In the midst of the greatest humanitarian crisis the Western Hemisphere has suffered, despite an increasingly anti-Maduro Venezuelan population, the Cuba-Venezuela alignment of Communist dictatorships today, more than ever, seems immovable.
At this point, it is of utmost and critical importance to both regimes, that this relationship remains intact. Venezuela’s Maduro can not afford to break with Cuba, and Cuba’s Castro and Communist Party can not afford to break with Venezuela.
The death of more than 300,000 Venezuelans due to malnutrition may be on the horizon, as well as the exodus of four million Venezuelans who can no longer bear the inhumane conditions. Hospitals are deteriorating and have no medicine, while the worst hyperinflation in modern history has turned purchasing power in Venezuela to dust.
The Venezuelan people may be in a sorry state indeed, but Maduro and his cronies have their priorities straight:, nothing hinders the daily flow of cash, in the form of barrels of oil, to the small island that now dominates the once great South American country.
According to an expert from the University of Texas, Jorge Piñón, writing in the Wall Street Journal, today the Nicolás Maduro regime sends around 40,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba. “These shipments have a value of more than USD $800 million annually.”
At current market prices, Venezuela is sending approximately USD $2.5 million a day to the Castro regime in Havana.
However, these figures pale in comparison to previous shipments. Until 2017, Cuba received an average of USD$2.4 billion annually, three times what the Nicolás Maduro regime now sends.
Venezuela has given Cuba more money than the Soviet Union did thirty years ago.
But Cuba does not receive this lucrative aid for free. The Cuban dictatorship provides the Venezuelan regime with the tools and methodology to maintain a unwanted dictatorship in the middle of a hostile continent. It is an agreement which bleeds Venezuela, which now remains in a state of voluntary submission; of voluntary servitude.
The island is not a military or economic power. But, despite this, it keeps a much bigger and stronger country under its control. The prestigious Colombian politician Fernando Londoño told me recently: “It’s as if the woman paid the delinquent to rape her.” And so, under this dynamic, the regime of Nicolás Maduro continues to settle accounts with its northern neighbor.
Cuban intelligence has embedded itself in the ranks of the Venezuelan military, and has foiled several plots to overthrow Maduro from within the ranks of the Venezuelan Armed Forces.
