Wikileaks around the Americas

Here are a few other Wikileaks stories of interest.

Venezuelan missile purchases worried U.S.: WikiLeaks: The US tried to prevent Russia and Spain from selling a variety of weapons to the Bolivarian Republic over the last five years.  I don't find that really surprising.  While the official rationale is that the US didn't want any of these weapons to fall into the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, I can't imagine that the US would have been any more supportive of the arms sales if we were convinced that the weapons would remain in Venezuela.

Wikileaks: Data on what Cuba sacrifices for Venezuela oil:  Each year approximately 200 Cuban doctors serving in Venezuela leave the program and end up fleeing to the United States.

WikiLeaks cable: Diplomats predict bleak economic future for Cuba and US cable: Cuba to be insolvent within 2-3 years:  The US met with with commercial and economic counselors from five of Cuba's largest trading partners -- China, Spain, Canada, Brazil and Italy -- plus key creditor nations France and Japan - in February 2010.  Most representatives seem to have concluded that (1) Cuba would not make serious reforms in the near-term, (2) could survive this year, but (3) 2011 could be a rough year.  Within months, the consensus on number 1 was undermined by the government's slashing of 500,000 public sector jobs. 

Uribe proposed capturing guerrillas in Venezuela: In one December 2007 cable, Uribe supposedly "likened the threat Chavez poses to Latin America to that posed by Hitler in Europe."  While I am sure that this statement was meant to get the US to pay more attention to the threat that Chavez poses to all the Americas (if that were possible), for me it makes me not take the threat or source seriously.

Charles II of Mercury Rising, RAJ, and Quotha provide commentary on outgoing US Ambassador Charles A. Ford views on Mel Zelaya (see here for the May 2008 cable).  In some ways, for me, the cable answers why the United States did not put a diplomatic full-court press on following the coup that removed Zelaya.  The ambassador believed that Zelaya (and those around him) was corrupt, involved in organized crime and drug trafficking, not a friend to the US, and too cozy with Chavez.  Ambassador Ford also relates that "Zelaya also has been quite erratic in his behavior."  This is the same accusation / frustration that it many officials seem to have had with Zelaya following the coup.