Venezuela’s 29 million people are praying for their ailing Commandante Hugo Chavez – half that he will survive his latest bout of cancer, and the other half that he won’t.

The flamboyant Chavez is reporting to be failing rapidly with “severe” respiratory complications after his fourth cancer surgery since 2011 in Cuba. Both the Venezuelan and Cuban governments have remained very secretive about the condition of the 58-year-old Chavez.

Watching any human battle the terrors of cancer is always heartbreaking. But Chavez’s prolonged illness is also causing rising economic and political uncertainty in both Venezuela and Cuba.

President Chavez styles himself leader of Latin America’s socialist “Bolivarian revolution,” an ex-military officers who vows to use Venezuela’s great oil wealth to uplift his people. Venezuela’s per capita income is a modest $13,000. By comparison, South Korea, a nation with no natural resources, has a GDP per capita of $30,000. Many Venezuelans subsist on $2 per day. They are Chavez’s most ardent supporters.

The dire illness that has afflicted Chavez has thrown Venezuela into political turmoil. He was due to take the oath of office for a second six-year term on 10 January.

Venezuela’s constitution provides for new elections if the sitting president dies. But there is confusion over what would happen if Chavez remains in a Cuban hospital. Will Vice President Nicolas Maduro take office – or not? The president of the National Assembly says he will assume office. Military officers are making coup noises.

All this would be merely of local interest if Venezuela was not one of the world’s most important oil producers. Lucky Venezuela literally floats atop of sea of oil and natural gas. It may even have larger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

Venezuela’s petroleum reserves from the region of Lake Maracaibo are estimated at nearly 300 billion barrels. Oil sands contain some 100 billion bbls of oil – more than Canada’s Alberta oil sands. Venezuela is the world’s eighth largest exporter of oil and Latin America’s leading producer of natural gas.

In spite of the long, bitter feud and name-calling between Caracas and Washington, Venezuela remains a primary oil supplier for the United States. Caracas even owns the US petroleum refiner and marketer, “Citgo.” Ironically, another leftist state, Angola, is also now a leading oil supplier for the energy-devouring US market.

Cuba’s leaders are also watching President Chavez’s health crisis with mounting concern. Venezuela supplies Cuba with an annual $3.5 billion subsidy, including 15,000 bbls of oil daily. Venezuela is also building a large refinery in Cuba that will strengthen its economic independence. In exchange for oil, Cuba has provided Venezuela with 30,000 doctors.

The Soviet Union used to supply Communist Cuba with free oil until its collapse in 1991. Cuba wholly relied on this Soviet petroleum and sold the rest to earn hard currency. Commandante Chavez has always been a huge admirer of Cuba; he regards Fidel Castro as a father figure. So he was quick to throw a lifeline to sinking Cuba after Soviet aid evaporated. Washington was furious, to say the least, and sought to bolster internal opposition to Chavez’s populist socialist regime which is despised by middle and upper class Venezuelans

If Chavez loses his fight with cancer -and this could come in days – or if he is incapacitated, a new government in Venezuela may either sharply lessen or, if the rightist opposition wins office, completely end aid to Cuba. This would leave Cuba in desperate straits. Cuba does not have enough hard currency to buy oil on the open market.

Havana’s plight might offer Vladimir Putin off in Moscow a nifty way of needling Washington, which has lately been stepping on Russia’s toes in the Caucasus and Syria. China may also be tempted to quietly rescue Cuba as a tool for future use if the US challenges Beijing over Taiwan or the South China Sea. Imagine the uproar in America if Chinese Navy vessels began patrolling off Miami just as the US 7^th Fleet patrols the Taiwan Strait.

This column wishes Col. Chavez a speedy recovery. He is a big pain to Washington, a mixed-up socialist, and a blowhard, but he’s also colorful, bighearted and amusing in a world full of dull leaders.

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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2013

HAVANA – Fifty years ago this month the US and USSR came terrifying close to full-scale thermonuclear war. I recalled those days of fear while staring at a rusting Soviet medium-ranged SS-4 missile displayed outside La Cabana fortress

Nuclear-armed Soviet SS-4’s, secretly brought into Cuba, were ready to destroy Washington and the entire US East Coast. Nuclear war was imminent. US forces were at DEFCON 2 and massed to invade Cuba. Washington was the prime target. As a student there at Georgetown University, I vividly recall how frightened we were, and how helpless we felt.

In the end, the Soviets prevailed in the Cuban missile crisis. President John Kennedy backed down, pledging the US would never invade Cuba. US missiles in Italy and Turkey targeted on the USSR were removed. Moscow took its SS-4’s out of Cuba.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev won his goal of saving Cuba and Fidel Castro’s Marxist regime from a US invasion. But it was such a terrifying gamble the Soviet Politburo deposed Khrushchev shortly after. Kennedy got far more credit than he deserved for the crisis.

In the early 1960’s, Communist Cuba was the vanguard of revolution in Latin America, then Africa. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s Cuba was the only Communist regime outside Mao’s China that had romantic appeal to western youth. Fidel’s vows to promote education, health care and land distribution sounded revolutionary when Latin America was mostly ruled by US-backed oligarchs and generals.

But that was long ago. The combined pressure of crushing US trade and financial sanctions and the inherent failures of the Marxist economic system left Cuba isolated, trapped in the past. Today, once picturesque colonial Havana is a Caribbean Pompeii, a museum of the 1950’s with its crumbling buildings and magnificent vintage American cars.

Half a century later, Latin America has rid itself of inept military dictators and achieved dramatic social and economic development. The US no longer treats Latin America with the paternalism and frequent contempt it did fifty years ago. Ironically, Cuba, with a living standard not far from that of the US in the early 50’s, was left behind in a time warp. Castro’s Cuba does have a high standard of health care and education, but the rest of the economy and society are battered beyond belief. Still, the Castro dictatorship, now run by brother Raul, has been honest and genuinely concerned for its people.

I’ve been going to Cuba since the pre-Castro era. My parents used to meet Ernest Hemingway for daiquiri cocktails at the famed La Floridita Bar, today, sadly an over-priced tourist trap. In my bookcase: “A Farewell to Arms,” inscribed “to Eric the painter from his friend Ernest Hemingway, Havana, 1952.”

Contrary to expectations, no big changes occurred after Raul Castro assumed leadership from the ailing Fidel. Yet I have observed many small but significant developments on my regular trips to Cuba. Things are changing.

Thanks to Raul’s recent reforms, small private enterprise is bubbling up everywhere. Aid and oil from Venezuela has been very important. People are more outspoken, less wary of the secret police and informers. One feels growing energy pulsating into Havana’s delightful old city. With its beautiful buildings, friendly, attractive people, and little music bars with their superb salsa bands, Havana is poised to resume its role of 50 years ago as the most fun – and perhaps wickedest city – in the world.

America’s Great Satan, Fidel Castro, is sidelined by age and illness, but Cubans still love their national papa figure. Brother Raul, now pushing 81, has gained respect for his leadership. But once the Castro era is over, what will happen?

Either a power grab by the military and old guard, or the half million Miami-based Cubans will return and rebuild Cuba. A tsunami of US money will swamp Cuba, washing it into the modern world. Many friends of Cuba do not look forward to this change, though Cubans desperately need relief from their threadbare existence.

Fidel Castro was admired across Latin America for proudly defying the mighty US and refusing to follow Washington’s direction. Cuba paid a heavy price for its independence: poverty, repression, Soviet influence. Today’s Cubans may decide continued independence is not worth the heavy cost.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012