Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Venezuela and other Latin America stories of the week




Guest: Fausta Rodriguez Wertz, the editor of Fausta's Blog........the elections in Ecuador......we will look at the situation in Venezuela..........Raul Castro's anti-Trump attacks..........more bad economic news from Brazil and a look at the latest from US politics..........Mexico and US immigration laws.........the Obebrecht scandal............very bad polls for President Bachalet in Chile....and other stories of the week...................


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Tags: Venezuela 2017, Mexico and US immigration laws, Raul Castro vs President Trump, Obebrecht scandal Brazil, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Goodbye Tony Romo


Apparently, Dallas will release Tony Romo on Thursday, according to The Dallas Morning News.    Tony did a great job over 10 years and we wish him well in Denver, Houston or whereever he goes.    
Thanks for the memories, and there are many!

Tags: Tony Romo  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Raul Castro with a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome



Well, who is going ballastic over President Trump? Who else but Raul, the younger Castro down in Cuba.    
This is from a report by TeleSur, a South American news agency:   
Cuban President Raul Castro said Sunday that the proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump to build a wall on the Mexican border is “irrational” and affects all Latin America.   
“The wall that is intended to be build on the northern border of Mexico is an expression of irrationality,” said the Cuban leader in Caracas at the 14th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Trade Treaty of the Peoples, also known as ALBA-TCP, adding that it is “not only against this brother country but against our entire region.”
“We express the solidarity of Cuba with the Mexican people and government,” he continued, adding that his country is not blind to the causes that affect Latin America.
 
During the meeting, Raul Castro said that “poverty, catastrophe and migrants are not contained by walls, but with cooperation, understanding and peace.”
Castro then unleashed more attacks on President Trump by saying that the new administration plans to violate environmental agreements to benefit large corporations. He closed by expressing his support for leftist regimes in the region and remember Hugo Chavez on the fourth anniversary of his death. As mentioned above, he expressed solidarity with Mexico but did not comment on the 91 Cubans recently sent back to the island.
So “que pasa” as Cubans would say? What’s going on?  
First, Cuba’s economy is hurting badly as was reported at the end of 2016:   
Cuba publishes few credible economic statistics, but experts expect the country to end this year with gross domestic product growth of 1 percent or less. 
It maintained a rate close to 3 percent from 2011-2015.
One bright spot is tourism, booming since Obama and Castro’s Dec. 17, 2014, detente announcement set off a surge in overall visitor numbers, up more than 15 percent in 2015 and again this year.
“I’ve never seen as many tourists as I have this year,” said Magalys Pupo, a street-corner pastry vendor in Old Havana. “They’re everywhere and they’re the income that we need in this country.”
The slowness of macroeconomic growth despite a surge of interest in foreign investment and the greatest tourism boom in decades attests to both long-term mismanagement of the Cuban economy and the depth of the crisis in other sectors, particularly aid from Venezuelan in the form of deeply subsidized oil.
Analysts believe that as Venezuela’s Cuba-inspired socialist economy has disintegrated, exports to Cuba has dropped from 115,000 barrels daily in 2008 to 90,000 in recent years to 40,000 a day over the last few months.
Second, it does appear that the Trump administration is going to take a second look at the U.S.-Cuba deal.   
President Trump has  reasons to review the situation:
a) The Cuban vote in Florida got him the 27 electoral votes; and, 
b) What exactly has the U.S. gotten out of this deal? Not much.  
So I think that Raul Castro is starting to get the message that elections have consequences. And frankly there are lots of us Cuban Americans in the U.S. who are happy with this particular consequence.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.



Tags: Raul Casteo and President Trump To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

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