Free Exchange: The criminal cartels running Cuba and Venezuela

This week we're going international and talking about two connected regimes that have been brought to their knees by brutal authoritarian governments: Cuba and Venezuela.


Boris Arenas Gonzalez was blocked from leaving Cuba by the Communist regime, so joins us down the line from Havana to talk about the political situation, the centrality of the black market, and his life as a pro-democracy activist.


Diego Moya Ocampos grew up in Venezuela and now works as a political risk analyst at IHS Market in London. Rather than seeing the situation in Venezuela as evidence of the failure of central planning, Ocampos argues that the governing class operates in practice as a criminal cartel.


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