Can Cuba and Venezuela Help Rescue Haiti? Head of U.S.-Backed Transition Is Asking
Can Cuba and Venezuela Help Rescue Haiti? Head of U.S.-Backed Transition Is Asking
"Putting the country in the midst of regional political tug-of-war would not be the best," said AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth to Miami Herald.
In Cuba the population is fighting shortages of food, fuel and medicine while a collapsing electrical grid that resulted in three nationwide blackouts this year continues to leave many people in the dark.
In Venezuela, strongman Nicolás Maduro is driving the hemisphere’s worst migration crisis — nearly eight million people have fled and more are threatening to leave amid economic hardships, human rights abuses and a power grab that has him preparing to inaugurate himself for a third six-year term in January. [...]
“No doubt Haiti is a mess,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and an expert on the region. “I’ve been calling it a failed state and I believe it to be. But putting the country in the midst of regional political tug-of-war would not be the best way to advance security and prosperity.”
Farnsworth said Voltaire’s decision is “a bad move” and its timing “rotten and probably intentional,” given the pending U.S. presidential transition. He wouldn’t put it past ALBA leaders, he added, to be behind the request “in order to embarrass the U.S. and polarize the situation.”
“ALBA has nothing to offer, so their best tried-and-true method is to try to work public opinion against the U.S. and hope to cast attention away from their own failures,” Farnsworth said. “Let’s see what if anything ALBA actually comes up with besides, maybe, a show of support with a planeload of supplies or something that isn’t sustained. I doubt that ALBA peacekeepers will be deployed to Haiti any time soon.”
