Works In Progress - February 2006 - Cuba and Venezuela: A Bolivarian Partnership

Two of Latin America's most respected independence figures, José Martí and Simón Bolívar, recognized nearly a century ago that their homelands would never be free of imperial domination until Latin America came together in solidarity as a united force. In the lands of these timeless figures, a unique partnership has developed between Cuba and The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela which defies the logic of neo-liberalism. Cuba and Venezuela are demonstrating an alternative relationship based on humanism and solidarity. This 'demonstration effect' displays to a world - where all are forced into a 'race to the bottom' - that focusing on the poorest people through a needs-based partnership is not only possible, but also desirable. Their mutual-aid exchanges in educational materials, medical services, and preferential prices of oil are a living counter-example to the competitive and exploitative nature of 'free trade'.

While Martí and Bolívar advocated for regional unity in the face of colonialism in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, their insights remain all the more relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization. The former colonizers have been replaced by trans and multi-national corporations and imperial states with the ability to blow up the world many times over. In addition, seemingly untouchable economic governing bodies (i.e. International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization) allow state and capital to come together to decide the most effective ways to control the world, amass wealth, and terrorize the global populace.

In the lands of Martí and Bolívar

For many decades, the Cuban Revolution has played a distinct role throughout the South as an openly anti-imperialist country interested in relationships based on solidarity, while actively pushing for a more humane economic and social system. On the international scale, Cuba has provided assistance to other countries based on humanistic values instead of solely economic incentives. Although a poor island with little material resources, and highly crippled by the US-imposed Blockade, Cuba offers the world medical expertise and humanitarian support. Nationally, the Cuban Revolution has brought literacy and education to its entire population, free and quality medical assistance to all, housing to the homeless, and food to the hungry. Cuba has, when possible, actively supported countries and movements who share similar goals of social equity and economic justice.

The rise of the Bolivarian Revolutionary movement to power in 1998, through the election of Hugo Chávez, has meant real change for the poor of Venezuela and the initiation of a different kind of relationship with Cuba. Reinvigorating the visions of Martí and Bolívar -- while respecting one another's differing systems and different paths toward revolution and change -- Cuba and Venezuela have built a relationship based on humanism, solidarity, mutual aid, and a shared vision of a world without poverty and imperialism. The aid that Cuba has provided is most notable in the social sphere. Rich in human capital and revolutionary experience, Cuba is aiding Venezuela as it goes down its own revolutionary path, with its Bolivarian projects and Missions.

Literacy and Healthcare without Borders

The Cuban Revolution has inspired two of the Bolivarian Revolution's largest accomplishments. The socialization of education and health were an important focus for Cuba, and similarly today, education and health initiatives are at the core of the Bolivarian project.

With illiteracy affecting 1.5 million people nationally, Venezuela, with assistance from Cuba, set out to devise a literacy program modeled after the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign. In Cuba, students, armed with pencils and paper, traveled throughout the island teaching reading and writing. Utilizing modern technology, Misión Robinson, Venezuela's literacy campaign, employs a video literacy program created by Cuba. Thousands of these videos along with TV and VCR sets, printed material for the classroom, reading glasses, and aids to train Venezuelan teachers were donated by Cuba. Venezuela has adopted these methods and translated the video into different indigenous languages. This tremendous joint effort has nearly eradicated illiteracy in Venezuela.

Accessible and affordable education and healthcare are essential pieces of the Bolivarian and Cuban Revolutions. In addition to Cuba's aid in Misión Robinson, Cuba's support has been vital for Venezuela's Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood), a program that brings medical assistance to the poor. Over 20,000 Cuban doctors have participated in the program to date. At first doctors lived in people's homes; they now are working out of offices, providing free, basic and preventative health care in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuela. They provide care for seventeen million Venezuelans, nearly two-thirds of the population, many of whom have never before received healthcare. Living within the communities they serve, doctors are on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, using Cuba's modern equipment and medicine. Additionally, Cuban health specialists have joined the effort to teach about health, diet, and exercise, focusing on preventative care and healthy living.

It is not solely the medical expertise but also, their experience working within a system that prioritizes healthcare which allows the Cuban doctors to aid in the Bolivarian Revolution's first healthcare initiatives. In order to meet all of the medical needs of the population and for the project to truly become its own, Venezuela is training doctors so that Barrio Adentro can be fully staffed and expanded. Many Venezuelans are learning to be doctors through education Missions within Venezuela, while thousands more are receiving free education in Cuba, attending the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana. Upon their return, they will be integrated into the Barrio Adentro program.

Oil, Trade, and Solidarity

The integral relationship between Venezuela and Cuba has further demonstrated that the same values of humanism and solidarity can effectively be applied to trade. In this collaboration, Cuba has especially benefited economically through these unique trade agreements.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, between 1989 and 1991, and the addition of extra-territorial stipulations to the U.S. blockade threw the Cuban economy into deep crisis, resulting in the implementation of the "Special Period." This was literally an economy of desperation, survival, and scarcity. Although Cuba has officially recovered from its economic depression, increasing trade with Venezuela has been an added relief. Venezuela has become Cuba's top trading partner - providing oil, food, and construction materials at preferential prices. This assistance is essential to the maintenance of Cuba's social system, achieved by the revolution.

Defying hedonistic neo-liberal and 'free market' dogma, whereby a country uses a 'comparative advantage' to exploit its trading partners, Cuba and Venezuela have committed to oil accords by selling oil at below market value and using a system of bartering. Venezuela has agreed to sell oil at a preferential rate to Cuba, so that despite rising prices in the world market, Cuba will purchase oil below market cost. Moreover, the two nations have been bartering oil for medical services and technical services in the agricultural, tourist and sports industries, thus demonstrating a humanistic approach to trade which values health and sustainability as important "resources".

Cuba and Venezuela are constructing a relationship that transcends the logic of markets and profits as the primary elements that should define trade. In effect, the two nations assess what goods and services will be exchanged based on analysis of each other's needs and capabilities. This fosters an economic partnership that views the goods and resources of each nation as potential tools in supporting and aiding in the other's revolutionary process. The larger effect of the mutual-exchange model is the demonstration of an 'efficient' alternative to market-driven 'free-trade', offering a vision for Latin American unity and integration that is radically different from the dominant neo-liberal model.

Towards a United Latin America

In 2002, Cuba's Fidel Castro tried to capture the nature of the distinctive Cuban-Venezuelan relationship, stating: "We share a mutual awareness of the need to unite the Latin American and Caribbean nations and to struggle for a world economic order that brings more justice to all people". Revitalizing the ideals of José Martí and Simón Bolívar for a united Latin America, Cuba and Venezuela have together taken steps to eventually make this a reality.

One such example toward a cooperative integration is exhibited through Misión Milagro (Mission Miracle), a hemisphere-wide program dedicated to providing eye surgery to the poor, free of charge. Venezuela provides the air travel to Cuba, and Cuban doctors perform the operations. Thousands have already participated in this hemispheric program, and Misión Milagro is designed to assist hundreds of thousands more. With Venezuela offering the travel, and Cuba the treatment, this truly internationalist initiative is able to provide a specific medical service for the poor of the Americas.

Cuba and Venezuela have also collaborated with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina to create the first Latin American joint venture satellite television station, TeleSur (Television from the South). The station is designed to be an alternative to CNN, providing viewpoints and voices from the South. TeleSur broadcasts international news and specializes in Latin American-made independent documentaries, relaying both a political and artistic perspective from Latin America.

Two further projects for Latin American integration are PetroAmerica, and the more encompassing Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (ALBA), a counter-proposal to the US-backed ALCA (Free Trade Area of the Americas).

PetroAmerica would consolidate the energy resources such as oil, natural gas, and electricity within the Caribbean, South and Central America, guaranteeing Latin America all of its energy needs. Moreover, the semi-continentalist venture would provide autonomy over natural resources for the respective nations to use for their collective benefit, effectively shutting out the ability of foreign capital to export the profits away from the native populations and into the Global North.

Similarly, although more grandiose, ALBA would integrate the economies of Latin America based on the principles and methods between Cuba and Venezuela of mutual-exchange, planning trade around the values of humanism, solidarity and self-determination and by assessing needs and capabilities. This is an overall contrast to the Social Darwinist policy of ALCA, where profits are the sole arbiter of success, as opposed to the elimination of poverty or the overall development of poor nations.

Limitations

Although Cuba and Venezuela are nurturing the visions of Martí and Bolívar, they face economic and political limitations that threaten the realization of their grand project. As Chávez contends in a 2002 interview with Marta Harnecker, "There has been a change in the legal-political structure" but, regarding "the essence of the socio-economic structure of the country, we have advanced very little." Up to this point, Venezuela has heavily relied on utilizing its petroleum reserves and revenues as a means of contributing to the unification of the Americas as well as internal social progress. However, these capabilities are not infinite. The project of integrating the Americas is vulnerable to these two phenomena: Venezuala's continued ties to corporate power, and the vulnerability of the world oil market.

As for Cuba -- remaining isolated in the Caribbean -- their integration into a Latin American-centered economy cannot be achieved with Venezuela alone. The US-imposed blockade has asphyxiated the Cuban economy and hence, its ability to initiate programs that reach beyond its own survival. As the United States moves forward with the FTAA, a proposed free-trade bloc that incorporates every country of the hemisphere except Cuba, the marginalization of Cuba expands. Cuba's future largely depends on a change in the current balance of power. A united, anti-imperialist Latin America could bring about this transformation.

Since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a united counter-hegemonic force of the kind Cuba and Venezuela seek is all the more difficult. At this point, much of Cuba and Venezuela's hope has relied on Leftist leaders being swept into power by popular movements in Latin America. Unfortunately, Lula (Brazil), Kirchner (Venezuela), and Vasquez (Uruguay) have not fulfilled many of their electoral promises. While invoking populist and often times anti-imperialist language, many of the claimed 'leftist' leaders have capitulated to the center, either by their own politics or by the pressures of foreign capital and debt. Although Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have contributed to TeleSur, promoting a shift from US domination of the media, their collaboration only goes as far as mounting a united counter-power to Northern hegemony. In many cases, they play by the rules of neo-liberalism, in the hopes that a United South America could out-compete the US and beat them at their own game.

Despite concessions and limitations, Cuba and Venezuela have embraced other nations willing to challenge the hyper-power to the North in hopes that the strength of their unity can encourage their neighbors to move in a more progressive direction.

Looking Forward

With a strategy based in the election of leftist leaders, the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia holds great promise towards a united anti-imperialist Latin America. Morales, an indigenous socialist, assumed the position of presidency in January of this year. He has spoken to the necessity of the nationalization of natural resources, redistribution of wealth, collaboration with Venezuela and Cuba, and has openly condemned U.S. imperialism.

Directly following Morales' election, Evo visited Cuba and Venezuela, signing cooperative agreements based on solidarity, humanism, and the advancement of Latin American integration. Evo and Fidel signed a bilateral agreement in which Cuba will fully equip two eye care centers, one in La Paz and the other in Cochabamba, which will provide free eye care to Bolivians. Additionally, Fidel extended 5,000 scholarships for the training of Bolivian doctors and specialists. With the help of Cuba and Venezuela, a program to eradicate illiteracy will begin in July, 2006. Evo and Chávez have agreed on a process in which Venezuela will help with Bolivia's Constitutional Assembly. Chávez has also promised to provide Evo's government with a $30 million donation for social projects. Furthermore, Venezuela will supply all of Bolivia's diesel fuel needs in direct exchange for Bolivia's agricultural products.

Cuba and Venezuela's 'demonstration effect' of mutual exchange, rooted in humanism and solidarity, is breathing life into ALBA. Now, as Bolivia joins their ranks there is greater possibility for the vision of Martí and Bolívar. Evo Morales shares this vision, as he has stated, "Together, united, we are going to change history, not only in Bolivia but in all of Latin America and free ourselves from US imperialism."