Cuba Is Hanging On ,Barely. As The US Turns The Screws

In the Vice: Cuba Is Hanging On, Barely, As the US Turns the Screws Cuba Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío recently sat down with Democracy Now! to talk about the US government’s toughening stance on the communist-run island 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Re-designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, resuming the American economic embargo on Cuba, banning travel from the island to the US, targeting Cuban immigrants for deportation, and sending immigrants detained in the US to the American military base in Guantánamo Bay were narrow-minded policies that were “not relevant to the interests of most Americans,” said Fernández de Cossío. As Cossío spoke, students at the Caribbean country’s universities were taking to the streets to protest the 800-percent increases in Internet fees, reported United Press International, adding that the hikes had undercut academic work, research, and public health services. The two developments reflect how Cuba faces threats, old and new, even as it reaches breaking point. Young Cubans who have lived with frequent power outages, water shortages, transportation failures, and skyrocketing food prices said that pricey wi-fi was the last straw. Cuba’s state-owned communications company, ETECSA, which enjoys a monopoly as the country’s Internet provider, unilaterally raised the price, saying it was short of foreign currency. However, the new prices, based on average use, are double the monthly base salary of government employees. Still, students said the real outrage was also that Cuba’s communist government is increasing its reliance on the US dollar. In recent months, state supermarkets have opened across Cuba that only accept hard currencies. Gasoline stations are switching away from the peso. Many believe electricity is next. Already, numerous companies offer foreign packages that encourage Cubans to ask their relatives abroad to pay. “(The anger) reflects a growing sense on the island that the government is moving away from its socialist principles, while not liberalizing the economy enough to allow people to earn the money now needed to live,” the Guardian wrote. Regardless, the price spikes for the Internet are one of many examples of the economy’s problems. Outlets that track the island, like CiberCuba, wrote that inflation is up and food scarcity is widespread. Poor seniors, for example, are consuming coffee and banana peels to stave off hunger. Products like milk are uncommon now. When families are lucky enough to find food, they cook over charcoal due to natural gas shortages. The US has arguably contributed to these troubles, analysts say. Restrictions on remissions to islanders from immigrant Cubans and Cuban Americans in the US have dramatically reduced income, for instance, as the state-owned Cuban News Agency described. Also, doing business with a Cuban entity is illegal and subject to sanctions. Citing the Cuban government’s abysmal human rights record and resistance to American power projection in the region, the chief of mission in the US Embassy in Cuba, Mike Hammer, said the US was already planning to impose a new round of sanctions on the country. “This administration is determined to sanction repressors,” Hammer told Reuters and other reporters recently in Miami. “There will be consequences for their actions.” The Cuban economy – and thus the communist government – are on the brink of collapse amid these pressures, argued Gerold Schmidt, an expert at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, a German think tank. “The socialist country is currently facing what is likely the worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution,” he wrote. “It will be difficult for Cuba’s political leadership to find a way out of the crisis in the foreseeable future. On the one hand, it does not want to give up the gains made by the revolution… But the country lacks the necessary funds for investing in vital sectors and cannot obtain further loans due to US sanctions and its already high levels of foreign debt. In the short term, the focus will have to be on how the country’s economy can survive without overstretching the population’s patience.” Share this story

Chilean Right Buoyed By Rise In Crime and Scandals On The Left

Chilean Right Buoyed by Rise in Crime, Scandals on Left Chile Outgoing Chilean President Gabriel Boric is lobbying hard in the capital of Santiago for progressive legislation that would expand abortion rights and permit euthanasia. The bills are vital to Boric’s legacy because he has failed to fulfill other left-wing pledges he made when he assumed office three years ago, including liberal tax reforms that never passed, pension reforms that did not eliminate private pension fund administrators as promised, and a proposed liberal constitution that voters rejected in a 2022 referendum, according to Reuters. The abortion bill would decriminalize the procedures for as long as 14 weeks after conception. The euthanasia bill would permit euthanasia and assisted suicide for citizens older than 18, the Associated Press reported. Boric’s urgency highlights his tough political position. Unable to run for a consecutive, four-year term under the Chilean constitution, Boric won’t be on the ballot in the upcoming election in November. Now, unless he shows that he can deliver on his campaign promises, Boric’s successors are likely to be conservatives who try to erase any influence he has had on the South American country. Boric’s approval ratings stand at around 22 percent, United Press International wrote, despite enacting some leftist policies like limiting the workweek to 40 hours and increasing the minimum wage. Still, Chileans are far more worried about spiking levels of crime and political scandals involving his administration, analysts said. Frontrunners in the presidential race, meanwhile, are all on the right. Leading the pack is conservative economist Evelyn Matthei, 71, the daughter of a general who served under dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled the country for 17 years, World Politics Review explained. She had campaigned to allow Pinochet to remain in power and to defeat efforts to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity during his regime to justice. She has pledged to crack down on immigration but also supports gay marriage and abortion. She compares herself to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a noted pragmatist. A close contender is far-right candidate, José Antonio Kast, 59, the son of a Nazi émigré to Chile and who lost to Boric in the last election. A long-serving congressman for the south side of Santiago, his late brother served as a minister under Pinochet, whose regime Kast has defended. He is rising in the polls. Another candidate is Axel Kaiser, 43, a libertarian who styles himself after Argentine President Javier Milei, who has slashed government programs and criticized left-wing policies. Kast and Kaiser have pledged to crack down on immigration, too. “I worked as a laborer, as a waiter, as a bond salesman, I’ve done a thousand different things,” Kaiser told America Quarterly. “(Boric) was a student activist, entered Congress, and became president. He’s never worked a day in his life.” All three want to put an end to Boric’s policies, added the American Conservative, and the public is receptive: “Boric, once the shining star of the young Latin American left, is now an exhausted political figure, as the region’s youth turn rightwards in concert with much of the world.”

Bolsinaro Goes On Trial

Down and Out in Brazil: Former Brazilian Leader Goes On Trial For Attempted Coup Brazil Former Brazilian Infrastructure Minister Tarcísio de Freitas recently testified on behalf of his one-time boss, Jair Bolsonaro, the ex-president of Brazil, who is currently on trial for allegedly organizing an attempted coup to remain in office and plotting to murder the current president and a supreme court justice. “During the period I was with the president during the final stretch (of his term)…he never touched on that subject, never mentioned any attempt at constitutional disruption,” said Freitas, who is the current governor of the state of São Paulo. A conservative and populist, Bolsonaro faces 40 years in prison if he’s found guilty of seeking to seize control of the government after he lost his reelection bid to current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, a leftist, in late 2022, reported Agence France-Presse. He would also be banned permanently from holding office. Soon after the election, his supporters stormed the Brazilian Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace in the capital of Brasília, the Buenos Aires Herald explained. Bolsonaro claims the prosecution is politically motivated and aims to prevent him from running for office again in 2026, the BBC noted. The case against him, meanwhile, appears strong, analysts add, pointing to a mountain of evidence, including testimony by some of his own supporters. In mid-May, Gen. Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, a former army commander under Bolsonaro, took the stand in a pre-trial hearing and told the court that he met with Bolsonaro ahead of the inauguration of Lula in early 2023 to discuss a “state of siege” as a possible way to overturn Bolsonaro’s election defeat, according to Agence France-Presse. Another military official under Bolsonaro, Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, told the court he also took part in meetings in which Bolsonaro discussed “the hypothetical possibility of using legal instruments” to overturn the election results and justify military intervention. Both Gomes and Júnior said they refused to comply. Gomes said that he warned Bolsonaro of the judicial implications of declaring a state of siege and even threatened to have him arrested if he followed through with the plan. More than 80 witnesses, including senior military officers, former government ministers, and officials from the police and intelligence services, are testifying in this preliminary trial phase. Among them is Bolsonaro’s former personal assistant, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, who has made a plea deal. Still, British-Canadian writer Gwynne Dyer saw holes in the prosecution’s case. Writing in the Bangkok Post, he argued that the civilians who vandalized government buildings were incompetent and half-hearted in their attempt at regime change. Soldiers never left their barracks. And Bolsonaro was “on vacation” in Florida. Meanwhile, it’s not clear a judge would imprison the former president if he is found guilty. Bolsonaro, 70, is recovering from his sixth operation for intestinal damage related to a 2018 assassination attempt. Pain and discomfort have impeded his campaign efforts for his party in next year’s presidential election, the Associated Press wrote. Bolsonaro’s downfall represents an especially remarkable reversal of fortunes in contrast to the comeback of his arch-nemesis, Lula. Lula left office in 2010 after serving two terms as a popular president. His handpicked successor, former President Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and ousted in 2016. Then, a year later, prosecutors convicted Lula in a bribery and corruption scandal, imprisoning him for almost two years. In 2021, the country’s Supreme Court annulled his conviction, letting him run for office again. Holding on to power is a long game in Brazilian politics, analysts say. Bolsonaro is already banned from holding office until 2030 for abuse of power and for making unfounded claims that Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud. Despite the ban, he said he plans to run again in the 2026 presidential election. After all, Lula became president again in spite of his conviction, observers add. “One of the strange paradoxes in politics is that populists gain from anger at the political system no matter how much they contributed to the system’s failures,” wrote World Politics Review. “Brazil’s prosecution (of) Bolsonaro for the attempted coup he plotted is salutary. But that does not guarantee the country won’t fall into this same trap.” Share this story