The Cuban connection?
An investigation by Spanish authorities with the support of the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation led to the arrest—at the end of January—of 14 people allegedly involved in a money laundering scheme for Albanian, Serbian, Chinese, Armenian, Colombian and Moroccan criminal organizations. According to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the criminal ring earned between 2 and 3% of the total amount of money laundered. There is talk of several million euros per month moved through this network, which was present in several cities such as Madrid, Malaga, Marbella, and the Portuguese Lisbon. More than 1 million euros, four money counters—housed in soundproof cabinets—, encrypted cell phones—which were synchronized and programmed to be blocked if any network member was arrested—, and a crypto wallet were seized. However, I share this because it is alleged that one of the ongoing laundering operations was the installation of infrastructure for photovoltaic power generation in Cuba in exchange for “large quantities” of nickel and gold. There is no suggestion so far that authorities here were aware of criminal activity behind the front business.
The country has proposed to increase the exploitation of minerals to increase the inflow of foreign currency or to use them directly as barter, as was apparently foreseen in this case. According to reports, Havana would be paying with nickel for the acquisition of photovoltaic solar parks from China, and also with domestic crude oil. As I recently explained here, Cuban citizens are living a hell of quite long power outages due to the underperformance of the old thermoelectric plants and the lack of fuel to feed diesel and fuel oil generation engines distributed throughout the country. A U.S.-designated Russian tanker recently entered a Cuban port with 790,000 barrels of crude oil, but this is barely enough for a little more than six days, as the national economy demands 125,000 barrels a day. The Russian cargo, in any case useful to alleviate tensions at least for a few days, is valued at 55 million dollars. In the village of San Nicolás de Bari—I had a beautiful bride there a few years ago—people are irremediably turning to charcoal to ensure the cooking of their food, as noted by Reuters this week.
“We've opted to cook with charcoal, which is what we can do because otherwise, we're going to go through a lot of work to be able to eat,” one woman told Cuba-based reporters from the British news agency. My father-in-law's wife in the central province of Camagüey is in the same dynamic. I talk of an urban setting. On the other hand, the authorities have stipulated that high-octane gasoline will only be marketed in dollars given the high deficit reported, largely associated with U.S. sanctions. But what is happening also has a lot to do with the failed internal policies, lacking creative alternatives to mobilize domestic production, deal with the private sector, attract foreign investment, and increase exports. I focus on the issue of the government's relationship with non-state actors in the economy. Cuban officials continue to try to tame the latter instead of adopting a more realistic approach based on the search for consensus. For example, several provincial governments have fixed the price of rice in the face of an acute shortage of this key product in the Cuban diet. The result has been that marketers have padlocked selling points, a dynamic in which ordinary citizens are the ones who ultimately suffer the most.
#CrimenOrganizado
— PTV MÁLAGA (@PTV_Malaga) February 20, 2025
👮🏻♂️La Policía Nacional ha desarticulado una red de la mafia rusa que blanqueaba dinero del crimen organizado en #España pic.twitter.com/BvyF1gIXzC
Latam Via X
Here we go again? Elon vs. De Moraes Round __?
Brazil's top court justice orders X to pay $1.4 million fine for non-compliance https://t.co/tO0gNzIGaa
— FOX 56 News (WDKY) (@FOX56News) February 21, 2025
Javier Milei gave Elon a chainsaw as a gift in the framework of his participation in the CPAC 2025. It is my impression or does Milei look out of place or too obsequious in his relationship with Musk 👇? The Argentine president also met this Thursday with the IMF head, who confirmed that they are working on the signing of a new program to support the reforms of the liberal Pink House.
SourceElon Musk has gifted the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, a silver chainsaw, a symbol of cutting down government and slashing costs, a movement famously led by President Milei, aka "Mr. Afuera!"
— SMX 🇺🇸 (@iam_smx) February 20, 2025
President Milei fully endorses Musk's @DOGE! pic.twitter.com/xlTHNCJz5X
Elon Musk received a chainsaw as a gift from the President of Argentina, Javier Milei (Mr. Afuera!).
— SMX 🇺🇸 (@iam_smx) February 20, 2025
"Chainsaw for bureaucracy!" pic.twitter.com/sWSZW30qv4
Panama, the Canal
The government of José Raúl Mulino is showing some strength again. Let's see if it is not just rhetoric this time.
Panama Exasperated over Persistence of US Allegations of Chinese Control of Canal https://t.co/GajHJ9Jsux
— Military.com (@Militarydotcom) February 20, 2025
MEC
This 👇 decision by Canada virtually mirrors the one taken by Washington on Wednesday. It is a move that pleases Trump and, in turn, puts Canada at odds with Mexico, the country with which it would in principle work to jointly confront the MAGA White House's tariff threats.
Here are the drug cartels and crime groups Canada now considers terrorist entities.https://t.co/d7SRzCO2ex
— Globalnews.ca (@globalnews) February 20, 2025
TRUMP/VENEZUELA
Venezuelans and Cubans increasingly attracted to red are now perhaps beginning to miss blue a little.
Venezuelans sue in US to challenge Trump's end to deportation protections https://t.co/KQZNQrsodc
— Reuters Venezuela (@ReutersVzla) February 20, 2025
Cecilia González Herrera is one of the 600 thousand hardworking, decent Venezuelan migrants protected with #TPS. Young, charismatic, intelligent.
— Leopoldo Martínez Nucete (@lecumberry) February 20, 2025
She was forced to flee Venezuela -in harms way- as a minor with her family years ago, and graduated in Political Science from Central… https://t.co/OHYzHsVv51 pic.twitter.com/Xh3NhaLw0h
Nicolás Maduro: “I tell President Donald Trump, with respect, (to) ask for the reports of the last four years from the FBI and the DEA, from the offices in Colombia, so that (you) can see, President Trump, who financed, who moved, who directed the famous Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train), who took it to Colombia, who took it to the United States”. Source.
ICE Air Operations transported 177 Venezuelan illegal aliens from Guantanamo Bay to Honduras today for pickup by the Venezuelan government, which returned them to their home country. pic.twitter.com/lzl0F4Ieln
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) February 20, 2025
There are no migrant detainees left at Gitmo after Thursday's deportations, per a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. Interesting in the video below how the deported Venezuelans thank the powerful Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello for having been rescued from the hell of Guantanamo.
A happy returning? (source of the image).“¡Gracias por sacarnos del infierno!”: Ministro Diosdado Cabello recibe a 177 venezolanos retenidos en Guantánamo
— Vanessa Teresa 🍒 (@CoralTeresa) February 21, 2025
Bienvenidos a su tierra! pic.twitter.com/bX1nPiKfPi
Haiti
Is Port-au-Prince still a home for them 👇? Dts.
The Trump administration has ordered the creation of 500K more illegal immigrants by stripping temporary protected status from Haitians. Vance said he didn't care they were here legally he would still call them illegal aliens. Now Trump gets to make the law match his rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/FnShwQKtIS
— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) February 20, 2025
Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica work with Trump in deportation effort
Costa Rica joins Panama in detaining deportees from the US in stopover back to their countries. By @meganjanetsky https://t.co/ziL0Ghva4v pic.twitter.com/6KAdubQiHb
— E. Eduardo Castillo (@EECastilloAP) February 21, 2025
It is a known and demonstrable fact that price fixing only exacerbates shortages. The underlying and insurmountable problems of Cuba's economy, primarily the insuperable embargo by the USA, aren't soluble with such simplistic tools as price fixing, but polities just don't have other tools they can try to resolve the desperate problem.
What Cuba could do short of simply surrendering it's sovereignty and yielding to slavery to corrupt corporate overlords isn't clear. I cannot recommend slavery, as I myself would rather starve. However, I cannot say I would starve my children, and can only empathize with parents in such dire circumstances.
It is unsustainable to resort to charcoal for cooking, as is well-known, but what else can be done? Whatever development Cuba turns to the covert spooks will sabotage, and Cuba's access to it's seas are difficult to secure from such heinous enemies to develop suitable resources for it's people, while it's forests are incapable of sustaining a charcoal industry. However I look at it, decentralized adoption of aquaponics that Cuba could enable it's people to undertake to themselves provide their necessary nutrition seems to me to be the best solution potential, as the people will not tolerate their own betrayal, and even were spooks to sabotage such individual industry, their impact would be limited to such solitary endeavors as they could corrupt.
Combating the ills that are exploitable via collective institutions are best decentralized because that removes the breadth of suffering that can be caused by sabotaging centralized institutions.
Thanks!
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the country needs to move towards the solutions you have outlined here at other times, not just aquaponics. A year ago a Cuban official spoke in this direction and people did not understand him, and rather what they did---clumsily and ignorantly---was to laugh at him. If I had the logistical capacity to introduce myself in this practice, I would assume it from now on, but I do not rule it out as conditions improve, which is what I am working for. Thanks for your always helpful feedback, my friend.
The future is an unpredictable sea. It's swells and chop cannot be predicted, except by those wizened and windblasted seamen that have surfed the swells and ridden the chop, windblown and erratic, yet able by men of long acquaintance to be at least relatively characterized. No one has a better understanding of how these markets and industries can be developed and will affect people and societies than you do, my friend. We peer into the future, and wonder what it will bring, but men brave the unknowable to undertake the first steps of epic journeys, and that is how followers in their footsteps dare to project their expectations on their own journeys after them.
I know you care for your loved ones, that you yearn for their prosperity and for them to thrive in good company in their lives ahead of them. While aquaponics isn't sexy, no shiny robots call you master and meticulously automate food production, the hanging gutters on a sunny wall fed by an aquarium bubbler from a tank of catfish or similar fish with easy diets and high tolerance for dirty water are a prospect of wealth and contentment in hard times to come.
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/2023/01/17/aquaponics-growing-crops-open-water openly provides information that is not all that is available. A few searches of the internet will provide what there is to know today, and from there you can develop specific information regarding specific local circumstances, supplies, and practices potential there.
What Cuba, and it's sons and daughters, can make of that information is truly up to you and your fellows. Almost all of the infrastructure can be made, or salvaged from used structures being replaced. Anything that can hold enough water will suffice to keep crawdads or catfish in. The biggest expense up front is the aquarium bubbler, ~$20.
If you fail, what is the downside? Who could blame you for trying? The simplicity of beginning with a 55 gallon barrel, an aquarium bubbler, and some used gutters on a sunny wall leaves almost no prospect of failure economically. Fear of failure is certainly a worse prospect than actually failing, because the expenditures are so minimal. Other tools like 3D printers are much more expensive, although capable of far more diverse production than some hydroponic gutters fed fish waste.
When you succeed at producing delicious food from table scraps and used gutters, what you learn you can share, and then people will not laugh and misunderstand, because no one hungry misunderstands a full belly. I encourage you to risk that laughter, to brave that fear of failure, because those are surely far worse threats in your mind than your efforts will produce in practice.