PDVSA suspended these shipments during the April 11 military coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. After the coup failed and Chávez returned to Miraflores--the presidential palace--April 13, his government took no action to immediately reverse the halt of shipments to Cuba. Chávez backed off from a pre-coup announcement that he would replace the state oil company’s leadership with executives loyal to him, leaving the management team headed by Ali Rodríguez intact.

The suspension was a blow to Cuba, since Venezuelan crude accounted for one third of the country’s energy supply. Havana reportedly was forced to impose measures to reduce energy consumption and had to seek more expensive oil elsewhere.

During Chávez’s brief ouster, PDVSA officials vowed not to deliver more oil to Cuba, claiming Venezuela was giving it away. Venezuela’s oil minister has defended the resumption of the shipments. He insisted on August 4 that the agreement his government reached earlier with Cuban president Fidel Castro is similar to those Venezuela has with other Caribbean nations.

Under the deal, 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil shipments to Cuba are reportedly to be paid for at world market prices within 90 days of delivery. The remaining 20 percent is sold by Caracas on preferential terms: payable within 15 years, with a two-year grace period and an interest rate of 2 percent.

In exchange, Havana has offered free medical care in Cuba for hundreds of Venezuelans who can’t afford it in their country. "Every week, a planeload of people badly in need of treatment leaves for Havana," said Antonio Aguillón, in an interview here July 22. His wife who had traveled to Havana that day for an operation, as part of this program, had just called him to say the plane ride went fine. Cuba continued this program without interruption in the three months since the April coup, Aguillón said. Dozens of other working people interviewed in Venezuela made similar points.

Many also praised the hundreds of Cuban doctors who are in Venezuela as part of the assistance program from Cuba. These volunteer doctors "go to many remote areas that most Venezuelan physicians refuse to set foot on," said Tomás Blanca, a fisherman in Cumaná, the capital of the state of Sucre, at Venezuela’s northwestern coast, in a July 19 interview there. "Venezuelan doctors practice medicine for profits. Cubans do it for humanity."
 
 
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