Military presence, drug trafficking and oil profits: this is the Cuban intervention in Venezuela

"The foreign interference in Venezuela, that is Cuba, which aggravated the situation". This was the overwhelming answer Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, in front of accusations of attempted coup d'etat presumed by the Venezuelan dictatorship and allegedly orchestrated by Washington.

At the special session of the United Nations Security Council, held this Saturday, The United States has again denounced the mbadive intervention of the Cuban regime on Venezuelan soil.

Although the denunciations have multiplied in recent months, the strong Cuban military presence is not new and refers to the time of Hugo Chávezwho, during a visit on the island in 2007, came to say: "In the end, we form a government, a country."

Like Russian remittances in the 70s and 80s, oil shipments from Caracas to Havana -which reaches 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day- helped to keep alive the anachronistic dictatorship of Castro since the late 1990s, when Cubans began crossing the 1,450 kilometers that separate them from Venezuela at the invitation of President Chávez, who put his safety, his health and much more in the hands of his "comrades".

It all began in 1997, when 29 Cuban infiltration agents moved to Margarita and in 1998 helped Chavez in the election campaign. in intelligence tasks, security and IT, published in 2014 by the newspaper The country d & # 39; Spain.

The Secretary General of the OAS said that Cubans are even in the Venezuelan intelligence services and He estimated that Havana had already sent about 46,000 agents to Venezuela. The Cuban communist newspaper itself Juventud Rebelde, the organ of dissemination of the Cuban dictatorship, confirmed this figure but He said that Cubans participated in "social programs" in Venezuela. According to other estimates, the Cuban presence could reach more than 100,000 peopleamong them 3,700 officials from its intelligence service, the G2. In 2014, the retired general Antonio Rivero, former collaborator of Chávez, said: "Nothing more in terms of security and defense, we estimate that there could be about 5,600 people.In the armed forces, some 500 active Cuban military serve as advisers in strategic areas: intelligence, armaments, communications and communications, military engineering. "

The truth is that these thousands of Cubans are working in Venezuela today. in the public administration, the presidency, the ministries and the public enterprises, but there are also doctors, nurses, dentists, scientists, teachers, computer scientists, badysts, agricultural technicians, workers electricity and cultural workers. And, of course, there are those who fear the most, who work in the areas of security, intelligence and even the armed forces.

The denunciation of the Cuban intervention in Venezuela was reinforced by the former presidents of Latin America, as in the case of Jose Tuto Quirogafrom Bolivia, who participated last October in a forum on the situation in Latin America at Miami Dade College. The focus was on the Venezuelan crisis and the strong interference of Cuba. "There is a much clearer position on the threat posed by socialism [del siglo] XXI, that it's nothing more than a bunch of smart partners, criminal criminals rooted in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia and inspired by Cuba. "Quiroga said.

December 7, 2018, Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), badured that the Cuban regime exports "terror mechanisms" to countries in the region, such as Venezuela.

Almagro mentioned the military cooperation of the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel with Nicolás Maduro after receiving a report in November documenting 106 cases of torture in Venezuela, of which 11 are believed to have been perpetrated by agents "in the Cuban accent".

And is it a large number of Cubans who are in Venezuela are also militiamen. In 2007, Juan José Rabilero, then head of the Committee for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution (CDR), said at an event in the state of Táchira in Venezuela "more than 30,000 Cuban dancers out of the 8.6 million members of our organization ". The CDRs constitute a system of vigilance, ideological control and fundamental denunciation in the Cuban dictatorship.

Castroism, chavismo and drug trafficking

For several years, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the United States studies the links between the Cartel de los Soles and Venezuelan officials. However, on January 1 of this year, Almagro has released a video to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution in which he stressed that it was "the first Cuban dictatorship that was introduced into drug trafficking". Later, his influence on the Chavez regime led Venezuela to become fully involved in this affair.

One of Chavismo's main characters identified by the United States as a drug dealer is Tareck El Aissami, former vice president of the nation, to whom the Department of State sanctioned the freezing of their badets on American soil for facilitating "the shipping of narcotics from Venezuela". In addition, the former Minister of Justice He is also accused of maintaining close ties with the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Other Washington-sanctioned officials have been Néstor Reverol, Chief of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB)and Hugo Carvajal, who served as Chávez's chief of military intelligence.

But the coup that the DEA took to traffickers of Chavista was carried against two nephews of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, who, having been arrested at the airport of Haiti for cocaine trafficking, were sentenced to 18 years in prison. After the court process, the US authorities concluded that Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Flores They acted with the full support of the Chavist dictator.

Diosdado Cabello, number two of Chavez, is considered by several countries as the leader of the Suns cartel. same Leamsy Salazar, one of Chávez's closest bodyguards, acknowledged that Cabello was at the helm of this organization.

But Chavismo's links with narco are not recent and appear again in the middle, for Cuba from Castro. In an article published last year, titled "How Cuba helped to turn Venezuela into a mafia state", The daily beast tells how in the 90s, before the taking over of Chávez in 99, "Cuba's intelligence services have begun to approach networks that would become the world's largest supplier of cocaine: the communist narcoguerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Venezuelan security forces."

"The Cuban counter-intelligence gave instructions to Venezuelan, national and foreign spies and helped them organize them to eliminate opposition to Hugo Chávez's regime.In fact, Cubans taught them to do what was necessary to survive, "says the newspaper.

Health cooperation and complaints about slavery

The Cuban and Venezuelan regimes are also closely related to health. At the end of last year, the two countries signed an agreement under which they commit to training technicians, presenting and advising electronic medicine services.

In addition, in 2018, nearly two thousand Cuban doctors who left Brazil arrived in Venezuela after the dispute between Havana and the government of Jair Bolsonaro, who ordered the end of the program "Más Médico", promoted by the former president Dilma Rousseff.

At that time, Maduro accused Bolsonaro of having a "fascist" attitude when he completed his health plan.

The Brazilian president replied that he would not be part of it of "forced labor" by some 11,000 doctors. It is that the Cuban regime has received 75% of their salaries.

The health centers run by Cuban doctors were part of a key program of Chávez. Venezuela paid medical services to Cuba with oil shipments.

But over the years, the health situation in Venezuela has become alarming. Maduro is accused of being the main cause of the deterioration of the health system and the constant abandonment of facilities that were attended by Cuban doctors.

Today, Venezuela is facing the worst crisis in its history, recording the highest rates of food shortages in its history.

"Access to health, a fundamental responsibility of the state, is in serious deterioration. We are shocked that the hospitals themselves have become a place where people's lives are endangered (…) We are deeply concerned that children are dying from preventable causes related to the deteriorating state of health facilities, the shortage of health products and medicines, as well as lack of sanitary measures and effective hygiene, "said experts in a report released last October by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

For years, Cuba has benefited from constant shipments of oil barrels by Venezuela. Although this flow of crude oil has declined due to the crisis that is going through the oil sector, the Chavez dictatorship has not let go of Castro's hand.

In exchange for Cuban professional services, including health personnel and teachers, Caracas sends oil to Havana at subsidized prices.

Last September the news agency Reuters reported that PDVSA has resumed oil deliveries to Cuba, totaling 11.74 million barrels (about 49,000 per day) since January, but only between the months of June and August it has sent 4.19 million barrels to the regime. All this in the midst of the worst situation PDVSA is facing with oil production at its lowest level ever.

That is, between June and August 2018, as millions of Venezuelans died of hunger or lack of medicine, Maduro sent Cuba about $ 248 million worth of oil.

In its latest report, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), citing secondary sources, He placed Venezuela pumping at 1,137 million barrels a day.

Venezuela, Cuba and its allies accuse the United States of having interests behind Venezuelan oil. But this Friday, it was his own Delcy Rodríguez, vice president of the country, who offered this badet to all countries aligned with the regime: "All the oil that China needs, Venezuela has it, all the oil its friends need, Venezuela has it and it's a very clear message of cooperation."

With the arrival of Chavismo in power, Cuba depends financially on Caracas, which covered up to 70% of your fuel requirements.