Parrot diplomacy

Venezuela and Cuba
Parrot diplomacy

Jul 24th 2008 | CARACAS
From The Economist print edition
Having rescued Cuba with cheap oil, Venezuela is to be paid back in zebras

SOON after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959, goes an old Cuban
joke, the signs at the Havana zoo that read "Please do not feed the
animals" were changed to "Please do not take the animals' food". When
the Soviet Union crumbled and withdrew its aid to Cuba, triggering the
so-called "special period" that began in the early 1990s, times became
even harder and the joke changed. The new signs, so the story went,
begged visitors not to eat the animals.

For those who lived through it, the special period was anything but
funny. Domestic cats disappeared from the streets and reappeared on the
dinner table. The zoo population thinned out. "The peacocks, the buffalo
and even the rhea [a South American bird that resembles an ostrich]
disappeared," says a Havana resident. "The hyaenas became vegetarians,
the zoo was depopulated and even the tigers had only sweet potatoes and
a bit of cassava to eat."

But while the old 26th Avenue Zoo in Havana was losing its animals, the
revolutionary authorities somehow maintained a safari park outside the
city. Captive breeding programmes for zebras and some primates survived.
And now the comrades in Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chávez,
provides Cuba with a generous oil subsidy that put an end to the special
period, are to benefit from it.

The Caricuao zoo in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, is a shadow of its
former self. Its last giraffe, Napoleón, died 15 years ago. Ruperta, the
last elephant, has been alone for over two years. Gone are the zebras,
kangaroos and ostriches. Its director, Carlos Audrines, attributes the
decline more to a "crisis of management" than lack of cash, like much
else in Venezuela. But thanks to high oil prices and revolutionary
solidarity, plans are now afoot to refurbish the rundown facilities and
restock the zoo.

Cuba is to supply 19 animals from species of which it now has a surplus.
They include a giraffe, two lions, four zebras, a rhino and a pygmy
hippo. In what Mr Audrines describes as a barter arrangement (in which
the Cubans seem to get the rough end), Caracas will trade them for eight
macaws, two tapirs, a puma and four capybaras. Further swaps are
planned. Negotiations are also under way with zoos in Moscow and Quito.

The animals from Cuba can expect the diet to be better in their new home
and the visitors to be slightly more free-range. But the Venezuelan
animals may not be so pleased with the deal. The puma is being kept
under a green awning during quarantine to prevent an attack of nerves,
say the Caricuao zoo keepers. The mood of the notoriously outspoken
Venezuelan macaws on being packed off to an island where freedom of
speech is a luxury can only be guessed at.

http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11792274&fsrc=RSS