"Cooperation between revolutionaries"

That’s the phrase used by the “Ministro del Poder Popular para Energía y Petróleo” and the president of Venezuela’s oil company PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez, to describe the economic collaboration between Cuba and Venezuela that resulted in an agreement yesterday for 76 projects with a $1.3 billion price tag.

Cuba’s foreign investment minister, Martha Lomas, said that the two countries have 26 active joint ventures, and ten more under negotiation.

Granma’s article said the new projects “are fundamentally in reference to the agroindustry of sugar and its derivatives,” and a Venezuelan newspaper account gets more specific, referring to the signing of an agreement for “the ethanol project” and “complementary projects for the development of sugar cane derivative projects.”

Maybe I’m missing something, but these two newspaper accounts don’t specify whether these projects will take place exclusively in Cuba, or in both countries – hence one can’t say that the news is about $1.3 billion in new investment in Cuba.

But the announcement does appear to settle the confusion about Cuba’s policy toward ethanol development after Fidel Castro trashed the idea last year, and a Cuban minister later reiterated Cuba’s interest in ethanol. We’ll watch for more details, and for possible talks with Brazil. But for now the answer seems to be “yes.”