Out

Cuba falls to Netherlands 7-6 and is eliminated from contention in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

400,000 entrepreneurs

Prensa Latina reports that there are now 400,000 Cubans working in the small entrepreneurial sector.  And the government, Reuters reports, is taking a positive step by finally creating stores where entrepreneurs can buy supplies at wholesale prices.  That will give entrepreneurs some flexibility to lower prices and an ability to hire more workers or otherwise invest in their businesses.  It could also reduce incentives for pilferage from state supplies.  AP reports that in addition to selling supplies and equipment, the new enterprise will offer storage and refrigerated storage service.

Some piecemeal efforts along these lines began in 2011; hopefully this is the real deal.

Odds and ends

• The gist of the State Department’s latest annual drug enforcement report (pdf) as regards Cuba: “Cuba’s intensive security presence and bilateral interdiction efforts have effectively reduced the available supply of narcotics on the island and prevented traffickers from establishing a foothold.”

• Who do you send to lead the delegation to Venezuela’s state funeral a few days after its government accuses you of injecting the late President with a substance that caused cancer?  A Congressman and ex-Congressman. (New York Times)  Like Vladimir Ilyich, the body will be embalmed and on public view “for eternity.”  (Reuters)

• In the World Baseball Classic on Wednesday, Cuba shut out Japan for eight innings and defeated the two-time champs 6-3.  A good blog writeup here, and Granma says it’s a win to savor.  After a loss yesterday to the Netherlands, Cuba faces an elimination game Saturday against Taiwan.  Update: Cuba plastered Taiwan 14-0, the game ending in the seventh inning by the mercy rule.  To be one of the four teams that advances to the final round that begins March 17 in San Francisco, Cuba needs to win Monday when it plays the loser of Sunday’s Japan-Netherlands game.

• Two Spaniards, both Partido Popular activists, tell El Nuevo Herald cloak-and-dagger tales of their 2007 visit to Oswaldo Paya, saying that Paya tried to go unnoticed when riding in their car by putting on a baseball cap and sunglasses.  Please.

• In Cubaencuentro, a very critical essay on Oswaldo Paya’s effectiveness as a dissident.

• Vietnam News Agency: A Vietnamese delegation visited Cuba and agreed with Cuban officials “to create favourable conditions for cooperation between Vietnam’s Viettel Telecoms Corporation and Etecsa, the Telecommunications Company of Cuba, targeting the goal of turning Viettel into Etecsa’s partner in upgrading the telecoms infrastructure in Cuba.”  Also: “The hosts spoke highly of Vietnam’s recent social-economic development achievements, saying that the doi moi (renewal process) is a good example for Cuba.”

• Spain’s foreign minister says he has no evidence supporting Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero’s version of the crash that killed Oswaldo Paya (El Pais).

Carromero speaks

Two months after arriving in Spain and seven months after the car crash in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero died, Spanish Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero has spoken out – to a Washington Post opinion writer who posed a series of basic questions.  Carromero declared that he “could not live, being complicit through my silence,” and “it’s not my intention to go on talking about this traumatic experience.”  He says he took lessons from USAID contractor Alan Gross’ experience, and relates that his statements on tape and at trial in Cuba were made for expediency, to have a chance to get home.

His version: that their car, which he was driving, was followed by a car that Paya and Cepero identified as being “from ‘la comunista,’” whatever that is, and was rammed and driven off the road by that car.  His memories are not intact; for example he says that only after returning to Spain did he recall that he and Swedish activist Aron Modig, who was in the passenger seat, had sent text messages after the accident.  He ascribes his memory gaps, which continue to this day, to the accident itself and to drugs that he alleges to have been administered to him during his captivity.

Modig, for his part, told the press in Sweden, “I do not remember what happened” and he has “no reasons to doubt” Carromero’s account.

There’s lots of background on this side of the story and the Cuban official account here. 

Carromero might quite understandably want to close this chapter in his life rather than wage a public battle.  Also, some suggest that he is under pressure to keep quiet.  Either way, his conduct to date has frustrated those that most want to pin Paya’s death on the Cuban government, and the presentation of the case – slow, late, and piecemeal, with Modig consistently useless – has limited its impact.  My strong guess is that skeptics of both accounts are not going to get satisfaction.     

Hugo Chavez, R.I.P.

Hugo Chavez had a pretty good run, governing Venezuela since 1999, winning four elections, and having lots of time to put in place and to develop his brand of socialism.

He made quite a mark.  At a time when the hemisphere, acting through the OAS, had joined together in a commitment to reject coups d’etat and similar usurpations of democracy, he governed by winning elections and then eroding elements of Venezuela’s democracy, never quite touching a tripwire that would bring an international response.  He benefited from opposition parties that had excluded Venezuela’s poor during their decades in power, and that never found unity or balance in opposition.

Chavez cared about the poor and had an odd way of showing it.  He put social programs in place – health, education, income assistance – and at the same time implemented policies that have gone a long way toward wrecking the economy in which poor Venezuelans and all others live.  He drove away foreign investment, eroded property rights, imposed foreign exchange controls that distort the entire economy and lead to corruption, and created food shortages.  To the latter, his government has responded for years with absurd charges that food producers are hoarding and speculating, as if farmers and distributors go into business for the purpose of keeping their products in warehouses.

All this, in an economy that is more than capable of maintaining both a strong private sector and a large financial commitment to fighting poverty.  Venezuela’s oil wealth gave him the wherewithal to set an example for both left and right, but Chavez’ ideology led elsewhere.

Fidel Castro once dreamed of armed revolution throughout Latin America, where the Andes would become the continent’s Sierra Maestra.  Chavez surely delighted him, along with the advent of like-minded leaders in Bolivia and Ecuador. 

For Cuba, the risk in Chavez’ passing is that the economic relationship with Venezuela may change or end, raising the cost of Cuba’s energy supplies and damaging the entire economy.  Chavez’ socialist party, having won the presidency last October and 20 of 23 state governorships last December, has to be counted as a favorite in Venezuela’s 30-day snap election scenario.  If the socialists win, the Bolivarian project would seem safe, including its international aspects.  If the opposition wins, the relationship with Cuba would likely be scaled back and new prices would be attached to the doctors-for-oil swap that so benefits Cuba today. 

The bottom line is that post-Chavez politics is new in Venezuela, and that brings a note of uncertainty for Cuba, the last thing el comandante Chavez would have wanted to leave behind.  R.I.P.