Cuba: Exchange of goods and services

HAVANA, April (www.cubanet.org) - Cubans are noticing more Venezuelan students in the island lately.

The students range from middle school to university, and are one way the Cuban government has found to pay for the up to 53,000 daily barrels of crude the Venezuelan government sends to the island.

Other foreign students pay anywhere from 5 to 15 thousand dollars to study at a Cuban university, depending on length and the specific field, but Venezuelans don't.

There is also reported a growing number of Venezuelan patients being treated in Cuban medical facilities, in particular one medical facility in Havana called La Pradera.

At the other end, Cuba has a veritable civilian army in Venezuela; reportedly more than 12 thousand physicians, 5 thousand sports trainers and coaches, and hundreds of experts in other areas such as agriculture and information technology.

Ah, the next generation of believers in a failed ideology are already in the pipeline.

So who's making sure the Venezuelans get a fair trade? Apparently, nobody is.

HAVANA, April 28 (José Antonio Fornaris, Cuba-Verdad / www.cubanet.org) - Cuba's much-vaunted educational system has trouble attracting teachers; primary schools in Old Havana still have 31 unfilled classroom spots in April, two-thirds into the school year.

Education and health are often touted by Havana as the "accomplishments" of the Revolution, but recently Fidel Castro himself remarked that people in Havana don't want to become teachers.

The government has created an expedited program to graduate what it calls "emerging teachers," but apparently even those are not enough to satisfy demand.

I wonder if an "emerging teacher" is the same as a teacher who can't pass an exam in his subject area -- as is happening in this country? To Chavez: suck-errr!!