The Venezuela oil tanker blockade may be hurting Cuba
If it hurts the regime and helps liberate the people: good.
If it only makes the people suffer: bad.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that “Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to a partial blockade targeting sanctioned tankers — the kind that carry about 70% of the country’s crude.” The story continued, “Were Venezuela’s oil shipments to stop, or sharply decline, the Cubans know it would be devastating.”
Cuban exile and energy expert Jorge Piñón told the Journal, “It would be the collapse of the Cuban economy, no question about it.”
Communist Cuba has relied on foreign benefactors to stay afloat, pretty much since Fidel Castro and his butcher boys like Che Guevara seized power more than 60 years ago. In recent years, the regime — ruled since 2018 by Communist party chief Miguel Díaz-Canel — relies on the largess of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro for cheap oil the country can’t afford to buy at market price.
Domino effect?
78% of Cuba’s people want to leave, and guess where they want to go? We used to take Cubans because for many years they were escaping Castro’s brand of communism, but Soviet style communism has been dead for almost 35 years. That doesn’t mean communism has gone away; it paused, licked its wounds for a while and came back disguised as climate alarmism and “green” mandates, ESG, and DEI. The Cubans might think they’re escaping communism, but are they really?
The really big question if Communism falls in Cuba, is what will all the Cuban expatriates in Miami do? Go back to Cuba and try to recover their seized properties? That won’t go over well. Could be a bad situation for those who left and for those who stayed behind.
F:
Cross that bridge when they get there. First, let’s topple Communism. Then let the Cuban people sort out the situation.
In the meantime, I’m all for welcoming Cuban immigrants to America. In my experience, Cubans are, collectively, among the best immigrants.* They assimilate, they work hard, they hate communism.
*I know a number of Cuban immigrants, now American citizens.
When I have pointed out to a lefty that Latin America or a given country in Latin America has done better than Cuba for a given health or economic parameter, the standard reply has been that the reason for Cuba’s relatively worse performance is that Cuba didn’t have “help.”
Which pointedly ignores the “help” that Cuba got for three decades from the Soviet Union and for two plus decades from Venezuela.
Gringo, what they are saying is that the Communist Paradise (TM) can’t make it without a lot of trade with the big bad capitalist USA.
F
There is one case where returning property to Cuban expats could be a win-win. After the loss of the Soviet Union sugar daddy, Cuba could not find a market for its sugar. Former sugar planting land lay fallow, and within several years got invaded by marabú, a shrub from Africa that has been in Cuba for over a century. It is estimated that marabú has infested 20-25% of Cuba’s agricultural land, though Micheal Totten estimates 50% in his article. The Lost World, Part 1
That “invasive weed” would be marabú.
C. Wright Mills mentioned marabú in Listen Yankee, his polemic in support of Castro. Mills pointed out that a solution for marabú infestation was well-known: prevention.
Had Cuba turned its fallow former sugar land into pasture, using pangola, this excerpt from Mills suggests that the marabú infestation could have been avoided. As Cuba was importing massive amounts of corn from the USSR to feed its cattle and milk cows, this would have been a good solution: substituting Soviet corn with Cuban grass (or corn). But all-knowing, all-controlling Fidel did not think of this, so it was not done.
Actually, one can get rid of marabú— the same way one gets rid of mesquite, another pesky shrub—physical removal with bulldozers or the like. But this requires capital, which no one in Cuba has. Deed the marabú land back to the former owners, and let them pay to bulldoze the marabú. As most of the marabú land is government-owned, no one would be booted off it.
(As an example of the utter failure of Castrista agriculture, consider milk. From 1961to 1990, milk production tripled in Cuba, and doubled in Latin America. Post 1990, the loss of the Soviet sugar daddy and Soviet corn, coupled with the marabú infested land that could have been turned into cattle pasture, milk production in Cuba declined by about two thirds, while in Latin America it more than doubled. For 1961 to present: milk production in Cuba increased by about 10%,while in Latin America it more than quadrupled.)
Someone really ought to tell Madmani…
(Or maybe NYC voters…though it’s a bit late for that…)
If Cuba falls Venezuela cannot stand.