and disruptions.

Article 3 of the LOFAN also explicitly empowers the Bolivarian FAN to
“resist the occupation of the country by invading military forces (by
all means) including actions of prevention against hostile forces that
show that intention.” In effect, the LOFAN explicitly empowers the
Bolivarian FAN to launch pre-emptive military invasions of other
countries to prevent those countries from invading Venezuela. Under the
new national security doctrine copied from Cuba by the Chávez
government, the United States is Venezuela’s biggest external enemy,
followed by Colombia. It’s doubtful that Chávez will airdrop
paratroopers over Don Pan in downtown Miami or the OAS in Washington,
D.C., but a conventional conflict scenario involving Colombia is not
unthinkable – particularly as Chávez builds a Bolivarian military force
that could easily top three million persons within the next five to ten
years.

The new LOFAN also empowers the Bolivarian FAN to engage in joint
actions with the armed forces of other countries – most obviously, Cuba
– to defend the integrationist vision of Simon Bolívar. Clearly, this
joint defense would entail Cuban military deployments on Venezuelan
territory to defend Chávez.

There are several aspects of the LOFAN that merit comment. First, it
establishes a highly vertical command and control system that places all
power over the FAN, plus the new civilian reserve and territorial guard,
in the hands of the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela .
The command-and-control system for the civilian reserve and territorial
guard are independent of the regular FAN’s command and control systems.
In effect, this means the president exerts direct control over a
civilian reserve that reportedly already totals over 300,000 volunteers
and eventually will number about 2.6 million persons or 10% of the
Venezuelan population. With all polls since 2001 showing that Chávez can
count on a very hardcore political base of about 30% of the voter
population, the Bolivarian revolution shouldn’t have any trouble
exceeding its volunteer reserve recruitment targets. If the Bolivarian
FAN should rebel against Chávez someday, the president could deploy his
volunteer reserves to defend his regime against the FAN.

Second, the president has exclusive operational command of the
Bolivarian FAN, the reserve and the territorial guard. The LOFAN defines
“operational” as any activities involving the deployment of troops to
carry out the main mission of protecting the president and preserving
public order. In effect, next time Chávez orders that tanks be deployed
to fire on civilians he wants to make sure no one will block or ignore
his commands.

Third, the LOFAN establishes new military zones, as distinct from
theaters of operation that would constitute the jurisdictional framework
of the government’s plan to bind the Bolivarian FAN tightly to the
government’s political imperatives. Each zone will have its own command
and control organization, and one of the chief missions of these local
commanders will be to maintain an updated strategic inventory of all
strategic assets within their zones, meaning infrastructure like roads
and communications, detailed lists of civilian and territorial guard
units and their deployment, and productive assets (i.e. businesses).

Although Chávez has declared that the reserve would total 10% of the
population, the LOFAN stipulates that all Venezuelans of military age
not on active military duty are required to be members of the reserve.
In times of conflict, such as a U.S. military invasion, the Bolivarian
FAN and reserves would be combined into the Territorial Guard, which
would be directly under the president’s command-and-control.
Interestingly, the LOFAN doesn’t stipulate what steps should be followed
if the commander-in-chief of the Bolivarian FAN, reserves and
Territorial Guard, should become incapacitated in times of combat.

How Cuban is this new military organizational model enshrined in the
LOFAN? Consider how the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (FAR) are
organized. Since its inception, the FAR’s mission has been to protect
and continue the revolution's accomplishments and preserve its status
quo. It sees the United States as its principal external threat. To
carry out this mission, Cuba's armed forces utilizes multiple doctrines
of warfare – conventional, unconventional, and irregular warfare – that
are implemented dependent on the existing situation.

There exists a conventional doctrine for the Revolutionary Armed Forces
(FAR), which is based on a "system of scientific criteria" of the
principles of military science and operational as well as tactical art,
and also that the Cuban forces must be prepared to wage conventional,
unconventional and clandestine warfare.

A basis for such doctrines can be attributed to the influence and
training by the former Soviet Union 's military. It can be said that FAR
has adopted Soviet military doctrine and organizational principles, with
some modifications to suit the smaller size and less sophisticated
armament of the Cuban forces. This influence is exemplified by the use
of an offensive doctrine as used in Cuba 's Third World campaigns.
However, in an invasion of the island by U.S. forces, the FAR would
implement a defensive doctrine that is its centerpiece of military doctrine.

The "War of All the People" doctrine (essentially an asymmetrical
conflict doctrine), is a defensive strategy that tries to counter an
overwhelming invasion force. This strategy envisions an armed populace
willing to fight for the defense of the homeland. It was announced in
1980 with the creation of the Territorial Troop Militia (MTT) to
increase the defense capability of the country. (The LOFAN establishes
the Territorial Guard and civilian reserves for that purpose.) Fidel
Castro stated that the MTT was necessitated in order to be "ready for
combat operations not only using regular troops, but with the
participation of the entire people." (Chávez has made identical remarks
about the LOFAN and Venezuela ’s new national security doctrine).

Such a strategy of mass mobilization of the populace to assist
conventional forces is not a new concept. During the French Revolution,
citizens were used to fill the need for soldiers. In early 1793, 300,000
men were called for, to be conscripted if they would not volunteer, and
in August the decree of the levé en masse, putting all fit males at the
disposal of the Republic, was promulgated. A recent example of this
strategy is seen during the Vietnam War where guerrilla fighters
assisted the regular forces of the North Vietnamese. This assistance was
not the sole reason but only part of the North Vietnamese success.
External assistance from the former Soviet Union and the People's
Republic of China was vital to the success of this strategy that Cuba
presently lacks.

The models for the creation of the MTT and the doctrine of the War of
the People were said to be the Soviet partisan movement during World War
II in German occupied regions of the USSR and especially the Vietnamese
concept of guerrilla struggle against superior forces of foreign
occupiers, that is, France and the United States.

It remains to be seen if such a strategy would be successful in the
event of an invasion from the United States. Without external support
present, which was a factor to the success of North Vietnam , Venezuela
’s FAN and Territorial Guard would face a difficult struggle with
superior number of forces and hardware.

Another factor to the implementation of this doctrine is support from
the populace to wage such a campaign of attrition. Approximately half of
the MTT force is made up of women, and women in Venezuela make up close
to half of the new military reserve. Heavy human losses are a reality to
the MTT support component for the FAR in Cuba, and would also be this
way in Venezuela. The question then is how willing civilians might be to
continue fighting in a scenario typified by large numbers of civilian
casualties including women.

The Venezuelan FAN

The Venezuelan armed forces (FAN) have approximately 82,300 military
personnel on active duty, including the National Guard and about 31,000
conscripts. The FAN has four service branches including the Army, Air
Force, Navy, and National Guard. The new Organic Law of the National
Armed Force (LOFAN) approved in September 2005 also created a new
civilian military reserve and a territorial guard that would be deployed
to battle external invaders under Chávez’s asymmetrical war strategy.

The president has said the volunteer civilian military reserve would
total 10% of the population, or 2.6 million persons based on a total
estimated population of 26 million. As of September 2005 over 300,000
volunteers had signed up to become military reservists, and the
government expects to deploy more than 50,000 fully-trained reservists
by the end of 2005. If current enlistment trends are any indication, at
least half of the civilian military reserve will be women, and about 40%
signed up mainly because they are unemployed and joining the reserve
will provide them (theoretically) a steady monthly income.

The army’s total active manpower was relatively low as of September
2005, numbering about 34,000 troops on active duty including about
27,000 conscripts, according to international sources that track
military readiness levels in all countries. However, Venezuelan army
commander General Raúl Baduel remarked recently that the army has over
100,000 reservists. If this number was not a typographical error in the
published news story, we think that Baduel likely was including the new
civilian military reserve as part of the army. Legally and in terms of
command/control, however, Baduel’s assertion was inaccurate. The new
LOFAN stipulates that the reserve is an independent entity that is
commanded directly by the president. In effect, Baduel cannot order
reserve deployments. Only President Chávez can do that.

The army’s weapons are a mix of U.S., French, Brazilian, British,
Italian and Israeli systems including battle tanks, light tanks, armored
personnel carriers, fighter/interceptors, bombers, attack helicopters
and other relatively sophisticated systems.

Since the start of 2005 the Chávez government has launched a program to
acquire new advanced fighters and helicopters from several countries
including Spain, Russia and Brazil. The FAV ordered 10 Casa 295
transport aircraft from Spain in March 2005, although it was reported in
October that the U.S. government would block that sale because the
aircraft’s avionics systems include U.S. technology. Chávez also plans
to buy 24 Brazilian Super Tucano attack aircraft, and possibly as many
as 50 Russian fighters including MiG-29 Fulcrums, and Su27 and Su-25
Flankers. The Chávez government also has ordered nine more Mi-17 Hip and
one Mi-26 Halo helicopters, and reportedly also plans to buy an unknown
number of Mi-24 Hi8nd assault helicopters.

FAN’s low operational readiness levels

Operational readiness levels within the FAN have been very poor
throughout Chavez’s presidency. However, the FAN’s troubles did not
begin when Chavez assumed the presidency in early 1999. The reality is
that the FAN has been collapsing internally for close to 20 years,
although the process did accelerate after Chavez’s failed coup in
February 1992. Steep budget cuts are only one part of the problem. The
FAN’s professionalism, ethics, command capabilities and concepts like
honor and respect for constitutional rule of law have also collapsed.
Political indoctrination has been introduced in all of the FAN’s
education institutions.

The FAN’s reported personnel levels must be viewed with skepticism.
There are reasons for thinking there are substantially fewer active-duty
troops than the Defense Ministry claims, although the military reserve
build-up is changing that situation. In 1990, for example, a 150-man
company was commanded by one captain, two lieutenants, three
sub-lieutenants and 10 sergeants. However, by the time Chavez became
president in 1999 the same 150-man company was commanded by one captain,
one sub-lieutenant and two sergeants. Moreover, in 1999 the average
frontier battalion had 740 soldiers on paper, but actual troop strength
was only 320 men commanded by one lieutenant colonel, 10 officers and 10
sergeants. These ratios have grown much worse since Chavez assumed the
presidency and slashed defense spending by more than 40 percent in order
to weaken the FAN’s ability to rise up against him.

According to a classified study done in mid-2001 by the army's military
intelligence division, the army was already a hollow shell nearly four
years ago. International defense standards for developing countries
state that operational readiness levels for 11 key measures of military
offense and defense capabilities should never drop below 70 percent. In
the case of Venezuela, the army's capabilities in nine of 11 key
measures of operational readiness were far below that 70 percent floor
in 2001.

The situation today is far more critical sources say. For example, in
terms of troop strength the Venezuelan army's operational readiness
levels in 2001 were only 56.69 percent. In terms of food supplies, its
readiness levels were only 40.25 percent, and weapons capabilities were
only 23.22 percent. Several lower-ranking officers who have commanded
army forces on the border during the past three years say their soldiers
lacked uniforms, boots, helmets and body armor. They also say their
troops were sent on combat patrols without sufficient ammunition to
engage hostile forces such as the FARC, drug traffickers, paramilitary
groups and other border bandits. The officers add that border unit
commanders frequently had to rent privately owned commercial vehicles
from local residents to transport patrol troops into high-risk border areas.

The classified study done in 2001 also rated the army's communications
capabilities at only 20.90 percent, combat medevac capabilities at 44.48
percent, ground transport capabilities at 39.36 percent and armored
vehicle capabilities (including tanks) at only 48.92 percent.

The classified army readiness study states that as of mid-2001, the
army's armored operational readiness levels were only 48.92 percent
overall. Of 528 armored vehicles, including main battle tanks such as
the AMX-30 and light tanks such as the Dragoon 300 and the Scorpion, 336
were operational and 189 were inoperative. Individual weapons systems
readiness levels on paper looked good for systems such as the AMX-30
battle tank (71.76 percent) and the Dragoon 300 and Scorpion tanks
(97.03 percent and 97.62 percent, respectively). However, these averages
do not tell the full story.

Army sources say retrofitting work done in recent years on the AMX-30
battle tanks by Metalurgica Van Dam, a Venezuelan metallurgical firm
with no prior experience in modifying tanks, effectively destroyed the
combat capabilities of these systems. A battle tank's turret must rotate
360-degrees, but Van Dam's "retrofitting" work made it impossible for
the tank turrets to rotate more than 80 degrees in either direction.

This means in combat the tanks can be flanked and destroyed easily from
the sides and rear by infantry units armed with light anti-tank rockets.
Van Dam also cut through the armor of the AMX-30 tanks in such a way
that the tanks were split completely in two. As a result, the armor of
these tanks can now be penetrated by ammunition as light as a
.30-caliber machine gun bullet, according to military sources. This
means an infantry soldier armed with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG)
can penetrate the turrets of these tanks and kill the crews inside with
as much ease as a hot knife slicing through butter if the rocket impacts
directly on the welding seam.

In addition, the Dragoon 300 and Scorpion light tanks might show
adequate operational readiness levels on paper, but they lack munitions.
These tanks can be deployed, as some were deployed in April 2002 to
protect Chavez in Miraflores from the nearly 900,000 unarmed protesters
who marched to the presidential palace demanding his resignation.
However, in an armed engagement these tanks would quickly run out of
ammunition, which in effect would make them useless.

The only two measures where the army exceeded the 70 percent floor were
air transport (73.91 percent) and electronic warfare (80.05 percent).
However, more than half of the army's helicopters are not equipped with
weapons systems capable of providing close air-ground support. In
effect, the army's air transport command is used mainly to ferry
generals around the country on official and personal missions.

Moreover, the army's electronic warfare systems have been withdrawn from
border regions and redeployed mainly to Caracas and central Venezuela,
where they are used to conduct electronic surveillance of all
communications inside Fort Tiuna, Palo Negro and other bases. Instead of
intercepting Colombian communications, the Chavez government is using
its electronic surveillance systems to spy on Venezuelan army units in a
permanent effort to locate and identify officers that could be
conspiring against him.

Modernization Efforts

Since the end of 2004 the Chavez government has signed a series of
contracts or announced negotiations to acquire new army, air force and
navy weapons systems. Separately, the Chavez government has invested
substantial sums in buying paramilitary equipment (handguns, automatic
weapons, body armor) to strengthen its political and civilian security
forces.

The main purchase made to date was the contract for 100,000 Russian
AK-103 and AK-104 assault rifles. The first shipment will arrive before
the end of 2005, and when all of the new rifles are received Venezuela’s
stock of automatic assault weapons will have doubled to more than
200,000, including the new Russian rifles and the old FAL 7.62-mm rifles
that will be decommissioned from the FAN and reportedly distributed to
elite forces in the new civilian military reserve.

Additionally, Chavez reportedly has quietly negotiated the purchase of
another 150,000 AK-47 assault rifles from North Korea ’s government. If
this report is accurate, it means that within a year or two Chavez’s
Bolivarian FAN and civilian reserve could be armed with about 400,000 AK
and FAL assault rifles. The assault rifle contract with Russia also
gives the FAN the right to manufacture AK assault rifles and munitions
in Venezuela, so theoretically Chavez could arm his entire military
reserve of 2.6 million people with assault rifles.

These assault rifles are the most significant arms purchase Chavez has
made to date. An arsenal of this size gives Chavez the potential to
ruthlessly crush internal revolt against his increasingly dictatorial
regime, and also supply weapons clandestinely to radical militant groups
in Colombia and other Latin American countries.

Chavez is using Venezuela ’s oil wealth and Fidel Castro’s political
advice to foment instability across the region. The prime targets are
Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua and El Salvador. If Chavez and Castro
can destabilize nominally pro-U.S. governments in these countries they
can literally push the U.S. out of Latin America strategically. Chavez
and Castro also are quietly seeking to destabilize the Dominican
Republic, and encourage political unrest in Jamaica. Chavez and Castro
also want to pull Panama into their orbit of influence, and support
radical groups in Mexico – although Mexico is a long-term target for the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

Venezuela ’s citizens are the group at greatest risk from Chavez’s
expanding military machine. The FAN cannot project force outside
Venezuela ’s borders. However, it is more than sufficiently equipped
today to suppress internal disruptions quickly. As the new Russian and
North Korean assasult rifles start to arrive, the FAN’s ability to
function as the president’s main instrument of internal repression will
grow significantly. Nevertheless, Venezuela ’s oil wealth, the Cuban
regime’s regional intelligence network and its vast experience in
fomenting instability, and the purchase by Chavez of 100,000 to 250,000
assault rifles likely also will be a lethal mix in Latin America for
years to come.

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (FAR)

Cuba ’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) are an important strategic and
tactical component of the Chávez government’s Bolivarian national
security doctrine in which the United States is Venezuela ’s greatest
external enemy and a constant national security threat. President Chávez
and Cuban leader Fidel Castro have an explicit government-to-government
mutual defense agreement. As a result, the FAR’s order of battle –
meaning its organization, deployment, weapons systems and readiness
levels – must be factored into any analysis of the Chávez government’s
national security and military concerns.

Cuba 's national security doctrine and military organization since Fidel
Castro's ascension to power in 1959 have focused primarily on defending
against an attack from the U.S. or armed Cuban expatriate groups. From
the early 1960s through 1990, Cuba received vast quantities of Soviet
military equipment, as well as financial, economic and ideological
support. This massive support ended abruptly in 1991 with the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, resulting in a marked decrease in
the readiness of the Cuban armed forces. The air force alone lost over
25% of its inventory.

Cuba 's military, once the second-largest in Latin America, cannot be
considered an offensive force today. It is essentially a defensive
force. The FAR has shrunk more than 75% from its 1989 size. The Cuban
military has not received any new military equipment since 1990 and no
spare parts from Moscow since 1993. Approximately half of the
active-duty force is devoted at any one time to business and productive
activities that finance the FAR’s budget, feed the troops and help
support the Cuban economy.

Approximately 70,000 Cuban soldiers are devoted full-time to supporting
the civilian economy and receive only cursory training. Bicycles are now
routinely used to transport heavy machine guns and mortars as a
fuel-saving measure. The Cuban army has been reduced to a primarily
infantry force whose new recruits generally receive rudimentary
training. Some 75% of major ground equipment has been decommissioned and
stored.

President Fidel Castro is the commander-in-chief of the FAR and
supervisor of all military affairs. However, operational control is held
by the National Defense Minister, who also heads the Defense Council.

The FAR was established in 1959, and includes all ground forces, the
Revolutionary Navy (MGR), the Air and Air Defense Force (DAAFAR),
Territorial Militia Troops (MTT) and the Youth Labor Army (EJT). Cuban
special operations forces, organized along the line of former Soviet
Spetsnaz forces, are subordinate to the Cuban army.

The Territorial Troops Militia (MTT) is the largest of Cuba 's
paramilitary forces, with an active force of nearly one million
personnel. The MTT is responsible for local defense and intervention in
civil disturbances, but is also a reserve force that supplements regular
army units in the event of a conflict.

Pre-conscription age males are part of the 70,000-strong Youth Labor
Army where they receive military technical training and indoctrination.
Youth Labor Army cadres act as a second-tier reserve for the MTT in time
of war. Cuba also operates a 50,000-member paramilitary Civil Defense Force.

The Ministry of Interior operates two paramilitary units: the border
guards and state security forces. The 6,500-strong border guard is
responsible for coastal defense operations and maintains 20 Zhuk and 3
Stenka inshore patrol craft, not all of which are currently operational.
Border guard troops also operate small coastal artillery garrisons in
conjunction with the Cuban army and navy. The larger state security
force (20,000 personnel) is responsible for internal police duties.

Each corps contains regular army units that are supplemented by reserve
and territorial militia personnel to bring them up to full strength. The
manning level of each army formation is along former Soviet lines or by
categories. Category A units are manned at 100%; Category B units have
50-60% of their assigned manpower; and Category C units are shell units
with only a few active personnel assigned.

The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimate that there are no
fully operational Cuban units above the battalion level. Cuban Special
Operations forces are organized along the lines of Soviet Spetsnaz
forces. Throughout the 1980s, Cuban special operations personnel were
active in guerrilla training in El Salvador and Panama. In March 1996,
it was reported that Cuban special operations officers were receiving
specialized instruction and training at facilities located in Vietnam.
Many of these officers are trained to infiltrate to the United States to
disrupt military staging and supply points if called upon.

These Special Forces also could be deployed to Venezuela in a conflict
scenario to support the Venezuelan territorial guard in an asymmetrical
conflict. Intelligence sources believe, in fact, that Cuban Special
Forces are actively engaged in Venezuela training FAN and civilian
reservists in the lethal arts of insurgency and guerrilla warfare.

The FAR does have some infantry weapons systems that could be used in
Venezuela in an asymmetrical conflict, although it is not likely Castro
will relinquish any weapons to Venezuela when Chávez has over $30
billion in foreign exchange reserves he can spend on military hardware.
For example, Cuba has over 1,000 mortars ranging in caliber from 82-mm
to 160-mm that could be used by Bolivarian Territorial Guard fighters in
an asymmetric guerrilla conflict. The FAR also have about 1,600
surface-to-air missiles, some of which might be deployed to Venezuela if
Chávez invokes his mutual defense pact with Castro.

On paper, at least, the Cuban air force has four fighter/interceptor
squadrons, two fighter/bomber squadrons that theoretically could be
deployed in a conventional conflict scenario affecting Venezuela. In
numbers the Cuban air force has about 200 fighters including 18 MiG 29
Fulcrums of which only six are believed by the CIA and DIA to be
operational, 65 Mig-23 Floggers, and 135 MiG-21 Fishbeds.

Conclusion

There is much less substance to the FAN-FAR strategic alliance than
President Chavez claims. The Venezuelan-Cuban strategic military
partnership is not operationally capable of conducting a sustained
conventional conflict against superior U.S. forces. If the U.S.
government were to launch a conventional military invasion of Venezuela
– which Chavez apparently hopes for desperately because he rants about
it so often – the regular FAN would collapse in less than 24 hours.
Eliecer Otayza’s assertion that the FAN would last three days is wildly
optimistic. Moreover, it’s unlikely that Cuba would come to Venezuela’s
aid militarily because the Cuban FAR’s has lost the capability to fight
a conventional military conflict in Cuba, so the idea that conventional
troops and weapons systems would be deployed by Havana to Venezuela is
wishful thinking.

The FAN-FAR partnership does not seriously challenge Colombia in any
conventional conflict scenario despite Venezuela’s apparent superiority
over Colombia in terms of battle tanks and advanced fighter/bombers like
the FAN’s AMX-30 tanks and F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighter/bombers.

The Venezuelan-Cuban mutual defense pact is mainly political hot air.
The Venezuelan FAN and Cuban FAR are not capable of coming to each
other’s aid tactically in any conventional conflict scenario. The Cuban
FAR does have a substantial capability in terms of its Special Forces
and Interior Ministry security regiments to support the Chávez
government on Venezuelan territory in a scenario involving an
asymmetrical conflict. It’s more likely, however, that this potential
conflict scenario would involve an internal revolt, not an invasion from
the U.S.

As a result, this analysis concludes that the new LOFAN, and everything
President Chávez is doing to expand the FAN and bind it more tightly to
his Bolivarian revolution under direct presidential control is intended
to assure Chávez’s permanent stay in power, and to repress lethally any
internal threats to the stability of his increasingly authoritarian and
corrupt regime. In effect, the Bolivarian FAN is being transformed into
President Chávez’s Praetorian guard, a role Chávez is strengthening by
expanding the FAN’s budget to raise the salaries and benefits paid to
the FAN’s loyal chavista officers and personnel.

The Chávez government’s proposed military budget for 2006 contemplates a
33.4% increase in defense-related spending, from the dollar equivalent
of $1.55 billion in 2005 to nearly $2.1 billion in 2006, about half of
which is earmarked for military salaries and related benefits.

http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200510270918