Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net
When Barack Obama became president of the United States, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez planned to have a conflictive relation also with the new U.S. President. To this end, Castro and Chavez applied their distinctive style of criticisms and insults against anyone who does not share their anti-democratic beliefs.
However, the comandantes have adopted now the contradictory attitude of praising some policies of the new U.S. government and congratulating Obama on almost everything he says about international issues.
So two questions arise: why this change of tone? Is it the case that the United States and Obama meet now the conditions to seek an understanding with the leftist leaders?
And the answers can be found in two main reasons:
Oil
First is the problem of crude prices. The Venezuelan petroleum empire controlled by Castro and Chavez is no longer producing the same profits as before, due to falling oil prices. What put the comandantes in the embarrassing position of needing the Yankees' money to finance their socialism -via public debt and oil investments in the case of Venezuela, and through remittances and tourism in the case of Cuba- swallowing their revolutionary words.
Popularity
However, not only money is affecting the plans of the Latin American left's most extreme representatives, as the today's world presents a new variable not anticipated by Castro and Chavez: A U.S. President, Barack Obama, is currently the most popular leader of the planet.
Reality that has an adverse effect on the anti-imperialist story, considering that this leftist ideology sounds less absurd if used against globally unpopular opponents such as Nixon or Bush.
Thus, the acclaimed Obama appears as an inconvenient enemy for the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, as his political influence makes his criticisms of Chavez and Castro more heavier than those made by George W. Bush. In the same way that it is more difficult for the left to criticize the international celebrity in which it has become the new American president.
Castro and Chavez also know that Obama has the ability to override the negative leadership of Latin American communists, because the new U.S. president has achieved his popularity with smart and democratic ideas. Quite the opposite of the obsolete Castro-Chavista project that proposes a violent world, unequal and undemocratic.
That's why Castro and Chavez are now more cooperative. They need fast money and should avoid being eclipsed by Obama, but they will not last long pretending.
Related articles:
- Latino leaders and the 2009 Summit of the Americas
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