Security

Venezuela, Cuba’s patron, is supplying its armed forces with new weaponry. Will this be the advent of a modernization of Cuba’s own armed forces with the financial support and direct supply from Venezuela?

Via Bloomberg:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will order $2 billion of Russian weapons, including submarines, during a visit to Moscow this month, Kommersant reported, without saying where it got the information. Venezuela, which has bought $4 billion of Russian arms in the last three years, will order four Project 636 diesel subs, Mi-28 combat helicopters and airplanes made by Ilyushin Co., Kommersant said.

Chavez is also purchasing arms from China.

Via Malaysia Sun:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has contracted to buy Chinese military training planes, expanding recent arms purchases and cementing ties. Chavez has detailed the order for Chinese K-8 planes, calling them ‘excellent planes for the boys.’ Chavez has said he will continue working on the issue of military equipment through Chinese sources, even though the US has accused him of launching an arms race. Washington has accused Chavez of carrying out an arms spending spree that could destabilize the region.

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The National Park Service of the US Department of the Interior published in 2004 an Historic Resource Study on the Cold War in South Florida providing a brief overview of activities in the region associated with Cuba and other Latin American countries:

South Florida was the location of many important events during the Cold War period 1945- 1989. The region’s proximity to Latin America made it an operational center for both covert and overt activities as the United States pursued its policy of containing communism. From the 1950s until the end of the Cold War, government officials directed operations from south Florida military installations such as Homestead Air Force Base, Opa Locka Marine Air Station, and the various U.S. Navy facilities in Key West that affected events in Guatemala, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other nations throughout Latin America.

Click here to read the study [pdf].

[H/T: Cryptome]

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Fidel Castro has written his latest reflection titled: “The Living and the Dead.” The Maximum Leader turned op-ed writer acknowledged recently sacked Education Minister Luis Ignacio Gómez Guriérrez as “truly exhausted” and “losing energy and revolutionary conscience.” While referencing his numerous travels abroad on behalf of Cuban education, Fidel chastised him for previous speeches whereby he took “personal accomplishment” instead of “extolling a body of work that was the authentic product of numerous revolutionary cadres.”

Fidel mentions the selection process of his replacement Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, who was among the list of fifteen candidates.

However, further along his reflection, a cryptic passage summons the following:

“When I had the privilege of also being consulted on the eve of the election of the Council of State, I did not hesitate in proposing that prestigious military leaders –who brought our heroic people glory and moral authority– such as Leopoldo Cintras Frías and Álvaro López Miera, who are mature, modest, brimming with experience and energy, younger than the military officer who is one of the strongest and most threatening candidates for the leadership of the empire, should be proposed to the National Assembly as candidates for membership in the Council of State. I know other cadres, quite a bit younger than they are, highly qualified, with excellent training and not very publicized, people whom we must consider.”

Is this tacit acknowledgment that those generals selected to the Council of State where chosen because they are loyal acolytes of Raul Castro and the younger generation of capable officers were passed over?

Moreover, does this cryptic passage alert us to a discontent by officers, and that future and careful consideration by Raul’s regime should be made to advance the younger generation within the officer corps to quell such discontent?

Something worth pondering about the state of internal cohesion of the armed forces.

[H/T: La Nueva Cuba.]

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An observation about Cuba’s ally with its recent purchase of arms and hemispheric implications:

“A deal with Russia, together with Venezuela’s recent purchases of Russian weapons, could spark an arms race in South America,” University of Brasilia political scientist David Fleischer. Source: AP

[H/T: Global Power Barometer]

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The recent changes implemented by Cuba’s government (i.e., domestic appliances, cars, cell phones, and hotels now accessible to the populace) although positive, they do not go to the root of economic, social and political problems facing the country, writes Pedro Anibal Riera Escalante in La Nueva Cuba.

Riera Escalante under the cover of Cuban consul, was chief of Cuba’s Intelligence Center in Mexico City  in the 1990s where he was sent to surveil and penetrate Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations in Central America. Years later, Riera Escalante was involved in an incident, which turned into an international scandal. Believing that he was going to defect in Mexico, the Cuban regime ordered operatives to kidnap Riera bringing him to Cuba in less than 24 hours with cooperation of Mexico’s government. In Cuba, Riera served years in prison, and was later set free.

Riera emphasizes:

While dissidents and opposition are not permitted to have access to the press, these measures, do not really constitute a democratic opening in the country.

Might this point of view be the growing mindset of a faction within Cuba’s intelligence apparatus acknowledging Cuba’s political state through Riera’s written voice?

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Cuba’s Central Army commemorated on Friday its 47th anniversary. A politico-cultural ceremony took place at the Defense Preparation School in Matanzas presided by Army Corps General (Lt. General) Joaquín Quinta Solá (Chief, Central Army), presidents and vice-presidents of the Defense Councils of the five provinces comprising of respective commands.

A military review was held with blocks of infantry, tank, and artillery units, Special Troops, Revolutionary War Navy, Ministry of Interior, sharpshooters, Camilitos, units of the MTT (Territorial Troop Militias) and Production and Defense Brigades.

Source: AIN

[Photo: Central Army military review, 2005.]

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Via AFP:

Cuba’s vast international spy network, considered among the best in the world, will remain intact under the leadership of the new president Raul Castro, intelligence experts say.

Havana will probably even ramp up its information gathering in the months leading up to the November elections seeking to win a firm handle on the policies of the next US president, said Chris Simmons, a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) counterintelligence Cuba analyst.

“Havana has an insatiable appetite for information about US military operations as well as US intelligence operations,” Simmons said.

That need has become even more pressing since Raul Castro took on the reins of power from his ailing brother, Fidel, in the first change of leadership in almost half a century on the communist-ruled island.

[H/T: La Nueva Cuba]

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“The broad support that acting Cuban President Raul Castro receives from the military, security services and the Communist Party will likely enable him to maintain stability, security and his own position following Fidel Castro’s announced exit.

Raul has displayed a preference for making decisions over the years in a collegial fashion. This suggests that the leadership group’s consensus will inform policymaking. The Cuban military’s support for Raul Castro shows no sign of reversing.”

– Lt. General Michael Maples, U.S. Army (Director, Defense Intelligence Agency).  Statement for the Record before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, February 27, 2008.

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