Cubazuela: Maduro reveals once again that Venezuela is a Cuban colony

"To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

Down with Cuban Imperialism in Latin America. Save Latin America

On January 20, 2020 Nicolas Maduro at the XX Meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission of the Cuba-Venezuela Integral Cooperation Agreement revealed the colonial status of his government: "I've told our older brother and protector, Raúl Castro Ruz, and he agrees. And it has been discussed in this mixed commission and we agree. The ambassadors are practically part of the Council of Ministers, the ambassador of Cuba has open doors in each ministry to coordinate, to move forward."

Maduro plantea que el Embajador de Cuba se integre al Consejo de Ministros de su régimen en Venezuela. #20Ene pic.twitter.com/UkZhH0Sv8F

— Gabriel Bastidas (@Gbastidas) January 20, 2020

This has been a long term objective of the Castro brothers. The Cuban dictatorship beginning in 1959 had strategic designs on taking over Venezuela to exploit its natural resources in order to magnify its regional impact.

On January 23, 1963 Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca made it public when he told a Havana rally that when the communists gained full control in Venezuela and they “make themselves owners of the great riches in oil, aluminum and everything their earth imprisons, then all of America shall burn.”  A cache of three tons of weapons was found on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963 that was to be used to disrupt the democratic elections there.

Fidel Castro would continue to agitate for revolution in Venezuela. A well documented incident occurred on May 8, 1967 and was reported in The Washington Post that described how: "two small boats carrying a dozen heavily armed fighters made landfall near Machurucuto, a tiny fishing village 100 miles east of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Their plan was to march inland and recruit Venezuelan peasants to the cause of socialist revolution." An all night gun battle with the Venezuelan military led to nine guerrillas dead, two captured, and one who had escaped.

Cuban Commandant Ramiro Valdes and President Hugo Chavez

Venezuelans successfully defended themselves from repeated ventures, and the Castro regime relented pledging not to attempt the violent overthrow of the democracy, but years later they succeeded with Hugo Chavez at the ballot box what they had failed to do through force of arms.

In 1992 Hugo Chavez was involved in a failed coup against the Andres Perez government. Pardoned by Andres Perez's successor, Rafael Caldera, in March 1994 Hugo Chavez made his way to Cuba later that same year where he was received by Fidel Castro as a hero not a failed coup plotter.

Fidel Castro greets Hugo Chavez in Cuba on December 13, 1994

Four years later, in a reaction to generalized disgust with the corruption endemic to the Venezuelan democratic order epitomized by the Carlos Andres Perez administration the former coup plotter was elected president.  President Caldera, who pardoned Chavez, handed power over to him in 1999. Together with Fidel Castro, as a mentor, Chavez began the process of turning a flawed democratic order into the regime it is today.

Maduro's action on Monday, was just the latest statement echoing what Hugo Chávez had already announced. In 2007 Chávez had declared that Cuba and Venezuela were a single nation. “Deep down,” he said, “we are one single government.”  

In February 2010  Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, then age 77, was hired "as a consultant for that country's energy crisis" but his expertise is not in energy.  Valdes was the Vice President of the Council of State and Minister of Communications in the Cuban government. His role in Communications was figuring out in 2007 a way to muzzle the internet, what he called a "wild colt of new technologies."

Nicolas Maduro and Ramiro Valdes

Commander Ramiro Valdes, founder of the Castro regime's feared Ministry of the Interior, head of the organization between 1961 and 1968 and was viewed by some as "the No. 3 man in the Cuban hierarchy." He is the architect of Cuban totalitarianism's repressive apparatus and assisted Chavez and Maduro in building the Venezuelan version.    

The Castro regime turned Venezuela into their colony. Today it is Cuban occupied territory.

Caracas Chronicles is right when it observes: "Amazing how everything the left accuses the U.S. of wanting to do in Venezuela —siphon off oil wealth, install a puppet dictator, run hundreds of spies, crush democratic institutions— is stuff Cuba is *actually* doing. And has been. For years."

Thousands of Cuban military advisers and intelligence officials assisted the Chavez and Maduro regime's consolidate power to entrench the dictatorship in Venezuela. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has described it as "being like an occupation army."

Maduro and the Castro regime are attempting to complete the installation of a communist dictatorship in Venezuela. One of the instruments that these regimes have used to subjugate populations is famine and rationing food to those who are loyal and denying it to those who are not.

Famine is a tool communists have traditionally used to remake societies. 

The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity."  Human decisions "determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine."

Jean Pierre Planchart malnourished inVenezuela. Pic: Dr. Livia Machad

In the case of Venezuela, Chávez and Maduro destroyed the market in food by imposing price controls "that resulted in underproduction when the official prices did not meet costs of production. Their governments expropriated farms, ranches, and even food distributors such as butchers. There’s very little if anything produced on these expropriated territories." Rhoda Howard-Hassmann's article "Famine in Venezuela" published on August 21, 2018 in the World Peace Foundation reports:

"By 2017 malnutrition was confirmed in Venezuela, precipitating the political unrest now roiling the country. According to Antulio Rosales (“Weaponizing Hunger is a New Low for the Venezuelan President,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 2018, p.A11) and Enrique Krauze (“Hell of a Fiesta,” New York Review of Books, March 8, 2018, pp. 4-7), by early 2018 more than half of all Venezuelans had lost between 19 and 24 pounds, and 90 per cent said they do not have enough money for food."

Despite this reality, on February 4, 2018 Maduro shipped 100 tons of aid to Cuba. Maduro's regime issued ration cards for food in a country were mass hunger is an ever present reality and it is understood by many that following regime instructions, such as going to vote in the last sham election, was necessary to be eligible for rations.  The electoral calculus was clear: "Everyone who has this card must vote," said Nicolas Maduro and continued, "I give and you give."

This is a very old playbook.

According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union." 

Maduro, and his Cuban allies issued denials about the extent of the problem of hunger in Venezuela. The rejection and destruction of humanitarian assistance combined with images of tons of humanitarian assistance shipped from Venezuela to Cuba appears bizarre, but it needs to be placed in the context of previous episodes involving other communist regimes.

Both the USSR and China used Western journalists, such as Walter Duranty in Moscow and Edgar Snow in Beijing to deny that a famine was taking place and to defend the official lies of the regime. This practice continues today in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Fidel Castro lounging with Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977

In Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime, reproduced Soviet and Chinese practices when he blacked out communications, and refused access to aid agencies.

In December 1979, during an Ethiopian military offensive, this time including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, it “was more specifically directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”

Worse yet, as starvation took hold in Ethiopia, Mengistu ordered planeloads of whisky to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his taking power. Denying that a famine was taking place. Once that could no longer be denied he then used the famine as a cover for ethnic cleansing and removing opponents.

Despite all of this the Castro regime on too many occasions is being given a pass, and this is not only a disservice to Cubans, suffering under a 61 year old dictatorship, but also to Venezuelans that have been colonized by the Castro regime.
  

Why the Obama administration's outreach to Cuba and Venezuela is a mistake of historic proportions

Good relations with regimes in Venezuela and Cuba while their peoples die and flee

Obama with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro  (April 2009)

 The Obama Administration since 2009 has sought a new relationship with Latin America, specifically with Venezuela and Cuba. This has been achieved in the midst of a worsening human rights situation in the region, coinciding with the expanding influence of Cuba. The situation today in the region is dire and the future is bleak. A new Mariel is underway with tens of thousands fleeing Cuba. Prominent dissidents murdered by Cuban intelligence agents.  Hunger riots are breaking out across Venezuela. However, in March 2016 President Obama made an official state visit to Cuba with his family and got some great photo ops with the Castro clan.

President Obama with General Castro (March 2016)

The Fantasy devoid of reality
The voice of the American establishment reflected in the the publication The American Interest provides an insight into the thinking in Washington DC that helps to explain the fantastic statements by policy makers such as Secretary of State John Kerry who in  August of 2015 said "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." Here is the analysis offered by Walter Russell Mead in The American Interest as to the logic behind this approach.

"Socialism has failed both in Cuba and in Venezuela. The Cuban people know just what is happening in Venezuela, and they know, too, that the two excuses that the Castros have always made for socialism’s abysmal record in Cuba (no oil, and the U.S. embargo) simply fall to pieces in the light of the Venezuela catastrophe. They know that the Castros aren’t getting any younger, and they know that integration with the U.S. economy represents the only possible future for their island.

Just possibly, Fidel and Raul have genuinely drawn the appropriate conclusions from more than half a century of socialist failure in the Americas. Just possibly, they want to burnish their legacies by doing something to help Venezuela step away from the abyss, especially if they can get some U.S. help for Cuba by doing so. Investigating that possibility was the most important reason, other than grandstanding, for the President’s visit. Let’s hope the subject came up."

According to Secretary Kerry if the current Maduro regime fails then Venezuela will become a refuge for terrorists and drug traffickers. This approach ignores some unpleasant facts that stretch back over decades and ensures that this policy will end in disaster.

State's Thomas Shannon (far left) and Diosdado Cabello (far right)

The Hard Facts
Not only is Venezuela already a refuge for drug traffickers but finds them within the highest reaches of the Venezuelan government. For example, Diosdado Cabello, a leading member of Venezuela's National Assembly is suspected by U.S. prosecutors of being in charge of the infamous drug-trafficking organization, "Cartel de los Soles". In spite of this Thomas Shannon, counselor to Secretary of State John Kerry met with Diosdado Cabello. Nicolas Maduro's family has been directly implicated in drug trafficking.

Castro regime involved in drug trafficking and terrorism
The Castro regime has been involved in drug trafficking for decades in the service of its ideological mission to undermine the United States with drugs and use the profits to fund guerrilla and terrorist movements. Raul Castro faced a federal indictment for drug trafficking in the 1990s but the Clinton administration quashed it. Despite ample evidence of continued bad acts the Obama administration took Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Venezuela under both Chavez and Maduro has become a refuge for terrorists and drug traffickers with the aid of Cuban state security agents.

Nicolas Maduro and Cuban General Ramiro Valdez in Venezuela

The existing reality in Venezuela is the product of decades of Castro regime involvement there trying to overthrow and undermine the democracy that existed there since 1958 until it was fatally compromised with the rise of Hugo Chavez to power in 1998 through popular elections.

The Castros really do want the end of the economic embargo

Furthermore, elite opinion in the United States has bought into the lie that the Castro regime wants the embargo to limit Cuban American and American influence there, but that is not true. With or without the Embargo the confrontation with the United States will continue as long as the government of the United States is a democracy. The propaganda of the regime in Cuba and its allies in Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia, and elsewhere is that the United States is an imperial power. Opening up to the United States economically as it has with other countries will present a new line of argument to justify its totalitarian control: the threat of economic domination by the imperialists.

This can already be seen in the arrests of Western businessmen and the confiscation of their assets with preferences to companies from ideologically friendly countries such as communist China, Vietnam, Venezuela, Brazil, etc.

The increased hard currency that the Castro regime is getting its hands on will go towards reinforcing the dictatorship's repressive apparatus at home and expanding its power and influence abroad at the expense of U.S. interests.

Hunger riots in Venezuela

US imperialism will be blamed for Venezuela's failure

The United States will be the scapegoat held responsible for the failure of Venezuela. Both Venezuela and Cuba are accusing the United States of playing a game of divide and conquer with the two revolutionary regimes that are both ideologically and strategically joined at the hip. The irony is that the Obama Administration prefers a stable Maduro regime in Venezuela than any sort of regime change. This is reflected in their outreach to Cuba in order to reach an accommodation on Venezuela.

Communists from Cuba and Venezuela with Swiss bank accounts

How communists cultivate more poverty and inequality

 The regimes in Caracas and Havana speak of social justice and defending the poor, but in practice they are the opposite of what they claim. Dictators with absolute power who once and while are revealed for who they truly are: a rich and unaccountable minority plundering the riches of once great nations whose peoples are spiraling into deeper poverty and misery.

HSBC is the second largest bank in the world. It was founded in London in 1991 by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.  The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has released 60,000 leaked files and alleges that HSBC profited from doing business with dictators, tax evaders, dealers of blood diamonds, arms dealers and other clients. According to the leaked files 29 clients with 70 bank accounts totaling 83.8 million dollars connected are to Castro's Cuba. The maximum amount of money associated to one client connected to Cuba is worth 48.5 million dollars. This is just one bank which leads to the question: What other bank accounts of the Castro dictatorship are there in Switzerland?

Most Venezuelans live in poverty. Povery is shooting up in Venezuela, but not all are feeling the impact of hard economic times. The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has 1,138 clients with 1,282 bank accounts totaling 14.8 billion dollars. Out of 188 countries with bank accounts at HSBC Venezuela had the third largest amount of money deposited in the bank. One client has a bank account with 11.9 billion dollars.

One Venezuelan depositor and Chavez loyalist was identified as Alejandro Andrade:

Alejandro Andrade lives in Palm Beach, FL in a wealthy neighborhood

 Alejandro Andrade

National treasurer

Alejandro Andrade started as a bodyguard to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and ended up serving as national treasurer between 2007 and 2010. Andrade was among the military officials that were part of the unsuccessful coup of 1992 together with Chávez. He was close to him during his first presidential campaign and held several financial posts in the Chávez administration. In addition to serving as treasurer, Andrade was also president of the Economic and Social Development Bank of Venezuela (Bandes) between 2008 and 2010. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil action and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York charged four individuals in what prosecutors said was a scheme that generated $66 million in revenue for a Miami brokerage in return for kickbacks and bribes to the vice president of finance at the bank. This occurred during Andrade’s administration but Andrade was not named in the suit. He currently lives in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the wealthy neighborhood of Wellington, and has invested in show horses.

File details

Alejandro Andrade was listed by the HSBC records as an attorney for the client account of the Venezuelan Treasury Office under the Ministry of Finance in 2007, when he assumed the position of national treasurer. The Treasury Office became an HSBC client in 2005 and held an account under the name of the governmental institution. The Treasury client account listed three bank accounts that together held as much as $698 million in 2006/2007. At least six of the other seven clients linked to this account were also Venezuelan officials who worked for the Treasury Office.

Comment

Despite repeated attempts, Alejandro Andrade could not be reached for comment.