Venezuela’s Crystal Ball
If our Venezuelan friends really want to peer into the future of their country, they need only to gaze into the magical crystal ball to learn what awaits them. That crystal ball is Cuba and if Venezuelans, as well as any other Latin American country with a fan of the Castro dictatorship as their leader, really want to see what the future holds, they have a fifty-year time line of leftist/communist corruption to reference.
As it went with Cuba, so it seems to go with Venezuela. Cuba was a small island nation that once was the biggest producer and exporter of sugar in the world. Once La Revolución got its paws on it though, it was systemically destroyed to the point that the island cannot even produce enough to supply its own populace with the sweet spice. Enter Chavez with his Revolución Bolivariana, and in a few short years they have gone from one of the biggest producers of some of the best Arabica coffee beans in the world, to now facing, for the first time in history, the prospect of having to import its coffee.
Venezuela to Import Coffee 1st Time Ever
Caracas, July 22 - Venezuela, a traditional coffee exporter that boasts one of the best cups of java in South America, may have to import coffee for the first time ever this year or face shortages, industry experts said.
Producers say rising costs and prices fixed by the government have caused production to fall and illegal exports to rise. The government says poor climate and speculation by growers and roasters is to blame.
Of course the Chavez government is blaming the weather, illegal exporters, aliens, witches, mal de ojo, and anything they can think of instead of their communist policies for this embarrassing development. And, according to the crystal ball, soon Chavez will blame the lack of coffee production on biological warfare being waged against Bolivarian agriculture by the evil American imperialists.
Amazing how history seems to continue to repeat itself, time and time again.
In a Communist joke book was the joke, let the Sahara desert go communist and soon you will be reading of a shortage of sand there.
Just outlaw coffee drinking like castro did with smoking. Problem solved.
Interesting article
Now Castro's take all Cuban coffee using road blocks during the collection season such as those outside of Guisa.
Then they take the good Cuban coffee and sell it overseas, replacing it with Robusta coffee from Africa ...
BTW Cuba is over 700 miles long
far too long to be called a small island.
Apparently we have another left wing creep masquerading as an expert in Lating American affairs
She is Vicki Gass of WOLA (?Washington office on Latin American Affairs) where she pompously calls herself
Senior Associate for Economic
Issues and Central America
but seems mainly busy making life difficult for the Colombian government
Her associate at WOLA Cuban desk is Rachel Farley
"Program Officer for Cuba"
Rachel Farley wrote (see quotes)
http://www.americaspolicy.org/pdf/reports/PRlatam2003.pdf
"Castro’s Cuba
The impact on the Bush administration of Chávez’s relations with Cuba’s Fidel Castro cannot be underestimated. The appointment of Otto Reich as President Bush’s first Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America was widely interpreted as a payback to the conservative, Miami-based Cuban-American community for its support of Bush in the Florida recount, as well as “pay-forward for their continued support in the 2002 gubernatorial and congressional elections.”
Venezuelans have only themselves to blame. They had the Cuban disaster as a major warning, not to mention what Cuban exiles in and out of Venezuela insistently tried to tell them before they elected Chavez. They chose to ignore the obvious. Unlike Castro before he took power, Chavez was not even remotely subtle or difficult to peg. Chavez was not 100% honest, naturally, but he was open enough. I'm sorry, but I'm very low on sympathy for people who refuse to see what's staring them in the face.
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