ABSTRACT
Venezuela's relationship with Cuba has been close throughout the history of the two countries. Their peoples have much in common in matters of race, culture, collective psychology, humor, and sympathies and antipathies. The incidents at and around the Venezuelan Embassy began in December 1979, when a group of people seeking asylum crashed the gate and nervous Cuban guards fired into the embassy grounds. A veritable rapprochement and a return to the friendliness between Cuba and Venezuela of the 1974-1979 period is perfectly possible. But much will depend on the shifting overall trends of international, Venezuelan, and Cuban politics. Venezuela possesses a permanent, nonpolitical foreign service that constitutes the solid foundation of its diplomatic and consular corps. Venezuelan conservatives both within and outside Christian Democratic party thereafter came to regard the Cuban presence in Grenada as part of a global "expansion of Soviet-Cuban influence" in the Caribbean and a possible threat to Venezuelan security.
