Oil for Doctors

The Globe and Mail had an article Saturday about the Cuban doctors working in Venezuela, part of an arrangement between Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In exchange for 15,000 Cuban doctors working in poor areas in Venezuela, Cuba gets lots of cheap Venezuelan oil. The opposition in Caracas claims the Cubans are more political propagandists than they are doctors, but the clinics I saw in Caracas seemed real enough, and there were certainly many, many people in Caracas willing to vouch for the program (and many to put it down, as well).