Last week I was flicking through the TV as we men are obsessed with doing. I came across a scene on the French channel of a poor seaside village with young barefoot mulatto children helping to bring in the catch from a rickety old wooden boat with a man presumably, their father
.I said, "hey, great a show on Cuba" and put down the remote.
The scenes were so familiar; the clean but threadbare clothing of the people, the delight being expressed by a family working together on a huge pot of stew with lots of vegetables and dumplings, but not much in the way of meat.
The kids, playing around the rocks, and soccer with a makeshift ball.
Then the show went to a commercial, and coming back the title revealed, "Welcome to Venezuela".
I was fooled.
Cuba and Venezuela share lots in common. The same climate and global locale, the same ethnic heritage, and both have Marxist demagogues as leaders.
The big difference is that Hugo trades in a big way with the USA, while Fidel does not.
Chavez has built his power base on selling (and sometimes offering to give away) oil to Americans.
But looking at this documentary, sadly, it doesn't appear that any of this wealth is being cooperatively shared with the poor seaside peasants.
Not dismayed, nor surprised.
In any form of economic system the poor stay poor and generally get poorer.
It is a basic truth.
