While Fidel Castro has his own reasons for sending Cubans to Africa, he could not do so without huge and constant transfusions of Soviet aid. Western experts estimate that Russia now pumps the equivalent of about $6 million a day into Cuba. That figure includes outright grants, subsidies and technical aid. The U.S.S.R. sells Cuba 190,000 bbl. of oil per day at about half the world price and buys 3.5 million tons per year of Cuban sugar at four times the world price (currently 7ยข per lb.), paying partly with what Cuba needs most: hard currency.
Cuba also gets virtually all of...
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