Venezuela's Maduro: Fidel Castro Gave Chavez and Me “Instructions” on How to Run Venezuela
By Carlos Camacho
Latin American Herald Tribune
March 10, 2017

CARACAS -- Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday night that he received “instructions” from Fidel Castro on how to run Venezuela.

Maduro then said Hugo Chavez, his predecessor and mentor, also received instructions from the late Castro.

“We received instructions, nobody denies that”, said Maduro, who went to a special school for Communist cadres in Cuba in the 1980’s for two years. The “instructions” pertained to “how to face down the international aggression” the Bolivarian Revolution received in 2003.

During an oil workers-cum-general strike between 2002 and 2003, Chavez fired 20,000 suspected dissenting employees from state oil company PDVSA. He increased the government’s control on the economy as well as handouts to the poor in a bid to boost his popularity -- policies that would continue for the rest of his natural life and would only get deeper under Maduro.

CATCH WITH “THE GIANT”

Venezuela is now deeply in debt, suffering from world-record inflation and PDVSA produces half of the oil it was producing in 1998. However, the relationship between the older Castro and Chavez kept on growing: “The Giant” was how Chavez called Castro. “I don’t know whether to call you father or brother,” Chavez also said in a typical exchange during a live television transmission.

As both men were frustrated baseball players, Chavez and Castro played catch on live television several times.

“I know he is watching”, Chavez would often say, giddily, during his frequent televised allocutions. “Hello Fidel!”, the late President would add in English, adding often, in Spanish: “he is teaching me English, you know?”

On Thursday, Maduro also criticized former Chavez supporters, explaining that it was “their lack of maturity” which made the advice from Castro necessary.

Once Chavez rose to power, he sent oil (currently, some 100,000 barrels a day) and money to Cuba in order to secure support in the form of thousands of cooperation workers, officially teachers and doctors, but in practice spies and militia, according to the Venezuelan opposition and local NGO’s.

Venezuela now has some 20,000 Cuban “cooperation workers” in the field of military expertise, public safety, health, education and sports, down from the 100,000 it had back when Chavez was alive.

SHADOW OF THE G2

Fidel Castro received Hugo Chavez with head-of-state honors in 1994, when Chavez was released from two years in jail after leading a failed coup in early 1992. That gesture cemented the international stature of the then little-known coupster and former paratrooper.

Chavez won the 1998 Presidential election after the front-runner, former Miss Universe and Mayor, Irene Saez, abruptly quit the race with no explanation and expressed her support for the failed coupster. People involved with her campaign said at the time that the Cuban intelligence services had pressured Saez into forfeiting in favor of Chavez.

A DOSE OF FIDEL EVERY 8 WEEKS

The day after Fidel Castro died, in December 2016, Maduro admitted something Venezuelans long suspected: that he met with Fidel Castro more than he admitted.

“Every two months I visited him,” said Maduro during a telephone interview with VTV, Venezuela’s state television network. “In order to say Fidel you need to say also Hugo Chavez.”

Maduro earlier had said that the older Castro “has passed on to immortality.”

“Between the pain and the memories always comes to us loud and clear the voice of our commander Hugo Chavez,” Maduro added.

The President said that he was about to visit with Castro together with First Lady Cilia Flores but that Castro’s death prevented the meeting.