Historian, economist and former diplomat Bernard Vega takes a serious look at the current geopolitical situation in the Caribbean and does not like what he sees. According to Vega, in the first place, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was taken out of Haiti and Venezuela, and this makes things much more difficult for the Dominican Republic and its fight again drug trafficking. In Haiti, the violence was the main reason for the DEA leaving the country. The US State Department opposed the move but was not able to stop it since the law regarding the DEA does not allow the State Department any discretionary leeway in such decisions. The DR receives a lot of drugs from Haiti. The DEA was kicked out of Venezuela by Chavez. Vega says that readers will remember how President Fernandez requested, some time ago, that President Chavez monitor his air space more closely, because planes from Venezuela were bombarding the DR with drugs. On the other hand, the price of crude oil has hit US$67.00 a barrel. In Ecuador, due to civil protest groups, oil production has stopped. If the United States invades Iran, there will be less oil available. The economist then asks the reader to remember that Iraqi oil production has not increased all that much since the removal of Saddam Hussein. He says that Saudi Arabia is producing at full capacity, adding that there are bottlenecks at refineries in several countries and that India, China and the US have increased their demand for oil. Vega ends his first paragraph with the announcement that Chevron Oil has declared that the era of easy oil is over. He says that the effect on the Dominican economy’s growth, inflation and balance of payments will be terrible. Chavez has promised some help for the Caribbean islands. On Monday, after leaving Cuba, he stopped in Jamaica and signed an agreement. He had already signed one with the DR. However, the agreements vary, according to Vega, depending on Chavez’s sympathy for the policies of the island in question. Under the agreements signed with Cuba in October 2000, Venezuela not only sells crude oil to Cuba at US$27 dollars a barrel, less than half the going price, but also supplies much more than Cuba needs. Cuban brokers have been re-selling the excess to the five Central American nations and pocketing the difference between the subsidized cost and the world price. This does not happen under the agreement with the Dominican Republic. Moreover, Cuba also gets longer payment plans. The combined amount (subsidized price, resale profits and lines of credit) that Venezuela gives Cuba is close to the amount that the USSR provided before the fall of the Berlin Wall and is roughly equivalent to the amount of US aid to the Dominican Republic during 1965-1966 if you take into account the size of the DR economy at the time.
Chavez has denied help to Haiti, since he considers Aristide to be the legitimate President, and the lack of assistance only pushes more Haitian immigration into the Dominican Republic.
Vega says that all of the aforementioned issues are only creating more problems for the DR. If we expect to reduce the impact of higher oil prices by appealing to Chavez, he will be more generous the more that the DR supports his already announced route to socialism. Mexico, under the San Jose Accord during the eighties, supplied oil to the Central American republics and the Caribbean islands. With the demise of the Communist threat, Mexico suspended its supplies of cheap oil. The oft-mentioned non-membership of the DR of the Central American Integration Bank is an excuse, since the Central Americans belong to it, but do not get any assistance from Mexico, either. Back then we received oil from both Mexico and Venezuela, and neither of them sent us a political invoice for the service. Now, we only have Venezuela, a country that, besides its crude oil, is also exporting its Boliviarian revolution.