It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t: At the end of this month, the 33-country Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — a two-year-old organization that lists promoting democracy among its top goals — will swear-in Cuban dictator General Raúl Castro as its new chairman.
What’s just as crazy, General Castro will become Latin America and the Caribbean’s official spokesman in political and trade negotiations with the 27-country European Union and other world blocs during his 12-month tenure. Castro will take over CELAC’s leadership from Chilean President Sebastian Piñera at a CELAC-European Union summit in Chile on Jan. 28, and is to pass on the group’s leadership to the Costa Rican president in January 2014.
European diplomats, who pride themselves on attaching “democracy clauses” demanding free elections to their countries’ trade agreements with developing nations, are already shaking their heads about the prospect of appearing in smiling pictures with General Castro.
Cuba has not allowed a single free election, or an independent newspaper
