Why decline of Hugo Chavez is grim prognosis for Cuba

Away from the constitutional wrangles and impassioned crowds of Caracas, the future of Venezuela after Hugo Chavez is being plotted this weekend in an elegant pre-revolution mansion in Havana's old playboy quarter. The firebrand Venezuelan president is fighting for his life in hospital, stricken by severe respiratory problems and a lung infection after his latest round of surgery for cancer.

His illness left him unable to be sworn in for his fourth term as president last Thursday, having won a close-fought election in October. But for his Cuban hosts, much more is at risk than simply the loss of a fellow Left-wing Latin American radical who has long venerated Fidel Castro. His death would put at risk the remarkable oil-fuelled largesse that has allowed Cuba to cling to its experiment in tropical communism.

Thanks to the close relationship between Chavez and Castro, energy-rich Venezuela supplies over 100,000 barrels of dirt-cheap oil a day to Cuba — an estimated 50% of the island's petroleum needs. Venezuela also hires tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers to work in its barrio slums, propping up the Cuban economy to the tune of about $6billion (pounds 3.8billion) a year. Without that subsidy, Havana would have been forced to introduce market reforms to its communist regime a long time ago.

Nothing has been heard or seen of Chavez for more than a month and few expect him to recover - if indeed he is still alive. So it is little wonder that Cuba is desperate to exercise maximum control over his passing — and in particular manoeuvre a handover of power to Nicolas Maduro, his vice-president.

Maduro, who arrived in Havana on Friday night for fresh talks at the government-owned "protocol villa", shares Chavez's loyalty to Cuba. But others within the Venezuelan elite are less convinced of the merits of subsidising Cuba with an economic lifeline at a time when inflation and debt are soaring in Venezuela, despite its oil wealth.

Also arriving in Havana on Friday, to pay what might be their final respects to Chavez, were Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the populist president of Argentina, and Ollanta Humala, Peru's Left-wing head-of-state. For months, Maduro has been commuting in an unmarked government jet between Caracas and Havana, ferrying messages from the ailing president as well as liaising with the Cuban leader, Raul Castro, and his older brother Fidel.

Amid the intrigue, Chavez is being treated at the jewel in Cuba's health system, the Medical Surgical Research Centre, the same hospital where Castro was treated for a near-fatal stomach condition in 2006. Chavez aides have given no update on his condition for more than a week, fuelling speculation that he is close to death. Unlike after previous surgeries, there have been no photographs or videos since the operation in mid-December, not even a phone call to state radio or television.

More than anything, it is the normally garrulous leader's silence that indicates the seriousness of his condition. The lack of specifics about Chavez's health is not surprising for high-profile patients in Havana. Castro's medical condition is treated as a state secret and Chavez's decision to have surgery in Havana meant that he could be assured near-total privacy. What is known, though, is that he has had surgery four times, as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy since his cancer diagnosis in mid-2011.

That he chose to entrust his life to Cuba's medical system rather than his own is regarded by many Venezuelans as a telling indictment of the state of the health service in his own country.

Although Chavez declared himself to be "cancer free" last year during a hard-fought election battle, it is believed that he was told from the start that the prognosis was grim. And the Cuban connection may have further harmed his health last year when his mentors there insisted that he return to the electoral fray in Venezuela, when doctors would have preferred him to rest after surgery.

"The key to Cuba's influence lies in the visits made to Cuba by Chavez on a continuous basis, almost monthly," Gustavo Coronel, a government critic and Venezuelan oil industry executive, told The Sunday Telegraph. "The number of these visits is in the hundreds over the years, starting in 2000 and becoming routine affairs as Chavez became dependent on Castro's advice. Chavez was hooked on Castro.

"It is Castro who convinced him to treat his ailments in Cuba. This would probably cost him his life, as it is now suspected that the procedures he underwent in Cuba did not include the best modern protocols."

Whether Chavez lives or dies, and who succeeds him, matters as much to Cuba as Venezuela. Indeed, his health amounts to a vital economic statistic in Havana.

It would be a disaster for Venezuelan subsidies to dry up, according to Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a US economist who was born in Cuba. "If this help stops, industry is paralysed, transportation is paralysed and you'll see the effects in everything from electricity to sugar mills," he said.

While Chavez-directed funds have poured into Havana, Cuban advisers have worked in the highest echelons of the Venezuelan executive. The president's security team is trained by Cubans, and the Venezuelan intelligence service is run under a similar structure to Cuba's feared G2 intelligence agency, itself based on former East Germany's Stasi network.

The mass marches that take place regularly in Venezuela, which loyal supporters are encouraged to attend with the promise of free alcohol and transport, are copies of the revolutionary model that was perfected in Cuba under Fidel Castro.

It was the Castro brothers, experts in political longevity against the odds, who were instrumental in working out how "21st-century socialism" in Venezuela, and in turn Venezuela's generous handouts to Cuba, could survive without Chavez. The doomsday scenario for Havana would be fresh elections in which the opposition triumphed.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph before the election in October, Henrique Capriles, the Venezuelan opposition leader who later lost the presidential race to Chavez, pledged that he would halt the "gifts" of free or heavily subsidised oil to ideological allies. But there is also danger for the Castro brothers if a more nationalist-minded faction was to prevail.

The Cubans are particularly wary of Diosdado Cabello, a former army comrade of Chavez and the head of Venezuela's National Assembly, who is thought to be rather cooler about the bilateral relationship. Under the Venezuelan constitution, if Chavez dies or is designated too sick to govern, then Cabello would become caretaker president until new elections were called. So it was the Castros who persuaded Chavez to leave his sick bed on December 9, travel to Caracas, and very publicly endorse Maduro as his chosen successor.

Chavez has not been seen since his return. It looks increasingly likely that his last public act was also his final political gift to his beloved mentors in Havana.