HAVANA
(Reuters) - Pedro Alvarez, who drives one of the
thousands of ancient American cars that serve as taxis in Cuba,
cannot bring himself to think about life without Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez.
His big,
blue 1949 Buick burns gallons of gasoline every day, most of it produced from
the imported Venezuelan oil that
fuels Cuba and all of it costing almost $5 a gallon, a pretty penny in a
country where the average monthly pay is $19.
Should
Chavez lose his campaign for re-election on Sunday or should the cancer for
which he has had three surgeries recur, it does not augur well for Alvarez or
his country.
"If
they get rid of Chavez or if he dies - which I don't want to happen ... how is
it going to be here if it's already this bad? No, no, no, I don't even want to
think about it," said the 35-year-old Alvarez, clapping his hand to his
forehead.
The future
of Chavez, politically and personally, is a high-stakes affair not just for
Cuba, but for many other countries in the Caribbean and Latin America who have
benefited from his willingness to share Venezuela's oil largesse in pursuit of a
dream of "Bolivarian" unity.
Venezuela is
providing oil on highly preferential terms to 17 countries under Chavez's
Petrocaribe initiative to aid social and economic development and is a partner
in other projects to produce and refine oil in countries such as Ecuador and
Bolivia.
It funds
infrastructure projects and social programs in several countries, including
Nicaragua, where Venezuelan investments to the tune of $500 million a year are
credited with cutting the poverty rate and providing drinking water, homes and
roads for many in the leftist-led Central American country.
"It's
been overwhelming really, the solidarity and the most important thing is that
it has been unconditional," said Jorge Gutierrez, a committed Sandinista
who works for the national water utility in Managua.
CHAVEZ AND
CASTRO
Nicaragua
gets most of its oil from Venezuela, for which it has 23 years to pay half the
cost at 2 percent interest and can pay the other half in agricultural products
within 90 days, said Nicaraguan economic analyst Nestor Avendano.
Venezuela's
economic power is such that Uruguayan President Jose Mujica is looking to it as
the potential buyer of last resort for seven small jets that belonged to his
country's defunct state airline.
He is hoping
Venezuela's state-owned Conviasa airline will purchase them and get Uruguay off
the hook for a potential $136 million loss.
Chavez is
close personally and politically to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro,
with whom he has plotted strategies to promote leftist governments and Latin
American unity, and he shares a regional sympathy for the small communist
nation that has defied U.S. opposition for over half a century.
To the chagrin
of his opponents, Chavez has taken a page from Castro's economic philosophy by
nationalizing much of the Venezuelan economy, as did his mentor after taking
power in Cuba's 1959 revolution.
Chavez, who
went to doctors at the urging of the now 86-year-old Castro, was diagnosed with
cancer in Cuba last year and treated for it on the island. He also just
published a book, edited in part by Castro.
The
centerpiece of the Cuba-Venezuela relationship is an oil-for-services deal
under which Venezuela ships 115,000 barrels of oil daily to Cuba, most of which
is used to meet the island's daily energy needs and the rest for processing in
a Cuban refinery refurbished by Venezuela.
Experts say
that is worth about $3 billion a year, and peripheral to it are wide-ranging
joint ventures and cooperation projects that reach deeply into Cuban society.
In return,
Cuba has sent 44,000 professionals to Venezuela, most of them medical
personnel, to help Chavez provide the same level of free healthcare and social
services Cubans receive.
Carmelo
Mesa-Lago, a Cuban-American economist at the University of Pittsburgh, said
that from 2000 to 2011 Cuba and Venezuela signed agreements for 370 investment
projects.
He estimates
that Venezuela paid Cuba the equivalent of $5.4 billion in oil and perhaps cash
for its people in 2010, which he said comes to $135,800 per person, or 27 times
the salary of a Venezuelan doctor. It was, he said, a "hidden
subsidy."
PACE OF
ECONOMIC REFORM
Chavez'
generosity helped Cuba emerge from the so-called "special period,"
when the island's economy was shattered by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet
Union, its ally and top benefactor for 30 years.
During that
time, Cuba was plagued by electricity blackouts and shortages of fuel, food and
consumer goods, an experience Cubans hope never to repeat.
"We
would chop up banana peels and fry them like meat so we would have something to
eat besides rice," remembers Carla Borges, a retired teacher who lives
with her extended family in a mid-19th century home in Havana.
"It
wasn't easy, but I know a nun who says that Cubans don't have to pass through
purgatory when they die, they'll go straight to heaven for all they've been
through," she said.
The danger
for Cuba is that if Chavez loses the election or his cancer recurs it could
suffer another dark economic time - perhaps not as bad because it is less
dependent on Venezuela than it was on the Soviets but still serious, experts
have said.
Enrique
Capriles, Chavez' opponent in Sunday's vote, has said he would continue the
social programs Chavez created for Venezuela's poor and honor international
agreements already in place, but that preferential oil deals for most allies,
including Cuba, would quickly become a thing of the past.
"To
have a friend, you don't need to buy him," he said in August. "From
... 2013 not a single free barrel of oil will leave to other countries."
In 2010,
Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA was not paid for 43 percent of its crude
and refined oil products.
An end to
Venezuelan aid could force Cuban President Raul Castro to speed up economic
reforms promoting more private initiative and a reduced state role, said Cuba
expert Paolo Spadoni at Augusta State University in Augusta, Georgia.
"If
Venezuela is not part of the picture, the reform process must move much faster
because you will have problems you must deal with in a much shorter
period," said Spadoni.
BLOW TO
LEFTIST ASPIRATIONS
For Chavez'
leftist allies, his loss would be a political blow to their aspirations of
spreading leftist influence in Latin America.
Along with
Petrocaribe, he has been a driving force behind the creation of the leftist
bloc ALBA, or Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, and CELAC, or
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, both aimed at regional integration
and diminution of U.S. influence in the hemisphere.
Cuban
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez alluded to Chavez's importance in a speech to
the United Nations on Monday and warned of "destabilizing attempts that
loom on the horizon."
"The
imminent elections in the sister nation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
will be decisive for the common destiny of our region," he told the
General Assembly.
"The
governing powers in the United States will make a very serious mistake of
unpredictable consequences if they attempt to reverse by force the social
achievements attained by our people," he said.
For taxi
driver Alvarez, regional politics were less important than keeping his
gas-guzzling, slightly dilapidated Buick on the road. Should Chavez leave the
scene, history might repeat itself, he thinks.
"Maybe
another country will come in (and help us). You know how it is - when something
bad happens, there's always another way out," he said.
(Reporting
By Jeff Franks, Tim Gaynor in Mexico City, Ivan Castro in Managua, Alexandra
Valencia in Quito, Brian Ellsworth in Caracas, Brian Winter in New York and
Alejandro Lifschitz in Buenos Aires; Editing by Tom Brown and Todd Eastham)
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