In intimate ally Venezuela, tears and cheers over Castro's death

[Zorro]

Venezuela's ruling socialists mourned former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, while opposition hard-liners exulted over the death of a man they called a dictator who helped wreck their economy and whose country for years had an easy ride with subsidized oil.

The two leftist Latin American governments became intimate allies under Castro and his younger disciple, the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, a relationship buttressed by generous oil shipments from the OPEC country to the Communist-run island in return for thousands of Cuban doctors, teachers, sports trainers and security advisers.

But that economic lifeline to Cuba ebbed in recent years as Venezuela, in the throes of a brutal economic crisis that has seen millions skipping meals, has cut back on the subsidized crude.

Venezuela used to send Cuba some 100,000 barrels of oil per day, but data seen by Reuters showed a 40 percent decline in crude shipments in the first half of the year compared with 2015 and that could fall further amid a production slump.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/intimate-ally-venezuela-tears-cheers-over-castros-death-171646998.html

[Marksman_91]

1. Venezuelans have more reason to celebrate Fidel's death than mourn it

Cuba under the Castros were nothing more than moochers living off Venezuela's oil teat. And in exchange we got doctors who don't even want to stay in Venezuela anymore 'cause of their miserable salary they're getting with the most inflated currency in the world and the out-of-control crime that they never experienced in Cuba.