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A delegation of the Venezuelan government has been in Shanghai since Tuesday to sign agreements in the oil sector, mainly through the formalization of joint ventures between the state-owned oil company PDVSA and Chinese companies, according to Bloomberg. Between the US sanctions, an aggressive narrative, and actions from Washington in general —which even precedes Trump—, the Miraflores Palace's management swerves, and corruption that, more than denounced from the outside has been recognized through recent legal actions against high-ranking officials —at a very high cost both economically and politically—, the Venezuelan oil industry is going through a bastard moment in which, despite being the country with the largest crude oil reserves in the world, it is unable to reverse this fact in large volumes of diversified production.
This move between Caracas and Beijing takes place when Chavismo is trying to reach 2024 —when new presidential elections would presumably be held— with more air, by guaranteeing greater liquidity to satisfy —or at least do it a little more— the basic needs of Venezuelan citizens, violently dragged by an inflationary current in which already in the afternoon a product can close with an increased price concerning the opening value in a certain business. Inflation rose by 13.6% from July to August, although it dropped 17 percentage points to 422% in its inter-annual measurement, a value which in any case continues to be a scandal (the food item, unfortunately, was one of those which experienced an increase in its prices, in the order of 8%). According to a conversation I had with a Venezuelan —through a friend living there—, the minimum wage is in the order of 3.5 dollars, while the average would reach 9 dollars; in total —adding government incentives— the average monthly income could be approximately 12 dollars. It is very worrying to see how this balance can be extinguished in minutes.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez upon her arrival in China (source).
On the other hand, Venezuela would be trying to show the United States that it can breathe and even venture to swim on the surface with all the sanctions, but for this to happen, China's support has to be very solid and decisive. It must be a practical and urgent contribution, not diplomatic. With this, Maduro would be gaining a card in his favor in the strategic negotiation by which Washington intends to appeal to the carrot instead of the stick (eliminating or making the sanctions more flexible in a representative manner) while waiting for Chavismo to guarantee plurality and cleanliness in the electoral process. One of the proposals on which China and Venezuela are working together is the renewal of a conduit to eliminate intermediaries in the transportation of crude oil. The Asian giant lent some 60 billion dollars between 2007 and 2015 (two years after the death of Hugo Chavez) for oil projects, backed by Venezuelan reserves.
I tend to make a few incursions related to my country here because I do not want to beat around the same topic, otherwise very local. Even when I go on the air with this Latin American Report, the times I have dealt with some event related to Cuba is because it has been relevant for the media that constitute the information sources to which I appeal. I have recently, directly or indirectly, worked on it [the Cuba issue] on two occasions, and I apologize for doing so for a third time —and last for some time—, but I have to exorcise all the demons that torment me when, almost masochistically, I submit myself to watch some programs on YouTube and read "information" and "analysis" in media that I know perfectly well where they are limping.
The attempt to sell an image of Cuba where nothing good happens anywhere, where the individual can't grow and develop in any way, because we are all subjected to repression and denial of our rights 24 hours a day, hunger, idleness, and misery of all kinds, skyrocket every day. My position on the Cuban State is based on the assessment I make of the external factors that vitiate its management, but I don't fail to discover and reprove daily the very negative and reprehensible dynamics that occur in this country. However, how difficult it is for my friend alias Ferenk, for example, to do the same from his worldview, and among all the contempt he feels for the Cuban political regime, to find some light that its development may be generating, however weak it may be.
Right here on Hive, we can already find another example of this that I have been discussing for years with Ferenk, specifically in the work of a fellow countryman —
Last year, the Cuban Parliament approved a new penal code (source).
Look, the main "complaints" made on these matters ignore the description —in the United States itself, for example— of the crimes of "rebellion", "seditious conspiracy", and "advocating overthrow of Government", and also, by the way, the hostile context to which Washington itself subjects the Island both with its policy of economic sanctions and with its strategy of regime change. It is unfair and not very objective not to allude to these factors, which are a plausible argument to defend that particular zone of limitation of rights and democratic distrust that is evident in Cuban legislation. Havana's is not a democracy that is built or developed in a laboratory, under ideal or aseptic conditions, but under an actual siege, no matter how much they want to hide it.
Then there is the hiver's commentary on a news item related to the demand that the outgoing Argentine president advances to make Cuba pay a debt that dates back to Fidel Castro's time in power. As always, the treatment of the news has to have a negative nuance, and Yecier echoes a line of message inscribed in the whole "anti-regime" discourse: the communist dictatorship does not pay its debts. In truth, Cuba has indeed defaulted many times, but since the previous decade, above all —getting out of a policy that, accompanied by a belligerent narrative, was aimed at not paying the contracted debt— it has honored its commitments as long as it could do so. When it has not done so, there has been a plausible argument (the pandemic, Trump's sanctions) to request a moratorium. I go now for a recent and hot issue.
The latest saga in our tense media space is the presence —already proven— of Cuban individuals, residents of the Island and Russia, in the war in Ukraine. The critical point of the story would be to discuss/demonstrate/reject the idea that the Cuban government is behind that participation, one that so far the same people involved —who defend their presence there based on the funds they would be receiving from Russia, added to the reported possibility of obtaining other legal benefits— have not defended or demonstrated. What is the predominant message line? It would be highly improbable that the "totalitarian" State is not aware of this dynamic, using which Russian and Cuban citizens would have incurred the crimes of "Hostile acts against a foreign State" and "Violation of the sovereignty of a foreign State", conceived in our Penal Code; that it is not an accomplice to it. As I always say, intuition and heuristic methods are very useful to develop a hypothesis, but ultimately you have to prove it. You have to provide hard evidence. I find it instead highly improbable that the Cuban government has entangled itself in such a crude manner in something that would place it in a compromising situation, especially on the eve of an important international summit to be held in Havana and the subsequent regular session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The Cuban foreign ministry says it has uncovered a human trafficking ring aimed at recruiting Cubans to fight for Russia in its war in Ukraine.
— New TR News Agency (@NewTRNewsAgency) September 5, 2023
It said that Cubans living in Russia and "even some in Cuba" had been "incorporated into the military forces taking part in the war in… pic.twitter.com/p1DFdJimuf
