I'm John Batchel. This is The New World Report with my colleagues Ernesto Arrugia, former foreign Minister of the Republic of Brazil, and Alejandro Pina Exclusa of the opposition.

Both gentlemen overseas, we looked to the headlines out of Cuba.

Last week, it became clear that there's a crisis.

The oil that Cuba has depended upon to run its electricity for years came from Venezuela.

Most recently there was a shipment or more from Mexico, but both have now ended, we're told.

This is part of the U.S. policy. And Cuba is either out of oil or will run out of oil.

It is right now a crisis for the seven million people left on the island. However, there's also this, the U.S. Supreme Court, to hear Exxon

bid for compensation from Cuba. In other words, people who lost property and assets because the Cuban

regime under Castro and his

successors refused to acknowledge private property in Cuba are now to be, all those assets

are to be reviewed by the Supreme Court starting with ExxonMobil, complicating the

question of what is the future for Cuba.

Alejandro, I come to you on this because Cuba was sustained by the Venezuelan oil

shipments.

Cuba was sustained on the basis of relationships between Maduro and the Diaz Canal regime

in Havana.

Now that the Cuban gunmen have returned to Cuba from Caracas, is there still influence

of Venezuela in Havana or is that ended permanently?

I think under the new national security strategy of the U.S., Cuba cannot exist as it is.

Cuba had its influence, its importance, first during the Cold War, because it was,

let's say, part of Russian influence in our hemisphere, or Soviet influence. And then Cuba was important

because it was ahead, the brains of the Sao Paulo Forum, which is now dismantling itself. It's

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