Caribbean & Central America - April 2006 (ISSN 1741-4458)

President Fidel Castro was at his belligerent best during a two-hour speech on 19 April, the anniversary of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion (known as Playa Girón in Cuba after the beach where the landing took place).

Speaking at Havana's Karl Marx Theatre before a crowd of more than 3,000 invited guests, many of them Playa Girón veterans, Castro said: "It has been an unending battle for 45 years_ there has not been a single day of peace, nor will there be, nor do we ask for it. We're not provoking war, nor will we provoke war, but we will never beg for peace from the US which has deprived us of that goal for so long." 

Castro did not have anything startlingly different to say from countless other speeches over the years but his assertion that "the hemisphere is falling from their (US) hands, they cannot continue subjugating peoples ... and the feeling of independence grows stronger every day" did not ring quite so hollow for once.

In a piece entitled "In Search of Hugo Chávez " that he contributed to the May/June 2006 edition of Foreign Affairs, Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the prestigious US think-tank Inter-American Dialogue, writes: "What has particularly alarmed US officials is Chávez 's alliance with Castro, Washington's nemesis for nearly half a century. With his resources, Chávez has succeeded in giving new life to the vision many considered long buried: to export 'revolution' (in this case, Bolivarian Revolution) throughout Latin America." Interestingly, Shifter cites a July 2005 speech "The Return of an Aggressive Cuban Foreign Policy" given to the Hudson Institute by the deputy assistant secretary of defence for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Pardo-Maurer, in which he warns that Castro is taking advantage of Chávez 's resources to carry out a strategy believed to be declining.

Talk of the decline of US influence in Latin America has been going on since the end of the Cold War of course. There is an increasing focus on China's growing interest in the region to keep it supplied with the primary commodities it needs to sustain its rapid economic growth. And now the Chávez /Castro partnership is seen as a threat to US interests in the region. Chávez is looking to extend his generous provision of oil to Cuba to other countries in the Caribbean under his PetroCaribe initiative and is even seeking to undermine US influence in its very own backyard by supplying cheap oil to left-wing mayors in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Chávez 's oil diplomacy provides an attractive economic deal for countries across Latin America and his fierce criticism of US-backed neoliberal policies resonates throughout the region but, as Shifter points out elsewhere, "(leaders) indulge him_ without really endorsing his agenda". While Latin American countries remain dependent on the US, Pardo-Maurer's fears will remain some way removed from reality, but until Washington comes up with a credible alternative to the Chávez /Castro deal and addresses some of the big issues for Latin American countries, such as migration and social development, the "revolution" will continue to have its adherents.

Worth noting: While Castro dismissed the month-long US military exercises in the Caribbean in April - "those little boats going around out there don't scare anybody" - Chávez called the US exercises "a threat against us - not just against Venezuela but also against Cuba". Venezuelan Admiral Orlando Maniglia announced that Venezuela would soon hold military exercises along its coasts in concert with the armed forces of (unspecified) neighbouring countries.