Vzla: Havana south

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez is consolidating power by attaching dozens of Fidel Castro's "advisors" to his intelligence services and key ministries, reveals a page one report in the Miami Herald this past weekend.

The paper noted that the move by Chavez, a militant pro-Castro leftist who has flouted his nation's constitution and shown little regard for democratic processes, has worried U.S. officials.

Recently, Roger Noriega, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said that Venezuela and Cuba have created an axis of subversion to destabilize democratic pro-U.S. governments in the region.

The disturbing development of Cuba's interference in Venezuelan domestic affairs was gleaned from foreign diplomats and former Venezuelan government officials.

The assignment of Castro agents to Venezuela hallmarks a significant expansion of Cuba’s influence over security and government affairs in Venezuela. Already of concern was the ominous occasion of Chávez’s brother, Adán, arriving in Havana last month as Caracas’ new ambassador.

The latest arriving cadres join an estimated 10,000 Cuban doctors working in poor neighborhoods and scores of sports coaches, said the report.

"We see a very worrisome spread in Castro’s infiltration of Venezuela under Chávez. Cuban advisors are always something more sinister than simple technicians," said a State Department official.

This unwelcome news adds to the U.S. chagrin that accompanied Venezuela’s recent withdrawal of its military contingent from the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Foreign diplomats in Caracas said they had verified with their own contacts in the government that Cuban advisors have been posted at an array of ministries:

With the rising anti-Americanism in the Caribbean, this is not a good sign. It is a poor time for INS to be alienating citizens of the Caribbean with harsh and felonious treatment. The Bush administration has some fence mending to do to halt the region's incline towards Castro, whose medical personnel are in Tobago as well as Venezuela, and whose institutions provide education and medical care for Dominica, as well as other countries. Castro, contrary to all expectations, has a reservoir of goodwill in the Caribbean, and a change of policy towards Caribbean citizens is needed before America has a bigger problem on its hands.