Venezuela & ALBA Weekly Newsletter

Venezuela & ALBA News: Growing US Military Presence in Latin America; Speeches by Diaz-Canel and Daniel Ortega; Delegations to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua

Resumen Latinoamericano: Why Israel is not Punished but Cuba is  Cuba, a country that harms no one and sends more doctors around the world than the World Health Organization, has been harshly sanctioned for over 60 years. In contrast, the apartheid state of Israel is perpetrating genocide before our eyes and yet no economic sanctions are imposed on it. On the contrary, it receives billions of dollars in aid and a great deal of heavy weaponry to carry out these massacres.

Currently 30,000 Cuban health workers are working in 66 countries, including Italy. In the last 60 years, Cuban doctors have treated two billion people around the world.

In Gaza, civilians are being killed and entire neighborhoods are being razed to the ground on a scale that could be described as industrial. In little more than four months, more children have died in Gaza than in four years of wars around the world. Israel has rightly been described as “the most racist state in the world”. Since its inception, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. In total it has received some $300 billion in economic and military aid.

In his own words, Biden bases his foreign relations on “upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating everyone with dignity.” The Treaty on European Union states that the Union is based on values such as “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.”

Foreign Policy: The Real Cost of Reimposing Sanctions on Venezuela A ruling class media outlet declares, “Maduro’s sanctions evasion and cooperation with Russia, Iran, and China reveal that the overuse of sanctions can drive affected actors to unite beyond the watchful eye of the dollar… Venezuela’s cooperation with US adversaries is a microcosm of a broader ongoing debate about the effectiveness and overuse of sanctions. As the number of sanctioned actors grows, so does the incentive for sanctions-busting cooperation. Washington’s economic statecraft relies on the idea that its rivals need US dollar reserves to trade. But when rivals are sanctioned, they seek to defy the US-led international economic system. The more sanctioned actors that the US creates, the bigger and more self-sufficient illicit economies become, rendering US sanctions impotent. Yet, U.S. policymakers continue to instinctively fall back on sanctions as low-cost tools that signal outrage and reward lawmakers at the polls. This current maximalist approach is counterproductive. It encourages heavyweight anti-Western adversaries to build coalitions with smaller, sanctioned states to organize and expand illicit trade networks.”

Orinoco Tribune: Vice President Delcy Rodriguez: We Must Reject US Militarization in Latin America, CIA Bases in Guyana  “Latin America and the Caribbean must continue to be a zone of peace. We, the people, must reject the US militarization of our region.” Defense Minister Padrino warned about the threat that Guyana represents for the country “because they have turned Guyana into the epicenter of the greatest threat against the peace of South America and against Venezuela… there are 12 CIA bases and 14 secret bases of the Southern Command, already at this moment on the ground in Guyana, the evidence will be shown in due course. Just as they prepared Ukraine against Russia, they have prepared Guyana for that, underestimating us, they do not know what we are capable of doing in the face of threats and anything that arises.” 

Tom Whitney: Pentagon focused on penetrating right-wing regimes in Latin America Information from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia suggests the US government seeks to isolate non-aligned countries like Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela and collaborate with “three bastions of U.S. support,” namely Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina…The largest U.S. bases in the region are the Guantanamo base in Cuba, with 6,100 military and civilian personnel, and the one at Soto Cano in Honduras, with 500 U.S. troops and 500 civilian employees. Ecuador and Peru each agreed recently to accept U.S. troop deployments. Colombia (2009) enabled the U.S. Air Force to utilize seven of its bases… The U.S. Navy patrols South Atlantic waters and conducts joint training exercises with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay.

Venezuelanalysis: President Maduro Criticizes US Hypocrisy After Crackdown on Students Maduro expressed his solidarity with US students protesting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza while questioning the silence of human rights organizations amid a crackdown against freedom of expression in the US. “What would they say if in Venezuela the police suddenly entered and raided the country’s universities and dragged away professors, students, workers as is happening in the United States, where seventy universities have been raided?” Maduro has consistently called for an immediate ceasefire and even paid tribute to the sacrifice made by Aaron Bushnell, the US airman who self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in protest over US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign.

TeleSur: Venezuelan Growth in Quarter 1 2024 Exceeds IMF Projection Vice President Delcy Rodriguez confirmed that her country’s Gross Domestic Product growth during the first four months of 2024 exceeded the forecasts of the International Monetary Fund. Its GDP growth was 5% at the end of 2023, when economic authorities recorded 11 quarters of productive economic expansion. President Maduro said that the GDP will grow by 8% in 2024, according to a report on prospects for the Latin American economy in 2024, thus exceeding the 4% rate expected by the IMF in mid-April.

Resumen Latinoamericano: Cuba: International Solidarity Meeting Held with Broad Rejection of the U.S. Blockade and Support for the Palestinian Struggle Members of more than 220 solidarity, political and trade union organizations discussed challenges  in the midst of the neoliberal advance, the urgent need for unity and the struggles of workers. 1144 delegates from 58 countries gathered at the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba and against Imperialism. Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs: “Sometimes it is even asked why we speak of an economic blockade and not a simple economic embargo. We commonly refer to embargo when a country decides to take measures against another country in commercial matters, prohibiting the import of a product from that other country or prohibiting the export of a product to that country. One can even speak of an embargo when one prohibits bilateral trade with that country. But what the United States practices against Cuba is something much more comprehensive, aimed absolutely at suffocating the Cuban economy.” He spoke of “the tens of millions that it [the US] dedicates every year to political subversion, to trying to fabricate an opposition, which it even openly acknowledges, to generating dissent artificially and from abroad, to creating irritation in the population, to generating confusion and to mistreating the Cuban people ideologically.”

Speech by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel at the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba and against imperialism “We highlight the importance of the continental meetings of solidarity with Cuba, which are planned for this year in the People’s Republic of China for the Asia-Pacific region, and in France for the European area…. In the face of enemy media and subversive actions aimed at provoking a change of regime in Cuba, the vast majority of the humble and working people have demonstrated, once again this May Day, in squares and cities, that they are ready to defend their independence, their sovereignty… more than four million Cubans took part…. 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger; 760 million people, mostly women, cannot read or write. The so-called Third World has more than 84 million children out of school; there are more than 660 million people without electricity… There are 183 million people in [Latin America] who qualify as poor, equivalent to 29% of the population, and 72 million of them live in extreme poverty….We also express our support for the young people who are demonstrating today in the universities of the United States and who are being repressed and brutalized by the police.”

Friends of Socialist China: Daniel Ortega: China is contributing to development in Africa, Asia and Latin America Ortega describes the escalating campaign of encirclement and containment against China, asking “what threat is the People’s Republic of China?” He contrasts China’s foreign policy with that of the Western powers: China “is not installing military bases like so very many military bases the United States has and has installed here in Latin America and the Caribbean alone”; China “is not promoting any war.”

The problem the US and its allies have with China is that “the People’s Republic of China has been growing, developing and has become close with the world’s developing countries… it is contributing to the development of these Peoples, contributing to the fight against poverty among these Peoples, to generating employment”. These are the same countries of the Global South which “the colonialist, imperialist countries used as nothing more than a source of wealth that they could steal.”

Events

Delegations to Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua

  1. AFGJ Delegation to Venezuela July 21-31Join us in Venezuela during its presidential elections to witness, experience and learn about popular democracy in action and celebrate 22 years of the Bolivarian Revolution since the attempted coup against President Hugo Chávez.
  1. Cuba Delegations
  1. Nicaragua Delegations Casa Ben Linder 2024 delegations
  • Email [email protected] to apply:
    • November 8-17 2024: Salud & Solidaridad: Hands-On Healthcare in Nicaragua
    • February 2025: The Bird Brigade: Birding in Solentiname Arquipelago
    • March 2025: Power & Protagonism: Women in Nicaragua

If you have events to publicize or find helpful articles for readers on the ALBA countries, please send them to [email protected],  or you can post them on Facebook here: Venezuela; Nicaragua; Bolivia; Latin America in general (here or here) Or send them to  [email protected]

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